Methane mitigation offers Africa a strategic opportunity to address climate change while advancing development goals, as methane is 84 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years and lasts only 12 years in the atmosphere, making reductions today produce measurable cooling within this decade; Africa accounts for 14% of global methane emissions with significant opportunities in livestock management (40% reduction potential by 2030), rice cultivation (36% mitigation potential), and waste management, yet financing remains the primary barrier with African interest rates at 15-25% compared to 3-5% in developed economies, requiring parliamentary action through legislation, budget allocation, oversight, and advocacy for affordable climate finance.
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IPU AFRICA REGIONAL METHANE SEMINAR || 15th may 2026.Added:
We will have Mr. um from regen Mr. Lyola Loello who come in uh to do her also two minutes. You want three minutes.
Okay.
I I I I'll extend to three minutes but we'll try to manage the presentations so that afterwards we engage the audience for any other um interventions, clarifications or maybe questions if they need be. So let me take this opportunity to invite Miss Salah to do her five minutes presentation. The five minutes counts from now. Miss Salah, thank you. Okay.
>> Thank you. Thank you so much honorable I'll just wait for my slides to get on the screen. Uh but in the meantime, uh honorable members of parliament, uh distinguished colleagues and partners, it is a privilege to be with you here in Nairobi. Uh with sincere appreciation to the IPU, uh and the parliament of Kenya.
Um so, uh I've traveled from my home country of the Philippines. So, it's quite a journey to get here, but I'm happy to be here. Uh methane mitigation is um one of the few climate actions capable of deliver of deliver delivering measur measurable cooling this decade and vulnerable nations must be positioned to capture development gains.
Um so the CVF20 is a partnership of 74 climate vulnerable economies representing 1.7 billion people. 33 members are from Africa and Barbados currently chairs this along with Ghana and Bangladesh forming the troa.
So under Prime Minister Miam's leadership, the CVF20 has made methane a flagship priority across waste, oil and gas sectors. Unlike carbon dioxide, methane lasts only about 12 years in the atmosphere. And so reductions today can produce significant measurable cooling within this decade. And for vulnerable nations like ours, this matters enormously because this can slow down um uh warming in order to reduce heat waves, droughts, uh floods, food insecurity and displacement. So it is at the end of the day about protecting live lives livelihoods and our development pathways. Uh meth many methane interventions generate revenue, improve public health and increase energy access as well as strengthen infrastructure resilience. Climate action and economic prosperity must and can advance together.
Africa accounts for roughly 14% of global methane emissions which is relatively low um and there are relatively few super emitters compared with other regions.
However, methane mitigation opportunities vary per sector and are increasingly becoming practical and economically viable. For example, in the waste sector, landfill capture represents one of the clearest lowhanging opportunities. Waste to energy systems can reduce emissions while generating electricity and improving sanitation. And then in the oil and gas sector, reducing venting, flaring emissions, these can all preserve commercially valuable gas uh while cutting down pollution. So just to give some context, cutting methane leakage in the oil and gas sector could save the equivalent of Norway's gas output per year. So this is a strategic priority um that that can deliver climate benefits as well as development gains.
So the economics is compelling. The IEA notes that nearly half of the fossil fuel methane emissions can be cut at zero net cost. Landfill projects generate energy and revenue. Um, reducing leakage preserves fuel and can be sold rather than wasted. So, this is why methane action should be utilized to towards productive infrastructure uh capable of supporting green growth and employment. Yet, financing remains the largest obstacle. In African countries, interest rates on loans can vary between 15 to 25%. This is against 3 to 5% that we see in developed economies like Europe and North America. And this is why methane finance aligns more broadly with the international financial reform agenda of the CVF and the V20. And we heard from previous speakers in the last sessions about the uh the challenges uh of financing that exists today um especially in this new world order um and that the CVF and the V20 is approaching this challenge by looking inward and looking for fairer terms. So what we know is that the money exists.
Uh trillions are in global capital markets. They are available and three trillion of this sits in Africa. Yet very little is being invested in Africa itself. And we know why. Borrowing is expensive, debt servicing costs are high, bankable pipelines are thin and institutions are working in parallel.
And so we are working on a V20 development finance institution compact.
Um this is one of the many efforts to help us change the direction of capital towards health, education, water and value addition. And it rests on four ideas. One, making capital more affordable. Um two um bringing private investment into health, education, water, and value addition knowing that none of them are possible without affordable energy. And three, letting countries lead through our climate prosperity plans, our platforms. and four, build debt instruments that give us breathing room when disasters strike so that we are not doing this alone. Um, the OPEC fund for international development is a key partner. The Arab Coordination Group with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and the Islamic Development Bank are all involved. The World Bank is partnering with us as well for Africa and we hope in time the African Development Bank will join. Um, I would also like to take this opportunity I'd also like to take this opportunity to share about a V20 central bank initiative called the lifeline fund. We know that we would have been 20% wealthier if not for climate change. So when disaster strikes our options are quite limited and for many CVF countries the only option is the IMF for liquidity. So what we plan to do is pull uh CVFV20 dollar reserves just 0.01% 01% of what we already hold so that we can lend to each other just so that no country faces crisis with just the IMF as an available option and I think the point is we are stronger than we think and we can help each other across the continents Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean and by doing so we hope to invite partnership on our terms not on terms dictated in rooms where we have no voice and so just coming back to to the methane point we have 64 of the 74 members um of the membership uh joining the the methane uh the global methane pledge and this is significant this is a big market opportunity um and in terms of um you know where we see uh parliamentary asks and partnership pathways first establishing methane monitoring and reporting requirements is really important second mandating leak detection and repair programs for oil and gas infrastructure third allocating funds for landfill gas capture and waste to energy systems. And fourth, advocating with us for concessional and affordable capital.
Partnerships will be essential and this includes bilateral cooperation. But what we should look for is not only technology transfer but actually technology co-development. We have practices in our home countries which we could share across uh the global south public private partnership support from multilateral development banks and collaboration uh within ourselves. So just to finalize um it is a huge market opportunity to pull the methane emergency break. The technologies exist, the economics are compelling but the missing piece is the affordable finance.
And so we look forward to working with you uh in ensuring that the scale, speed and quality of finance is delivered at this moment um as is demanded of us given the climate and development challenges we face today. Thank you.
Thank you, Miss Salah.
Thank you, Miss Salah, for those insightful reflections. I'm sure the audience have grasped one or two, three things, though uh you had uh many more time, but I'm sure they'll be able to ask and uh find out more from your presentation. At this time and point, let me invite uh Miss Cena Spigler for your five minutes, please. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much honorable members of parliament, distinguished g delegates, dear guests, colleagues, um it's an honor to be here. I'm joining you from the climate and clean air coalition secretariat. Um, and I'm sure my slides will come on in a minute as well, but the CCAC, if you're not familiar, is um, a UNIP convened initiative focused on reducing short-lived climate pollutants, methane among those um, and really focusing on science to policy research.
So, there have been quite a few assessments that the CCSC has co-authored and then also really working on implementing those into action. So, largely that's through supporting mitigation projects.
roughly half of those actually in the African region and many of those on methane. Here you can see some figures.
