Namibia gratified with the outcomes of the climate change conference
The Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism has welcomed the decisions taken at this year’s just-ended Conference of Parties on climate change (Cop 27), an official recently said.
The climate change conference took place earlier this month in Sharm El-Sheikh Egypt to negotiate on a wider range of issues, from global reporting on national climate change efforts, and how to finance such efforts, MEFT spokesperson Romeo Muyunda said in an update statement.
“Namibia was represented adequately at both political and technical levels,” he said, as he highlighted some of the decisions Namibia is pleased with.
According to Muyunda, the landmark win agreement on establishing the first-ever dedicated fund for loss and damage is one of the decisions welcomed by Namibia.
“The fund will assist developing countries with financial and technical support to rescue and rebuild the physical and social infrastructure of developing countries devastated by extreme weather events including climate-related emergencies, sea level rise, displacement, relocation, migration, insufficient climate information, and data, or the need for climate-resilient reconstruction and recovery,” he added.
New pledges, totaling more than 230 million U.S. dollars, were made to the Adaptation Fund at COP27, a small sum given the scale of the needs in developing countries. Despite efforts made on the financial pledges to the Adaptation Fund, the COP also urged developed countries to lay down a clear roadmap on mobilizing 100 billion U.S. dollars per year by 2024/5, Muyunda said.
Furthermore, Muyunda said the decision to double adaptation finance was reached and COP called for urgency on developed countries to scale up and mobilize financial support to the developing countries to implement their nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
Muyunda said the mitigation work program was established which aims to halve the current emissions by 40 to 50% by 2030 with the developed countries taking the lead.
“It was also decided that the work program shall function in a manner that is consistent with the procedures and timelines for communication of successive NDCs established in the Paris Agreement, and that the scope of the work program should be based on broad thematic areas relevant to urgently scaling up mitigation ambition,” he said.
Meanwhile, Muyunda said parties agreed to initiate the development of a framework for the global goal of adaptation to be undertaken through a long-term structured approach under the Glasgow—Sharm el-Sheikh work program in 2023 with a view for the framework being adopted at the next COP.
