Senior officers dealing with different aspects of climate change, from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community, (EAC), and the Southern Africa Development Community(SADC) met at the East African Hotel, Arusha, Tanzania on 21-22 February 2012, for an annual planning on the Tripartite climate change adaptation and mitigation programme.
The EAC team that hosted the three Regional Economic Communities (RECs) was led by Ms Wivine Yolande Ntamubano, Principal Environment and Natural Resources Officer at the EAC secretariat, who also chaired the meeting, the COMESA team was led by Dr Mclay Kanyangarara, the COMESA Climate Change advisor, whereas the SADC team was led by Ms Margaret Nyirenda; Director Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources at SADC secretariat.
The three RECs deliberated on the work programme and potential activities identifying strength of each with the view to provide leadership and support to sister RECs making the implementation easier and avoiding duplication. They also looked at available budget and funding, including existing and potential contribution agreements with the view to equitably share these resources, as well as engage donors with one voice.
COMESA, SADC and EAC are among the eight building blocks recognized by the Africa Union and constitute a joint membership of half the African countries and have 51 percent of the total African population. Their decision to work together on important issues such as climate change therefore speaks volumes.
The Programme on Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the COMESA-EAC-SADC region is a five-year initiative that started in July 2010. The aim of the programme is to inject Africa’s Unified Position on Climate Change into the post-2012 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) global agreement so as to unlock resources for promoting strategic interventions that sustain productivity and livelihood improvement for millions of climate-vulnerable people in the region.
The COMESA-EAC-SADC Climate Change initiative has been a success thanks to the funding by different cooperating partners. The major ones being Norway, and the European Union, as at the end of February 2012; the three RECs had made significant progress negotiating a grant from DfID for the implementation of Climate Smart agriculture within their share region of Eastern and Southern Africa.
EAC is based in Arusha Tanzania, whereas COMESA and SADC are based in Lusaka, Zambia and Gaborone, Botswana respectively.