Lands and Natural Resources Permanent Secretary Ndashe Yumba says the country is making tremendous strides in mitigating climate change.
According to a statement issued by First Secretary for press at the Embassy of the Permanent Delegation to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in France Yande Musonda, Yumba was speaking at a side event on mobilizing investment for off grid solutions in African countries organized by beyond the grid Fund for Africa of the on-going Madrid Climate Change Conference COP-25 in Madrid, Spain.
Yumba commended various partners for complementing governments efforts in meeting its pledge to the Paris Agreement through its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) where the country pledged to reduce its emissions from the Agriculture, Forestry and Energy Sectors.
Yumba noted that Beyond the Grid Fund Project had recorded 151,190 energy services subscriptions and 786,188 total beneficiaries.
“A total of 1,505 jobs had been created and 372,165 kg of carbon dioxide was being mitigated annually. The mentioned gains met all the pillars of sustainable development of contributing towards the Social, Economic and Environmental components of development. Additionally, the Project contributed greatly to the sustainable development of Zambia’s energy sector and that the Government has been reviewing and developing relevant policies and regulations so as to ensure that the development of the sector responded to the ever-changing business environment. The year 2019 has seen cabinet approve the draft National Energy Policy (NEP) 2019 and the Electricity and Energy Regulation Bills 2019,” stated Yumba.
“We have placed duty free on energy efficient lighting lamps, solar panels, solar geysers, solar batteries and inverters for solar power and energy saving appliances, machinery and equipment in order to meet the demand for energy in Zambia.”
2 Responses
Actually, they are doing more than enough and that is why they have not bothered to give incentives to a shift to use of wind and solar in power generation thereby encouraging the production of charcoal to supplement the importation of electricity from South Africa.
I feel some points stated in the article are not depicting the reality on the Zambian soil. I must state that most Zambians are currently dancing to the tunes of climate change; and for anyone to mention most of those good things about mitigating effects of climate change is not a fair thing. Maybe I not aware, some people do not have load-shedding where they stay and operate from. One would ask; what have we done as a country to mitigate the effects of climate change on the water levels in Zambezi river? Rainfall patterns are affected too. And this has a chain effect on our environment. I get concerned because I am a Zambia and we are currently negatively affected by effects of climate change, simply put; we, the citizens love and support our leaders, but please take a research in environmental issues before making plenty of tremendous statements on mitigating effects of climate change. Of course, l somehow agree to some extent that efforts are being made to mitigate effects of climate change, mostly by the private, NGO sector. Let’s have an environmental symposium…