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Malawi prioritising climate mitigation technologies

Experts from energy, agriculture, environment and water supply have kick-started a process to prioritise climate adaptation and mitigation technologies that can help the country effectively counter the impacts of climate change.

For years stakeholders have complained of lack of prioritisation in the implementation of technologies aimed at reducing carbon emissions and promoting productivity.

Dry Lake Chilwa, one example of how climate change affects Malawi

Currently, government is pushing to complete a Global Environment Facility (GEF) Technology Needs Assessment (TNA) process by end of this year.

The process seeks to analyse and select technologies that can work for Malawi and market them to players implementing climate change interventions in the country.

As part of the process, a pool of experts from energy, agriculture, environment, water supply, forestry sectors met in Salima to review the technologies.

Speaking at the opening of the meeting deputy director in the Department of Environmental Affairs (EAD) Micheal Makonombera said the prioritisation of technologies will help the country.

He said: “There are so many technologies in the world but we need to come up with exact ones which can help build resilience in Malawi because some of them are not helping us, this is why we need to select the right ones that can help reduce global emissions and help our people to adapt”.

Makonombera added that some of the technologies which other stakeholders are campaigning for cannot work for Malawi and are confusing people.

“The outcome of this exercise is a shopping list of technologies which the government will approve for all stakeholders in adaptation and mitigation to follow. This will be a “Bible” for Malawi’s climate change and adaption interventions,” he said.

Studies show that scaling up climate-smart technologies continues to face challenges in the least developed countries (LCDs) mostly due to maintenance cost, social acceptance and implementation models, among others.

TNA project Steven Makungwa said considerations will be made to ensure only technologies that are relevant for Malawi are recommended.

While commending the government for the prioritisation process Civil Society Network on Climate Change (Cisonecc) National Coordinator Julius Ng’oma said it is likely the country has been channeling resources to wrong interventions that have not yielded results.

The technologies under scrutiny include those being implemented in sectors such as water, agriculture, energy, and forestry.

In agriculture Irrigation and Conservation Agriculture (CA) are some of the technologies which have not been sustained and massively scaled-up across the country yet previously huge resources have been channeled to such interventions.

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