KATOWICE, Poland (PAMACC News) - The Africa civil society organisations under the umbrella of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) have called on the negotiators at the ongoing United Nations climate conference in Poland to come up with a comprehensive work plan that will help in implementation of the Paris Agreement. “We join the African Governments and experts in underscoring the vital importance of ambitious outcomes from this conference,” said Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director at PACJA.“We need to uphold equity, justice and act as an anchor in the Paris Agreement’s implementation,” he told a press conference at the UNFCCC COP 24 in Katowice, noting that the pre-2020 ambition remains vital to stay within the closing window as indicated by the recently released IPCC report and the Paris Agreement implementation.Sudanese scientist and climate activist, Dr. Shaddad Mauwa also said that climate finance should be taken seriously as a critical issue of negotiations for COP 24. “We expect a clear roadmap for fulfilment of climate finance commitment of USD 100 billion per year by 2020,” he told a team of journalists in Katowiche. Dr Shaddad said that parties should agree to discuss a new post - 2025 quantified climate finance goal from the floor of USD 100 billion, and also agree on accounting rules for climate finance that are robust and provide full transparency on actual assistance provided and to be provided to the developing countries.The activists also pointed out that there is need to focus on how Adaptation Fund will serve the Paris Agreement. “Parties should agree on maintaining the current balance of the Fund’s board membership, operational policies and guidelines for developing countries to access the funds when it serves the Paris Agreement,” said Shaddad.They called on parties to negotiate on the Nationally Determined Contributions timeframe in relation to the Paris Agreement. They noted that a single five-year common timeframe for NDC implementation should be agreed at the ongoing COP 24 in order to enhance consistency and comparability of NDCs. On loss and damages, the civil society representatives pointed out that Africa continues to suffer enormous economic losses in billions of dollars as a result of climate change impacts. “It is worrying to keep hearing the answer for loss and damage as insurance, this might be possible in developed countries but in developing countries especially in Africa, it is a far-fetched dream,” said Mithika. “We call for the commitment in the implementation of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage and need a predictable a financing approach for Loss and Damage in Africa,” he added.Rebecca Muna, the Director of Civil Society Forum on Climate Change (FORUMCC) in Tanzania noted the importance of gender considerations in policies that supports activities on adaptation, mitigation, finance, technology development and transfer, including capacity building. “We call for Parties to increase their efforts in ensuring that women are represented in all aspects of the Convention process, and gender mainstreaming is achieved in all processes, and activities of the Convention,” she said. “We…

KATOWICE, Poland (PAMACC News) - As the 24th round of negotiations on ways and means of curbing climate change and adapting to its impacts go down in Katovice, Poland, the World Bank Group has announced a major new set of climate targets for 2021-2025, doubling its current 5-year investments to around $200 billion in support for countries to take ambitious climate action. According to the press statement released alongside the United Nations conference on climate change (COP 24), the money will be channeled into three major climate resilience sectors that include renewable energy, green cities and in food through improvement of integrated landscape management in some 50 countries.“Climate change is an existential threat to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. These new targets demonstrate how seriously we are taking this issue, investing and mobilizing $200 billion over five years to combat climate change,” said the World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim. The new plan significantly boosts support for adaptation and resilience, recognizing mounting climate change impacts on lives and livelihoods, especially in the world’s poorest countries. The plan also represents significantly ramped up ambition from the World Bank Group, sending an important signal to the wider global community to do the same. “We are pushing ourselves to do more and to go faster on climate and we call on the global community to do the same. This is about putting countries and communities in charge of building a safer, more climate-resilient future,” said Yong Kim.The $200 billion across the Group is made up of approximately $100 billion in direct finance from the World Bank (IBRD/IDA), and approximately $100 billion of combined direct finance from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and private capital mobilized by the World Bank Group.A key priority is boosting support for climate adaptation, recognizing that millions of people across the world are already facing the severe consequences of more extreme weather events. By ramping up direct adaptation finance to reach around $50 billion over FY21-25, the World Bank will, for the first time, give this equal emphasis alongside investments that reduce emissions.“People are losing their lives and livelihoods because of the disastrous effects of climate change. We must fight the causes, but also adapt to the consequences that are often most dramatic for the world’s poorest people,” said World Bank Chief Executive Officer, Kristalina Georgieva. “This is why we at the World Bank commit to step up climate finance to $100 billion, half of which will go to build better adapted homes, schools and infrastructure, and invest in climate smart agriculture, sustainable water management and responsive social safety nets.”The new financing will ensure that adaptation is undertaken in a systematic fashion, and the World Bank will develop a new rating system to track and incentivize global progress. Actions will include supporting higher-quality forecasts, early warning systems and climate information services to better prepare 250 million people in 30 developing countries for climate risks. In addition, the expected investments will…

