{UAH} Pojim/WBK: We hate climate change, it’s drying up the rivers of NGO funding... - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/-/434750/2994208/-/fm3165/-/index.html

We hate climate change, it's drying up the rivers of NGO funding...

We hate climate change. I mean we the African elite who have spent the past two to three decades attending seminars and workshops (whatever the difference is between the two), writing project proposals and working on paper projects that don't waste much effort on the ground.

HIV/Aids for instance, has been such a wonderful epidemic; a great source of private investment funds. Many shopping complexes, apartment blocks, nice cars and commercial matatus are direct proceeds from Aids projects. But this climate change is so complicated we are yet to locate its mammary glands to milk them.

It is really frustrating to hear people talking billions of dollars at those COP meetings when the process of diverting a couple of millions to your department remains so unclear.

Unlike HIV, for which you could create an NGO in one day to cater for people living with the virus, to provide proper nutrition for afflicted children, to provide school fees for orphans and or any other idea that came to your head, this climate change is so dry I am yet to see a person who has bought even a secondhand car from it, let alone built an apartment block.

And the beauty with HIV is that it is very difficult to pin you down when you spend the project money on increasing the housing stock (which is also in acute shortage), because you can always explain away its non-performance.

For example, you could say the patients died because they did not follow the instructions for taking their ARVs. Consequently, you give the donors a supplementary budget for training patients in the proper administration of the lifesaving drugs. You give the mini project a catchy acronym and the donors also send an expert to help manage it. HIV has thus been beneficial in more ways than one.

But this talk of carbon credits is just dizzying and disturbing our heads. How do these people expect us to access their climate billions when it is so complicated?

If it is to build robust infrastructure that can withstand the vagaries of extreme weather variations, do they realise this is not possible with the normal budgeting process where a reasonable percentage must be taken by different players?

If it is to replant a forest, where do they think we shall put all the voters, sorry encroachers, who occupy the former forests?

With HIV, if they say they are earmarking a billion dollars for a certain programme, the relevant African ministry writes its proposal and the minister's nephew is put in charge of managing the new project. A hundred million dollars is wired to the project account and housing projects, shopping malls start coming up as more 4WDs are bought to grace our streets and highways on weekends.

But this climate change! Especially the carbon emissions business — Africa only contributes some 2 per cent of the greenhouse gases. So how do we claim funds to cut emissions?

Fine, we have the carbon sinks in the name of forests to preserve. But that is difficult; moreover, failing to replant forests cannot be explained away like an Aids patient failing to recover.

Once again: We hate climate change!

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: buwembo@gmail.com

We hate climate change, it's drying up the rivers of NGO funding... - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/-/434750/2994208/-/fm3165/-/index.html

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.