Uganda
Analysis written by ambassador JulietGrace Luwedde with mentor Michael Kakande.
Executive Summary
On the 21st of September 2016 Uganda submitted her Intended Nationally Determined Contribution in compliance with Decision 1/CP.19 (Further advancing the Durban Platform: and in particular Paragraph 1 (b & c)) and as elaborated in Decision 1/CP.20 (Lima Call for Climate Action and in particular paragraph 11) premised on the Convention and guided by its principles. Uganda is and continues to work on reducing vulnerability and addressing adaptation in agriculture and livestock, forestry, infrastructure (with an emphasis on human settlements, social infrastructure and transport), water, energy, health and disaster risk management. The goal of this analysis is to determine the scope of gender equity and emissions reduction while exploring the roles of youth, women and civil society inclusion in the development and implementation of Uganda’s NDC.
Highlights from the NDC
Uganda committed to focus on implementation of a series of policies and measures in the energy supply, forestry and wetland sectors with the estimated potential cumulative impact of the policies and measures that could result in approximately 22% reduction of national greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 compared to business-as-usual. With this in mind, the NDC recognizes that there is need for;
Institutional capacity building– technical, financial, organizational, business – to drive the climate finance agenda in-country
Respect for human rights and gender-responsive climate change actions. The protection of vulnerable groups, including women, is a crosscutting priority
Reducing vulnerability and addressing adaptation in agriculture and livestock, forestry, infrastructure (with an emphasis on human settlements, social infrastructure and transport), water, energy, health and disaster risk management.
Implementing identified policies and measures as their impact may be higher or lower than the estimations illustrated in the country’s NDC ambitions.
Recommendations for the Ugandan government on NDC enhancement and implementation, to support the most ambitious climate action possible, are to:
Improve the gender responsiveness of key policies and overarching strategy documents to include gender specific issues and to provide for the protection of the rights of women, youth and children in land and environment management
Involve youths in all key processes at both national and local level to see that the NDCs are implemented given the significant role they play in all the five sectors as highlighted in the NDC
Improve consultations with civil society. Dialogue between the government and civil society should no longer happen in rather superficial ways as it has been the case but rather call for advocacy, accountability and transparency.
Uganda’s NDCs overall are dependent on policy documents and how the five sectors listed there perform in order to meet the intended targets and implementation strategies. While these documents have satisfied the purpose of their formulation, having a comprehensive NDC that has clear, achievable strategies in the primary document will provide a more inclusive document with clear responsibilities of all stakeholders on how strategic partnerships will enable us as a country to meet set targets. The potential for youth, women and civil society inclusion in National climate action plans, the revision and inclusion of the NDCs can be achieved. These stakeholders are so passionate about their work and they have got more networks to make sure that actions are implemented. There is a need to engage them more and build their capacity in technical issues.
NDC Analysis
Discrimination against women and girls continue to constrain them from equally participating in, contributing to, and benefiting from sustainable natural resource management, as well as sustainable development. Women all over the globe use and interact with natural resources and ecosystems on a daily basis yet gender inequality and social exclusion continue to increase the negative effects of unsustainable and destructive environmental management on women and girls.
Extreme weather events such as droughts and floods come with a greater impact on the poor and most vulnerable – 70% of the world’s poor are women yet they are still a largely untapped resource. Despite women being disproportionately affected by climate change, they play a crucial role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Women have the knowledge and understanding of what is needed to adapt to changing environmental conditions and to come up with practical solutions.
Introduction
The livelihood of the people of Uganda is highly dependent on the exploitation of her natural resources, including climate. In submitting the first NDC, Uganda’s priority was adaptation. Today, Uganda continues to work on reducing vulnerability and addressing adaptation in agriculture and livestock, forestry, infrastructure (with an emphasis on human settlements, social infrastructure and transport), water, energy, health and disaster risk management.
Uganda committed to focus on implementation of a series of policies and measures in the energy supply, forestry and wetland sectors. The business-as-usual (BAU) scenario the estimated emissions in 2030 will be 77.3 Million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (MtCO2eq/yr). The estimated potential cumulative impact of the policies and measures could result in approximately 22% reduction of national greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 compared to business-as-usual. Uganda proposes to implement the identified policies and measures, and their impact may be higher or lower than these estimations illustrate.
Contributions under this Intended Nationally Determined Contribution include crosscutting respect for human rights and gender-responsive climate change actions. The protection of vulnerable groups, including women, is a crosscutting priority.
Objective: The goal of this analysis is to determine the scope of gender equity and emissions reduction while exploring the roles of youth, women and civil society inclusion in the development and implementation of Uganda’s NDC.
