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Rabat – The World Bank announced on Friday, June 11 that it had approved an additional $100 million to finance Morocco’s resilience against climate change-driven natural disasters. The US-based financial institution will expand funding for the Integrated Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Resilience program that already has a budget of $200 million.
The World Bank presented the increase in funding as a way to help improve Morocco’s ability to respond to natural disasters and mitigate the effects of climate change.
World Bank Maghreb Country Director Jesko Hentschel described the need to boost Moroccan resilience as a “critical investment given Morocco’s exposure to climate-related risks.” The world bank’s funding is not only intended to help people but is also seen as an investment. Growing Morocco’s abilities to cope with natural disasters and other climate issues is projected to save Morocco an estimated $800 million a year, according to Hentschel.
“Over the past decade, Morocco has improved its institutional, policy, and investment framework for disaster risk management,” the World Bank highlighted. Morocco has additionally established a solidarity fund that intends to “alleviate the financial impact of natural disasters on households and businesses and design a set of instruments to reduce the State’s financial exposure to risk.”
The World Bank’s DRM program in Morocco intends to “accelerate results on the ground by building on reforms the Kingdom has been implementing with the support from the World Bank,” according to the program’s Task Team Leader Philipp Petermann. “The focus of this new operation will be to strengthen the impact of risk reduction investments and enhance the monitoring and evaluation of investments,” Petermann stated in the World Bank press release.