Um that's for methane. There's been a lot of support specifically on national planning and and working with countries to integrate methane more into NDCs. Um we've already heard a lot why why methane is so important and why it matters. So here you can see some key numbers again. Um, one that I really want to highlight again and this is really I think also important for the framing that in the African context I mean methane of course has been rooted in the in the climate sphere but it's really not necessarily just this the glo global climate solidarity or international obligations of of course those matter but it's really the self-interest and the local benefits that um can happen from all the negative methane um consequences that really are local. So for example um in Africa the the the estimate for preventable deaths every year um is at 200,000. So this would be from SLCP mitigation measures that are available specifically on methane. And then of course also um annual crop loss the the 25 million tons that's a global figure but of course in Africa um agriculture being a hugely important sector that's um very relevant as well. And so methane being so important there being a precursor for ground ground level ozone that is um damaging human health and crops. Um in in 2022 the CCAC UNEP and the African Union have published um an integrated assessment of air pollution and climate change for sustainable development in Africa. That's a really comprehensive assessment. Um and so I just want to share some few figures from there. um there have been 37 identified measures in that um assessment and so that's really been like working together with African scientists and institutions and from those measures the estimate is that 40% of Africa's methane emission could be um reduced by 2030 with an even higher figure for the 2063 agenda. um livestock of course being a huge lever here um but really also livestock productivity. So not reduce like not trying to increase farmer income and increase productivity and of course not at all um stocks or any of the sort because of course agriculture and also waste those are those are sectors where emissions are um forecasted to rise due to more demand. But so really just highlighting that measures here are benefiting productivity and can often come as low cost or even negative costs as we've heard before from example waste as well where me methane can be captured and can be used as a as a resource and so in the African ministerial conference on the environment um in that year in 2022 that um assessment has been endorsed and and there's been a call to implement these um 37 seven recommended measures as a continentwide Africa clean air program. So that's something that the African Union and and also the CCIC supporting are um currently working on.
So just to reiterate that yes, the evidence base is really strong. the political mandate exists at a ministerial level. And so really what we're missing still is the translation from that mandate into legislation and then into actual implementation into the budgets, the oversightes.
To give you some figures also from from the international context. Of course, we've heard about the the global methane pledge. Um last year the CCAC and UNIP have issued um a a global methane status report as well to show us a little bit on where we stand with those commitments and and where we see emissions still coming from. Um in terms of the sources we've already heard about that. So globally that actually is reflective of how the split is in the African continent as well with agriculture being the biggest source but then also really energy um and waste and for all of those um technical solutions do exist and often costs are manageable oftentimes even um productive businesses. So coming at at net negative costs especially in the um fossil fuel sector for example like we've heard before from um avoid flaring and venting capturing methane emissions there and reutilizing that.
Similarly in the waste sector from wastewater and landfills capturing methane and utilizing that resource and so there is um promise in there. Um otherwise the status report of course has also shown that for this 30% target we're really quite far away from that.
So right now if we assumed that all the commitments that exists in NDC's and in national action plans were committed we'd only have we'd only see an 8% reduction.
But the report also affirmed again that with technically available solutions it could even we could reach a point that is even a little beyond 30%. So 32% of um technically feasible mitigation measures have been estimated there.
So I also want to highlight again the economic case for action because methane really is not just an environmental issue but an economic issue. It it can be economic strategy for for competitiveness for trade policy for investment flows. Um we've already seen for example in the energy markets that um regulations have been introduced that shape how energy is produced, how food is grown and so some of these rules influence market access of course and how investments can be attracted. So an early positioning can really come with a lot of opportunities there and um yes highlighting again that it's really methane action is not a trade-off against development or economic policy. It's really it is economic policy um with these lowcost or or revenue generating measures available.
Um I had some points also about the the type of work that the CCSC has supported here but um I don't think I'll go into detail in to save some time but just a few examples. I mean on methane really I think a key point has always been integrating methane more concretely international policy planning. So whether it is NDC commitments or whether it is then really um more sectoral strategies as well in countries on on which measures have the most impact and can be most feasibly implemented. So um there has been quite a lot of of work on that with country countries for example like Ghana who's the founding member of the CC as well really working from the policy integration and then more sectorally working on for example recently um methane guidelines for implementation of the new petroleum regulation which is really a great example for oil producing countries in particular um Nigeria as well has there's been a lot of work on that so Uganda Zimbabwe I mean I can name quite a few um but yeah I think I will leave it at this and and the key actions for parliament so to really tie it back to this room but as we've also already heard from prior speakers I think is really the the legislation um so making sure that there's for example methane sector specific targets quantifiable targets making sure that um MRV um frameworks are in existence because of course the the measuring and is such an important factor in the verification of commit um of the implementation of of commitments that have been made. The budgeting of course because only institutions that um are budgeted can really continue to maintain the capacity that they have to implement and um enforce commitments that have been made.
The oversight to to hold governments accountable and to track progress on all of these commitments. The representation of communities that are often um the ones most affected are often the ones most marginalized. So it's really important to link the methane action always to those local benefits. So for example, when it's in in the waste sector or landfills, making sure that that those are really the focus area, those the benefits for human health um on the ground and the communication of course because I think methane is not necessarily a complicated issue. um but it's often not so clearly presented. And so that framing that it's really more than an environmental or climate issue, but that it's a human health issue, that it's an economic issue, I think that's that's really important to convey as well. So just thank you very much and I'll leave it here.
>> Thank you, Miss Senna.
That was a wonderful presentation.
So allow me at this point in time to invite the two honorable members to uh say something in regards to the presentations made but also maybe a bigger reflection of the meth subject.
At this point in time I invite honorable Sherry Duya to speak something on the uh topic of discussion. Thank you. Over to you honorable.
>> Thank you very much. Good afternoon once again honorable members of parliament our regional international partners IPU distinguished delegates my first intervention will have to do with the economics of methane because one of the major reasons excuses that countries give for their inaction is the first. However, recent studies have revealed compelling economic reasons why we should take action. And I will make reference to one of such recent studies uh by the researchers from the Landing School of Economics, Duke University, the University of Delaware and the National Bank of Belgium.
This study was published in October 2025 and from the study global action to cut methane emissions would pay for air cells six times.
According to the study, the achieving global methane pledge alone would result in more than $1 trillion in annual avoided market damages by 2050. And it is important also to stress that the study highlighted that lower income countries would benefit more from methane emission reduction actions. And under conservative assumptions, the benefit to cost ratio for mitain action is at least 3:1.
that is the lowest rising to 6 to one when health co benefits are included.
So distinguished delegates the issue of cost as an excuse for inaction for me is no longer turnable. Apart from issue of climate as the earlier speaker said it also makes economic sense since it can pay itself up to six times. Now let me quickly shift my attention to what we are doing in Ghana. Ghana has shown global leadership in the mitain agenda.
Far back in 2010, Ghana joined the global meeting initiative and Ghana was a founding member of the CC in 2012.
