Uganda

1. Introduction

The livelihood of the people of Uganda is highly dependent on the exploitation of her natural resources, including climate. In submitting the first NDC, Uganda’s priority was adaptation. Today, Uganda continues to work on reducing vulnerability and addressing adaptation in agriculture and livestock, forestry, infrastructure (with an emphasis on human settlements, social infrastructure, and transport), water, energy, health, and disaster risk management.

Uganda committed to focusing on the implementation of a series of policies and measures in the energy supply, forestry and wetland sectors. In the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario the estimated emissions in 2030 will be 77.3 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (MtCO2eq/yr). The estimated potential cumulative impact of the policies and measures could result in approximately a 22% reduction of national greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 compared to business-as-usual. Uganda proposes to implement the identified policies and measures, and their impact may be higher or lower than these estimations illustrate.

Contributions under this Intended Nationally Determined Contribution include cross-cutting respect for human rights and gender-responsive climate change actions. The protection of vulnerable groups, including women, is a cross-cutting priority.

The goal of this analysis is to determine the scope of gender equity and emissions reduction while exploring the roles of youth, women, and civil society inclusion in the development and implementation of Uganda’s NDC.

Uganda’s NDCs:

On the 21st of September 2016, Uganda submitted her Intended Nationally Determined Contribution in compliance with Decision 1/CP.19 (Further advancing the Durban Platform: and in particular Paragraph 1 (b & c)) and as elaborated in Decision 1/CP.20 (Lima Call for Climate Action and in particular paragraph 11) premised on the Convention and guided by its principles.

The livelihood of the people of Uganda is highly dependent on the exploitation of her natural resources, including climate. In submitting this NDC, Uganda’s priority is adaptation. The country is and will continue to work on reducing vulnerability and addressing adaptation in agriculture and livestock, forestry, infrastructure (with an emphasis on human settlements, social infrastructure, and transport), water, energy, health, and disaster risk management.

This analysis has been conducted from a feminist perspective while looking at issues of gender equality, Uganda’s emissions reduction plans (mitigation and adaptation), youth, and civil society Inclusion.

Uganda’s current NDC has been reviewed as shown and described below:

2. Gender Equality

Contributions under Uganda’s NDCs include crosscutting respect for human rights and gender-responsive climate change actions. The protection of vulnerable groups, including women, is a cross-cutting priority. Besides highlighting women as being vulnerable in terms of food insecurity, water shortage, and fuelwood scarcity, Uganda’s NDCs do not go into detail on prioritizing women engagement in the implementation process despite the progress of including gender equality outcomes in numerous national policies. There still remain gaps and policies that could be improved upon to better integrate gender and climate change priorities. Women face greater risks and carry a heavier burden in relation to their ability to respond and adapt to climate change due to the inequalities they face in Ugandan society.

While none of the priority sectors considered for the NDCs mention women and girls exclusively, the UNDP Gender analysis report revealed gender equality gaps and opportunities in three key NDC sectors; Agriculture, Energy, and Waste, and proposed measures to integrate gender-responsive actions in these sectors in a Gender Action Plan. The recommendations given included;

• Establishing a high-level ministerial committee on NDC policy coordination and implementation under the leadership of the Office of Prime Minister.

• Addressing climate change and gender capacity gaps in human resources at both the national and district level to ensure smooth coordination and implementation of gender-responsive measures in the NDC.

• Improving the establishment and collection of gender- / sex-disaggregated data in priority NDC sectors.

• Improving the gender responsiveness of key policies and overarching strategy documents to include gender-specific issues and to provide for the protection of the rights of women, youth, and children in land and environmental management. This includes the Sustainable Land Management Policy (2013), The Land Act (1998), The National Environment Act, Cap 153, and the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy. For the latter, gender equality and participation should be spelt out specifically as a development outcome due to the important role gender plays in achieving development objectives.

3. Emission Reduction

Uganda in her NDCs proposes to implement the aforementioned policies and measures and their impact may be higher or lower than these estimations illustrate. The cumulative impact of these measures could result in approximately 22% reduction of overall national emissions in 2030, including Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry, compared to the business-as-usual (BAU) projection. The BAU emissions baseline for Uganda, including LULUCF, is 77.3 Million tons of Carbon dioxide equivalent per year in 2030, according to projections in the Background Paper for the 2012 Climate Change Policy. Total emissions in 2000 Despite Uganda’s share of the total global GHG emissions being insignificant; the country’s sectors emission profile is growing with Agriculture as a leading source of GHG emissions and Land Use Change and Forestry (LUCF) as the second most significant source (WRI CAIT, 2015). The LUCF sectors are expected to remain a net emitter through the 2030s and with interventions, these are projected to become a major sink as early as 2025 (GoU, 2014).