Uganda’s NDCs:
On the 21st of September 2016 Uganda submitted her Intended Nationally Determined Contribution in compliance with Decision 1/CP.19 (Further advancing the Durban Platform: and in particular Paragraph 1 (b & c)) and as elaborated in Decision 1/CP.20 (Lima Call for Climate Action and in particular paragraph 11) premised on the Convention and guided by its principles.
The livelihood of the people of Uganda is highly dependent on the exploitation of her natural resources, including climate. In submitting this NDC, Uganda’s priority is adaptation. The country is and will continue to work on reducing vulnerability and addressing adaptation in agriculture and livestock, forestry, infrastructure (with an emphasis on human settlements, social infrastructure and transport), water, energy, health and disaster risk management.
This analysis has been conducted from a feminist perspective while looking at issues of gender equality, Uganda’s emissions reduction plans (mitigation and adaptation), youth and Civil Society Inclusion.
Uganda’s current NDC has been reviewed as shown and described below:
Gender Equality
Contributions under Uganda’s NDCs include crosscutting respect for human rights and gender-responsive climate change actions. The protection of vulnerable groups, including women, is a crosscutting priority. Besides highlighting women as being vulnerable in terms of food insecurity, water shortage and fuel wood scarcity, Uganda’s NDC’s do not go into detail on prioritizing women engagement in the implementation process despite the progress of including gender equality outcomes in numerous national policies. There still remain gaps and policies that could be improved upon to better integrate gender and climate change priorities. Women face greater risks and carry a heavier burden in relation to their ability to respond and adapt to climate change due to the inequalities they face in Ugandan society.
While none of the priority sectors considered for the NDCs mention women and girls exclusively, the UNDP Gender analysis report revealed gender equality gaps and opportunities in three key NDC sectors; Agriculture, Energy, and Waste, and proposed measures to integrate gender responsive actions in these sectors in a Gender Action Plan. The recommendations given included;
Establishing a high-level ministerial committee on NDC policy coordination and implementation under the leadership of the Office of Prime Minister.
Addressing climate change and gender capacity gaps in human resources at both the national and district level to ensure smooth coordination and implementation of gender responsive measures in NDC.
Improving the establishment and collection of gender / sex disaggregated data in priority NDC sectors.
Improving the gender responsiveness of key policies and overarching strategy documents to include gender specific issues and to provide for the protection of the rights of women, youth and children in land and environment management. This includes the Sustainable Land Management Policy (2013), The Land Act (1998), The National Environment Act, Cap 153 and the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy. For the latter, gender equality and participation should be spelt out specifically as a development outcome due to the important role gender plays in achieving development objectives
Emission Reduction
Annex I: Potential impact of the mitigation contribution provides for the emission reduction potential. Uganda’s prioritized measures in energy supply, forestry and wetlands estimations are approximate, and are presented for indicative purposes only.
Uganda in her NDCs proposes to implement the aforementioned policies and measures and their impact may be higher or lower than these estimations illustrate. The cumulative impact of these measures could result in approximately 22% reduction of overall national emissions in 2030, including Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry, compared to the business-as-usual (BAU) projection. The BAU emissions baseline for Uganda, including LULUCF, is 77.3 Million tons Carbon dioxide equivalent per year in 2030, according to projections in the Background Paper for the 2012 Climate Change Policy. Total emissions in 2000 Despite Uganda’s share of the total global GHG emissions being insignificant; the country’s sectors emission profile is growing with Agriculture as a leading source of GHG emissions and Land Use Change and Forestry (LUCF) as the second most significant source (WRI CAIT, 2015). The LUCF sectors are expected to remain a net emitter through the 2030s and with interventions, these are projected to become a major sink as early as 2025 (GoU, 2014).
Under the growth and development scenario in 2015, Uganda’s total emissions were projected at 77,381 Gg CO2 eq (77.3MtCO2eq/yr) also known as business as usual scenario. It is envisaged that implementation of prioritized measures in energy supply, forestry and wetlands will result into cumulative impact of approximately 22% reduction of overall national emissions in 2030. It should be noted that in 2012, total emissions were estimated at 36.5 Mt CO2eq/yr in 2000.
Youth
The youth in Uganda form a majority of the population today with special needs and perspectives therefore their role in development including climate change plans and policies is very significant at all levels. There is a lot of potential and inherent energy to use their resources, as volunteers as well as technical services to Revise and implement the NDCs. Specific aspects on where the youths could get involved include the consultation with the rest of the youths in the different local communities, the implementation of the programs in the various sectors, and more innovations in regards to climate change adaptation and mitigation for Uganda.
