29 Apr 2016

The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Evironment Wildlife and Tourism (MEWT), Mr Elias Magosi says Botswana is committed to the fight against climate change.

Mr Magosi said this at a signing of the climate change financing agreement with Italy’s director general in the Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea,  Dr Francesco La Camera, in which the government of Italy had committed to contributing a total of  P23.9 million in starting the process.

He said Botswana was thankful to the government of Italy and indeed through the ministry of  Environment of land and Sea to be able to get the fund.

The event follows the signing of Memorandum of Understanding with Italy on December 2015 in Paris, where the two signed three documents on financial agreement and the guiding principles and financial rules and procedure

“The countries that are signatory to the United Nations systems are committed to the  negotiations in recognition to the fact that climate change is affecting every country and impacted by the effects of climate change,” he said.

He said over the years there had been the landmark of negotiated agreement in Paris, where the negotiations concluded on the Paris agreement on climate change, of which the relationship with Italy developed, hence culminating in the meeting.

“On the margins of those negotiations, we had side meetings with our colleagues from Italy and in the end we ultimately have appended the memorandum of understanding between our two governments, primarily to drive and implement the climate change commitments,” he said.

He said it was best to appreciate that Italy was one of the most developed countries and also a member of the European Union,

Mr Magosi said there were commitments which were made by all countries which were signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNCCC), which were the commitments that Botswana was putting forward to deal with climate change.

“We have therefore made an agreement and commitment with the memorandum of understanding that we are going to work together and primarily the government of Italy, was going to support the activities and actions that Botswana is making in the implementation of those commitments signed to the UNFCCC,” he said.

He said they had entered into a 5 year Bilateral memorandum of understanding, which was the first agreement on climate change that has been held by Botswana with Italy.

“The Paris Climate Agreement, struck at a world climate summit last year, aims to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as mobilize vast financial resources to fund climate change mitigation  programmes and projects in developing countries. Specifically, the accord seeks to keep annual global temperature rises to a maximum of two degrees, which experts say will help arrest global warming, and reduce the impact of climate change,” he said.

Mr Magosi said, climate change also had serious impact, as Botswana was semi-arid, adding that of recent, the southern part of Botswana was much dependent on the water from the North, which led to the North South carrier. 

“It is up to the Ministry to establish what needs to be done, in regenerating, preserving and restoring the underground water,” he said.

For his part, Dr La Camera said the sustainable development goals dependeded largely on what would be done in climate change.

“If the global temperature continues to rise it will be more and more difficult for the other targets and challenges. We as Italy, working towards Paris and thinking after Paris, we have chosen to direct our broad activities to Africa, adding that Africa for Italy was a priority,” he said.

He said Botswana had a huge potential to address challenges of climate change and working on making agriculture more smart as it had all the credentials to do the job at best.ENDS