Addis Ababa — As the UN Conference on Climate, COP 21, approaches, the discussions and debates on climate change are starting to intensify with each region vying for a good agreement during the December meeting.
The Economic Commission for Africa and the Global Climate Change Alliance are hosting African, Caribbean and Pacific countries from June 30 to July 3 in Addis Ababa to discuss points of common interests on what is perhaps this century's most contentious topic: climate change.
Mr Thierry Amoussougbo representing the host, ECA's Special Initiatives Division, reminded delegates of the importance of 2015. "This year is an especially strategic moment for this meeting. Later this month in Addis the Financing for Development meeting will be held, in September, New York will host a conference on sustainable development and the COP21 will happen in Paris. We have a lot on our plate for the remaining half of the year".
Those attending this Joint Policy Discussion were unanimous about the difficulty of climate change adaptation in the face of politics and money. For Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, the issue is not about curbing emissions but financing adaptation to climate change.
"Our economies and trade are vulnerable to climate change, so if we want to make any meaningful venture, we have to have agriculture access some of the climate change adaptation. We need to do business very unusually in these times," said Mr. Mclay Kanyangarra of the Common Market of East and Southern Africa.
Representatives from universities, regional groups and policy makers from the three regions shared information and practices on data availability and use, climate change education, use of local knowledge, climate smart agriculture and partnership alliances.
Delegates proposed that a way must be found for local knowledge of weather analysis to be incorporated into the study of climate change. Communities also have observation systems they have developed over a long time.
Scientists are disregarding observations and forecasting of local weather patterns made by rural communities and knowledge is not being used because current methods are not designed to integrate this information.
The acquisition, application of knowledge and data was seen as one the biggest challenges to adapting to climate change. "We invest in modelling and not in observation. But capacity must be built to observe the data, so it's a policy and political issues," Joseph Intsiful of ECA's African Climate Policy Centre said.
Ms. Aliti Fanifau Korol from the University of South Pacific explained how her university offers courses tailored on community needs instead of global climate challenges to which communities fail to relate because of the subject's complexity. She highlighted the role education institutions have in advising governments on evidence-based climate policy.
Each region is facing its own climate change challenges: in West Africa, they are trying to find a solution for control over food security and to reduce the speed of desertification. In the Pacific, they are battling with the consequences of the frequent and severe typhoons. In East and Southern Africa, droughts, flooding and dwindling lakes pose a serious risk to food security and in the Caribbean, coral bleaching poses a threat to marine life and to communities whose main source of protein and livelihood is derived from the sea.
The discussions on climate change are just at the beginning and Mr. Amoussougbo reminded those present, "the two-day Joint Policy Discussion meeting will produce tangible results that will be important inputs first to our Programme Steering Committee meeting which follows, and then to our ministerial meeting held in Brussels in October".
