By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
In a bid to minimise the threats posed by Climate Change in the country, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Action Aid Sierra Leone (AASL) has called on all including the government and other partners to collectively address the problem.
Action Aid and Christian Aid in partnership with the Women’s Network on Environmental Sustainability (WoNES) launched the flagship campaign and Report on Climate Change Adaptation and Sustainability Energy at the Family Kingdom Resort on the 20th of September 2023.
In his statement, a local Consultant on the climate change project, Mustapha Olajiday Thomas (PhD) and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geology at Fourah Bay College (FBC), University of Sierra Leone (USL) noted that climate change is an existential threat that has the tendency to annihilate all forms of life on Earth. He said that Covid-19, Ebola, and the Russia-Ukraine war cannot match the threat posed by climate change in terms of scale and impact.
He said there is an urgent need to first accept that climate change is real and thereafter take the appropriate steps to combat the threat it continues to pose to everyone’s existence.
“The debate on climate change and global warming is over and all we have to do now is to mobilize the human and financial resources to mitigate or adapt to the undesirable impact,” he said.
Dr. Thomas noted that the Report put together by Action Aid looks at how climate change action will be funded, whilst WoNES and its partners are working on climate change adaptation and resilient building at the local level.
According to AASL Executive Director, Foday Bassie Swarray, Sierra Leone has witnessed many climate-related disasters in recent times such as floods and mudslides, with particularly women, the hardest hit.
He likened the conversation around climate change to that of a nightmare painted in the language of science that discusses issues such as carbon footprint, drought, and water scarcity in communities which are all a reality. He said farmers even forget the time to plant because rain falls even in the dry season which makes them so confused about when to start farming, burning, and brushing.
Swarray stated that half of the world is now in danger as the rate of pollution and global temperature continue to rise and warned that the effects are going to get worse for the most vulnerable countries in Africa. He said the communities in the Global South need support but access to climate finance is very difficult.
AASL Head of Programme, Mohamed Fofana noted that the report shows that industrial agriculture is one of the components destroying the environment and contaminating water through the use of heavy-duty machinery. He also said that the report calls for the use of renewable energy and agroecology as alternatives to industrial farming.
He stated that farmers in agricultural communities sometimes have the conviction that their ancestors are angry with them due to poor harvests, failing to realize that it was due to climate change. He went on to note that a country in Africa out of a list of 19 other countries like the United States, India, and Japan are the major cause of climate change around the world.
The National Coordinator of WoNES, Gertrude Karimu noted that they will continue to address climate change issues that impact marginalized women and communities in Pujehun District and Western Rural Area of the country by providing support advocacy and resilience-building initiatives. She also stated that they will mobilize and strengthen Civil Society Movements to hold the government accountable for climate change commitments.
She said they will generate evidence to influence effective climate change-related programming and policy actions for marginalized women and communities. She added that they will increase the knowledge and resource capacities of marginalized women and communities to use their voices and agencies to reduce barriers and challenges to accessing climate change support.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (22/09/23)
