COMESA member States tackle Climate Change
Written by Millennium on July 23, 2019
NOEL IYOMBWA writes
@SunZambian
MORE than 48 senior government officials from Ministries responsible for planning, agriculture, environment, health, disaster management and mitigation units from 17 COMESA member countries will meet in Lusaka to discuss the Regional Resilience Initiative on climate change, which was launched in 2017.
The meeting which opens today and ends tomorrow was aimed at supporting member States to strengthen their policy and coordination mechanisms and develop national resilience policies and implementation frameworks.
These would serve as national guiding documents to resilience building and project implementation at member State level.
Speaking in Lusaka, ahead of the meeting, the COMESA Climate Change Coordinator, Dr. Mclay Kanyangarara, said that most member States had a fragmented and haphazard approach to managing risks, shocks, and stresses which had proved to be ineffective as the magnitude of loss and damage continued to escalate in the region.
This is contained in a press statement issued by COMESA Secretariat Head of Corporate Communications Mwangi Gakunga.
“Governments find themselves diverting resources allocated to much needed developmental projects and programmes to deal with the effects of the disasters thereby trapping many in a vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment,
“Furthermore, natural and economic systems are interconnected at the national and regional levels, hence impact on one affects the others,” he said
He said most COMESA countries were vulnerable and faced similar threats of climate change and droughts, flooding, industrial shocks, extreme rainfall and disease outbreaks, wars and civil unrest among others.
To attain its regional integration goals, many systems in the region (such as shared water courses, energy, transport, communications, and financial systems) must be interconnected.
