Harriette's Highlights: Thursday 20 August

Climate change took centre stage on the fourth day of the World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden.A session on Focus on Water and Climate: Presenting the African-European Dialogue on Climate Change was particularly interesting. Speakers including the Bethel Nnaemeka Amadi, First Vice president of the Pan African Parliament were obviously very passionate about the issue.

As far as Amadi was concerned Africa’s demand for a climate change needs a compensation from the more developed world, which must come in the form of special projects and knowledge sharing to improve on the lives of its people and “not funds that would be stashed into Swiss accounts."
Another session which initially promised to be interesting but turned out to be a bit boring was a high panel discussion on Getting the Politics Right Towards Stronger Collective Action on Water and Climate Change Impacts at COP-15 and beyond. This otherwise interesting subject turned out to be a ‘talk shop’ with about eight panel members with the exception of two delivering long speeches and leaving no time at all for Q and A.

It was interesting that the European Parliamentarians for Africa (AWEPA) approached the Water Cube TV to get video footage from Stockholm that they can use in their campaign for the important December 2009 Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen. SIWI asked IRC to do the interviews.

Four of the five guests I interviewd on Water Cube.tv. relate to this:

• Mr. Joseph Souza, a Member of Parliament from the Kingdom of Swaziland;
• Mr. Bethel Nnaemeka Amadi from Nigeria, Fist Vice President Pan African Parliament;
• Ms. Aune Amwaama from Namibia, Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry;
• Mr. Tommy Nambahu from Nambia, Member of Parliament, with a special interest in natural resources and economics.

The last interview I did was with Pieter van Eijk from Wetlands and Livelihoods. He stressed that Africans must take the initiative to demand the West to take responsibility for climate change adaptation.

In all these interviews, we tried to delve more into the causes of climate change and how it effects can be mitigated, especially for Africans.

One major point for action emerging from this, is the big need for more education on climate change for Africans, since they are hardest hit on floods and droughts that lead to famine. These problems also push people out of their habitats moving them into already crowded places, which is causing conflicts.

Harriette Naa Lamiley Bentil, e-mail