ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PAMACC News) - Mainstreaming climate information and climate information services into legislation and development policies in different African countries is the main driver for the much needed actions in the fight against climate change, experts have said.
It is against this backdrop that parliamentarians from African countries joined a training workshop that came immediately after the sixth conference on climate change and development in Africa (CCDA-VI) in Addis Ababa-Ethiopia.
“This training is geared at setting the scene for lawmakers to factor climate information issues in budgetary allocation in their countries,” said Thierry Amoussougo of Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) who presided over the workshop opening on behalf of the secretary general, Carlos Lopez.
The workshop accordingly focused on building capacities of decision makers in the use of climate information and services for long term planning and decision making in African countries.
“We are looking at strategies and approaches that can be implemented by lawmakers and governments to ensure climate change policies are mainstreamed into development planning and actions in different African countries,” said Stephen Mutimba, managing director of Camco Clean Energy-Kenya and lead trainer at the workshop.
Participants were drilled on the concepts of climate information and services, types of climate information and uses, use of climate information in agriculture, infrastructure, disaster risk reduction, urban and special development and sectoral planning.
The workshop also focused on the role of climate information in domesticating international agreements such as the Paris Climate talks, legislation for improving climate information and services, including budgeting and institutional development and also how to mainstream such information and services into laws, plans and policies for better long term decision making.
The workshop organizers, the African Climate Policy Center of the ECA, pointed out that the training is in recognition of the disproportionate effects of climate change impacts, such as droughts, floods and other extreme weather events on women and youths.
“These vulnerable groups access climate information services differently from the rest of society, thus climate information services, with pro-active targeting where possible, need to be integrated throughout climate interventions for the benefit of women, girls and the youth, “ says James Murombedzi, Officer-in-Charge, ACPC-ECA.
Presenting the training guide on climate change titled “Climate change solutions”, the managing director of Camco-Clean Energy in Kenya said, it was a rich working tool replete with useful information on the intricacies of climate change, especially in the area of availing climate information.
“Climate information refers to climate data that is obtained from observations of climate (temperature ,precipitation from weather centers)and also data from climate model output. It entails the transformation of climate related data together with other related information and data into customized products such as projections, forecast, information, trends, economic analyses, counseling on best practices, development and evaluation of solutions and other services in relation to climate that are useful to society,” the guide explained.
Challenges
The question of adapted infrastructure in many African countries to tackle climate challenges was also raised by law makers. According to some parliamentarians, human skills and other requirements were necessary for the production and delivery of climate information and services.
“There is need to not only build the capacities of the required human resources but also to invest in adapted climate information infrastructure and the create the enabling environment for the different institutions involved in climate information delivery,” said Chalikosa Mambalaskylvia,MP from Zambia.
Generally participants at the workshop agreed that appropriate and reliable climate information services in Africa are hampered by lack of capacity building, insufficient finance, limited technical capacity to manage weather information system, systematic processes for packaging, translating and disseminating climate information and warnings as well as the lack of integration with disaster management systems.
The three day workshop also saw the participation of civil society organizations, the media represented by the Pan African Media Alliance for Climate Change, PAMACC, who all identified strategies and solutions to the challenges the youths and women face in accessing climate information services.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PAMACC News) - Mainstreaming climate information and climate information services into legislation and development policies in different African countries is the main driver for the much needed actions in the fight against climate change, experts have said.
It is against this backdrop that parliamentarians from African countries joined a training workshop that came immediately after the sixth conference on climate change and development in Africa (CCDA-VI) in Addis Ababa-Ethiopia.
“This training is geared at setting the scene for lawmakers to factor climate information issues in budgetary allocation in their countries,” said Thierry Amoussougo of Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) who presided over the workshop opening on behalf of the secretary general, Carlos Lopez.
The workshop accordingly focused on building capacities of decision makers in the use of climate information and services for long term planning and decision making in African countries.
“We are looking at strategies and approaches that can be implemented by lawmakers and governments to ensure climate change policies are mainstreamed into development planning and actions in different African countries,” said Stephen Mutimba, managing director of Camco Clean Energy-Kenya and lead trainer at the workshop.
Participants were drilled on the concepts of climate information and services, types of climate information and uses, use of climate information in agriculture, infrastructure, disaster risk reduction, urban and special development and sectoral planning.
The workshop also focused on the role of climate information in domesticating international agreements such as the Paris Climate talks, legislation for improving climate information and services, including budgeting and institutional development and also how to mainstream such information and services into laws, plans and policies for better long term decision making.
