22 Jun 2022

Botswana has welcomed the Commonwealth Living Lands Charter as an important development for achievement of the Paris Agreement ambitions by  small states.

   Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Lemogang Kwape said this when addressing the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) climate change meeting in Kigali yesterday. 

He therefore appealed to small states to join hands in the charter’s implementation.

Dr Kwape said coupled with the Commonwealth Acceleration Action, the charter offered an important foundation for members to collaborate and learn from each other about more sustainable ways of growing food and adapting to climate change.  

He said the charter’s themes of climate-smart agriculture, soil and water conservation, biodiversity, livestock rearing and climate-resilient development were a springboard for further collaboration.

Traditionally, he said, north-south cooperation had been used in efforts to address many developmental challenges including biodiversity and climate change.  Through the charter, the Commonwealth family  had  a unique opportunity to adopt south-south and triangular strategy to complement existing collaborations with more efficient use of resources.

He said Botswana had joined Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in recognition of the urgent need to enhance the convention’s implementation through south-south and triangular cooperation.    

“We are in the process of developing our own south-south and triangular strategy to align with this and other development initiatives amongst developing nations, particularly within the Commonwealth,” he said.

 Dr Kwape expressed the hope that the charter would help member states find ways of accessing much-needed technical assistance for capacity building purposes and realisation  of commitments under the UN’s framework on climate change known as the Paris Agreement and Rio conventions. 

The conference of parties to each Rio convention, namely Convention on Biological Diversity and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, underlined the need for enhanced collaboration to improve synergy and reduce duplication of activities, he said. 

Minister Kwape said the charter was particularly important for global realisation of Sustainable Development Goal targets related to life on land.

He revealed that Botswana was considering development of alternative livelihood projects in biodiversity hotspots, land restoration, sustainable management of waste as well as of the Okavango Delta, the world’s 1000th heritage site.

On UNEP’s  cross-cutting capacity development project, Dr Kwape said it was geared towards strengthening institutional and technical capacities in environmental management.

Expected key outputs from the project included development of strategic environmental assessment guidelines and a state of environment report, said the minister. ENDS