ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PAMACC News) -Kenya is among 15 African countries that have been commended for ratifying the Paris Agreement on climate change by representatives of over 1000 civil society organisations in Africa, ahead of the Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.In the same vein, Kenya's Cabinet last week approved the National Climate Change Policy Framework, which provides a roadmap for coordinated response to climate change and urban development. The framework has been submitted to Parliament for adoption.The country is now among the 81 countries globally that have ratified the climate change agreement out of the 197 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Speaking at the UN conference centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, James Murombedzi of the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) hailed Kenya for championing ambitious climate policies in the run-up to Paris and by spearheading the implementation process."Kenya has set an example that should be emulated by the remaining African countries to demonstrate their commitment to concrete actions. We commend Kenya's ratification as this is important to delivering the expected results," Murombedzi said.Mithika Mwenda, the secretary general of Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) said Kenya's step now paves way for it to benefit from the money the civil society is pushing for."Kenya now stands to benefit from the $100 billion pledged by developed countries to developing ones and that even larger sums be leveraged from investors, banks and the private sector that can build towards the $7 trillion needed to support a world-wide transformation on climate change," Mwenda said.Kenya has also enacted Climate Change Act, 2016 which provides a regulatory framework for enhanced response to achieve low carbon climate resilient development.Other policy measures to achieve a green economy in Kenya are the National Climate Change Action Plan 2013-2017, Climate Change Response Strategy 2010 and Environmental Management and Coordination Act CAP 387.Environment Cabinet Secretary (CS) noted Government has identified nine areas where urgent mitigation actions should be undertaken using the billions of shillings."Among the nine are restoration of forests and degraded lands, developing an additional 2,275 megawatts of geothermal energy, restoration of degraded forests, encouraging Kenyans to use improved cookstoves and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and agroforestry," she said.Others include bus rapid transit and light rail corridors, develop greenhouse gas inventory and improvement of emissions data, measuring, reporting on and monitoring forestry emissions and sinks and mainstreaming of low-carbon development options into planning processes."To achieve the above, Government needs to undertake a programme of work to restore forests on 960,000 hectares up to 2030 including dryland forest restoration activities, developing, testing and application of compensation and benefits-sharing mechanisms and develop an additional 2,275 MW of geothermal capacity by 2030 through a support programme aimed at encouraging private sector investment," Wakhungu said.The country also needs to undertake a programme of work to replant forests on 240,000 hectares of land that were previously forests, increase awareness of improved cooking practices, undertaking pilot initiatives which promote the use of LPG, increasing…

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PAMACC News) - Civil society organizations in Africa have called on countries in the developing world in general and African continent in particular to pursue low carbon-emission pathways in line with the Paris COP 21 agreement. Speaking ahead of the sixth Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA VI) conference, Mithika Mwendam the Secretary General of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) was surprised that only 15 African countries have so far ratified the Paris Agreement. “We want African countries to pursue low carbon-emissions pathways and implement bottom-top projects that will deliver justice to impacted people and communities,” Mithika said. Civil society representatives faulted developing countries of double standards, by implementing projects that increase greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) into the atmosphere in their quest for industrialisation. They singled out Nigeria and Morocco as countries that are investing in coal production. Civil society called for more financing to African countries to implement low-carbon development pathways. “Whatever the challenges, African countries need additional financial and technological resources that would enhance their capacity to pursue a low-carbon path of development,” says Azep Girmi of Least Developed Countries (LDC) Watch However, civil society actors noted that low-emission pathways do not apply only to the energy sector. In some African regions, land-use development, particularly infrastructure expansion, is identified as a key variable determining future GHG emissions. “For most developing countries, adaptive and mitigative capacities are low and development aid can help to reduce their vulnerability to climate change,” said Johnson Nkem of African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC). “It can also help reduce their emissions growth while addressing energy-security and energy-access problems,” he added. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Africa’s energy consumption will increase by 80% by 2040; but, with the continent’s population almost doubling, the energy consumption footprint will reduce per capita. However, studies have projected that nearly one billion additional people will have access to electricity by 2040. The IEA report however outlines another possible future – what it calls the “African Century” in which Africa’s governments and donors invest an extra $450 billion in energy. This would sharply increase the use of fossil fuels, reduce much of the most polluting renewables, and provide energy access to 230 million more people. Providing more – and more reliable – power to almost two billion people will increase GDP by 30% in 2040.

