MAFETENG, Lesotho (PAMACC News) - A group of women in Thabaneng, Mafeteng, about 75 kilometers south-west of Maseru, are unhappy with the sidelining of women’s development needs despite the fact that they often bear the brunt of climate change. But the women are taking an uncharted path to change the situation.
The women—all members of a small-scale farmers group that seeks to highlight the debilitating effects of climate change on poor rural communities, say there is need for a complete change in efforts to halt the phenomenon.
The farmers’ group is unhappy that rural women’s plight is given little priority on the climate change agenda, arguing that emphasis should be directed at community-based approaches to address gender and climate change.
One of the women, Mapheko Phera, sayst her area was one of the worst affected by El Nino which caused the driest weather phenomenon that hit many parts of Southern Africa in 2015. This was when she decided to join hands with other women to form the Small-Scale Farmers Forum of Lesotho.
Phera, a mother of three, said life began to change for her when she joined the piggery project, a major component of the forum.
She now sells piglets, pork and livestock foods to supplement her meagre earnings from subsistence farming.
“It was in this rural women assembly where I acquired knowledge and skills on farming,” she said.
However, persistent drought meant that Phera’s livestock business was also in danger of collapsing as water had become scarce. This led to her abandoning the piggery project.
“There was no water and food for the pigs and I began losing some of them. I couldn’t stand watching them die without rescuing them. Selling them was the only option left for me,” Phera said while bemoaning the worst drought in living memory that has now crippled her livelihood.
The UN Women supports the essential idea of ensuring that women like Phera are empowered as critical actors in addressing the impact of climate change.
The agency says this is critical in ensuring that women and girls enjoy their rights and are able to make better decisions to better respond to disasters.
The UN Women clearly states that in many parts of the Southern Africa, women and girls from rural areas in particular, are disproportionally affected by the negative impact of climate change.
One of the founders of the Forum, ‘Mamalefetsane Phakoe, said some of the skills members of the assembly acquire include sewing, crop production, animal and poultry farming.
“Our assembly molds women into small scale farmers with the ability of establishing income generating projects with the purpose of adapting to climate change,” Phakoe said.
“We promote the use of indigenous seeds in our cropping activities knowing fully that known climatic patterns have changed. We share amongst others, while on the other hand we also encourage women to practice agrology agriculture and other efforts of being adaptive to this global concern,” explained Phakoe.
The Paris Agreement calls for action to respect, promote and consider respective obligations on gender equality and the empowerment of women in addressing climate change. It also gives mandates for gender-responsive adaptation and capacity building activities.
On the other hand in light of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by world leaders in 2015, there has to be an opportunity for renewed work on gender and climate.
The UN Women believes that to advance this agenda and contribution to the achievement of SDGs, it is critical to focus on gender sensitive climate change responses and approaches.
The SDGSs agenda adopted by the world leaders in 2015 acknowledges women as beneficiaries and enablers of climate action and as agents of climate change while African Union Agenda 2063 provides a strong impetus for advancing gender and climate change.
The rural assembly women, believe that with the full support from the Lesotho government especially in providing markets for their products, the programme will not just benefit them and their families but also other women from their village who are keen on joining the assembly.
Assembly members produce handicrafts such as shoes, headbands, dried vegetables among others to sustain their families during drought seasons.
In May 2016, a declaration was taken up by rural women, women smallholder farmer organizations, supporting civil societies and media in Southern Africa, in Johannesburg South Africa.
Concerns raised in it included an increasing impact of climate change on rural women smallholders, which they said needs urgent attention to prevent further hardships in their lives and that of their households as well as communities.
It also raised concern over declining access to natural resources such as marine, forestry, land, water and livelihood support systems by rural women smallholder farmers due to the negative impact of climate change.
This Declaration urged the Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairperson to champion the issue of climate change among fellow heads of states and governments.
The Declaration encourages decision makers to prevent a recurrence of the disaster of 2015/16 growing season, by listening to the voices of women in SADC, who demanded the implementation of existing commitments and policies of international and regional conventions that are pro-rural smallholders and gender equality.
Lesotho is said to have small carbon footprint, as it is committed to tackling both the causes and consequences of climate change.
The women, therefore, urges everyone to join hands in building a climate resilient nation.
BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - The demand to tackle conflict of interest within the UNFCCC has over the years been raised by several actors including governments and civil society.
However, to date, progress has been slow, notably, due to some cosy relationships formed between politics and the fossil fuel sector lobbyists.
