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SADC members strategise on climate change effects response

SADC members strategise on climate change effects response
By Fridah Zinyama
Thu 29 Apr. 2010, 04:30 CAT

SOUTHERN Africa Development Community (SADC) members are meeting in Lusaka for a three-day workshop that will help them come up with strategic responses concerning the effects of climate change affecting the region.

This meeting is being held in order to help strengthen the region’s negotiation capacity and foster stronger regional cohesion following the stalled climate change negotiations which were held in Copenhagen last year in September.

During the official opening of the three day workshop whose theme is ‘Beyond Copenhagen’ which is being held at Cresta Golf-View Hotel, tourism minister Catherine Namugala said the workshop was a response to calls from different member states for the need to have one voice on climate change issues.

Namugala said SADC believed that the problem of climate change was a global issue which could only be resolved through concerted regional, continental and global action.

“We, therefore, remain committed to dealing with this problem within the multilateral context of the United Nations Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) negotiations processes,” she said.

Namugala said it was for this reason that key regional economic centres such as COMESA, the East Africa Community and the SADC were now engaged in the negotiation process.

“As you are aware, climate change is now widely acknowledged as one of the most serious developmental challenges of our time,” she said. “This is evidenced by adverse effects of climate change that we are already experiencing in most of our countries such as increased incidences of severe floods and droughts.”

Namugala said the region’s most vulnerable and sensitive sectors such as agriculture, forestry, wildlife, water, energy and human health had already been adversely affected by climate induced changes, thereby significantly reversing the gains that had been recorded in the past years.

“As we prepare for COP 16 that is scheduled to take place in Mexico later in the year, we should bear in mind the COP 15 which will be remembered as one of the biggest international conferences outside of the United Nations that had raised a lot of expectations without achieving the desired outcome,” she said.

“Although the Copenhagen outcome acknowledges that an enormous amount of work still remains to be done before the world can admit that a turning point in the fight against climate change has accrued, we remain optimistic that the expectations created in Copenhagen will ultimately be translated into a binding and ambitious international agreement on climate change.”

Namugala said African countries needed to negotiate for a global incentive mechanism that would recognise the continent’s resource endowments such as forests.

“These can be used as our contribution to the global efforts in addressing climate change,” she said.

Namugala said the mechanism should be negotiated in such a way that local forest-dependent communities were rewarded for conserving and sustaining utilisation of their forests.

Labels: CLIMATE CHANGE, SADC

posted by MrK @ 2:47 PM