Dodoma — THE Deputy Minister of State in the Vice President's Office, Environment and Union Affairs, Mr Khamis Hamza Khamis has called for concentrated efforts to ensure availability of needed resources for climate financing.
He made the remarks over the weekend during the launching of domestic resource mobilization in Tanzania's extractive sector for climate financing report prepared by Policy Forum Tanzania and the Tax Justice Network-Africa, with financial support from the African Climate Foundation.
According to the report, Tanzania, like most developing countries, has been highly affected by climate change with floods and droughts destroying infrastructure and disrupting human life.
The Deputy Minister said climate change has also affected livelihoods as agriculture, the largest employing sector, has mainly been affected by the erratic nature of rainfall thus the need to promote the environment as it has compromised the food security to people who rely on subsistence agriculture for their food crops.
He insisted on the need to protect water sources as the government has formulated and implemented a number of regulations and policies to see how best they deal with climate change effects including Nationally Determined Contributions and National Environmental Master Plan for Strategic Interventions.
Mr Khamis said financial instruments for climate change are potentially available to Tanzania include the 100 billion US dollars target, the new Green Deal, green bonds, carbon markets and carbon border adjustment mechanisms.
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"Domestic Resource Mobilisation (DRM) is key and the country's fiscal revenues have increased over the years with a manageable debt to service. This has coincided with equaling growing revenues from the extractive sector," he said.
The reports said with an abundance of green minerals, the extractive industry in the country could be used to spur a green revolution with increased revenue contribution can be among the sources of climate financing.
Policy Forum Tanzania Board Chairperson, Ms Christina Ruhinda said since the country depends most of climate financing from abroad it was time they looked at the extractive sector for domestic resource mobilization.
"Tanzania's ability to mobilise resources domestically has been undermined and curtailed by IFFs despite having a transfer pricing mechanism in place.
She mentioned a recommendation to change the trend to stop awarding harmful tax incentives to the extractive sector.