It is for this reason that a global coalition of civil society groups is calling for a strong conflict of interest policy for the UNFCCC to decisively deal with the challenge.
The coalition, supported by the European Parliament has released a report highlighting revolving doors between the fossil fuel industry and high level politicians, ministers, regulators, and advisors.
According to the study, titled “Revolving doors and the fossil fuel industry,” carried out in 13 European countries, finds that failure to deal with conflict of interest by the EU is due to cosy relationships built up with the fossil fuel sector over the years, and calls for the adoption of a strong conflict of interest policy that would avoid the disproportionate influence of the fossil fuel industry on the international climate change negotiations.
“There is a revolving door between politics and the fossil fuel lobby all across Europe,” said Max Andersson, Member of the European Parliament, at the Bonn Climate Talks. “It’s not just a handful of cases—it is systematic. The fossil fuel industry has an enormous economic interest in delaying climate action and the revolving door between politics and the fossils fuel lobby is a serious cause for alarm.”
According to Andersson, to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and keep global warming to as close as 1.5 degrees as possible, there is need to clamp down on conflict of interest to stop coal, gas and oil from leaving “their dirty fingerprints over our climate policy.”
He says European governments should support the call for a common sense conflict of interest policy so that the next COP can deliver an outcome that will put the world on the road towards a climate in balance.
And adding his voice to the debate, Augustine Njamshi of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), believes fossil fuel lobbyists have both a direct and indirect influence on climate policy.
Njamshi says the lack of ambition from developed parties in terms of emission cuts as well as provision of finance for developing parties is a result of bad influence from big polluters.
“For instance, in my opinion, delayed climate action, in particular, climate finance for African countries, is indirectly linked to big polluter influence,” said Njamshi. “They have a lot to lose if money is made available for countries to carry out their climate actions because their businesses depend on the current state of affairs.”
Meanwhile, Pascoe Sabido of Corporate Europe Observatory argued for strong advocacy to win the battle against big polluters having a field day at the UNFCCC negotiations.
“Strong advocacy and policy on conflict of interest should be adopted or else, the interests of fossil fuel sector will continue to have huge influence on climate policy,” said Sabido.
The conclusion of the report is that the revolving door phenomenon is systematic and widespread, as the study revealed at least 88 cases of revolving doors between ministers, advisors, regulators and politicians.
A further disturbing finding is that there is lack of adequate legislation to ensure that climate-policy making is not unduly influenced be vested interests, and where legislation exists, it is not properly applied.
The CSO coalition has therefore called for urgent action by interested parties to the UNFCCC to save climate policy from what they have called dirty fingerprints of big polluters.
BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - The demand to tackle conflict of interest within the UNFCCC has over the years been raised by several actors including governments and civil society.
However, to date, progress has been slow, notably, due to some cosy relationships formed between politics and the fossil fuel sector lobbyists.
It is for this reason that a global coalition of civil society groups is calling for a strong conflict of interest policy for the UNFCCC to decisively deal with the challenge.
The coalition, supported by the European Parliament has released a report highlighting revolving doors between the fossil fuel industry and high level politicians, ministers, regulators, and advisors.
According to the study, titled “Revolving doors and the fossil fuel industry,” carried out in 13 European countries, finds that failure to deal with conflict of interest by the EU is due to cosy relationships built up with the fossil fuel sector over the years, and calls for the adoption of a strong conflict of interest policy that would avoid the disproportionate influence of the fossil fuel industry on the international climate change negotiations.
“There is a revolving door between politics and the fossil fuel lobby all across Europe,” said Max Andersson, Member of the European Parliament, at the Bonn Climate Talks. “It’s not just a handful of cases—it is systematic. The fossil fuel industry has an enormous economic interest in delaying climate action and the revolving door between politics and the fossils fuel lobby is a serious cause for alarm.”
According to Andersson, to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and keep global warming to as close as 1.5 degrees as possible, there is need to clamp down on conflict of interest to stop coal, gas and oil from leaving “their dirty fingerprints over our climate policy.”
He says European governments should support the call for a common sense conflict of interest policy so that the next COP can deliver an outcome that will put the world on the road towards a climate in balance.
And adding his voice to the debate, Augustine Njamshi of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), believes fossil fuel lobbyists have both a direct and indirect influence on climate policy.
Njamshi says the lack of ambition from developed parties in terms of emission cuts as well as provision of finance for developing parties is a result of bad influence from big polluters.
