'As the rains continue pounding in many parts of the region, following a prolonged season of heat, the Assembly is calling for a Bill on Climate change.
EALA Member, Hon Dr Woda Odok Jeremiah, termed Climate change, a phenomenon with no respect for borders and an existential challenge to humanity, as she moved a resolution urging EALA to expedite the introduction a suitable Bill on Climate Change.
According to Dr Odok, the delay in presenting the Bill to the House for debate and enactment is constraining and frustrating Community efforts to deal with the adverse effects of climate change. Further, the population of the region suffers high poverty levels coupled with low adaptive capacities and the livelihoods of both urban and rural populations. The resolution echoes that EAC Partner States’ economies are generally dependent on climate sensitive natural resources and that a solution to address the matter is now long overdue.
The resolution which received overwhelming support on the floor of the House, avers that Council of Ministers in 2011, adopted the East African Community Climate Change Policy way back in 2011 aimed addressing the adverse effects of climate change and providing strategies for responding to its negative impact both at national and regional levels'.
Comment:
We are in full support of this resolution. However, we reiterate that The Chairperson, Council of Ministers, Hon. Olivier Nduhungirehe takes into account the following six issues:
Fully incorporate gender equality and women’s empowerment in all regional climate change discourse and actions as per the Gender Action Plan from the Paris Agreement, taking into account existing gender-related aspects.
Explicitly promote civil society and private sector participation in implementation of the nine major activities in the EAC roadmap, beyond the narrow view of their role being that of resource mobilization; promoting climate resilient and low carbon development initiatives; capacity building for negotiators and awareness creation. For example, people representing businesses, investors, cities, regions, civil society and others need to step out to have their voices to be heard
Review the current engagement mechanisms and processes in order to institutionalize wider stakeholder involvement to include vulnerable groups, communities like pastoralists, fishers, urban poor people, mountain-based communities, farmers, women, youths, disabled persons, among others. Institutionalized consultations with the diverse groups should enable input into the periodic adaptation communication on adaptation priorities, needs, plans and actions at national level while informing EAC interventions at the regional level, in line with the bottom-up structure of the Paris Agreement, where action is not conditional upon international rules, adaptation support (from the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund and others facilities) will also be better defined in a timely fashion, and targeted to hot spot areas / vulnerable sectors.
Develop monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for tracking the level of implementation of the EAC Climate Change Policy and strategy to ensure that they are effective and also provide information for informed decision making on the necessary corrective actions. In this regard the EAC Roadmap needs to clearly flag out and develop elaborate plans to contribute to the Global Stocktake due to take place every five years starting from 2023.
Put in place mechanisms to integrate the climate change actions in all planned region-wide micro – to mega investments, projects and programmes, rather than the climate policy being implemented on its own. In other words, all interventions must be assessed against a climate sensitivity criteria (for example adaptation, resilience building etc.). This could be in the EAC Partner States’ updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Low Emission Development Strategies, as time goes.
Join the Call on all Parties including Least Developing Countries (to which the EAC is largely part) and Small Island Developing States to strive to formulate and communicate Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS) to be submitted not later than 2020. This could take the shape of common low emission development pathway for the EAC as a region that builds on what individual countries have in place (for example the Green Growth Development Strategies for Kenya and Uganda, the Rwanda Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy and the proposed Low Emission Development Strategies for Tanzania, among others.