Take urgent actions to tackle climate change

I followed events of the African Climate Week (ACW) 2022 that happened between August 29, to September 2 in Gabon.

The ACW 2022 hosted by the government of Gabon was organised by UN Climate Change in collaboration with global partners; UN Development Programme, UN Environment Programme, and the World Bank Group.

 Partners in the region included the Africa Union, the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and UN Gabon.

More than 2,300 delegates attended the event, in Libreville and the conference provided a crucial platform for the continent to address social inequalities and invest in development to advance climate action and safeguard people and ecosystems.

 The event held under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a crucial step toward COP27 which will be held in Egypt in November.

The opening session featured a ministerial dialogue on the challenges of mobilising and accessing climate finance at scale to spur the implementation of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and priority national climate plans and strategies.

It should be remembered that in October 2021, Uganda submitted her Nationally NDC to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Through these NDCs, the country hopes to reduce emissions from its business-as-usual (BAU) scenarios by 22 percent by 2030 via a series of policies and measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This will cost approximately $7.80 billion (World Bank, 2016). Mitigation efforts are focused on the agriculture, energy supply, forestry, and wetland sectors.

The BAU scenario estimates an output of 77.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (MtCO2eq/yr) by 2030.

The contributions under Nationally Determined Contribution include cross-cutting respect for human rights and gender-responsive climate change actions.

The livelihood of Ugandans is highly dependent on the exploitation of natural resources, including climate.

In submitting these NDCs, Uganda’s priority is adaptation. The country aims at working toward reducing vulnerability and addressing adaptation in agriculture and livestock, forestry, infrastructure (with an emphasis on human settlements, social infrastructure, and transport), water, energy, health, and disaster risk management.

Although, Uganda’s NDCs include cross-cutting respect for human rights and gender-responsive climate change actions, the protection of vulnerable groups, including women, none of the priority sectors considered for the NDCs mention women and girls exclusively.

Besides highlighting women as being vulnerable in terms of food insecurity, water shortage, and fuelwood scarcity, Uganda’s NDCs lack sufficient details on prioritising women’s engagement in the implementation process despite the progress of including gender equality outcomes in numerous national policies.

Women, girls, and youth continue to face greater risks and carry a heavier burden on their ability to respond and adapt to climate change due to the inequalities they face in society.

Even with the development of the NDCs aimed at addressing climate change, the climate crisis remains the greatest challenge of the time and has impacted the country through both rapid and slow-onset events.

Notable impacts include rapid changes in lake and river water levels, more frequent and severe droughts, and erratic and excessive rainfall leading to flooding, and mudslides, and landslides across the country. For instance, on August 1,  floods killed 24 people in the Bugisu Sub-region.

Additionally, more than 300,000 people have been affected by floods and landslides in Bududa and Sironko districts in eastern Uganda and Bundibugyo in the western region, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Also,  an estimated 65,000 people have been displaced.

With the above, the government needs to work more with various stakeholders to increase climate change expenditure in support of the NDC implementation.

Currently, public financing through budgetary allocation for climate actions is elaborated in the Ministry of Water and Environment, under a sub-vote on climate change. Though this is ring-fenced to the Climate Change Department, it remains insignificant compared to the country’s required climate-related expenditure.

Patrick Edema,

Environmental engineer and programmes assistant,

Africa Institute for Energy Governance