The workshop organizers, the African Climate Policy Center of the ECA, pointed out that the training is in recognition of the disproportionate effects of climate change impacts, such as droughts, floods and other extreme weather events on women and youths.
“These vulnerable groups access climate information services differently from the rest of society, thus climate information services, with pro-active targeting where possible, need to be integrated throughout climate interventions for the benefit of women, girls and the youth, “ says James Murombedzi, Officer-in-Charge, ACPC-ECA.
Presenting the training guide on climate change titled “Climate change solutions”, the managing director of Camco-Clean Energy in Kenya said, it was a rich working tool replete with useful information on the intricacies of climate change, especially in the area of availing climate information.
“Climate information refers to climate data that is obtained from observations of climate (temperature ,precipitation from weather centers)and also data from climate model output. It entails the transformation of climate related data together with other related information and data into customized products such as projections, forecast, information, trends, economic analyses, counseling on best practices, development and evaluation of solutions and other services in relation to climate that are useful to society,” the guide explained.
Challenges
The question of adapted infrastructure in many African countries to tackle climate challenges was also raised by law makers. According to some parliamentarians, human skills and other requirements were necessary for the production and delivery of climate information and services.
“There is need to not only build the capacities of the required human resources but also to invest in adapted climate information infrastructure and the create the enabling environment for the different institutions involved in climate information delivery,” said Chalikosa Mambalaskylvia,MP from Zambia.
Generally participants at the workshop agreed that appropriate and reliable climate information services in Africa are hampered by lack of capacity building, insufficient finance, limited technical capacity to manage weather information system, systematic processes for packaging, translating and disseminating climate information and warnings as well as the lack of integration with disaster management systems.
The three day workshop also saw the participation of civil society organizations, the media represented by the Pan African Media Alliance for Climate Change, PAMACC, who all identified strategies and solutions to the challenges the youths and women face in accessing climate information services.
DDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PAMACC News) - Africa remains the only region in the developing world where agricultural yields are low and continue to decline.
According to the Africa Climate Policy Centre (ACPC), despite recent progress in agricultural and land management technologies, agricultural production in most parts of the continent is still at subsistence levels, with the smallholder producers who dominate the agricultural production landscape barely able to meet their own consumption needs.
Regrettably, Climate change and climate variability has added to these historic challenges that face the agricultural sector in Africa. With increased incidences of extreme weather events, including droughts and large fluctuations in precipitation patterns, and shortening of the lengths of growing periods, Africa’s largely rain-fed driven agricultural production, has been exposed to serious uncertainties.
Agricultural production is very important in assisting food security and poverty alleviation, especially in rural African households, a point that Ephraim Belemu, a law maker from Zambia, made at a round-table discussion of African Members of Parliament on the need for effective Climate Information Services to smallholder farmers, at the Sixth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“For us in Zambia, most smallholders rely on rain-fed Agriculture such that any shift in rainfall pattern as has been happening in recent years affects the planning and ultimate production capacity of farmers,” said Belemu, citing the 2015/16 farming season which left most farmers helpless at the hands of an El Nino induced drought.
However, it is believed that improved and well-coordinated weather information systems would lessen this production uncertainty, a point that the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization- FAO Director-General José Graziano made during this year’s World Food day:
"As usual the poorest and the hungry suffer the most and the vast majority of them are small family farmers that live in rural areas of developing countries," he said, stressing the importance of adaptation and mitigation based on "much better access to appropriate technologies, knowledge, markets, information and investments".
FAO therefore wants to see Climate change, hunger and poverty being addressed together in order to achieve the sustainable development goals, not forgetting the landmark Paris Agreement set by the international community last year.
For Africa, however, there are still some teething issues that need to be addressed especially regarding the Paris Agreement. “There is a big concern that policies are not prioritizing climate change related issues and countries,” said James Murombedzi, officer in Charge of the Africa Climate Policy Centre (ACPC).
In his summary of overarching issues discussed during the conference, Murombedzi also noted the importance of an action plan on how and what Africa wants to see regarding means of implementation, a key component of the Paris Agreement to be discussed at the COP 22 in Marrakech, Morocco.
“Agriculture is a key sector for Africa’s transformation and adaptation, as has been observed, remains a key component, but it requires sustainable means of implementation such as finance and technology transfer,” said Murombedzi, further stressing the need for African countries to revisit their nationally determined Contributions and align them with national, regional and international development aspirations.
Opportunities
There is, however, hope for Africa. According to available data, an increase of Agriculture investments by governments, accompanied with policies that promote production, and encourage adaptation to existing climate variability and long-term climate change, would help the continent’s transformative agenda.
