New 7-year, $32 mln programme to help prevent natural disasters in Georgia

Georgia is starting a new seven-year programme worth $32 million that will help the country to prevent natural disasters.

The project first will be launched in Georgia’s Adjara region where geological and hydrological maps of high precision will be made. The project will step-by-step cover all the regions of Georgia where early warning systems will be installed.

The goal of the project is to prevent or mitigate possible negative consequences caused by natural disasters in the country.

Early warning systems are already installed in the basin of the River Vere in the capital of Tbilisi and in the Devdoraki Gorge in northern Georgia.

Green Climate Fund, a financial mechanism under the UNFCCC, offered $27 million while the Swiss government allocated $5 million for the programme.

The deputy minister of Environment Protection and Agriculture Nino Tandilashvili said that such scale project had never been implemented in Georgia in terms of preventing the climatic threats.

This is a 7-year project. If it will be successfully implemented about 1.4 million people will be better protected from climatic threats. In the spring and summer seasons, natural disasters are quite frequent, and it is important to have a risk prevention system in the country. Unfortunately, today we react to a disaster only after it happens”, said Tandilashvili.

She also said that during these seven years, a new generation of geologists, hydrologists, and meteorologists will be trained and for this reason cooperation with Georgian higher education institutions is planned.