Climate change stands as one of the most critical challenges of our time, impacting all aspects of life—health, livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems. As decision-makers, Parliamentarians are urged to renew their commitment to building and enhancing resilience in the face of these challenges.
With support from the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), Climate Sub Saharan-Africa and the ICCF Group, the SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) convened a workshop on the 9th and 10th of July in Windhoek under the title Fostering Sustainable Futures: Integrating Climate Resilience in Southern Africa.
The regional workshop aimed to leverage the influence and expertise of parliamentary leaders in Southern Africa to address pressing issues related to climate resilience, ecosystem conservation, and sustainable development. Through collaborative efforts and informed legislative action, the workshop sought to empower regional parliamentarians to champion initiatives that promote climate resilience, protect ecosystems, raise awareness among parliamentarians about the environmental impacts of extractive industries and drive sustainable development in the region.
The objectives of the workshop were to:
● Strengthen existing Parliamentary Conservation Caucuses to focus on legislative action promoting climate resilience and ecosystem conservation.
● Support parliamentarians to understand the critical role of ecosystem services in mitigating climate change impacts across landscapes such as the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area and the Greater Kruger Landscape.
● Foster collaborations among stakeholders to support projects emphasizing ecosystem preservation and climate adaptation strategies.
● Explore Climate Financing mechanism models and the legal and policy frameworks associated with financing climate adaptation.
● Raise awareness among parliamentarians about the environmental impacts of extractive industries, emphasizing the need for oversight and sustainable practices.
The workshop discussions reaffirmed the following insights:
- Natural resources are a cornerstone for many SADC countries, contributing 40-90 percent of national exports. Yet, despite this abundance, the benefits often fail to reach the people. It is vital for countries in the region to develop a vision that is rooted in the constitutional provisions guiding the exploitation of natural resources, ensuring that these activities align with national development priorities and follow principles of human-centered, locally driven, and sustainable development. Parliaments have a significant role in enhancing mining governance and management.
- As custodians of public trust, parliaments are tasked with ensuring accountability, not only in tracking collective progress on climate commitments but also in monitoring the extraction of natural resources—especially those critical to energy security and the green transition agenda. This workshop provided parliamentarians with a platform to shape a roadmap that reinforces responses to natural resource governance, strengthens climate resilience, and promotes environmental sustainability. It also highlighted drivers that could be leveraged to spur such action.
- Parliamentarians must exercise their oversight, budget-making, representation, and law-making functions to integrate climate change resilience, improve infrastructure, and develop inclusive and equitable adaptation strategies that prioritize society’s most vulnerable. Supporting entities that generate data and scientific research is crucial for enhancing scientific understanding of climate impacts and ensuring that legislation and budget allocations are evidence-based.
Outcomes and Way Forward
The workshop concluded that there was a clear need to streamline and mainstream climate strategies across sectors and institutions, and that there was need to develop a toolkit on mainstreaming climate action in parliamentary processes in the region.
In order to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable members of our communities, Parliamentarians are tasked with enhancing holistic and integrated gender perspectives, especially considering the impacts of our policy direction and decisions on women and children.
Parliaments also need to appropriate adequate financial resources so Government can execute programs to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
There is an imperative on Parliaments to develop regulatory frameworks to ensure policy de-risking and to provide incentives to scale up investment in natural resource governance that will advance the transition agenda and prosperity for our communities from the private sector. The private sector needs certainty and predictability in regulatory frameworks that seek to either reduce, transfer, or compensate for risk, including, streamlining our national processes for obtaining permits, clarifying the role of the regulator, and ensuring the enforcement of contractual obligations and mechanisms for recourse. There is therefore an opportunity to develop a regional strategy that informs innovation around resource mobilisation.
The workshop observed that several SADC countries have constitutions in place that emphasise the conservation of the environment as a fundamental human right, Parliamentarians must therefore give life to the application of these constitutional provisions.
There is a need to enhance the ratification and domestication of relevant international and regional instruments and key international norms and standards. Parliament ought to be robust and proactive in the negotiations that are conducted relating to international agreements prior to the signature of these agreements. Parliaments are equally entrusted with the responsibility to oversee compliance on international agreements.
There is a need to strengthen regional integration on transboundary policy issues. The green hydrogen agenda has seen countries in the region develop national green hydrogen strategies. There is a need to develop a regional green hydrogen strategy to encourage and unlock investment and integrate regional perspectives. It is further encouraged that we strengthen the link between regional networks to ensure a cohesive regional approach to conservation of the environment and transboundary policy concerns.
Transitioning to renewable energy and the exploitation of our resources for our benefit requires policymaking that is evidence based and data driven. This can be driven again through the various partnerships that we can continue to explore beyond this session. Drawing lessons from the partnership between SASSCAL Member States: and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), on green hydrogen initiatives in order to explore opportunities to develop knowledge tools that seek to capacitate institutions of Parliament on translating data into policy considerations to drive the critical importance of the green transition and on the sustainable exploitation of our resources. Parliamentarians have the ultimate responsibility of ensuring accountability in climate change, natural resource governance, and mining policies in the SADC region. Establishing clear procedures for reporting and addressing grievances related to mining operations is crucial.
