Norway cut $ 2.7M environmental aid to Tanzania

e Norwegian Embassy in Dar es Salaam has stopped disbursing $2.7million (about Sh4.3billion) to a local conservation organisation over failure to observe an agreed work plan. The embassy entered a $3.9 million (about Sh6.2billion) contract with the Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania (WCST) to implement a pilot project called REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) in the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves. The four-year REDD project started in February 2011 and was intended to reduce deforestation and reduce carbon dioxide by improving carbon stocks through forest conservation in the two forest reserves located on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam City.Ms Inger Naess, the counsellor for Environment and Climate Change in the Norwegian Embassy confirmed about the suspension to The Citizen last week, saying, “Funds haven’t been disbursed to the WCST since December 2011.” She said in an interview that a contract between the embassy and the WCST was valued at approximately $3.9 million, but so far only $1,208,414 has been disbursed, and there was no indication that the remaining amount, $2.7 million, would be given to the society.

Ms Naess said the embassy did not make any disbursement in 2012 because the WCST failed to fulfil necessary contractual agreements. “In December 2012, the WCST was asked to stop all expenditures for the project,” she noted.

According to the contract, she said, the embassy was required to make semi-annual disbursements to the WCST, adding that two disbursements were made in May and December 2011.

She explained that, under the agreement, the WCST was required to submit to the embassy progress and financial reports by May each year and audited reports by September of the same year.

“The contract provides that if agreed reports are not submitted according to the agreement, funds will not be disbursed. Hence, funds have not been disbursed to the WCST since 2011,” said Ms Naess.

She said, “The embassy has noted with regret that the progress in project implementation has not proceeded according to the agreed work plan.”

WCST officials have been promising to comment on the issue for the past one week, but they were yet to do so as of yesterday. Tanzania Forest Conservation Group has estimated that at the current rate of destruction, the Kazimzumbwi forest will be completely destroyed by the end of next year and that of Pugu by 2017.

In 2006, an evaluation of Norwegian aid to Tanzania revealed that about $30 million had been lost through corruption and mismanagement in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.

Chris Lang of REDD-Monitor said in an email to The Citizen last week that the money was about half of the total that Norway spent on the Management of Natural Resources Programme (MNRP).

He said Norway supported the MNRP from 1994 to 2006 to the tune of $5 million a year.

(thecitizen)