ALER develops Communication and Awareness Plan in Cape Verde

ALER is developing the Communication and Awareness Plan for the "Sustainable Energy Access and Climate Action Plan" (SEACAP) of the Municipality of Praia and Ribeira Grande de Santiago in Cape Verde.

The regional initiative comes under the European project "Covenant of Mayors for Sub-Saharan Africa" (CoM SSA) launched in 2016 and landed in Cape Verde in 2020 with the first two signatory cities in the country: Praia and Cidade Velha.

From the CoM SSA, local authorities are invited to voluntarily commit to the implementation of climate and energy policies in their communities and agree to a long-term vision to address three pillars: sustainable energy access, climate mitigation and adaptation.

To translate political commitment into practical action, CoM SSA signatories commit to produce and implement a Sustainable Energy Access and Climate Action Plan (SEACAP).

Cape Verde is an island country, where the energy matrix is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. This dependence on fuel for energy mobilisation is highly inefficient and very costly for the country, in addition to the CO2 emissions produced. At the national level, it has focused its efforts in the energy transition on the research for a renewable matrix. Under the Nationally Determined Contributions, it is assumed that the country will reach 30% of implementation of renewable energy by 2025. However, according to the proposed commitments, with the support of international cooperation, they could reach 100% renewable energy.

Currently, the municipality of Praia is undergoing an accelerated process of urbanisation and therefore faces challenges that the city intends to manage by acting on several axes, such as urban planning, mobility, renaturalisation of space, among others.

The municipality of Ribeira Grande de Santiago, in particular Cidade Velha due to the fact that it is World Heritage Patrimony, must comply with a series of requirements to be able to achieve the commitments with UNESCO at an international level, and many of them are related to the Covenant's own targets.

In this sense, the Covenant of Mayors can enable the two municipalities to access climate finance and enter into a network of cooperation and knowledge exchange that allows them to reduce their emissions and approach their environmental sustainability targets in a much more efficient way and promote resilience in their communities.

The Communication and Awareness Plan defined by ALER will support SEACAP's communication work to create, among other objectives, awareness of the challenges and solutions that the two cities (Praia and Cidade Velha) face in the climate field, and support the initiative Pacto de Autarcas in order to bring together all the municipalities that are part of the country, so that Cape Verde can give a local and tangible response to a global problem such as climate change.