Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in ECA/SADC/COMESA region: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Africa is one of the continents highly vulnerable to climate change due to several reasons: high poverty level, high dependence on rain-fed agriculture, poor management of natural resources, capacity/technology limitations, weak infrastructure, and less efficient governance/institutional set-up. To address climate change, design of appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategy is necessary. This paper assesses the status of climate change mitigation (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD)) that are in place by the different countries in the ECA/SADC/COMESA regions and the opportunities and challenges for climate mitigation. Results of this study show that although the different countries in the region have designed strategies and tried to implement climate mitigation, climate change remains one of the main problems; it causes a major threat to the region than to any other part of the world. There is, therefore, a need to undertake the following: design of more robust climate change mitigation strategy, capacity building, establishment of climate mitigation platforms, design of efficient climate financing mechanisms, support of research and innovations on climate change mitigation, streamline climate change mitigation in the academia in the region.