East African Community partner states have been urged to put in place strong policies that encourage climate adaptation practices aimed at improving food security and resilience.
East African Community partner states have been urged to put in place strong policies that encourage climate adaptation practices aimed at improving food security and resilience.
This would include altering farm management practices and adopting new varieties such as crops and animal breeds more appropriate to future climate conditions. It would also mean having policies to discourage certain kinds of heavily emitting agriculture to reduce risks and slow down land-use changes.
The remarks were made by Action Development and Regional Integration (ADIL) President, Godfroid Manirankunda in an exclusive interview held on the sidelines of the Third Regional Meeting of the PACT EAC Project in Bujumbura, Burundi.
The conference was organised by CUTS International. Manirakunda said the economy of East African countries depends largely on agriculture hence the need to introduce policies that emphasise better farming methods that can help mitigate climate change or crop resilience.
Manirankunda also said the agricultural policies that are to be established by East African members states should also promote irrigation technology and intercropping methods that use little amounts of water.
He noted that the EA countries should emphasise the collection of climate data, in order to ensure countries are getting unified solutions.
Most of the East African countries have the same climate hence it makes it easier for scientific researchers to use solutions for the data they get in one country to solve the same climate condition in another,” he said.
He went on to say that EA countries should obey the Mozambique Declaration that bounds all African countries to give at least 10 percent of their budgets to agriculture, insisting that the sector needs enough funds to improve its production and quality.
Assistant Commissioner at Uganda Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry, Elisabeth Tamale, meanwhile said that climate change policies such as on carbon taxes, border carbon adjustment and regulation of bunker fuels can negatively affect trade and increase the cost of doing business.
“For example, with the introduction of CO2 emission tax for air travel, air tickets have become more expensive. The global nature of the negative effects of climate change means that very often, countries are affected irrespective of the different levels of emission,” she said.
The rules that guide climate change are embedded into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change-UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, besides other policies and measures at the regional and national level, she added.
Sébastien Dusabeyezu, the UNFCCC National Focal Point for Rwanda, said: “What we need to achieve in climate change, food security and trade integration finance is very crucial in terms of mitigation, adaptation, technology development and transfer as well as capacity building.”
Dusabeyezu added that Rwanda’s priorities are firstly, technology for adaptation, and secondly technology to avoid emissions to promote Rwanda development that is clean.