Rwanda: Regional Lawmakers Commit to Tackle Climate Change
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
29 August 2008
Posted to the web 29 August 2008
Nairobi
A new joint plan by African and European parliamentarians has brought them into international efforts trying to counter climate change which experts say will hit Africa hard more than any other region, RNA reports.
Lawmakers from 14 African countries and 14 from Europe and Japan are calling for "specific parliamentary action in the areas of appropriate legislation, policy reform and budgetary re-allocations to counter the damaging effects of climate change in Africa", which they agree are now clearly apparent.
"Climate change concerns and issues should be incorporated into national development plans", the parliamentarians say in the African-European Parliamentary Action Plan on Climate Change.
The lawmakers from Europe, Africa and Asia were in Kenya for the Parliamentary Forum on Sustainable Development and Aid Effectiveness that ended Thursday organised by the Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa (AWEPA).
Experts have affirmed that Africa and Asia stand to suffer more from climate change which they say will cause major disruptions in the global food system. In February, Stanford University's Programme on Food Security and the Environment in a study said 'adaptation to those changes needs to begin immediately'.
Otherwise one-fifth of the world's population could starve and millions of others become climate refugees, forced by heat and drought to abandon their lands and hunt for food elsewhere in the coming decades.
It has not taken so long for the situation to appear as rocketing food prices bite hard globally. In the east Africa region, drought has left millions of people with very little to eat.
The plan by the lawmakers meeting in Kenya urges that a further set of recommendations be made "to address the current food security crisis."
As a symbolic gesture of support for the launch of the Action Plan, Kenya's Vice President, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, planted a tree "which will grow and flourish as an enduring sign of our determination to confront the challenge of climate change," he said.
Meanwhile, in Kigali Agriculture Minister on Friday said farmers should not wait for rain instigated farming but adopt irrigation to produce more food. Rwanda has not suffered from food shortages but high oil prices have hiked the costs.
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