The International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the Federal Environment Ministry (BMUB) is pleased to have funded and commissioned its 500th project.

In April, IKI reached the magic number of 500 funded and commissioned projects. And two large and important projects are representative of the great many projects commissioned over this period. The first is a project on establishing a national climate institute in India, while the second is the 'Mami Wata' project on coastal protection in West Africa.

India has set ambitious climate goals, and has already started a series of initiatives to achieve these. The newly approved IKI project is supporting the establishment of the National Institute for Climate Change Studies and Actions (NICCSA), which pools knowledge about climate change developments and cooperates with national and international research institutions. Cooperation arrangements also exist with the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. This makes it possible for the Government to make climate policy decisions based on scientifically sound information.

The second project, 'Mami Wata', promotes coastal protection in West Africa in connection with the Aichi Biodiversity Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The project will develop and carry out technical and institutional training programmes for experts on marine and coastal protection. This will help the West African countries to improve the management and coordination of their marine and coastal ecosystems.

Since 2008, IKI has been implementing projects around the world to support activities and processes for sustainable climate change mitigation. Many of these measures helped to pave the way for the current Paris climate agreement. In order to help realise the international climate policy goals and commitments from the Paris climate conference in the future, BMUB's IKI will continue to fund and commission projects across four areas 'Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions', 'Adapting to the impacts of climate change', 'Conserving natural carbon sinks / REDD+' and 'Conserving biological diversity'. The call to all international organisations to submit project outlines with their innovative approaches is already online.