11th November, 2022
BUYZED CAMPAIGN has joined the fight against climate change and called upon global leaders and international community to aggressively confront this scourge with a similar harmonised global policy response and increased funding demonstrated during the unprecedented period characterised by Covid-19 pandemic, said Kelvin Kamayoyo, Zambian Economist who was recently appointed as Chief Technical Advisor and Strategist for BuyZed Campaign. He noted that climate change has come to stay and it shall continue to manifest undetermined ruinous environmental conditions that disturb our way of life globally, and obviously this scourge is already
ravaging most of the sectors on the African continent.
He noted that the global unity of purpose and desire for stronger global cooperation being demonstrated at the ongoing Conference of Parties (COP) 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt is undoubtedly what our planet should yearn for always, if we are to win the war against the mutation and negative impact of climate change of global warming. Mr. Kamayoyo said, Africa needed this global passion and concerted effort to prevail at all times because the continent is already overburdened with unprecedented crisis fueled by Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, unavoidable global disruptions in the supply chains and sluggish economic growth.
Arguably, beyond COP 27 the world needs to walk the talk that leaves an indelible footprint and putting implementation of commitments under the Paris Agreement into action while encouraging more country-to-country peer-reviews in order to keep track on progress made. Mr. Kamayoyo stated that the BuyZed team is delighted and inspired by the pronouncements made by His Excellency, Mr. Hakainde Hichilema, President of the Republic of Zambia, during his speech at the COP 27 that “there are times when we as individual countries have a decision to support or not to support certain commitments. In this particular case, l am afraid to say, that option to decide not to does not exist, is not available to anyone of us”. We are therefore compelled to join this campaign of fighting against the adverse effects of climate change especially that most of Africa’s anchor economic sectors for growth are climate sensitive, thus, agriculture, water resources, health, energy and transport.
Mr. Kamayoyo further noted that during the COP 26 in Glasgow a lot was promised by nations, the private sector and local governments, and these commitments must be actualised substantially in order to prevent the spontaneous occurrence of climate change events and limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C and simultaneously assist African countries from backsliding to economic downturn. It is against this backdrop that BuyZed has resolved to take an active role in complementing government efforts especially in the area of raising awareness and information sharing about the adverse effects of climate change and what approaches ought to be embraced by everyone in order to preserve our ecosystem, our country and our planet. This resolve has been influenced by a vividy realisation that climate change is a vicious pandemic posing increasing threat to sustainable food security, economic development and social wellbeing.
BuyZed intends to take this opportunity presented by COP 27 to collaborate with all the relevant stakeholders to support existing local companies and start-ups overcome both structural and behavioural barriers associated to cost of doing business induced by climate change and begin to mobilise for hosting a private sector-led national consultative conference to extensively discuss issues concerning climate change and its impact on the business environment. The outcome from this national stakeholder engagement conference is an integrated approach
that mainstreams climate science into multidisciplinary
development planning processes that helps to enhance stakeholders’
decisions making by providing relevant new information
that they could incorporate into practice, said Kamayoyo.