In 2018, Ghana's capital Ara became the first African city to join CCAC's brief life campaign. And in 2019, Ghana was the first country in the world to include short-lived climate polit and our fourth official national greenhouse gas inventory submitted to the UNF triple C. In 2025, Ghana became one of the very few countries in the world to appoint a minister responsible solely for climate change. Countries have environment and climate but ministers responsible for climate change alone. In addition to having environment, science and technology minister, in addition to having minister responsible for environment, natural resources including forest, Ghana has appointed a minister of state solely in charge of climate change and that brings the political momentum, it brings resources to tackle climate change and ultimately uh the mitain agenda. Finally, Ghana under uh the distinguished leadership of the speaker of parliament, Ghana parliament is playing pivotal role in all these uh especially in the area of uh climate maintain diplomacy following our partnership with IPU. Ghana parliament is embarking on aggressive capacity building for parliamentarians and parliamentary staff. Uh we've also elevated the conversation number of debate statements on the floor of parliament and we've also increase our budgetary allocation for 2026. The speaker actually directed that actions towards mameim reduction mitigation measures should be allocated with enough resources and we saw substantial increase over the previous year and we have five parliamentary committees >> that are being coordinated seamlessly to work together to deal with climate and ultimately maintain and finally the engagement is key. There is something unique.
I personally have started in Ghana as a parliamentarian. I have established climate action clubs in schools where I engage the school children and on the 5th June the world environment day. The whole day is dedicated for mitain action. There will be quizzes amongst various schools and we will undertake various initiatives to draw their attention and elevate the mitain conversation. So these are some of the things that we in Ghana are doing. Thank you.
>> Thank you so much uh honorable Kua from Ghana. So much things to learn from Ghana. I I I think they need a better hand of applause because they seem to be doing a lot already.
If the parliaments, if countries are to do a benchmarking, I think Ghana would be the best place to go. So, we have got a lot to learn from you, honorable, and I'm sure you share some of the writings and presentations that you've you did so that the honorable members in here should have a copy of what you prepared.
I think you I I I I think you had too much to share on the success stories.
Thank you so much. At this point in time, let me invite honorable Masha to come in or so with three minutes and please stick to your three minutes. I know you guys have got a lot to share much as it is exciting but we've got time to manage so please come in honorable. It's your time. Thank you.
>> Uh thank you very much moderator. Maybe let me start by saying that uh few months ago my president Sir Ramaposa went to America at the funeral of uh Jesse Jackson Reverend.
He traveled 18 hours and they said he must speak for 2 minutes. We protested h and uh when we were at the room there holding room you said we have five to 7 minutes. I just want to openly protest maybe it's a South African thing uh that I will stick to my 5 minutes.
The the first point I want to make is that uh you know in Africa and uh the world when we speak about the climate crisis, we tend to think about uh our coal powered uh stations that emit carbon dioxide and our cars uh that emit uh carbon dioxide.
And I think with these presentations and uh uh this discussion we are starting to realize that there is a more powerful ghost in the room called methane which requires us to have a change of mind in how we tackle it.
You know when something has got over 80 times potent than uh carbon dioxide and over a period of uh 20 years can cause disaster. I tend to look at it like a marathon uh which is g global warming and the end point the finishing line is disaster and uh we have a sprinter which is methane and a long runner which is carbon dioxide. And that tells us that if you want to deal with uh the climate crisis, we must deal with a sprinter first because it will get there at the finishing line first and cause disasters before carbon dioxide.
So we need a a change of uh uh thinking uh in that. But for the African continent, this is linked to our livelihoods. You may have heard the gentleman who was here who spoke about if you want him to stop uh expanding how his kettles graze, he's not going to be a happy man. But if you were to tell him to say graze more or have your kettles grazing more, he will be a happy man. So it is a a a a a livelihood issue when it comes to the American the the African uh continent because reality is that the African continent relies h on livestock and traditional farming practices as a backbone of its economy.
Now you can't uh say don't strike a balance. Uh you will get revolts uh because what people want uh wealth and an African person's wealth is their uh kettles or livestock and farming.
Now when cities grow as a African continent is still growing it's not developed.
you you you get to undergo um what I want to term urban explosion where waste management uh uh infrastructure can't catch up. You have landfills that are growing and uh those landfields become chimneys that emit uh methane into the atmosphere and it becomes deadly and speeding up this process of uh arresting uh methane crisis. You need to look at it. People say there is a lowhanging fruit. You need to look at this as a lowhanging fruit that we must uh stop.
But every lowhanging fruit, as low as it is, it needs somebody to climb up and grab it for it to come down. Because once it comes down on its own, it means it's rotten. And that is the finishing line that we call a disaster. And we don't want that to happen. Now, let me turn to South Africa. I think I'm still on my 2 minutes.
>> You've got 2 minutes.
>> 2 minutes remaining. That's fine. So in South Africa, we still uh have our coal mines uh even those that are abandoned, they they they continue to emit uh methane.
And we see that as an opportunity that we can use to grab h the gases and capture for reuse.
Uh in terms of our energy trajectory, the the waste crisis like I said uh as urban uh cities grow we have a crisis. So if you look at Johannesburg and Cape Town, we are struggling to maintain landfields. We must come with an opportunity in terms of technology to convert the waste product into biogas.
H if we don't do that uh we'll be left behind. By doing that by the way we create jobs, we have our clean cities and we reduce our carbon footprint.
Now all of these things can't happen if there's no political will.
We need political will and South Africa has demonstrated that it has a political will. Uh we took the opportunity uh to lead uh the global methane pledge uh in the entire region. How did we do that? We integrated our methane reduction uh into our national determined uh contribution. That's a signal that we are ready to lead in the green uh economy. But how do we speed up this process? Just in a minute. How do we speed up this uh process? We need data because you can't manage that which you don't know. You need data to measure that which you are dealing with.
Secondly, you need finance. I had somebody saying we we must not act as beggars. And they are correct. We can't be beggars for finances. We need uh finance that will come with low h interest rates when we we borrow so that we we use the it as a tool to do the job not as a charity coming our way. H I've spoken about the political will. Uh but fellow Africans, as I conclude, there's a song that our forefathers in South Africa used to sing during the apartate.
It was saying from Cape to Cairo, Morocco to Madagascar.
And it was saying Aania, let's get our land with a bazooka, which was violence. And I'm saying to you today, fellow South Africans, and I'm saying to you, fellow South Africans, at the end I will sing.
>> They say you should sing.
>> I will sing at the end. Let me let me finish. And I'm saying to you now, fellow Africans, from Cape to Cairo, from Morocco to Madnagasa, we have our land. Let's protect it.
>> Thank you.
>> Let's protect it from uh this emission.
Thank you very much. I will sing at the end. Thank you.
>> Thank you, honorable. Thank you so much.
Uh that's so brilliant. Uh thank you for those remarks. So timely and really insightful. Uh lastly, I'm inviting Mr. Loy Loyola.
Yeah, I think uh I I don't know if I've missed the name, but uh you have two minutes as well to contribute on something. I know you're an expert on all these issues that we discussing here. uh being a technical person please come in two minutes.