Unlike children who are mentioned as particularly vulnerable in Uganda’s NDCs, there is no mention of youth yet this group of stakeholder has taken it upon themselves to represent their country and organisations at the different high level climate negotiations and policy conferences to be able to create visibility to their work and their potential. It is important to understand the role that young people play in the economic growth of Uganda and tackling the climate crisis. The current NDC doesn’t outline the provision of resources to young people involved in mitigation works. Acknowledging the efforts of young people in subsequent NDCs would motivate a lot more young people, knowing that their efforts are included in the national climate policies.
Civil Society Inclusion
In light of the NDC Partnership plan for Uganda, a number of implementing partners have pledged support including the Governments of Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Austria; the European Union; United Nations Climate Change (UNFCCC); United Nations Development Program (UNDP); the African Development Bank; the World Bank; the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO); the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI); Environmental Management for Livelihood Improvement Bwaise Facility (EMLI); Conservation International; International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN); National Adaptation Plan – Global Network (NAP-GN); and World Resources Institute (MWE, 2018a).
While the review process of Uganda’s NDCs ambition continues to take precedence, there is still no clear roadmap for this process as yet on how civil society will be included in the implementation stages. Dialogue between the government and civil society takes place although it is rather superficial however, the new NDCs review process has taken into account the progress made in the NDCs implementation to date including launch of the NDC Partnership Plan, Development Partner’s commitments, Projects launched from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Adaptation Fund (AF) and with civil society support among others so this is a good sign.
Recommendations
As we work towards updating Uganda’s NDCs more than ever, there is urgent need for the relevant stakeholders to:
Develop policies to address climate change that recognize gender-sensitive impacts, provide women with access to resources, and give them opportunities to participate in mitigation and adaptation processes.
Actively involve youths in all key processes at both national and local level to see that the NDCs are implemented given the significant role they play in all the five sectors as highlighted in the NDC and this can be achieved through full Youth inclusion and participation in the Climate policy formulation and implementation while also creating and increasing Climate Action Entrepreneurship opportunities for the youth.
Inclusion of youths, women and people with disabilities in all the priority sectors and this can be both in the making plans, strengthening or revising of the NDCs and until implementation.
The current NDCs mention provision of technical support and capacity building but don’t breakdown how this is to be achieved. Investing in education, technologies and initiatives to enhance sustainable and renewable energy sources that reflect women’s knowledge, needs, and roles, while incorporating indigenous expertise and traditional practices.
Supporting incubator centers where young people are doing most of the climate innovations is a step towards ensuring the success of the NDCs.
Facilitate youth-led research in the key priority areas while prioritizing multi sector planning and implementation.
Improve agricultural extension efforts, agricultural inputs, subsidies, incentives and training for women in climate smart agriculture. Promote a gender-responsive approach to climate financing.
Conclusion:
Uganda’s NDCs overall are dependent on policy documents and how the five sectors listed there perform in order to meet the intended targets and implementation strategies. While these documents have satisfied the purpose of their formulation, having a comprehensive NDC that has clear, achievable strategies in the primary document will provide a more inclusive document with clear responsibilities of all stakeholders on how strategic partnerships will enable us as a country to meet set targets.
The potential for youth, women and civil society inclusion in National climate action plans, the revision and inclusion of the NDCs can be achieved. These stakeholders are so passionate about their work and they have got more networks to make sure that actions are implemented. There is a need to engage them more and build their capacity in technical issues.
References:
Authors
JulietGrace Luwedde, Uganda NDC Ambassador: Luwedde JulietGrace is an environment enthusiast and climate activist from Uganda with experience writing about the environment and extensive knowledge working with communities while promoting Sustainable Urban Agriculture for food security, ecosystems protection, and conservation of Natural Resources. She has contributed to institutional program designing, research, and capacity Training at the national level as a junior consultant with the Ministry of Water and Environment and the National Environment Management Authority. JulietGrace is also the Focal Point for the Africa Youth Initiative on Climate Change in Uganda, interim focal point and facilitator for the UNCCD Global Youth Caucus and a contributing author to the GEO-6 for Youth Africa.
Michael Kakande, Uganda NDC Mentor: An environmentalist, certified Climate Change activist, Policy Analyst, Youth Participation and inclusion in decision making Advocate, Founder of Two Hands One Life (THOL), a National NGO accredited to UNCCD, An Ambassador under Theirworld, Youth4Nature and One Million Youth Action Challenge (1MYAC), mobilising youth to lead on nature, climate and agenda 2030. He is the Regional Coordinator for Open Dialogues on Climate Change – East Africa, a member of the Resilient40, which is an Africa UK partnership towards climate resilience on the African Continent. He’s a member of local, National, Regional and international youth environmental networks.