The UN Green Climate Fund confirmed the Ortega-Murillo regime’s failure to comply with project rules regarding environmental and social safeguards. “It’s an enormous recognition of the indigenous peoples’ resistance,” stated a noted environmentalist.
HAVANA TIMES – The UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) has rescinded the Financial Activity Agreement for Nicaragua’s “Bio-CLIMA project, billed as “integrated climate action to reduce deforestation and strengthen resilience in BOSAWAS and Rio San Juan Biospheres.” The organization made the decision due to alleged “non-compliance with GCF policies and procedures on environmental and social safeguards.” The Fund confirmed its decision in a statement posted in English on its website.
The Bioi-CLIMA project was approved in November 2020, would have given the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo US $116.6 million dollars for its implementation. Nonetheless, in June 2021, the indigenous and Afro-descendent communities of the affected region presented a formal complaint to the GCF’s Independent Redress Mechanism, which then began an independent investigation. The Green Climate Fund has now decided to definitively suspend the project, the first such decision since its creation.
They assured that “no funds were disbursed by GCF to the project, and the project had not begun implementation.”
The posted update goes on to explain that the decision was made by the Green Fund Secretariat “following a thorough investigative and assessment process, as well as actions taken by the Secretariat to address the instances on non-compliance, which constituted legal breaches to the relevant legal agreements between GCF and the Accredited Entity.”
“Enormous recognition of Nicaragua’s indigenous resistance”
Nicaraguan environmentalist Amaru Ruiz, who has been banished from the country and had his organization’s property confiscated by the Ortega-Murillo regime, assured Confidencial that the suspension of the project “is an enormous recognition of the resistance of the indigenous and Afro-descendent communities in Nicaragua, especially those from the Mayagna Sauni As territory. This is the area that has struggled most and seen its territories invaded, and where the killings of indigenous people have bee
