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…

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…

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…

BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - The fossil fuel industry has been active in lobbying for delays in global climate action as they stand to make enormous amounts of money when the process is stalled. If the targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change to reduce emissions are to be met, the fossil fuel industry will be losing money. A study on “Revolving doors and the fossil fuels industry”, presented by the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament at the Bonn Climate Talks in Bonn this week, is calling for the adoption of a strong conflict of interest policy that would avoid the disproportionate influence of the fossil fuel actors on the international climate change negotiations. The report gathers studies of revolving doors between the fossil fuel industry and high level politicians, Ministers, regulators and advisors, and questions whether the EU and European governments’ lack appetite to deal with this issue is a result of the cozy relationships built up with the fossil fuel sector over the years. According to Max Andersson, Swedish Greens Member of the European Parliament, the revolving door between politics and the fossil lobby is a serious cause for alarm. “If we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and keep global warming down to as close to 1.5 degrees as possible, we need to clamp down on conflicts of interest to stop coal, gas and oil from leaving their dirty fingerprints over our climate policy,” he said. The demand to tackle conflicts of interest within the UNFCCC has been raised by governments representing over 70% of the world’s population and civil society organizations from across the globe and is supported by the European Parliament. However, progress has been slow, notably, because the European Commission had been siding with Canada and the USA to block discussions on conflict of interest from appearing on the UNFCCC agenda.The Africa Group of negotiators has stated that there needs to be restrictions on business participations in the negotiations because engagement by vested interest “threatens the integrity and legitimacy of the UNFCCC process” and the goals of the Paris Agreement.Augustine Njamnshi, Chair of Political and Technical Affairs at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), says there is no basis to delay climate action. “It is in our interest to ensure that those who come here; those who come to the discussion table are there for real business to solve this climate crisis because the more we delay, the more endangering the continent of Africa and other developing countries,” he said. The report by the Greens/FFA Group concludes that there is a need to adopt conflicts of interest policies at the UN, EU and national levels to safeguard public interest policy-making from the disproportionate influence of vested interest, which is particularly urgent when it comes to climate negotiations. “European governments need to support the call for a common sense conflict of interest policy so that the next COP can deliver outcome that will put the world on the road…