>> Yeah. Thank you very much uh honorable uh moderator. Um yeah before before lunch you are senator Kajang you're very clear that Kenyans should behave in the afternoon. Uh Dr. you're very very clear. So I shall behave I shall take only two minutes.
>> Yeah. Um so as as a private company um here in Kenya I am we are actually honored to be able to contribute to this conversation uh on a Panaffrican level.
Yeah. Um last week we were in the Kenyan the Kenyan parliament uh with the same conversation and we honored uh to be able to do the same uh today. So I I'll be very brief um three things. I'll introduce who we are very very quickly.
Um and then I'll speak about how we're going beyond climate mitigation into using climate mitigation to fuel through the cycle economy, sustainable waste management and and and regenerative agriculture. Yeah. And then finally, I'll close by by by giving the key ask that you'd want uh from uh the distinguished um uh members of parliament as well as the guests who are here today. So um very briefly, Region Organics, also known as Sany Limited, is uh the leading organic uh waste recycling organization uh in East Africa and I would say maybe across the continent. Um today in Nairobi, we collect uh more than 50,000 tons of waste per year. Uh so that's organic waste that would have otherwise have gone into the environment. Uh we have uh our facility uh that is our recycling facility. We have one of them just here in Nairobi metropolitan. So that is about 30 kmters from here uh servicing Nairobi. Uh we have another facility in western Kenya uh servicing the sugar belt across western Kenya. And then in Kifi uh we have another facility uh that is servicing uh the people of Kifi around the coast. Yeah. So briefly what we do is we collect organic waste uh that would otherwise have gone into the environment and honorable member of parliament you're clear in terms of what that waste then does. Yeah. So if organic waste is not uh decomposed correctly in the presence of of oxygen, if it goes anorobic, what happens is it then generates methane. And when methane goes into the environment, as all the speakers have mentioned today, it's it can be very very devastating. Yeah. So 84 times more dangerous, more potent than carbon carbon dioxide across 20 years. Yeah. So it is the fastest way from a climate mitigation perspective for us reduce the pace at which we are increasing the the temperatures across the globe. Yeah. So we collect that waste and then we use three technologies to process that waste. The first one is black soldier flies. Um I think uh someone mentioned black solder flies this morning. So that is this insect bigger than the house fly cleaner than the house fly that eats the waste. Um it fattens it. We harvest the the the the l of the of the fly and sell it into the food valition in terms of uh food for our our animals. Yeah. And then why this is powerful is that it reduces the amount of waste that comes in by 70% in 8 days. So it's a very very efficient uh bioconverter of waste. So secondly we also produce organic fertilizer um where we use composting. So that is industrial composting to convert that organic waste into organic fertilizer. And then lastly we also use biochare especially across the sugar belt uh to convert that waste into into biochar. So why is this important? Um when it comes to organic fertilizers there needs to be a conversation around productivity in Africa. Yeah. So compared to the globe especially in the global north where you have winters their soils tend to have tend to to rest in the winter. Hence the organic matter in their soil and the organic carbon in their soil tends to be higher. That's why in Africa and and subass Samsara and Africa especially if you look at productivity when it comes to growing of food we're basically 50 to 80% of the global average.
>> Two minutes now.
>> Thank you. So yeah. So very very quickly so by putting that organic waste into organic fertilizer into the soils farmers are seeing upwards of about 30 to 50% increase in yield. Yeah. So that that is a very powerful story about how you can on one end mitigate climate and then on the other end use that to drive food security. Yeah. So my brief ask is that we are currently selling carbon credits uh into the voluntary markets uh because of the the the emission reductions that you're doing uh across across the process that we that we have here in uh in Kenya. Now we are not yet into the compliance markets because we need members of parliament in Kenya and of course across across Africa to approve um projects that sit within article six of the Paris agreement.
Yeah. Now that will allow us to get into the compliance markets which means as Kenya we now sat as a country and working with projects like ourselves trading government to government uh across across the world and and that is a big thing. So as we continue having discussions I think on a technical level within parliament I think it'll be good to figure out how we can more quickly approve projects like ours so that as a country and within our economies we can we can we can fuel uh the work that we do.
>> Thank you so much. Uh thank you all the panelists for the uh such wonderful information. I I'm sure that uh if we to talk about uh technical issues, we should say that uh it goes beyond figures and numbers. Just as I I want to borrow your word, honorable uh just as what you said, honorable cherry, that uh uh financing should not be uh a bar should not be an excuse of not being uh of not taking an action of uh methan.
But also it is true that uh if nothing is being done on methane then there will be uh some gravious disasters more than what we know on carbon. Uh we paying more much attention on carbon emissions and we leaving out methane which we really need to start looking at both and making sure that we manage the numbers.
If we cannot manage the statistics and the numbers then it will lead into disaster. Um I know that uh we need to invite the uh audience to say something but I with because of time I don't know if the MC will allow me just to take two.
>> Okay fine. So uh bear with us because of time. Uh all those that had something to say over our panelists uh let me ask you to keep that just write it somewhere that you don't forget what you wanted to contribute uh on this session. uh at this time in point allow me just to give the panelists one minute each just a minute to say something to close so that we wind up the session. One minute for each speaker please. Thank you strictly one minute.
>> Yes. Uh thank you. Um I think I just want to um mention that as as we look at these technologies uh there will be opportunities for us like our countries to also co-develop these technologies for methane reduction and and others. So I think we need to be part of that. Uh the other is um affordable finance is our key issue and I think we need a lot more engagement uh with parliamentarians on this issue on the global stage. Thank you.
Thank you Sarah.
>> Thank you very much. Um yeah, I would also just reiterate sort of the point that's been made throughout that there is so much evidence on methane. There are so many solutions that have been identified that are technically available and feasible often at low cost. And so the economic case is very strong. the the costs that are being paid really by people today are real.
Those are happening. Those um deaths due to air pollution, crop productions due to also methane um um methane triggered ground level ozone. So those are all not you know future projections like when we talk about the 30% 30% methane target by 2030. Um those are costs that are being paid today. Um, of course, yeah, financing is a big topic and and there is a finance gap that needs to be closed. Um but it's also really some of these legis like where we can come in as or you as legislators um to trying to really derisk some of that area to attract more financing to have clear um regulations and strong commitments in place that can then actually trigger additional financing and um supporting to translate those commitments into action. and um that because it's really often times not necessarily an issue of ambition. Yes, it's just the speed at which we're acting now. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Just just one thing that I want to say, you know, when you read reports on climate change, uh methane is more on the footnotes of the report.
And I want to call on countries that uh let's shift the agenda of methane from being footnotes of climate reports to being in the agenda of our national uh imperative as countries. Thank you.
>> Thank you so much. One minute please.
