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bluemagic-girl · 6 years ago

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Let’s Walk the Talk to Defeat Climate Change – African Leaders Told — Global Issues

Floods in Kenya’s Turkana County, Lodwar the city. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

via Isaiah Esipisu (addis ababa, ethiopia)

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Inter Press Service

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Aug 28 (IPS) – African leaders had been requested to stroll the communicate, and lead from the entrance, so as to construct resilience and adaptation to the adversarial affects of local weather exchange on the continent.

This used to be the message conveyed via a number of audio system at the ongoing 8th Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) convention in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“Our first urgent action is to build the Resilience and Adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change for the most vulnerable communities across Africa,” mentioned Dr James Kinyangi, the Chief Climate Policy Officer at the African Development Bank (AfDB), as he articulated commitments via the Bank on tackling local weather exchange.

“The time is now, to translate the (2015 Paris) agreement into concrete action, to safeguard development gains and address the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable,” he advised the CCDA discussion board which brings in combination coverage makers, civil society, adolescence, non-public sector, academia and building companions once a year to talk about local weather rising problems and to evaluate growth forward of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP).

“We must challenge our leaders to walk the talk, and lead from the front in the spirit of the UN Secretary General, who recently pointed out that beautiful speeches are not enough to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement,” mentioned Mithika Mwenda, the Secretary General for the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) an umbrella group of over 1000 Africa setting and local weather civil society teams.

So a ways, 53 African international locations have dedicated to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to decelerate the have an effect on of local weather exchange, figuring out the want for an estimated USD three.five – four trillion of funding via 2030.

According to Kinyangi, those commitments provide a chance for the AfDB to give a contribution to insurance policies and movements that mobilise the monetary sources wanted to fortify long-term investments in resilience and Africa’s transition to low carbon building.

In a not too long ago revealed interview, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina mentioned: “Africa cannot adapt to climate change through words. It can only adapt to climate change through resources.”

“Africa has been shortchanged in terms of climate change because the continent accounts for only 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions but it suffers disproportionately from the negative impacts,” he declared.

He mentioned AfDB is main an effort to create an African Financial Alliance for local weather, which is able to deliver in combination monetary establishments, inventory exchanges, and central banks in Africa, to broaden an endogenous financing fashion that will fortify Africa to adapt to local weather exchange with out relying on anyone else outdoor the continent.

Early this 12 months, tropical cyclones, Idai and Kenneth ripped via 5 African international locations – Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the Comoros each inside a duration of 1 month.

Kenneth is on report as the most powerful hurricane ever to make landfall, whilst Idai, is the worst ever hurricane in relation to loss and damages to hit the African continent, the place greater than 1,000 lives had been misplaced with harm of belongings price 1 billion US greenbacks.

“In Sudan, we have just won a democratic struggle, but we are faced by another catastrophic ecological crisis of monumental proportion, which, last week alone, killed at least 62 people and destroyed 37,000 homes,” mentioned Nisreen Eslaim, a local weather activist from Sudan, referring to floods that not too long ago swept via the town of Khartoum.

Since the risk of floods, droughts and heatwaves will likely be amplified with expanding local weather variability, mavens imagine that the perfect reaction technique is one who improves the resilience of economies, infrastructure, ecosystems and societies to local weather variability and alter.

“As much as we are trying to respond to climate related calamities, we need longer-term action for disaster risk management. Hence, a reason why we must do whatever it takes to implement the Paris Agreement,” Kinyangi advised IPS.

To fortify African international locations adapt to local weather exchange, AfDB has dedicated to making sure that a minimum of 40 p.c of its undertaking approvals are tagged as local weather finance via 2020, with equivalent proportions for adaptation and mitigation. The financial institution additionally seeks to mainstream local weather exchange and inexperienced expansion tasks into all investments via subsequent 12 months.

“As much as we will be mobilizing significantly, more new and additional climate finance, to Africa by 2020, we will keep pushing the rich countries to deliver on the pledged 100 billion dollars each year,” mentioned Kinyangi.

“As we know, our leaders’ focus is slowly but surely turning to other issues dominating international diplomatic interactions such as Iran/US tiff, Brexit, Terrorism and the emerging extreme right-wing movements, which constitute a risk of increased climate scepticism,” mentioned Mwenda.

