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Overview of the Provincial Revenue and Expenditure (OPRE %u2013 2025/26)Climate Change: An update The province has been plagued with numerous incidents of heavy rain associated with flooding, as well as strong winds and snow fall resulting in loss of life, damage to the environment, infrastructure, and other properties. Further there are incidents of drought negatively affecting the provision of water to infrastructure facilities supporting agricultural infrastructure projects thus also affecting food security. To address the effects of the disaster in the Province in 2024/25 financial year, the National Department of Cooperative Governance through National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) allocated an amount of R 40.345 million for Department of Transport (R15.345 million), Education (R15 million) and Health R10 million. In terms of the provincial consolidated business plans for the assessed damages for disaster a total request amount of R 698.663 million was submitted to National Department of Cooperative Governance. Further in dealing with the disaster and climate change issues in the Province, PT has requested departments to make provision of 2 per cent allocation from their total departmental infrastructure budget as a contingency for speedily addressing disasters when they occur, as such an amount of R 294.561 million or 3.14 per cent in 2025/26 FY and R788.292 million over 2025 MTEF of the total provincial infrastructure budget is set aside by the departments to immediately attend to infrastructure disasters. Over and above the tabled project list was mapped so that the planned projects and projects in the construction stage are plotted so that the project located in the disaster-prone areas can be identified for intervention. In addition to the PT improvement tools reflected, PT has incorporated the climate change factors for consideration into the infrastructure planning checklist so that when planning for projects, departments can ensure that the projects are more resilient, and disasters can be mitigated. The climate change act has been enacted which requires that the province prepare the climate assessment and implementation plans dealing with the adaptation and mitigation in respect of the affected infrastructure projects. In ensuring that projects are climate resilient requires an integrated and proactive approach to be followed by all stakeholders which will result in positive spinoffs including minimal impact based on occurrences of Eastern Cape being affected by National Disasters in terms of Section 23 of the Disaster Management (57 of 2002) thus safeguarding the Eastern Cape communities. To this end, the Provincial Treasury has undertaken an analysis of the projects, for departmental intervention, which fall within the climate change categories as outlined by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Greenbook i.e. projects affected by drought, projects affected by extreme rainfall, projects located in very high flood risk areas and those projects located within the 100 meter setback line which will require a Water Use License (WULA) application As such, the Eastern Cape Provincial IDMS at its portfolio management level, has factored in environmental sustainability as a key assessment criterion when undertaking the development of the strategic brief/ concept reports for small to medium projects and the pre-feasibility/feasibility studies for mega projects through the inclusion of the climate change requirements into the planning checklists. 28