>> Uh thank you. Um the while while while I appreciate uh a lot in the audience and and of the panel look at look at how things work top down um given your position in terms of legislators and members of parliament as private sector looked at it we we look at it bottom up. Yeah. Um so we we think that and and I would think that the compounding effect that goes with uh climate mitigation and the circular economy um looking at it not as not as one big thing that need to be needs to be solved but pieces of the puzzle that needs to be improved every percentage point across a circular circular economy. that that means for companies like ourselves really really supporting those what you'd callmemes moving into growth companies that that are really contributing to the circularity of it.
Yeah. Because I think that is the engine that will fuel the the whole mitigation exercise. Yeah. So it's not just about big projects. It's those small projects that happen all over the country. uh that if they are all supported 10% improvement through policy uh we can all together then help to to to to shift and to to really mitigate what is happening to our >> Thank you so much and lastly honorable please one minute >> as uh parliamentarians I want us to leave here with renewed sense of determination to combat the climate misinformation and disinformation.
As lawmakers, we need to lead by example before preaching to others. That is why parliamentary action is very very crucial here and the leadership is so important. As I indicated earlier on in Ghana under the distinguished leadership of the speaker, right honorable speaker Babin, Ghana is making a lot of progress and as parliamentarians, we should take the leadership, confront the climate skeptics, deal with misinformation, disinformation, and confront them with the scientific fact. Thank you.
>> Thank you so much. Uh let me take this opportunity to thank all of my of the panelists who were here. They've spoken really good and uh I I I must say that this session needed almost an hour because every speaker here seems to be an expert and they've got a lot to share to the audience. I'm sure that uh we'll keep engaging you engage with the audience and audiences. If you have anything to ask maybe uh in separate sessions and whatsoever you can engage any of the speakers just as Senate Kan said in the morning that uh uh when all the technical issues have been discussed it goes down to parliament and as a member of parliament I I must say that this call for an action uh on the two speakers the presenters that they said something they all called for an action on four things. Legislation, budget, oversight, representation, communication. We must establish methane monitoring reporting requirements. We must uh mandate leak detection and repair programs for oil and gas infrastructure. Allocating funding for all landfill gas capture and waste to energy systems. advocating in internationally for affordable concessional climate finance and this includes bilateral cooperation with technology leaders for code development.
With these uh few but many remarks allow me to release the panelists and also we give them a hand of applause. Thank you so much.
>> Thank thank you. Thank you very very much. I think uh the moderator has done a good job in summarizing. Um honorable Mikato wanted to sing. I think he needs to do that before he sits down.
Please give him a microphone. Do we need to stand up?
Do we need to stand up?
>> No, no, no, no, no. I wanted to Okay.
there was a vote that you should but anyway it is fine. So thank you very much uh honorable tan for that very informative session. I'm I'm sorry that uh we'll not take the interventions now.
So we'll combine the two sessions and then we take them at the end. Is that okay?
>> So that we save a bit of on time. So allow me ladies and gentlemen there for now to welcome the honorable Dr. John Mutunga who's going to moderate the next session. Please clap for him as he comes.
He is uh a member of parliament here in Kenya but also a co-chairperson of the steering committee karibana.
Thank you very much.
Uh thank you very much Jo for that very warm welcome ladies and gentlemen honorable members uh our fourth session rather is where we are right now I would like to call uh the members of the panel but just before that my name is uh John Munga as you said and I have the pleasure for moderating this session on agricultural systems and meen Agriculture as you know it remains central to African economies and livelihoods supporting food security, employment and rural communities across the the continent.
It is at the same time anal systems are increasingly affected by climate change while contributing to emission through livestock rice cult and others to be able to deal with these issues. Today I would like to call upon our four panelists starting with Dr. Claia Ant who is uh the senior is a senior scientist and team leader of the Mazinger Center at the International Lifesto Research Institute here in Nairobi and she leads multi-disiplinary team working across low and medium income countries live systems to create an app and applying data for climate response and food secure development. Please welcome madame take a seat first I'll also call upon and Dr. Paulin Chie Dr. Dr. Paul Chen is a senior scientist in cropping systems and climate change and country representative for the international rice research institute in Tanzania.
as she is a soil and biochem soil and biochemistry scientist and has quite some long-standing experience focusing on soil nutrient management and soil health in small holder farming in Africa and Asia. So she leads a couple of international projects working diverse farming systems in in topics that include bio geochemical nutrient cycling and she will be one of our panelists this afternoon. On the other hand, we have two politicians who are also going to join us and let allow me to introduce the honorable Bashir Abdullah.
Rashid Abdalah uh is is a member of parliament from Kenya. I don't seem to see his uh brief here but Bashir has been in the national assembly for Kenya and has also been uh exposed in the area of of of uh climate change and area of uh let me just say a few things. Bash Bashil is a manger, a retired manger in the Kenyan forces. He has done a lot of operations including having been in peacekeeping management in the Horn of Africa.
uh he has also s served as operations officer in the African Union mission to Sudan and he is the founder and managing director of VA security services and he in he was elected as a member of parliament in 2017 to represent Mandela North I believe he is in his second term now so Bashir we are saying the term welcome Bashir And then our fourth and maybe final panelists is honorable Capisa Ganso Gansaw. I hope I'm pronouncing your name properly. Madame uh the honorable member uh is an educated public servant who has served as a member of parliament for the African National Congress party since 2019.
uh with plenty with the party. She holds a significant leadership role in the Eastern Cape Province Executive Committee. Currently she serves as the chairperson of the portfolio committee on forestry, fisheries and environment.
A role that leverages her existence extensive experience and promote sustainable resource management and preservation of the South African natural heritage. Those are our panelist. Before I call the first panelist to make a presentation whether probably she wants to stand here or to make a presentation from her seat. Let me say that this session believers to answer three questions.
One of them is to articulate midane emissions from agriculture.
We'll see how agriculture is a contributor to pollution. Then the other one is showcase practical practically how to reduce me within. And the third one is explore how parliamentarians or parliaments support uh climate action uh while advancing for food and nutrition security and just transition goals. In this discussion um this discussion is therefore important because uh it is not only about emission reduction uh but it is also about how countries can strengthen food food systems, improve productivity, support farmers and build resilience in ways that are practical and appropriate uh for African contexts. We will begin by hearing perspectives from experts as I said and it is my pleasure therefore to invite Dr. Claudia Ants who is a senior scientist and team Linda to make a presentation. Madame welcome.
>> Thank you very much. Um good afternoon everybody.
I'm going to talk about the livestock sector for you. But first I want to start with just breaking down where methane is coming from. So we know methane globally 40% is coming from agriculture. Of this 32% is from livestock and most of that is from from actually the animal and some part of this from the manure. The other 35% come from fossil fuels and waste. Um we have 20%. But these topics are going to be handled in different sections. And the global methane assessment identified that livestock is actually the highest um or the best opportunity to re reduce methane for Africa.
I also wanted to give you a little bit of a picture on what the what the global warming potential of methane is because we've been talking about it. So if we are producing one ton of methane and one ton of carbon dioxide, when we look at it on a 20-year horizon, methane is 84 times as potent as that carbon dioxide there. And when we look over a 100 year, it's 28 times as potent. So why we're focusing on methane now is because methane is a shortlived climate pollutant. It is in the atmosphere for about 12 years. So if we reduce it today that methane potential is not going to be there after that anymore. And that is one like only short um term life um climate pollutants can help us to meet the not hit the two degrees um warming.
