23 Jun 2022

Botswana has restated its support for the transition to clean energy as a way of contributing  to the attainment of the global warming reduction goal to below two degrees.

President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi said this during a high-level panel discussion on climate change regarding Botswana’s response to the Glasgow Climate Pact at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kigali yesterday.

As part of Botswana’s contribution to keeping the 1.5 degrees goal alive, he said, government planned to reduce emissions by 15 per cent by the year 2030 as stipulated in the country’s first nationally determined contributions which had established that the majority of emissions would emanate from the energy sector.

He said Botswana submitted to Glasgow pact commitments and had made its own to mitigate and reduce the impacts of climate change.

The commitments  had been buttressed through reviewing legislation and policies to ensure parastatals and residences reduced emissions, the President said.

Dr Masisi said he ordered revision of the integrated resource plan following the Glasgow meet in order take into consideration further steps required to ensure reduction of emissions.

“We are committed to increasing the contribution of solar to our energy mix because Botswana is comfortably placed on a planet where solar is able to contribute enormously,” he said.

Stating that the plan was also to integrate wind energy into the country’s energy mix, Dr Masisi said a study would be completed end of this year.

The President said Botswana was also resolute in advancing advocacy for developed and developing states to play a role in proportion to their contributions that negatively affected mother earth.

“Africa should not be excluded from this because while we have these forests, they are threatened by the absence of peace in some of those countries that promote the absence of peace through production of some technologies that cause conflict and wars which ravage forests, stripping the forests of the ability to support us,” he said.

Dr Masisi called on both developed and developing states to honour pledges made at the Glasgow Conference of the Parties (COP26) to support enhanced action on developing countries’ adaptation initiatives.

He said at the heart of climate change mitigations was multilateralism because the issue was a global threat to all.

“This is the reason that compels and justifies the reason for having a multilateral order hence all states should play their part,” he said.

Meanwhile, COP26 president Mr Alok Sharma said countries should deliver their COP26 commitments for tackling climate change.

He pointed out that one of the agreements was that global warming should be limited to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

“I want to find out if anything has been done since COP26 to urgently scale up global warming mitigation ambition and implementation agreed to,” he stated.

Mr Sharma said some countries had already made strides in scaling up finance to reach out to climate-vulnerable countries.

He announced that the United Kingdom was doubling its funding to nationally determined contributions partnerships to 10 million Pounds and encouraged countries to utilise the funding. Ends