Under the growth and development scenario in 2015, Uganda’s total emissions were projected at 77,381 Gg CO2 eq (77.3MtCO2eq/yr) also known as the business as usual scenario. It is envisaged that the implementation of prioritized measures in energy supply, forestry, and wetlands will result in a cumulative impact of approximately 22% reduction of overall national emissions in 2030. It should be noted that in 2012, total emissions were estimated at 36.5 Mt CO2eq/yr in 2000.

4. Youth

The youth in Uganda form a majority of the population today with special needs and perspectives. Therefore, their role in development including climate change plans and policies is very significant at all levels. There is a lot of potential and inherent energy to use their resources, as volunteers as well as technical services to Revise and implement the NDCs. Specific aspects on where the youths could get involved include the consultation with the rest of the youths in the different local communities, the implementation of the programs in the various sectors, and more innovations in regards to climate change adaptation and mitigation for Uganda.

Unlike children who are mentioned as particularly vulnerable in Uganda’s NDCs, there is no mention of youth, yet this group of stakeholders has taken it upon themselves to represent their country and organisations at the different high-level climate negotiations and policy conferences to be able to create visibility to their work and their potential. It is important to understand the role that young people play in the economic growth of Uganda and tackling the climate crisis. The current NDC doesn’t outline the provision of resources to young people involved in mitigation works. Acknowledging the efforts of young people in subsequent NDCs would motivate a lot more young people, knowing that their efforts are included in the national climate policies.

5. Civil Society Inclusion

In light of the NDC Partnership plan for Uganda, a number of implementing partners have pledged support including the Governments of Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Austria; the European Union; United Nations Climate Change (UNFCCC); United Nations Development Program (UNDP); the African Development Bank; the World Bank; the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO); the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI); Environmental Management for Livelihood Improvement Bwaise Facility (EMLI); Conservation International; International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN); National Adaptation Plan – Global Network (NAP-GN); and World Resources Institute (MWE, 2018a). 

While the review process of Uganda’s NDCs ambition continues to take precedence, there is still no clear roadmap for this process as yet on how civil society will be included in the implementation stages. Dialogue between the government and civil society takes place although it is rather superficial however, the new NDCs review process has taken into account the progress made in the NDCs implementation to date including the launch of the NDC Partnership Plan, Development Partner’s commitments, projects launched from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Adaptation Fund (AF) and with civil society support, this is a good sign. 

6. Recommendations

As we work towards updating Uganda’s NDCs more than ever, there is an urgent need for the relevant stakeholders to:

• Develop policies to address climate change that recognize gender-sensitive impacts, provide women with access to resources, and give them opportunities to participate in mitigation and adaptation processes.

• Actively involve youths in all key processes at both national and local levels to see that the NDCs are implemented given the significant role they play in all the five sectors as highlighted in the NDC and this can be achieved through full Youth inclusion and participation in the Climate policy formulation and implementation while also creating and increasing Climate Action Entrepreneurship opportunities for the youth.

• Inclusion of youth, women, and people with disabilities in all the priority sectors can be both in the making plans, strengthening, or revising of the NDCs and until implementation.

• The current NDCs mention provision of technical support and capacity building but don’t breakdown how this is to be achieved. Investing in education, technologies and initiatives to enhance sustainable and renewable energy sources that reflect women’s knowledge, needs, and roles, while incorporating indigenous expertise and traditional practices.

• Supporting incubator centers where young people are doing most of the climate innovations is a step towards ensuring the success of the NDCs.

• Facilitate youth-led research in the key priority areas while prioritizing multi sector planning and implementation.

• Improve agricultural extension efforts, agricultural inputs, subsidies, incentives and training for women in climate smart agriculture. Promote a gender-responsive approach to climate financing.

7. Conclusion

Uganda’s NDCs overall are dependent on policy documents and how the five sectors listed there perform in order to meet the intended targets and implementation strategies. While these documents have satisfied the purpose of their formulation, having a comprehensive NDC that has clear, achievable strategies in the primary document will provide a more inclusive document with clear responsibilities of all stakeholders on how strategic partnerships will enable us as a country to meet set targets.

The potential for youth, women and civil society inclusion in National climate action plans, the revision and inclusion of the NDCs can be achieved. These stakeholders are so passionate about their work and they have got more networks to make sure that actions are implemented. There is a need to engage them more and build their capacity in technical issues.

8. References

• Uganda’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC)

• Stock take report of Uganda’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and NDC partnership plan implementation

• Gender and Climate Change in Uganda: Effects of Policy and Institutional Frameworks

• Uganda Gender Analysis

• Uganda Civil society brief on NDCs

• Governments and Civil Society Advancing Climate Agendas