So the no return point where we don't want to be but at the same time we need to reduce other um greenhouse gas emissions like CO2 and nitrous oxide as well. But that is just to explain why methane is such an urgent topic to be addressed because we can really reduce um warming in the short term with that.
So methane has different risks associated with it as we've talked already about. It contributes near-term um warming. It also is a health hazard for people. It leads to climate change.
So it affects our agricultural production and also has impact on our ecosystems and um resilience. But I also want us to look at it. It is also an opportunity. We can actually get rapid climate benefits from it. We have many solutions that can um improve productivity and reduce emissions per product. We can increase um our air quality and have a healthier population.
And we can use it as an energy resource through bio gas and we can use it as a fertilizer by nutrient cycling. So it is really an opportunity the way we need to look at it. So when we look at livestock in Africa we all know it's central for food security and nutrition for livelihoods for women and youth employment also for soil fertility.
We're using the manure also it is important for climate resilient. It's not like a crop. Your livestock can move if there's no grass. It can go elsewhere. If you build a crop and there's no water, you will not be able to water it. So, it gives population climate resilience and again an opportunity to nutrient cycling. So now when we look at what the animal protein demand is going to be until 250 is going to increase quite a bit, but it's going to increase mostly because of population growth. There is a I put underneath the animal protein consumption for Africa and Europe in comparison and you see by 2050 Africans are still only eating a third of animal protein what um Europeans are going to be eating. So livestock is really an important part of nutrition for Africans. We're not overeating livestock products. So there's not a discussion about that we need to have a um dietary change because sometimes I run into discussions with people around that and we like the increase we see and the demand that needs to be met it's because of growing population and feeding the populations.
So it's needed for food security and also for the um climate challenge because we have more food demand and we also have more climate events. we will have more risks of droughts and floods and that will ch uh challenge our food system, how we're producing and we need to learn how we can really improve our livestock productivity to use more uh less resources and produce more with fewer resources and also at the same time have a smaller impact of livestock to the climate. This is a graphic to explain you how um productivity increases can reduce emissions per product. When you look at the x-axis you see y- axis sorry you see that the emissions per product is there and if you increase milk yield on the bottom you see that you see that the emissions per product will go down and we have often lower producing systems so that means we have quite an opportunity to really reduce emissions per product. So if we are able to increase productivity, our reduction uh emissions per product are going to be really going down quite a bit. So that's an opportunity for us as well. Um then I also wanted to explain that if you increase productivity so we have a modeling scenario you can my team has uh posters outside you can go more detail and talk with them around that we can actually um did look at um production and different interventions. So we can actually increase livestock productivity if we imply like use multiple interventions by up to 3%. That means we can act uh from baseline what we're expecting and that means we can reduce emissions per product by over 50%.
But that also means because we're producing much more now we're going to have um 35% more total emissions. But if we aim for meeting the demand, we're going to have actually less emissions at same productivity with a healthier cow and with a um applied interventions compared to the business as usual. So that's a blue bar you're seeing there.
So if we're aiming, this is called avoided emissions and that's what we're going to work for because we want to have a production scenario. We're meeting productivity and we're doing that with efficient animals so we can reduce emissions compared to animals we may have now which can be maybe fatted a little bit better in other health interventions. So with that I wanted to talk about the solutions that we already have and there's for example feed innovations. So, I've brought my team with me. They're all sitting in the back, but we have a stand outside from the International Livestock Research Institute where you can find all of the people who are here on the slides to talk more about the detail. But the point is we can improve um feed uh quality and by improving feed quality, we can improve um for example what we did in the study, milk production for 23% and methane per kilogram of uh milk by 15%. Um all of this is outside. You can take flyers of it as well. So there are also animal health interventions.
We're working a lot on this. So we did a modeling scenario for Ethiopia where if we applied different health interventions and uh we could reduce emissions um per product by 56% even. We did a modeling scenario for Kenya where we looked at calf mortality. uh if we were able to not have uh calf mortality anymore, we could feed 4.5 million more Kenyans with uh beef and we have mystitis uh subclinical. So the farmer doesn't even know it's there. If we are able to prevent that, we could have uh milk for over 1 million people more.
Then there is a general system. If we put multiple interventions together um so that was looking at feed interventions, health um breed and management intervention the system mitigation for Kenyan beef could be by 52%.
Then it's also important so manure usually how we have it in Africa it's usually on the pasture that's not going to produce a lot of methane if manure is stored in liquid it becomes un aerobic that's when it starts to produce methane but we can use the manure from our livestock uh we can do different manure management strategies like composting improve the storage and also bio gas systems so we c we should be using our manure better sometimes it's not always used in the systems and we really should use it to as a good research to produce better crops. So now we have the solutions, but how we're going to go for impact. We need these solutions and we need to work on solutions that actually work for the farmers. We need to be able to measure what the production gains for these farmers are, what the mitigation force is because you need to report it underneath your NDCS for example and maybe you want to unlock clim uh carbon finance. But for the carbon finance when we talking about um any of the intervention strategies or solutions I urge you to make sure that anything you supposed like suggest to the farmers it needs to be product um profitable for them without carbon finance because we cannot rely on carbon finance. We need to have solutions that work without carbon finance and maybe leverage carbon finance to get some extra benefit. This is just another slide that uh puts together the different intervention um pathways and the benefits.
And then for scaling, what do we need for scaling? We need to have research and innovation. We need to help create the evidence and the supporting tools that you need to measure what you're doing, how you're producing productivity, how you're reducing emission. And then we need to be able to scale that at landscape, regional, and national level.
So I wanted to give an example from our social scientists as well for scaling what works with farmers. They usually work with pioneer farmers. What is a pioneer farmer? A pioneer farmer is what that person farmer may do something a little bit different than the neighbor.
They're producing are a little bit more productive but they're not unreachable for the neighbor to do. So like they're not the top farmers and they like to teach other farmers. So they then understand um how they're doing this and learn from them, how um the solutions are implemented on their farm. And these farmers usually also are interested in teaching other farmers. So you have events where farmers can teach farmers to really um scale the knowledge that is already there because we have these solutions, we have these farmers on the ground that can help their neighbors and their community to become better um food producers.
And then I also wanted to just talk you know that livestock is more included in the NDC's for African countries. So of the 12 countries where it is here. Um when it's included the interventions that are included for the NDCS is feed management, manure management, animal health, um productivity improvements and MIV systems and silver pastoral systems.
Um just to give you an idea and for the MIV systems we need fit for purpose. So we need MRVs that allow us to show to the farmers what their production gain is. If the farmer doesn't see a production gain when they put the solution on the ground, they're not continuing to do it because they need to adopt a different behavior and that's not that easily done. We also needed to to help policy and implementation decisions so you can actually decide where we're putting money and where we're prioritizing um financing to put different interventions on the ground.