“For instance, in my opinion, delayed climate action, in particular, climate finance for African countries, is indirectly linked to big polluter influence,” said Njamshi. “They have a lot to lose if money is made available for countries to carry out their climate actions because their businesses depend on the current state of affairs.”
Meanwhile, Pascoe Sabido of Corporate Europe Observatory argued for strong advocacy to win the battle against big polluters having a field day at the UNFCCC negotiations.
“Strong advocacy and policy on conflict of interest should be adopted or else, the interests of fossil fuel sector will continue to have huge influence on climate policy,” said Sabido.
The conclusion of the report is that the revolving door phenomenon is systematic and widespread, as the study revealed at least 88 cases of revolving doors between ministers, advisors, regulators and politicians.
A further disturbing finding is that there is lack of adequate legislation to ensure that climate-policy making is not unduly influenced be vested interests, and where legislation exists, it is not properly applied.
The CSO coalition has therefore called for urgent action by interested parties to the UNFCCC to save climate policy from what they have called dirty fingerprints of big polluters.
BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - Agriculture is the mainstay of most developing country economies. Ironically, they are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts through extreme weather events such as drought, floods, landslides, storm surge, and soil erosion, affecting their predominantly rain-fed agricultural productivity and production.
In consideration of this vulnerability of agricultural systems to climate change, developing party negotiators had been pushing for it to be considered as a stand-alone work programme at the negotiating table.
And the push finally paid off at COP 23 where decision 4/CP.23 on the "Koronivia joint work on agriculture" was adopted, paving way for issues related to Agriculture to be addressed taking into consideration the vulnerabilities of agriculture to climate change and approaches to addressing food security.
However, while this was a milestone, African civil society groups still want more ambition on Agriculture considering its importance to African countries in relation to adaptation, as most countries depend on agriculture for livelihood.
“Noting the significance of Agriculture in Africa, the decision on Agriculture during UNFCCC-COP 23 was a big milestone,” said Mithika Mwenda, Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) Secretary General. “We caution our African governments however, to urgently ensure that there is a joint work plan for Agriculture in ensuring that it receives the required means of implementation.”
According to Mithika, further attention should be paid to the type of Agriculture being promoted, saying Africa is not interested in industrial agriculture as practiced by developed countries but rather, promoting resilience of smallholder farmers.
“Our interest is to promote resilience to Agriculture, the context in Africa is how do we support that smallholder farmer, that pastoralist whose cows are dying due to drought every time, so we are talking about; how do we now change that, so it’s important that we look at it from this context,” explained Mwenda at the on-going SB48 Climate Talks in Bonn.
In fact, the African civil society is linking agriculture to loss and damage, another long-standing issue that developing parties have been pushing at the negotiating table.
The argument is that developing countries and Africa, in particular, continues to suffer enormous economic losses in billions of dollars as a result of climate change impacts. Coupled with un-costed social losses due to climate induced displacement of persons triggering conflicts, the African group is dismayed to keep hearing that the answer to loss and damage is insurance—a concept which they believe is a far-fetched dream in Africa.
“Insurance works out in developed countries but not in developing countries especially in Africa, where the concept is hardly understood,” said Richard Kimbowa of Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development.
Kimbowa says Africa “needs a predictable and easy to understand financing approach for loss and damage,” adding that severity of climate change impacts are not the “normal adapt and move on.”
He explained that it is for this reason that the loss and damage mechanism is being pushed to address such losses that have become more severe for communities o easily cope.
Closely connected to Agriculture and loss and damage, is gender.It is worth noting that there is considerable progress that has been made in terms of gender policies that support activities on adaptation, mitigation, finance, technology development and transfer, including capacity building, under the convention.
“Off course, one of the decisions made at the highest level is that we have the gender national focal point persons, but so far, only 22 states have put forward national gender focal point persons to the UNFCCC, so we urged countries to see the importance of gender in the climate processes,” said Edna Kaptoyo of the Indigenous Information Network.
The call is for the Parties to increase their efforts in ensuring that women are represented in all aspects of the convention process, to ensure that gender mainstreaming is achieved in all processes, and activities of the convention.
Overall, African civil society are demanding more ambition on means of implementation, which they believe is key to the attainment of the set targets in the Paris Agreement.
This, they say, is inconsideration that effective ambition of developing countries depends on the provision of means of implementation by developed countries, without which there would be no predictable pathway for implementation of the Paris Agreement.
Therefore, the next ten days will see a lot of lobbying and activism from African CSOs as they push for Africa’s climate change and development agenda.
