Uganda is one of the 134 countries that have committed to the UAE declaration focused on the need for agricultural pathways that fully focus on achieving the ‘long-term goals of the Paris Agreement’.
The parties that committed noted that ‘agriculture and food systems must urgently adapt and transform to respond to the imperatives of climate change’.
They committed to amongst others ‘scaling up adaptation and resilience activities to reduce farmer vulnerabilities; promoting food security and nutrition through increasing support to vulnerable people, supporting groups of people that work especially the women and youths; and strengthening the integrated management of water in agriculture and food systems as well as maximising the climate and environmental benefits while reducing harmful impacts associated with agriculture and food systems by conserving, protecting and restoring land and natural ecosystems.
Reacting to the development, WWF Manager of Forests and Carbon Absorption, Philip Kihumuro has called for the protection of the systems that produce the food.
‘This is a great opportunity for Uganda as a country. We need to consider how food systems become a positive ally to landscape restoration. Restored landscapes can coexist with nature-positive food systems; where we consider the role of trees in providing nutrition to communities but also leading to overall landscape restorations,” Kihumuro said.
Earlier, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Uganda welcomed the creation of a fund to help compensate countries struggling to cope with loss and damage caused by climate change during the ongoing COP28 in Dubai.
“Uganda is more than ready to take advantage of this opportunity to be able to fulfil its pledge to reach the targets made by the global biodiversity framework. It is about halting nature loss and driving nature positive development,” said WWF Uganda Country Director, Ivan Tumuhimbise.
He explained that the discussions at the ongoing COP28 are talking of regenerative agriculture and that Uganda falls in this category, especially in highland communities.
“What is emerging from the pledges being made are opportunities for adopting regenerative agriculture and will make a lot of business sense for communities, especially in highland areas in Uganda like Rwenzori, Sebei, Kigezi and Bugisu regions which constitute almost 20 million Ugandans. If all of them were able to adopt regenerative agriculture and work with the government to enforce the recent pronouncement by the president to evict communities from wetlands, we can achieve the 30 by 30 target as by global biodiversity framework.”
