Tanzania: Govt Advised On Climate Change Policy

Dodoma — THE government has been advised to put in place a climate change policy to strategically address the climate change problem.

The advice was given by stakeholders of climate change statistics during a one-day validation workshop for the...

National Climate Change Statistics Report 2019.

In their recommendations they said since climate change had become a national development challenge it was high time for the country to develop a national climate change policy to guide programmes, strategies and actions towards addressing the effects of climate change.

They said the policy could also attract more stakeholders and enhance collaboration with funding institutions to facilitate the implementation of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures hindered by lack of funds.

Among the stakeholders attending the workshop were from Vice President's Office, National Carbon Monitoring Centre, Sokoine University of Agriculture, University of Dar es salaam, the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance and Planning, the National Environmental Management Council (NEMC), the Land Use Planning Commission, the Ministry of Lands and Human Settlements, the Tanzania Forest Research Institute (Tafori) and the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Minerals.

The stakeholders also stressed the importance of establishing and strengthening a mechanism that would ensure strong administrative data systems which guaranteed accurate and timely availability of climate change data.

They also proposed to the government through the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Vice President's Office to explore the possibility of establishing a climate change data hub to address data gaps and inconsistencies.

During the workshop, participants reviewed a draft report by assessing the quality of data used, sealing the gaps and deliberated on challenges affecting the production of similar reports in a national statistical system.

When opening the workshop, Statistician General, Dr Albina Chuwa, told stakeholders that the report among other things would be used to monitor and evaluate the implementation of various multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) which Tanzania was a signatory.

Additionally, she said the report would help create public awareness on climate change and its effects on social and economic spheres.

The statistician general explained that the report like many other statistical reports produced by NBS was a result of cooperation and collaboration among both local and stakeholders which demonstrated the importance of partnership in statistics.

"This report is a result of collaboration from various stakeholders. It was not an easy task, but we have made it. Many thanks to UNEP, GPSDD and GIZ for facilitating this workshop," said Dr Chuwa.

She noted that as the report's main source of data was administrative data, it was a step further in the production of official statistics using nontraditional data sources.

Dr Chuwa acknowledged challenges facing the use of administrative data in the production of official statistics like that of climate change as data was scattered in various sources.

"With data scattered all over, it is difficult for users to timely access them and above all it makes it difficult to make a long-term analysis of the environmental situation of the country," she said.

The workshop was facilitated by German International Development Agency (GIZ), Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) and United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP).

Speaking during the opening of the workshop, UNEP Representative Diana Ngina from Nairobi said UNEP was very proud of NBS because when one looked at developing countries, NBS was in forefront in terms of the production of climate change statistics to seal the existing data gaps.

"Let this report be the starting point, let it be the one that other countries can look at and try to achieve what Tanzania has already achieved," she said as congratulated NBS and wished it could continue with the same motivation and produce more reports.

For her part, GPSDD Representative Karen Bett from Nairobi said her institution was delighted to see Tanzania had managed to produce such a quality report using administrative data.

"Having produced this excellent report using administrative data demonstrates how important the administrative data is. Now let's use it to inform policies and actions to improve the lives of our people," she insisted.