Uganda has reaped from its youth delegates who took part in UN (COP22) climate talks (COP22) in Marrakesh from Monday to Friday – the Pearl of Africa will host a High Level UN Global Youth Conference on Climate Change (COY13).
This was lead by youthful conservationist and CEO of Youth Go Green, Edwin Muhumuza who led the team in Marrakesh, Morocco.
“It is a big opportunity for our country,” Muhumuza told TheUgandan from Morrocco on phone. This will be the very first time for Africa to host this global youth event. ” He revealed that what was left now is to set up a series of meetings with the Ministery of Water and Environment, UN bosses in Kampala and other strategic partners to plan and secure the needed funds for a successful conference.
Muhumuza a former Western Youth MP aspirant on the ruling party – NRM ticket revealed that Uganda stands to both financially and technically from the summit that will attract well over 2,000 top decision makers, researchers, technical experts, financiers, journalists and operatives of civil society to dissect the debilitating, but obviously inevitable issue of climate change.
“Like most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda consider it a matter of national priority for climate change to be mainstreamed into the national policy agenda ,” Muhumuza said who represented Ugandan youth at the opening of the first plenary session.
As of 24 October 2016, a total of 83 out of 197 Parties, including Uganda, had ratified the Paris Agreement. The Agreement sets out global action to address climate change by limiting global warming to 2°C.
“In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, youth have to be at the forefront, and government needs to build their capacity and awareness of climate change issues,” Muhumuza said.
The Minister of Water and Environment, Hon. Sam Cheptoris, said that the Conferences had provided solutions to building resilience in communities on issues of climate change.
He explained that government was committed to contributing to the global efforts to address climate change despite its meager contribution to the global green house gas emissions.
#COP22
The climate change conference underway in Marrakech, known as COP 22, is concentrating on how governments, business and financial institutions can collaborate to reduce carbon emissions to help prevent global temperatures from rising.
Governments have set targets, but enterprises and banks will have to take on a greater role to meet them.
Investments in renewable energy have grown rapidly to reach a record level of $286 billion last year.
This needs to double before the end of this decade to support the Paris climate change goals agreed to last year.
Changing economies have been a deciding factor behind speeding up a renewable energy roll-out.
COP 22 is starting to identify a growing number of projects that will be created simply because they make sense economically.
