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By Alex Bitekeye
The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam. Developing countries have been advised to have a common strategy when attending the COP17 meeting in Durban.It will be held at the end of this to pressurize formulation of long term strategies in dealing with the effects of climate change.
The common goal will help in making the meeting, which will also be attended by developed countries, formulate sustainable strategies to curb climate change effects which grossly affect developing countries. “Where the impacts of climate change are increasingly becoming vivid, any delays in agreeing on how to tackle them within a binding agreement at the global level is subjecting these countries to more impacts,” cautioned Mr Richard Muyungi, assistant director in the Vice-President’s Office (Environment Division).
He was speaking yesterday at the opening of a two-day conference that attracted representatives from 28 African and Asian countries. It was organized by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED in collaboration with Environmental Protection and Management Services (EPMS).
He said the need to have a single voice would help the developing countries this time when more developed countries were shunning phase two implementation of the Kyoto protocol.“The Durban conference must be able to come up with a tangible outcome of all outstanding issues of particular importance to developing countries,” he said. He noted that through having a common goal these countries will succeed.
He said these countries were much affected through the action taken by the developed countries not to commit themselves to the second commitment of the Kyoto protocol.Corroborating with him Ms Margret Mukahanana from Zimbabwe said in this case, the real victims would be countries vulnerable to the impact of climate change. “Their only hope is that at Durban the proposed design of the Green Climate Fund-as imperfect as it may be- will be approved by consensus without making another negotiation,” she said. Ms Mukahanana is also the vice chairperson of the Long Term Cooperative Action in Climate Change negotiations.
Among other issues, there was a need for sustainable financial funding in various Climate Change issues because donating countries were the ones which ran away from helping needy countries, she said. “Nothing will be done without money; we need some long term sources of finance which will help us in adaptation and mitigation while at the same time political intervention is highly needed too,” said Ms Mukahanana.For his part, Mr Muyungi asked the developed countries to help in funding least developed countries in dealing with the climate change effects.
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