Experts have therefore recommended that one key policy issue to support the ability of smallholding producers to adapt to the effects of climate variability and change, is the integration of climate change and climate variability information into development policies.
“Therefore, we thought it is important to first engage Parliamentarians in this process of integrating climate information services in policies,” said Murombedzi of ACPC, adding “Parliamentarians are key decision makers especially in influencing policy in their respective countries.”
But even as climate information services are being integrated in national policies, there is a call not to leave behind the affected communities most of whom leave in rural areas.
In a special message on World Food day, Pope Francis said: "From the wisdom of rural communities we can learn a style of life that can help defend us from the logic of consumerism and production at any cost, a logic that, cloaked in good justification, such as increasing population, is in reality aimed solely at the increase in profit," the pontiff said.
In echoing this reasoning, Silvia Chalikosa, a law maker from Zambia believes “there is still hope for as long as the rural populace is not left behind,” because they hold the key to the success of climate adaptation policies.
Friday Phiri
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PAMACC News) - Over three hundred participants representing various interest groups on the continent including governmental and non-governmental, academic, media, women, lawyers and youths have underscored the need for African member-states to integrate the Paris Agreement into Africa’s development agenda and other global governance frameworks.
This came out strongly today as the sixth conference on Climate Change Development in Africa (CCDA-VI) ended in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.
The CCDA-VI which began on the 17th of October 2016 on the premise of facilitating science-policy dialogue and providing a marketplace for innovative solutions that integrate climate change into Africa’s development processes urged Africa to engage with and embrace the Paris Agreement within the framework of it’s development aspirations as underscored in Agenda 2063, which embodies the vision of the “Africa we want”, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which sets global targets with a vision of “leaving no one behind”.
Participants were also of the view that most of the intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) submitted by African states require urgent revision ahead of the coming into force of the Agreement as many of them were vague and inconsistent with national development priorities.
According to Abdallah Hamdok, Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), “analyses by various institutions, including the African Climate Policy Center, have demonstrated that there are still a number of challenges with the INDC submissions of many developing countries.”
These according to him, include vagueness in their mitigation ambitions and adaptation aspirations; lack of cost estimates for achieving their adaptation and mitigation goals, and absence of clarity on sources of funding (conditional, unconditional, private sector, and/or public) for both mitigation and adaptation.
In a similar vein, the Vice President of the African Development Bank, Dr. Kapil Kapoor enjoined African states to ensure that the nuances in the Paris Agreement are clarified and contextualized in the run-up to COP22, especially in the case of Africa, whose greenhouse gas emissions remain the lowest but which is already bearing the greatest burden from the adverse impacts of climate as evinced by the effects of the unusually strong El Niño of 2015 in East and Southern Africa.
Civil society groups under the auspices of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) cautioned along the same line, urging Africa to utilise the window of opportunity the ratification period provides to revise their INDCs and while identifying strategies for implementing the Agreement especially through pan-African initiatives and institutions, public-private partnerships, and the engagement of State and non-State actors.
“Tackling climate change is therefore paramount if Africa’s development objective as defined in Agenda 2063 is to be achieved,”Mithika Mwenda said.
To James Murombedzi, Officer in Charge of the Africa Climate Policy Centre, “the Paris Agreement is somewhat weak in terms of how African countries will attract the required investments to deal with the challenges of climate change.”
While it was hailed as a landmark global deal on climate change, there remains a feeling of impotence from the Africa group on certain nuances of the Agreement and its implications to the continent’s development agenda.
However, signing and ratifying the Agreement is not optional for Parties as it was universally agreed by the then 196 members to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—UNFCCC, in Paris last year.
This therefore implies that Africa’s fears about the Agreement and its implications, would have to be dealt with at the negotiating table, and this is the point at which the Young African Lawyers (YAL) Programme becomes crucial.
Established under the ClimDev-Africa Programme, YAL has the overarching goal of strengthening Africa’s negotiating position and ensuring Africa gets the best at the UNFCCC processes.
“Signing and ratifying the Agreement is not optional for us as Africa,” says Natasha Banda, a young Legal Practitioner from Zambia, one of the mentees under the programme.
Being part of the legal advisory team for the Zambian negotiators through the UNFCCC country Focal point person, Banda believes ratifying the Agreement is not negotiable and the starting point “because the nature of international Agreements is that you cannot have bargaining power from outside,” and is certain that Zambia, which is yet to ratify, would do so once all necessary processes are complete.
