This archive report was first published on 6 November 2019.
On November 6, 2019, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) announced the development of a draft Regional Resilience Framework to help its member states cope with the devastating effects of climate change.
The framework aims to address the increasing vulnerability of regional countries to climate change and other disasters such as flooding, landslides, droughts, cyclones, disease epidemics, and heat waves.
COMESA Climate Change advisor, Dr. Mclay Kanyangarara, explained that the Regional Resilience Framework will also address the fragmented and haphazard approach to managing risks, shocks, and stresses, which has proved to be ineffective as the magnitude of loss and damage continues to escalate.
"Resources allocated to much-needed developmental projects and programmes are diverted to deal with the effects of the disasters thereby trapping many in a vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment," Dr. Kanyangarara observed.
The validation meeting, which brought together 17 out of the 21 COMESA Member States, was critical in providing a platform for Member States to review and provide final input into the draft resilience framework.
Seventeen countries, including Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, D.R Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, are participating in the meeting.
During the two-day meeting, the delegates will discuss the implementation arrangements and financing opportunities for the regional resilience framework interventions, come up with recommendations of domesticating the resilience framework provisions in order to strengthen national resilience building efforts, and develop an implementation roadmap of the COMESA regional resilience framework.