“Our only hope is unity of purpose, and the purpose which brings us here in Addis Ababa – to contribute to a process which will shape the future of humanity and health of the planet,” added the PACJA boss.

According to Ambassador Josefa Sacko, the Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture at the Africa Union Commission, there’s want for larger ambition in the combat towards local weather exchange.

“Without ambitious and urgent global commitments to tackle climate change, the ability of most African countries to attain the Sustainable Development Goals and the ideals of Africa’s Agenda 2063 remain elusive,” she mentioned.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, has convened a Climate Action Summit September 23 at the United Nations in New York, and has known as on all leaders to come to the summit with concrete, bold and life like plans to reinforce their nationally made up our minds contributions via 2020, in keeping with lowering greenhouse gasoline emissions via 45 according to cent over the subsequent decade, and to internet 0 emissions via 2050 as known as for via the IPCC particular document.

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<p><a href="http://www.globalissues.org/news/2019/08/28/25597">Let’s Walk the Talk to Defeat Climate Change – African Leaders Told</a>, <cite>Inter Press Service</cite>, Wednesday, August 28, 2019 (posted via Global Issues)</p>

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Let’s Walk the Talk to Defeat Climate Change – African Leaders Told, Inter Press Service, Wednesday, August 28, 2019 (posted via Global Issues)

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aliciawilliams015 · 8 years ago

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WHAT WORKS Many of World Vision’s development programs in Kenya are located in arid or semi-arid regions. Lawrence Kiguro, associate director of livelihoods and resiliency for World Vision in Kenya, says work to combat the effects of drought started in earnest in 2005 following several consecutive seasons of crop failure.

These efforts are legion. They include introducing communities to rainwater-harvesting technologies, drought-resistant crops, hardier goat breeds, and more. These methods are being replicated in more than 60 sponsorship-funded development programs in Ethiopia, serving almost 200,000 sponsored children.

Granted, these are mammoth tasks—not just to establish the programs, but also to educate local people on how to implement the new ideas and convince them of the benefits. But based on experiences so far, Lawrence remains confident that the effects of drought can be beaten. “I am sure we can protect communities if we continue to expand successful initiatives in new areas,” he says.

Lawrence points to World Vision’s standout project, the Morulem Irrigation Scheme in Turkana, Kenya, constructed with a combination of USAID grants and child sponsorship funding. The project uses a network of canals to direct water from the Kerio River to irrigate 1,500 acres of land, supporting more than 3,000 families. At a time when the food situation in other parts of Turkana has reached crisis levels, farms in Morulem are flourishing with maize, sorghum, and a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Morulem’s children are healthy and active. “We eat every day, and we never go hungry,” says Loice Akaran, 11. “I am able to concentrate in school.”

Tree planting is another method showing extraordinary promise in arid regions. Trees retain moisture and nutrients in the soil, inhibit soil erosion, and improve the climate. In fact, experts at the Center for International Forestry Research claim that forest destruction has done more than drought to turn vast areas of once grazeable and farmable land into “lunar-like” landscapes.

But this process can be reversed. An example is a joint World Vision/World Bank program in Ethiopia’s Humbo district, which suffered massive forest clearing in the mid-1970s. Through the rehabilitation of 2,700 hectares of forest, the program has drastically reduced soil erosion, improved pasture, reduced temperatures, and increased rainfall—not to mention provided income for the local community through the use of tree products.

Transformational programs like those in Humbo and Morulem prove that when sponsorship funding is leveraged by grants from strong partners, hunger emergencies can be prevented, despite environmental factors beyond our control. “Droughts will always be with us,” says Charles Owubah, World Vision’s regional director in Africa. “But, truly, children do not have to die.”

And those who have been provided the safety net of child sponsorship in the Horn of Africa are not dying. Sponsors�� support not only improves the lives of individual children but also helps make their communities better able to withstand the worst in times of disaster.

Famine-fighting is not in World Vision’s purview alone; the organization works alongside a vast array of humanitarian, government, and nongovernmental groups to provide long-term development assistance in the Horn of Africa. Collectively, these efforts raise hope that famine’s tragedy will not recur.

“We know how to do this,” declares Dr. Raj Shah. “It’s just a matter of getting the world together to get it done.” •

#world vision #famine #drought #horn of africa #sponsor a child #sponsor

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