Life
Africa to implement home grown solutions to tackling climate change
Effects of climate change in Northern Kenya. PHOTO/Sarah Elliott/EPA
African leaders have been urged to consciously promote indigenous locally developed technology usage in order to adapt to climate change’s impact on the continent.
A communiqué issued after a five day international conference in Accra, Ghana says African governments should expand climate negotiating teams to include scientists so as to realize a strong continental position in global negotiations.
“African problems should first and foremost be subjected to African analyses and solutions,” the communiqué issued on Tuesday states.
The participants comprising researchers, civil society groups, environmentalists, private and public sector players, politicians, gender advocates and indigenous people, came from countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Mozambique, and Kenya.
The conference was the 2nd Climate Change and Population Conference on Africa organized by the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) of the University of Ghana.
African states, the communiqué says, should also support credible local institutions to undertake rigorous policy-relevant climate change research and empirical assessments.
This, it notes, will help to inform climate negotiations, adaptation options and policy implementation.
It urged governments to increase the proportion of their gross domestic product (GDP) dedicated to research on the continent in order to support innovations geared towards addressing the climate change menace.
