KAMPALA – Ugandan youths have been encouraged to actively participate in the formulation of environmental policies.
Speaking at the Third Edition of Kampala Climate Cafe, hosted at Alliance Frances in Kampala, Crispus Mwemaho, the CEO of Kampala Climate Cafe urged the young people to help influence national environmental policies, plans, and programs.
“If you are very well versed with what is happening today, you realise that Climate Change and environmental issues are always just one step away from your home and something that is every day, you’re seeing floods, and droughts all over the country. So it is important for us as youths to get involved and actively participate in the formulation of the environmental policies in Uganda, said Mwemaho.
He said that Climate café sought to provide a nondiscriminatory safe space for Ugandan Youths to network and learn while raising awareness about the climate crisis. It also helped to highlight the need for the youth to be more involved in creating the future they desire.
Laura Muwanguzi said that young people are some of the most vulnerable to the lifelong environmental effects caused by climate change.
Age, gender, unequal access to education and health, human rights violations, and a closing civic space all pose significant barriers to meaningful youth engagement in governance and policymaking, a concern highlighted at the café.
Muwanguzi wants the youth to be included in the decision-making rooms where key decisions are being made from.
“I also think that in ways how youths can take part in climate action is evolving in the small actions and activities, for example, planting trees in their communities,” Muwanguzi said.
Isaac Mugumbule, the Head of Landscaping at the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) said the city authorities have been working on a three-year project under slicks, a partnership with the city of Strasbourg France and KCCA.
He added that Kampala Climate Cafe has offered them a platform to engage with various stakeholders and players in the community also to share what it is that they are doing, and also hear from them what that means and find a way of working together.
“It has been a great platform for us to engage because we have seen that the element of youth is one of those elements, neglected when we were implementing programs and yet we find that the key people that implement our initiative and activities are actually the youths.
So what this has done and allowed us to do was to share and listen and I believe moving from here, the networks we found can lead us to the next platform.” He said.
Uganda falls among the most vulnerable countries to climate change amidst its negligible contribution in greenhouse gas emission to the atmosphere as the main cause of global warming, which unfortunately bears the brunt of its effects.
Uganda’s economy is heavily reliant on agriculture, making the country highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In Afrobarometer’s 2016/2018 surveys, 85% of Ugandans – more than in any of the other 33 countries that were surveyed – said climate conditions for agricultural production in their area had gotten worse over the previous decade.
Large majorities of those familiar with climate change say it is making life worse and requires immediate government action, even if such policies and programmes are expensive, cause job losses, or take a toll on the economy. But overwhelming majorities also say they expect greater efforts by other stakeholders, including business and industry, more developed countries, and ordinary citizens.
