AfricaPress-mozambique: The Mozambican government is focused on optimising plans and strategies to reduce the country’s vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate change, declared the Minister of Land and Environment, Ivete Maibase.
Speaking on Wednesday at the opening of the First National Conference on Climate Change, Maibase said the government prioritises the prevention and mitigation of natural disasters, particularly in rural communities.
She noted that, due to its geographical location, the country “is in a situation of extreme vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. This demands from us the adoption of strategies that will allow future generations to live with this phenomenon”.
Maibase said her ministry has been undertaking actions to strengthen the sustainable management of natural resources, with the strategic goal of reducing the vulnerability of communities, of the economy and of infrastructures to climate risks and natural disasters.
Mozambique, she added, is making every effort to honour its commitments under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, and under the subsequent Paris agreement. To implement these commitments, between 2020 and 2030, a budget of 11 billion US dollars is required.
For the government, climate change is not only a threat to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and to poverty reduction in Mozambique, Maibase said, but also has the potential to destroy the gains the county has already made in implementing its development agenda.
Climate change, she added, could lead to mass migration and the destruction of livelihoods, compromising development, and exacerbating the inequalities between men and women.
The response to climate change, Maibase continued, “requires the participation of all development actors, and all cooperation partners, including the private sector”. All must be involved in the measures to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.
For her part, the resident coordinator in Mozambique of the United Nations system, Myrta Kaulard, guaranteed that the UN will always be willing to support Mozambique in the sustainable use of natural resources, the protection of biodiversity, climate resilience and the consolidation of the green and blue economy.
She transmitted the message from UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, on the occasion of World Environment Day, celebrated on 5 June, in which he warned that the degradation of the natural world is compromising the welfare of 3.2 billion people – which is 40 per cent of humanity.
“We are rapidly approaching a point of no return for the planet”, said Guterres. “We face a triple environmental emergency from the loss of biodiversity, climate disruption and growing pollution. For a long time, humanity has cut down the world’s forests, polluted its rivers and oceans, and ploughed its fields to exhaustion. We are devastating the very ecosystems that support our societies”.
