National Climate Change Policy

The National Climate Change Policy is a national sectoral policy of Uganda. Its main objective is to ensure that all stakeholders address climate change impacts and their causes through appropriate measures, while promoting sustainable development and a green economy.
The Policy aims to ensure food security. To this end, it sets out measures concerning promoting value addition and improving food storage and management systems in order to ensure food security at all times as a factor of resilience; and promoting and encouraging agricultural diversification, and improved post-harvest handling, storage and value addition in order to mitigate rising climate related losses and to improve food security and household incomes.
The Policy also seeks to make fisheries more productive and sustainable. Specifically, it aims to strengthen efforts to promote integrated fisheries resource management and improve aquaculture in order to ensure sustainable fisheries production. Further, the Policy provides for the sustainable management of forestry including by promoting and encouraging efficient biomass energy production and utilization technologies to reduce biomass consumption. In addition, it also targets to effectively address the challenges posed by climate change impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems; to ensure the conservation of wildlife resources; to promote a balance between conservation and sustainable use of wetlands to reduce GHG emissions; to mainstream climate change mitigation issues in the efforts underway to promote and improve the management of natural resources; and to promote sustainable use of solid and liquid wastes for energy generation and other uses.
Further the document aims to reduce rural poverty. In particular, it provides for encouraging agro-forestry, which will enable poor rural households to meet their subsistence and energy needs; giving special attention to the improvement of the resilience of vulnerable groups to climate change; and supporting on-going efforts to ensure that climate change concerns are integrated into national efforts for sustainable and long-term conservation, access and effective utilisation and management of water resources.
In order to enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the following measures are set out: promoting and enforcing urban and rural planning of settlements; controlling and monitoring land development and other land-use changes in a sustainable manner so as to better manage GHG sources and sinks; and promoting climate change adaptation strategies that enhance resilient, productive and sustainable agricultural systems.
Increasing the resilience of livelihoods to disasters is the central objective of this Policy. To this end, the document aims to strengthen the existing national forestry policy to reduce deforestation and forest degradation; to promote intensified and sustained afforestation and reforestation programmes implemented by the government, institutions, households and individuals, the private sector, civil society and multilateral organisations; to strengthen adaptive mechanisms and enhance early-warning systems and adequate preparedness for climate change–related diseases; to promote sustainable energy access and utilisation as a means of sustainable development in the face of uncertainties related to climate change; to ensure disaster mitigation and adequate preparedness for climate change; to promote cleaner production processes in industries to contain the increase in GHG emissions; to support and accelerate the implementation of the Renewable Energy Policy; to promote conservation and efficient utilisation of energy, especially at consumer levels (industries, households, commercial and institutional buildings); to encourage the use of alternative fuels instead of relying heavily on biomass; to effect a gradual shift to the use of less carbon-intensive fuels in vehicles instead of relying heavily on gasoline and diesel fuels; and to promote modes of transport that take GHG emission reduction into account.
The Policy recommends that National Climate Change Commission be established and adequately resourced in the Ministry of Water and Environment for it to act as a national coordination centre for climate change. The full M&E Framework for the implementation of this Policy builds on the draft Implementation Strategy. The M&E Framework is clearly linked to the planned outcomes and outputs of this strategy and the roadmap to implementation that it outlines. It is instrumental in ensuring the full implementation of the Policy by the various stakeholders involved. The M&E Framework provides a basis to later develop specific performance indicators and targets for each policy priority and strategic action by sector and proposes accountabilities for the actors that are tasked to implement them.