By Hilma Hashange
hilma@economist.com.na
Climate change adaptations have the potential to disrupt
available funding or to deplete national budgets of poorer countries. With the
financial impact of climate change events already witnessed on a large scale
over several years, Namibia will need to investigate financial options both
within the country and externally.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol make provision for parties with more resources
to financially assist those countries where the inhabitants are more vulnerable
due to budgetary limitations.
The parties to the UNFCCC assigned the operation of the
financial mechanism to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) which is
accountable to the Conference of Parties (COP) to decide on GEF’s climate
change policies, programme priorities and eligibility criteria for funding.
Various support actions from international development
partners including funding for climate change events are available in Namibia
and many projects have been funded or co-funded by the Global Environment
Facility (GEF) through various implementing agencies such as the third National
Communication Project to the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) which is funded by the GEF through the United Nation
Developmental Plan.
The project was funded to prepare a national report on
greenhouse gas emissions, including
measures to promote adaptation and mitigation as well as
issues related to public education and awareness. The report also assessed
technology needs, financial ability and technical requirement to deal with
climate change.
Namibia is one of the ten countries world-wide implementing
this project.
However, according to Johnson Ndokosho from the Ministry of
Environment and Tourism, more adaptation projects especially in rural areas,
require funding. He is of the opinion that more still needs to be done to fund
projects that develop crop varieties, livestock improvement, agricultural
diversification and water conservation. This is even more of a pertinent issue
given the current drought, he told the Economist.
Major adaptation investments such as proposals to protect
Oshakati from flooding through a large scale diversion aquifer, or building a
sea protection wall around Walvis Bay harbour are just some major and strategic
investments that will require international funding.
Ndokosho said even though mitigation and adaptation projects
are needed, Namibia does not emit much greenhouse gases hence mitigation
efforts will not make much impact on the global scale.
"Moreover, Namibia is classified as a developing
country which is not legally required by the United Nations Convention to
implement mitigation measures, so we do it on a voluntary basis," he said.
However, the country is highly vulnerable to the effects of
climate change hence greater emphasis is put on adaptation in order to make the
country more resilient to climate change impacts. "Climate change
manifests itself in either floods or droughts. Namibia is vulnerable to both
and we need to be prepared to deal with both situations going forward. It is
now high time that we incorporate and mainstream climate change impacts into
our planning process," Ndokosho noted.
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