WOTE, Kenya, Nov 26 – Climate change experts are rooting for the entrenchment of response mechanisms geared at slowing global warming and promoting adaptation in law to advance locally-led climate action.
Speaking on the sidelines of the 7th Devolution Conference on Friday, Winstone Atamba, Director in charge of climate change in Vihiga County, noted that counties need to develop interventions anchored in law to sustain county-led interventions.
“It is time counties and individuals started financing climate change initiatives by setting aside resources for climate change. For instance, the County Government of Vihiga sets aside 2 per cent of its budget,” Atamba said.
He cautioned against overreliance on external funding to finance climate action saying donor resources should complement existing efforts by governments at both the national and devolved level.
Atamba noted that some interventions are capital-intensive at the onset but yield immense outcomes in supporting climate adaptation and deescalating climate change.
“Solar, for instance, is expensive to install in the beginning, but in the long run it is clean energy and cheaper to manage because there are minimal operational costs,” he noted.
Atamba called for public financing to support green initiatives including subsidizing cleaner energy sources like gas.
“We see the price of gas, which is not completely clean, go up which means people may consider other alternatives which may include non-clean sources of energy,” he noted.
Atamba called for public financing to support green initiatives including subsidizing cleaner energy sources like gas/CoG
Atamba’s counterpart in Kisumu, Evans Gichana, supported the proposal to anchor climate action and financing in law saying a legally-mandated response to climate change would help advance climate adaptation.
“We were among the first counties to create a Climate Change Unit as required by the Climate Change Act with the support of the Adaptation (ADA) Consortium and Financial Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD Kenya),” he stated.
ADA is a National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) initiative designed to support county governments mainstream climate change into development and planning through the County Climate Change Fund Mechanism.
Gichana challenged both levels of government to mobilize for climate financing both from own sources and external financiers to sustain efforts to support adaptation.
“We must develop proposals so that we can be able to get support but we must not depend on World Bank. We must engage other partners and also mobilize our own resources so that we intervene appropriately,” he said.
Gichana expressed confidence in the outcomes adopted at the Devolution Conference, which doubled up as Kenya’s inaugural sub-national climate summit, noting that most county governments had already formulated climate laws and policies.
Gichana challenged both levels of government to mobilize for climate financing both from own sources and external financiers to sustain efforts to support adaptation/CoG
A joint communique adopted at the end of the conference held in Makueni from November 23-26 called for increased allocations by both the national and county governments in the 2022-2023 budget cycle to support climate adaptation at the grassroots level.
It also recommended the formation of a new Senate committee to monitor county-level climate action.
The communiqué called for stepped up preventative health, planning and risk reduction through an integrated approach encompassing the two levels of government.
Further, delegates agreed on the need to expedite joint regulations by both levels of government to promote investments in renewable energy, a key intervention to deescalate global warming.
“Both levels of government shall develop and review regulations and standards to provide an enabling environment for investment in renewable energy including clean cooking and E- Mobility for sustainable and affordable utilization of energy,” the outcome document read.
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