Noting that climate-induced impacts like frequent and prolonged droughts and floods, as well as environmental degradation, have created uncertainties that make livelihoods unattainable for rural and urban communities, key speakers at the conference also identified migration as a trigger and amplifying factor.
The conference further recommended that the causal linkages between climate change and migration be better understood in order to take appropriate climate response measures to stabilize communities and improve livelihoods.
Examining the implications of the Paris Agreement for Africa’s future economic growth and sustainable development agenda; the conference called on African countries to identify viable and transformative investment opportunities, reform institutions to make them more efficient, and build capacity to access and absorb climate finance — in readiness to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the Paris agreement, to leapfrog technologies and transition to low-Carbon, Climate-resilient development.
In addressing and responding to the impacts of climate change on socioeconomic development and environmental degradation in Africa, a number of key regional initiatives have been developed and adopted across multiple countries through partnerships and joint implementation.
Pan-African initiatives such as the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI), the Africa Adaptation Initiative (AAI), the ClimDev-Africa programme and the Africa Great Green Wall) were identified as key pillars supporting the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Similarly, the Agreement provides a unique opportunity to synergize these initiatives for maximum impact and efficient management and use of resources.
As the sixth session of the Climate Change and Development for Africa (CCDA-VI) came to a close, Justus Kabyemera, Coordinator – ClimDev Africa Special Fund at the African Development Bank called on Africa to resolve the issue of gender and inclusivity for climate change and development sooner than later.
“Of course there are issues that remain to be sorted out, but as most of you highlighted in the course of the discussions, we need to be more strategic and assertive in our decisions. Issues of gender and inclusivity for climate change and development are some of the gaps that we need to resolve sooner than later,” he said. He pointed out that throughout the discussions, it came clear that there was need of a coordinated and programmatic approach to climate change initiatives across the continent.
“Working in silos or doing business as usual is no longer tenable especially as we grapple with the meager resources at our disposal,” he told the conference.
“We need to leverage and compliment the resources and build on the capacities of all players in the climate change arena. There is need to scale up the various initiatives, including climate services, loss and damage mechanism/models, early warning systems; but also domesticated approaches as the countries brace to implement their NDC within the framework of the Paris Agreement,” said Kabyemera.
The place of the youth and the future of developmental frameworks in Africa was also put on the front-burner at the conference as Youth leaders linked the success of any development agenda on the continent to the extent of its anchorage on young people.
“In terms of leadership transition, we are still lugging behind because our leaders don’t trust young people, they see them as a threat, they see young people as naïve…but we will rise and fight for climate justice and ensure that 2063 is a reality,” said Ibrahim Cessay of the Africa Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC), a network of African youth organizations and individuals working on climate change & sustainable development.
And Abel Musumali of the ClimDev Youth Platform agrees with Cessay on the need to engage young people saying “climate change is about both short and long term planning, under for Agenda 2063 to be achieved, we should be involved now in solving the climate change problem which has a bearing on our future, otherwise, we are doomed.”
Agenda 2063 heralds Africa’s dream for development in the next 50 years. And Dr. Seth Osafo, former legal advisor at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, would like to see investments in scientific research especially for young scientists.
“We need to develop young people’s expertise at the highest level to contribute positively in their country processes. There are already some experts in all the other areas but we need a lot of research scientists, and I look forward to having a programme soon that could be mentoring young scientists for Africa to be much involved in the climate scientific governance framework considering that climate change threatens to hinder Africa’s aspirations as enshrined in the Agenda 2063,” concludes Osafo.
The conference also witnessed the Inaugural Prof. Godwin Olu Patrick Obasi Memorial Lecture wherein the life and times of the icon of meteorology were extolled. Prof. Laban Ogallo of the IGAD-UNDP Disaster Risk Reduction Project in Kenya recalled that Prof. Obasi was active in promoting global solutions to environmental issues, with special attention to the atmosphere, fresh water and the oceans.
“He was at the forefront in drawing the world’s attention to the issue of climate change, notably in convening the second World Climate Conference, held in Geneva in 1990,” Prof Ogallo said.
Obasi played an important role in the negotiations leading to the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Climate Research Programme, the Global Climate Observing System and the Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer and its Montreal Protocol.
The Prof Obasi inaugural memorial lecture later set the stage for conference participants to explore the importance of climate information services in Africa’s development agenda, showcasing best practices for the development of climate services on the continent . This was considered alongside the human well-being and economic prosperity, as well as the ultimate goal of increasing policy uptake of the services.
