Climate Change: Parliament to debate youth petition

Oct 01, 2019

Uganda is among the 47 Least Development countries to Climate change

The youth petition and the recent protest walk in Kampala over climate change have caught the attention of Parliament.

The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has said the petition will be debated in the coming week. She said climate change has disrupted Uganda's weather patterns and also food production as well as increased the violation of human rights.

"We are going to debate the petition in the coming weeks," said Kading that the youth should be celebrated because they were at the forefront of the fight against climate change.

Kadaga was presiding over as the chief guest at a three-day climate change meeting organised at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala on Monday. The meeting that was convened by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, International Labour Organisation and Government of Uganda attracted 22 delegates from East Africa and other countries in West Africa, North Africa and Saudi Arabia.

In the two page petition that was handed over to Kadaga about a fortnight ago, the youth are demanding that Parliament should debate the Climate Change Bill and pass it into law. This, according to the petition will help will make the violators that are blamed for climate change more accountable to Ugandans.

The youth also stated in the petition that a fund is needed to address impacts of climate change. Edwin Muhumuza, the Chief Executive Officer of the Youth Go Green handed over the petition to Kadaga about a fortnight ago. Edwin also participated in the side events organised in New York during the UN Summit.

Uganda vulnerable

Kusum Lata, Team lead of Mitigation and Impact Analysis Support under Mitigation, Data Analysis of the UNFCCC said Uganda is among the 47 Least Development countries to Climate change. She said 33 of the most vulnerable countries were in Africa.

According to the Inter-Governmental Panel and Climate Change, the LDCs will be most affected by climate change because of their low adaptive capacity.

In addition, the Paris Agreement has stated that countries are affected not only by climate change but also by the measures taken in response to it.

"Their priorities are development and their economies are based on minimal export base from Agriculture sector," stated Kusum. "What if these sectors are affected by climate change mitigation actions. It makes them more vulnerable to receive the impacts of climate change and the impacts of the implementation of mitigation actions."

About 24 million jobs created

The National Project Coordinator of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Rukia Lukanza, said that they had launched a plan of greening the jobs in most developing countries.

"The transition to a greener economy will help place an increase in the newer job opportunities and at the same time help in handling global warming issues; an estimation of 24 million jobs will be attained from the greener economy for sustainable development which in the result will improve the energy," Lukanza said.

She added that a green economy will also help in handling environmental degradation on addition to creating 1.2bn jobs if the environment and world work were interdependent.

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