Denis Jjuuko

Denis Jjuuko

From Cape Town to Cairo, Nairobi to Accra, the climate change story is not reverberating on the streets.

It is a story echoing in international conference rooms of five star hotels and in the boardrooms of elite non-governmental organisations. The few bureaucrats who understand the issues don’t usually come out of their boardrooms to debate the subject. And hence, the man on the street is completely out of the picture.

Yet the effects of climate change are going to influence the lives of everyone.

One way of to popularise climate change and put pressure on governments to take it seriously is by involving parliamentarians who have the power to formulate policies and enact laws.

This view resonates well with that of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance. Its coordinator, Mitika Mwenda, argues that parliaments play a great role in spearheading reforms needed in addressing climate change at the national level.

“By having them involved, parliamentarians will become familiar with the climate change story,” Mwenda said. Just as HIV/AIDS was initially ignored because believed it was a homosexual disease and people didn’t feel they would contract the virus, climate change is also regarded as a problem that generally affects “others.”

The countries that succeeded in combating HIV/AIDS employed national action plans and the same should be with climate change. Countries that will succeed in overcoming the effects of climate change will be those that admit it as a problem that affects everyone.

“With portfolio committees on climate change, parliament will pressurise governments to make concrete commitments at national level,” Mwenda argued. “Most African governments today don’t take climate change seriously. There aren’t enough resources devoted to it.”

Once parliamentarians take up the climate change debate, more people will become aware of it. When only experts speak about climate change, as is the case today, people do not pay attention.

Once it becomes people-driven, climate change will easily become an electoral issue that demands the attention of every single legislator. This will inevitably lead to formulation of policies and enactment of climate change laws.

There is also need to borrow a leaf from countries that have put climate change at the forefront such as The Netherlands. “They have a minister in charge of climate change,” Mwenda said. This only happens when legislatures are fully involved.

This calls for more initiatives like the Pan African Parliamentary Network on Climate Change that encourage parliamentary participation in climate change debates thus leading to passing of climate change laws.

Although Kenya has just set up a Parliamentary Network on Renewable Energy and Climate Change and Nigeria enacted federal laws on climate change, more are still needed.