Namibia: SADC Legally Commits to Fighting Climate Change
THE Southern African Development Community (SADC) has made strides in the fight against climate change and now has a legally binding instrument to address the issue.
According to the 2010 Southern Africa Climate Change Framework, the region has been experiencing a warming trend over the last few decades, and temperatures in the region have risen over 0,5 degrees Celcius over the last 100 years.
These climatic events have increased the region's vulnerability to the negative impacts of climate change, mainly because it is predominantly dependent on climate change-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water, coastal zones, tourism, biodiversity, forestry, the environment and land.
All SADC member states are members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which provides an international legal framework for addressing climate change.
In an effort to tackle climate change at regional level, SADC heads of state and governments signed the SADC Protocol on Environmental Management for Sustainable Development on 18 August 2014.
Article 4 of the protocol states that its objectives are to promote effective management and responses to the impacts of climate change and variability in the region.
To achieve these objectives, states should develop and implement joint climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, it says.
The protocol states that SADC member states should take measures to address climate change, including transboundary considerations through adopting the necessary legislative and administrative measures to enhance adaptation to climate change.
One of many notable SADC projects addressing climate change is the five-year climate change adaptation and mitigation project for SADC member states.
It is funded by the African Caribbean Pacific Group of Member States and the European Union (EU) Partnership Programme.
Sibongile Mavimbela, the senior programme officer for environment and climate change at the Gaborone-based SADC secretariat, says the project is called the 'Intra-ACP +Programme in the Southern African Development Community' and will be implemented for a period of 48 months.
The total EU contribution to the project is 8 million euros.
"The overall objective of the project is to increase the capabilities of SADC member states to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change," Mavimbela says.
The project will also support the achievement of the Regional Indicative Development Plan, Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
The rationale for coming up with the project is that the southern African region experiences climate extremes and natural hazards, which cause poverty and significant loss of life.
Mavimbela says there is a compelling need for building regional capacity to assist member states in developing their critical capacity by increasing their resilience to climate change.
She says the specific objectives of the project is to capacitate SADC member states to undertake regional national adaptation and mitigation actions in response to the effects of global climate change, and to assist them to design pilot projects on adaptation in five SADC member states.
Other objectives are to facilitate the implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in the SADC member states, to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and experiences with other ACP regional organisations, and to support research in the development of innovation solutions to climate change challenges.
"Building local capacity and knowledge, and creating a sense of ownership among project participants will be one of the main pillars for assuring the long-term sustainability of the action beyond the EU support," Mavimbela says.
This article originally came from AllAfrica
Photo: E International Relations