WINDHOEK, Namibia (PAMACC News) - Over 15 weather experts from African Regional Climate Centres (RCCs), Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and representatives of Regional Climate Outlook Forum (RCOFs) have agreed on a draft outline and content for RCOFs best practices document. The experts met under the auspices of the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA’s) Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER) programme from 22-23 November in Windhoek, Namibia. The meeting came as a result of RCOFs knowledge exchange workshops convened by ACPC earlier in the year, which have led to a rich collection of material consisting of procedures, lessons and practices that RCCs utilise in producing consensus seasonal forecasts, organizing RCOFs, engaging stakeholders and seeking their feedback. While the knowledge shared is already benefiting the RCC focal persons who have participated, the write-shop was convened to produce a consolidated document to serve as a reference by all RCCs. Procedures and practices applied by the RCOFs to both produce consensus seasonal forecasts and publicise them vary. While most of the RCOFs face similar challenges, especially related to engaging stakeholders, dissemination and uptake of the seasonal forecasts they produce, some RCOFs have been operational for many years and thus have lessons and experiences that can help other RCOFs avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’. And some of the key thematic areas deliberated on included; training and capacity building, funding mechanism and sustainability, communication and dissemination, and engaging stakeholders among others. “As a best practice, for sustainability, it is important that member state governments take full ownership of the RCOFs process in terms of funding because the current donor based support system is not sustainable,” said Phillip Omondi of the Climate Prediction and Application Centre (ICPAC) at the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Eastern Africa. Omondi also believes, as other experts do, that with changing meteorological dynamics, “continuity and consistency in training is needed to keep weather experts well-informed on latest trends and tools in the sector.” It is generally agreed that there is a suspicious relation between scientists and media professionals. The weather experts therefore agreed on the need for enhanced relations between scientists and media. As a best practice, it was agreed, communication and dissemination should be enhanced through provision of training to media and boundary stakeholders, for the benefit of end users.“I am particularly impressed with the way they arrive at the consensus, but I believe the way stakeholders are engaged is also key,” said Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla,Senior Scientist in climate modeling and climate change at the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL).“Having media persons, the journalists as part of the process to serve as drafters of the press releases from the technical statement is just great, as we scientists are trained in scientific language which is most often not understood by stakeholders. It is something we must improve upon to ensure that the solutions we discover reach the intended end users.”In line with the…

Digitalisation to transform farmers’ productivity and profits WAGENINGEN, The Netherland (PAMACC News) - Digitalisation can transform agriculture and enable farmers to increase their production and income. Partnerships and multi-sectoral investment are key in scaling out successful technologies for smallholder farmers and to achieve Sustainable Development Goals, says Michael Hailu, Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), a joint international institution of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the European Union (EU). Interview excerpts:What does digitalisation mean for the work of CTA? CTA has been using ICTs for many years to bring technologies for application in agricultural operations at different levels of the value chain. For more than 20 years, we have been testing and introducing different technologies in ICTs, starting from CD-ROMs up to the new technology, like mobile technologies and satellite data. We have been testing the technologies with farmers and seeing how they can be useful in improving productivity and profitability. We have been doing some of this on a small scale. But now there is a great deal of interest from the private sector to governments in harnessing ICTs for agricultural development, and a key issue is, how do we take these technologies to scale? We hope our experience capitalisation activities will help us find answers to this question. Our role is catalytic. We have been making these technologies accessible to farmers, but to scale up we need to work with the big players, like the private sector, governments and development partners.Can digitalisation help scale out technologies of use to farmers? Absolutely. I think there is much that digitalisation can offer in terms of connecting farmers to markets, for example, and helping in the process of improving productivity and creating resilience. Farmers can tell how much fertilizer they can use. They are able to reduce inputs while increasing yields and returns. There are so many possibilities where you can apply digitalisation. We need to make the strategic investment in digital innovations, so we can make them available to a large number of farmers.In your view, is there political will in the ACP region to support digitilisation as an opportunity for farmers and farming? When you talk about the ACP region, it is a large region of 79 countries. Policies differ from one country to another, but overall there is global recognition that digitalisation is a disruptive technology. The top five companies in the world are technology companies, and this tells us the importance of this technology to development and investment, so we cannot ignore it. We are saying that if you bring technology to agriculture, it can create huge opportunities for inclusivity, and for many farmers to benefit by making agriculture profitable. There is strong recognition from many countries about the importance of agriculture. Digitilisation is a game change in this sector. I attended the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) Forum in Kigali recently, and this whole issue of digitilisation was high on the agenda, highlighting…