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Climate Mitigation

Uganda gets Shs3b for climate change pact

Kampala. The Ministry of Water and Environment has started implementing a $775,000 (about Shs2.9b) support project known as nationally-determined contributions or NDCs Support Programme. The European Union funds the programme through the United Nations Development Programme to enable countries make progress on their commitments under the Paris Agreement.

The project seeks to strengthen Uganda’s capacities in “integrated governance, gender mainstreaming, climate actions, transparency systems, climate finance and private sector engagement”.

“This support is timely in helping us address the current climate challenges,” Mr Sam Cheptoris, the Environment minister said in a speech read by the ministry’s commissioner in charge of change, Mr Maikut Chebet yesterday.

Ministry of Finance and Private Sector Foundation Uganda are the other partners in the implementation of this programme.

Uganda committed to reduce its emissions by 22 per cent by 2022 and has listed increasing wetland and forest cover as key to attaining this reduction.

Climate change impacts

“Other impacts of climate change have included the severe floods in eastern and western Uganda …there is also loss of snow cover which is significantly reducing in its size on Rwenzori Mountain because of increasing temperatures,” Mr Cheptoris added.

Uganda’s briefing paper at the 22nd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in 2016, noted that the snow on Mountain Rwenzori has melted from 7.5Km in 1905 to 1.5km in 2006. With increasing temperature, the worst, the delegation noted, is yet to come.

Ms Almaz Gebru, the UNDP country director said that reducing the economic and social cost of climate disasters requires increased efforts to protect the natural environment.

“Available evidence demonstrates that communities with better managed ecosystems are less vulnerable and adapt better to climate and natural disaster impacts,” she said in Kampala on Tuesday.

“Priority remains to reverse the current degradation of forest and wetlands. This loss is what leads to some of the devastating disasters we are experiencing today across the country,” she added.

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