Climate Change projects vital - Minister
ZAMBIAN experts at the ongoing climate change meeting in Poland should get a share of the resources needed to implement climate change programmes and projects, Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Jean Kapata has said.
Ms. Kapata said the experts needed to ensure that they did not leave the meeting empty handed. This is contained in a statement issued by First Secretary for Press and Public Relation in Berlin, Kellys Kaunda. “You heard the Secretary General of the United Nations’ message to this conference that we are in deep trouble as an international community owing to our failure to quickly address climate change,”, the Minister to the 13-member delegation said. And her Permanent Secretary Trevor Kaunda urged experts to help create an understanding among lawmakers and ordinary people what they were doing about climate change. He noted that while there were projects addressing climate change in various constituencies, experts needed to devise ways of educating the public. “When you visit constituencies, MP’s may be asking what you are doing on climate change because your work as experts is also to show both lawmakers and ordinary people the linkages,” Mr Kaunda said. Zambia’s Ambassador to Germany and Poland Anthony Mukwita said at the same occasion that his mission was expected to make follow ups beyond the climate change conference in Katowice, also known as COP 24. “There are decisions to be made at this conference and it is our duty as an embassy to play our part in ensuring the implementation of promises made,” Mr Mukwita said. The Zambian team is involved in five major thematic areas of the conference that include resource mobilisation, technology, capacity building, and issues related to operationalization of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The two-week-long conference that would end on Friday next week, was expected to come up with a framework of implementing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Zambia experienced devastating effects of climate change between 2015 and 2016 when rainfall levels dropped drastically. At the time, mining companies were forced to slow down copper production due to reduced power supply. Zambia depends largely on hydro generated power, thereby making it an easy victim of adverse climate change effects such as droughts and floods.