And last but not least, we need to be able to track that. Illry, we're here in East Africa. We've done a lot in East Africa, but that doesn't mean we're only here. We're building capacity. We're training um scientists from different regions. We're working with governments and trying to help achieving these goals. And so the ultimate goal for us is a more efficient, a resilient and lower emission livestock system. Why?
Because we know methane matters for climate change, but also gives us opportunity and we can reduce it. We need African livestock pathways. We want to improve productivity and we need practical solutions that work for our farmers and at the same time we need to create our own evidence for Africa um to support the implementation and for the scaling then we need to some finance policy and partnership and an MRV system. With that I'd like to thank you very much for your attention. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Cl. I felt like interrupting, but it was so interesting.
I was also learning. Let me now call upon Dr. Paulen Chang. And Pauline will be listening to my mic ring. I'll click on it.
Honorable members and uh respectable guests, good afternoon.
So um I'm going to talk to you about methane emissions under rice cultivation in Africa. And my name is Pauline Chen.
I'm a I'm the country representative for International Rice Research Institute based in Darasalam, Tanzania.
So I thought I should uh just give you a brief background of uh who we are. Uh we are an organization which is part of the CGI uh consultative group of international agriculture uh research. We were founded in 1960 with our headquarters uh in the Philippines. We have presence in Asia and in Africa. Our regional office here in Africa is in Nairobi. Uh and we have offices in uh five other countries including Tanzania. So we recently developed our strategy for 2025 to 2030 and we have three impact uh goals that are interconnected uh to drive uh the impact of our work uh over the next 10 years. The first impact goal is improved nutrition uh for the farmers and the consumers of rice. And then the second impact goal is sustainable planet which uh is a goal that is related to what we are here to talk about today because it's it talks about um ensuring rice based uh food systems uh that are climate resilient and circular and um reducing the overall environmental uh footprint of our production systems. uh looking at methane, looking at uh the synthetic uh inputs such as fertilizers and agrochemicals and then uh we also have uh the third goal is inclusive livelihoods. So ensuring that uh we are improving the livelihoods for the small holder farmers uh that grow rice.
So why is why is rice important? It's important because it feeds half the global population. It is grown by mostly small holder farmers more than 140 million uh farmers um across the world which represents about 25 uh% of the farmers and then uh it's a source of income for these small holder farmers.
Rice utilizes about uh 10% of the total arable land and it uses about 15% of uh the fertilizers used worldwide and it uses um a lot of water. So rice is a water loving crop utilizing about 35% of uh the irrigation.
So rice is at the center of food security and the global demand for rice is increasing but it's increasing much more in Africa at a faster pace uh than other regions. So our per capita consumption is increasing. Uh we are eating more rice than we used to uh the past few decades. uh that is because of uh changing preferences uh consumer preferences but also uh the increasing uh population. So by 2050 we are going to need about 75 million uh tons of uh me rice and half of that is coming from Africa. So we need to produce this rice with uh uh fewer resources uh because we have limited land. uh we are going to also ensure that uh we reduce our the environmental footprint and we are doing this under a changing climate.
So rice uh is mo mostly grown under flooded conditions. Uh so compared to other cereals the m the other major cereals such as uh rice and wheat um wheat and maze rice emits significantly more greenhouse gas emissions. If you look at the figure on the right, uh you can see that it rice emits three times more methane emissions than uh other crops. And if you look at the middle, you'll see that um rice contributes about 6% of the non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions, which is quite significant.
So um methane emissions are actually increasing in uh Africa. uh because we have an increase in production of rice in Africa. uh in response to the demand for rice uh in following the the global food crisis of 2008, coalition for African rice development was formed to promote the production of rice uh in Africa to reduce uh our dependence on imports from Asia and also with uh u support from uh development partners such as the World Bank, we have uh expanded our irrigated rice which means that we are going to uh emit more methane emissions. We are going to emit more methane and uh uh we can look at the figure on the left. It's showing uh how rice area expansion has happened in Africa about 700%.
Compared to other uh global uh regions which have barely increased uh their area under cultivation. Uh this means that our rice production has increased only through expansion but not increase in productivity which means we are increasing our methane emissions. And then when we look on the right you see that um we have um agriculture contributing more to greenhouse gas emissions compared to other sectors which is different from other world regions.
So most of the expansion uh in rice production has been happening in West Africa. So the figure on the left is showing you uh the area under um rice production. The blue is representing rice in 1960 area under rice in 1960 and then the orange is uh representing 1961 to 2018. You can see that there has been significant in increases in area under production and con similarly there has been increases in emissions if you look at the figure on the right. So the increase in the land is also causing increase in uh methane emissions. So we really need to uh work on reducing the methane emissions. But the problem we have on the continent is that um we have a critical data gap because in Africa we have very few um incitu measurements of uh methane. Most of the data that we have is coming from satellite imagery uh from modeling and uh from estimates.
So this increases our uncertaintity in uh national and regional emission inventories. So it means that uh we we will not be able to uh have uh proper MRVs.
We have a single emissions factor in in Africa for irrigated rice which is worrying because we have a a special variability in terms of production and the emissions. So we really need to increase our efforts to measure greenhouse gas emissions in Africa.
So although rice is a significant contributor of uh methane emissions uh it is also one of the uh biggest uh mitigation potentials in in the agricultural sector. So on the left you can see that uh emissions in the agricultural sector are highest with livestock like Claudia said and then um we have crop land and then uh rice but when you look at the right you'll see that uh rice is has about 36% uh more mitigation potential compared to 3 to 9% for the other sectors. So our interventions can significantly reduce the methane emissions contributions for Africa and it's possible to reduce these emissions because we have interventions that we have tried particularly in Asia and also here in Africa but to a limited extent we have um um management options such as water direct seeding which is uh managing the water resources fertilizer practices and straw management and this interventions are not more expensive.
They are actually uh reachable for the farmers and uh they just need to be uh made aware and um given the information and in addition to uh improving the productivity and profit profit for the farmers uh we have the carbon credit which uh can provide further incentives for the farmers.
So here I'm giving you um some examples of the intervention interventions that we have evaluated. The figure on the top left is showing our traditional continuously flooded rice which is in black uh uh bars and then uh the intermittent irrigation which is in the um clear bars. You will see that consistently in different uh studies methane emissions are much higher under the traditional continuous flooding. And then when we look at direct seeded rice, if you look at the figure on the left, you'll see that direct seeded rice uh leads to less water use and uh you have a lower global warming potential compared to the traditional um transplanted uh rice. We are doing some of this work. If you look at the figure at the bottom which is in blue, it shows our work in MUA where we have shown that you can uh reduce uh water use by up to 60% when you combine direct seeded rice with uh alternate wetting and drying. So you reduce the amount of water but also you do not uh um compromise the yield and uh you also reduce the uh greenhouse gas emissions. And this this work is uh on the poster outside uh for those who are interested.
Uh this figure is just showing that there are aomic interventions that can improve yield but also reduce methane emissions. So we can generate core benefits of improved productivity but uh uh contribute to reducing the methane emissions as was alluded to earlier in an an earlier panel.
