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Climate change will adversely affect economy - Namugala

Climate change will adversely affect economy - Namugala
By Kasapo Chibwe
Wed 16 June 2010, 04:01 CAT

TOURISM minister Catherine Namugala has said climate change will adversely affect the country’s economic growth and overall development.

And permanent secretary Lillian Kapulu has said climate change is a defining issue of the time and any country’s development will depend on how effectively it responds to the challenge.

Namugala, who was represented by deputy minister Vera Tembo at the opening of the national inception workshop yesterday, said key sectors such as agriculture and food security, wildlife, forestry, water, energy and human health which were critical to the economic growth and development of the country were threatened by climate change.

“The workshop is for the development of a comprehensive national climate change response strategy for Zambia which has come at a time when there has been unprecedented public interest in matters of climate change, an interest generated by activities leading to the world climate change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark last December which made climate change a defining issue of this era,” she said.

Namugala said the tourism ministry with the support of the Norwegian government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had embarked on developing a national climate change response strategy whose purpose was to enhance the country’s coordinated approach in addressing all aspects of present and future challenges of climate change.

She said the strategy would spell out how to deal with all aspects of climate change including adaptation, mitigation, technology, research, awareness, financing as well as an effective institutional arrangement.

She said the strategy would have a clear resource mobilisation framework for climate change activities and would also enable the ministry to assess whether the country needed to put a scientific policy and legislative framework to address climate change or not.

She explained that the alternative would be to review existing policies and legislation in a manner prescribed by the strategy.

She said recent scientific findings indicated that global warming would affect human and natural systems with potentially disastrous effects on local, regional and global economies.

“For this reason it is no longer a matter of debate that national sustainable development will depend on how effectively each country responds to the challenge of climate change,” she said.

Namugala said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for Africa observed that warming was very likely to be higher than the global annual mean warming throughout the continent and in all seasons.
She said IPCC further said Africa was one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and variability.

She said the adverse effects of climate change were already affecting many of the African countries and Zambia was no exception as could be seen from the increased incidences of floods.

She said the quantification of the economic impact of climate change to Zambia were still under investigation but explained that some studies had been commissioned for the investigation.

She said the national adaptation plan of action (NAPA) remained government’s strategic document for addressing climate change and it identified key adaptation needs of the nation in various sectors of the economy.

She said NAPA was complemented by the national policy on environment (NPE), which provided a comprehensive framework for sustainable development through effective natural resource utilisation and environmental conservation.

She said NAPA and NPE had formulated programmes and projects being implemented which included adaptation projects in agriculture, a clean development mechanism project in the energy sector, a United Nations programme aimed at reducing emissions from the forestry sector and a World Bank funded pilot programme on climate resilience (PPCR).

Namugala commended the civil society and the media for the roles they played in complementing government efforts in environmental awareness raising.

“Despite these efforts, it has become increasingly clear to government that we need to address the challenge of climate change in a more comprehensive way, therefore emphasising the need for a national response strategy,” Namugala said.

And Kapulu said Zambia had been reacting to climate sensitive issues through ad hoc initiatives due to lack of a framework to coordinate climate change response among other things.

She said in order to enhance a coordinated national response to climate change, the ministry had initiated the development of a comprehensive national climate change response strategy.

“The national climate change response will build in on existing policies and priorities in Zambia as well as identify the main gaps and opportunities for addressing climate change and develop a framework which will oversee implementation of activities through a more prioritised coordinated approach across the sectors,” Kapulu said.

Kapulu said a zero draft of the national climate change response strategy was expected by the end of July 2010 and the final draft would be available by the end of September 2010.

Labels: CATHERINE NAMUGALA, CLIMATE CHANGE, NAPA, TOURISM

posted by MrK @ 12:01 PM