Cameroon rice farmers in the East and Northwest regions have recorded significant progress in rice production in the last decade thanks to technological knowledge transfer from China.Chinese rice production scheme introduced in these regions since 2006 has recorded improvement in yields, control of dangerous weeds, the fight against crop diseases, destructive insects and climate stress, agriculture experts say. Cameroon’s vast potential in rice and other cereals production is attracting not only investment from China with the setting up of some large-scale rice farms by the SINO-CAM IKO Agriculture Development Co. Ltd in Nanga Eboko in the East but also providing the opportunity for training and technology transfer in high breed rice farming by rice farmers in Ndop in the Northwest . The scheme is not only boosting rice production in Cameroon but is also helping to improve on the income of rice farmers, as well as add value to the country’s second generation agriculture launched by the government since 2010.“Cameroon rice farmers have really benefitted from training acquired from Chinese rice experts for quite some years now and this are impacting on the production. With high yield rice breed, and techniques to fight against diseases and the effects of climate change, many farmers have mapped out solution pathways to rice production,” says Bernard Njonga, President of ACDIC an NGO that defends the interest of farmers in Cameroon.The Cameroon government says its rice production project with China that started in 2006 are a snapshot of Chinese engagement in agriculture in Cameroon, which is certainly not yet exhaustive. In the longer term, activities may accelerate, as more opportunities open up.“We took the engagement to partner with the Chinese government in rice production not only because of their expertise in this sector but more because of their remarked interest to invest and promote agriculture in Cameroon in general,” says Henry Eyebe Ayisi, Cameroon’s minister of agriculture and rural development in an interview.Today, the Chinese ‘un-whitened’ rice is produced, packaged and sold in different markets in the country for FCFA 300 per kilogram.The rice production is expanding to other areas in the country with about 6,000 hectares in Nanga Eboko and 4,000 hectares in Santchou in the West Region. The company officials say they are producing over 100,000 metric tonnes of rice to feed over 600,000 people and providing employment to some 1,000 workers.The rice production project is the fruit of the Sino-Cameroon relations especially in agriculture. The partnership agreement was signed between the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Integrated Industry-Commerce Corporation of the Shaanxi Land Reclamation and State Farms, China in 2006. According to the agreement the latter was granted 10,000 hectares of land for the production, processing and marketing of rice. The agreement was accompanied by the Chinese government’s aid package of 40,000,000 RMB or FCFA 2,8 billion to revive Cameroon’s vast potential in agriculture.According to the ministry of agriculture,a major offshoot of the partnership agreement was the creation of the subsidiary of the Shaanxi Company in Cameroon under…

NAIRIBI, Kenya (PAPACC News) - Many African smallholder farmers and farm communities experience low crop and animal yields but are unaware that this is partly as a result of climate change. In countries like Ghana, many are not aware of what to do to remedy the situation of erratic rainfall, drought and other unfavorable weather conditions. Agriculture across the continent needs to undergo a significant transformation to meet the multiple challenges of climate change, food insecurity, malnutrition, poverty and environmental degradation. A proposed means of achieving such improvements is increased use of a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approach which emphasizes the use of farming techniques that: increase yields, reduce vulnerability to climate change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mrs Estherine Fotabong, the NEPAD Agency’s Director of Programme, says the ability of farmers to apply new technologies and innovations is an important determinant of CSA adoption. “Transformative adaptation needs to not only be at larger scale with new innovations, bold enough to take political steps that may not be easy or quick but also transformative adaptation needs to be integrated fully into the big agriculture questions that will really transform Africa’s agriculture,” she said. The decision of African Union to set up an African Climate Smart Agriculture Coordination Platform is a means to pursue the vision to have at least 25 million farm households more practicing Climate Smart Agriculture by 2025. The 2nd Africa CSA Alliance Forum holding in Nairobi, Kenya, is focused on addressing major hindrances limiting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices among smallholder farmers. Under the theme “From Agreement to Action: Implementing African INDCs for Growth and Resilience in Agriculture”, the Forum is looking at the INDCs transitioning to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with key implications for Africa’s development, especially agriculture. The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) represent country-level programmes for climate action presented to the UNFCCC ahead of the COP21 climate talks in December 2015, which produced the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. Dr Abebe Haile Gabriel, FAO Deputy Regional Representative for Africa, has maintained that countries need support in their INDCs, through which the plight of climate smart agriculture came to light. The plight of smallholder farmers was also brought to the fore with a call to promote climate smart agriculture success stories and award them opportunities to sustainably adopt climate smart practices. Mrs Fotabong stressed that knowledge-sharing is key in agriculture and rural transformation, through which indigenous knowledge should not be ignored. “Communities should be fully capacitated in the various areas of crop management, community mobilisation and empowerment, disaster preparedness and have access to robust technologies and information such as new crop varieties that are drought and disease tolerant,” she emphasized. This she said should be the collective effort of government, private sector, NGOs, civil society and donors to ensure communities have greater ability to cope and adapt to climate change and extreme weather events and thus achieve rural livelihoods and food security. Climate Change can no longer be treated as just an environmental…