Some of the uh interventions include um trying to make uh one of the waste products uh from rice production uh rice straw and husk uh and make them into a biocular economy and then you can use them the straw for different aspects composting with uh animal manure to make uh organic fertilizers. You can do mushroom uh production. You can produce different uh other products such as uh uh ports that you can use for flowers and um you can uh use them for biochar which when applied uh to the soil can also reduce the methane emissions and you can add the value for the farmers.
This is value addition. So farmers can get extra income from utilizing the waste. So this is just summarizing the mitigations options mitigation options that we have across the rice production cycle from the seeds that you use for planting because the different varieties influence uh methane emissions. We are breeding uh some varieties that have lower methane emissions. Um so you can reduce methane by up to 65% compared to the traditional uh rice production. We have water saving technologies. Uh we have um mushroom production. All of these can lead to uh lowering the greenhouse gas emissions. And we have quite a lot of work that we are doing at Erie which can contribute to improving our rice production in uh Africa.
So the aim is to move towards uh zero emissionbased uh rice systems and uh we can do this across the whole value chain uh the rice production chain from uh land preparation, the seeds you choose, the establishment method, the fertilizer management, the water management. uh you can use this utilize the straw and you can also do rat tuning all of which uh contribute to reducing the uh methane emissions but also contribute to improving productivity.
Lastly um what support uh we need uh from the parliamentarians.
I think you guys play a pivotal role in shaping the form the policies and the frameworks that align with climate action and food security and just transition goals. So we can really uh generate these core benefits. You can also advocate uh for scientific research uh that uh can contribute to uh supporting uh sustainable agricultural practices.
H and then you can uh also help in uh encouraging commitment to prioritizing climate smart agriculture um in the policy agendas and uh fostering collaboration of across the different stakeholders so that we can implement uh strategies that are effective to address the methane emissions but also contributing to food security really generating those uh core benefits. The challenge we have is uh data. We need more data for accurate reporting of our national inventories of uh emissions so that we can inform the NDC's uh for uh decision making and uh targeting. With this I thank you.
>> Thank you very much Dr. Chie. I actually wanted to interrupt but the presentation was very very very enriching and I thought it was necessary for us to go through it so that we be able to understand at least how agriculture is a polluter as it were also a solution. Uh let me now call upon the member of parliament for Kenya the honorable Ashir to give us his brief presentation and Washir and my other colleague we are already short we already ran short of time.
Thank you horrible. You know during the introduction he he talked about so many things about me but if you go two key important things that is I am also the chair of the pastoralist parliamentary group and that's why I'm here.
Equally I'm also the vice chair of the defense intelligence and foreign relations of the national assembly. So those are the two key things he has forgotten but the many things he has said are all right. Thank you very much.
Uh thank you very much. Uh all protocol observed for me I think uh I will not talk much because when experts speak they normally finish with we expect the parliamentarians to do ABCD and the best thing to do to to say is we have heard you thank you very much. We are going to do this what we said and that's as short as it can be.
uh however and that is just to guarantee that we will do uh whatever is uh necessary to ensure that we partake on this uh profound subject.
We all know that climate change affects all populations especially African countries but it is more so to vulnerable communities especially the pastor's communities and low income urban population.
Every person talk about the livestock.
When you have livestock, most of you, I'm sure, in this hall, you think about the cow, the camel doesn't ringing your bell.
But if you look at the cow and the and and the camel, the camel produces less methane than the cow.
So the best way also to reduce methane is to ensure that you have more chemls than the cows.
That is scientific. I mean the the research is there. The percentage that a camel produces methane and the percentage that a cow produces the cow is higher than the camel. And so that's why the pastoralists naturally partakes in reduction of methane and so they also require now more support. It's not the way of life that you think.
They don't live in a cage. They don't live in a piece of land. They're highly mobile. Now that mobility ensures that they spread across the the issue of the effect of but nonetheless how do we ensure that the cow and the chemo all of them are taken care of.
When it comes to methane reduction, there's the issue of we talked about carbon credits at some point.
The carbon credits these days is profit making. It's actually profetering than looking at the livelihoods of the farmer of the livestock farmer.
And so as parliamentarians we have actually in Kenya I'm sure you all know that our president is champion number one on matters climate change actually at the level and that's now for all Africa here in our parliaments we have had a number of acts the climate change act 2016 as amended in 2023 we have the NEMA we have the climate change public participation that we have. But all these things generally talk about climate change.
Nothing specific about methane.
And so it's upon us as parliamentarians sitting in this hall and those who are out there to ensure that our regulations, our acts now specifically target methane.
A honorable member of parliament is saying you will see issues of methane at the footnote. is true. It's something new. And so we just need now to act and say that we need to have regulations, acts, policies specific, tailor made for methane.
That way we can be able to tackle the issue of uh of of methane.
How is this related to livelihood and and the livestock sector?
The pastoralists move from place to place. It's highly mobile.
The way we want to address the issue of methane on livestock, especially on the cow, is not the same as on the camel.
We know population have grown.
The lands is becoming restrictive. But the camel is still there. The pastries are still there. they will still keep on moving with their cows and the camels.
How do we address the issue of land rangelads and the issue of the pastoralists?
The other day we spoke about the issue of public participation.
When you go out there and you want to do public participation on the pastoralist, they can't come to our town hall because that's not where they are. They're not found in town halls. You have to go out there and look for them. So some of these policies are really not tailor made for them. It's a general thing and then it excludes a larger percentage of the pastor's communities.
And so what we want is to ensure that policies and regulations should equally be inclusive of the pastoralist community. Remember for example in this country we occupy 80% of the landmarks.
I think for those who don't know 80% of Kenya landmarks is occupied by assal and semi arid past communities.
So 80% and yet some of these policies some of these acts some of these regulations do not favor them.
So let's think about the personal communities as we make our rules our regulations and so forth. So the other thing is the issue of carbon credit. I talked about it in right now in in in in Kenya. We don't even have regulations that are in place for the carbon credits. There's a draft that is before parliament not yet formalized and I'm sure once it is it comes to the committee and we go through we'll be able to have it but we don't have it as we speak right now with the carbon credit regulations.
So what is the best way to do and I'm sure in future or soon we'll have credits it will come.
So whoever owns the cow and the camel or the camel for example will have more credits on on matters of methane they produce less.
So the more camels you have the better for you. Otherwise as parliamentarians we have heard and that we ensure that we partake on the issue of policy on the issue of regulations and the acts as well as ensuring that we offer sight the executive to ensure that the funds that we appropriate is properly utilized to ensure that it addresses climate change and specifically the methane aspect.
So our work is just very clear. Experts have said it. We have heard from you.
You have given us the input. We will incorporate it into our legislative uh uh programs.
Equally as members of parliament because we represent constituencies.
The honor is also on us to go out there and tell our people what is methane how useful it is to reduce it. What is the impact in our local forest as we go out to our constituencies otherwise if we just leave it in in such a whole beautiful places and the people who suffer most are out there and they don't know about it then we are doing a serious game. So I think is a challenge to us as parliamentarians when we go back to our constituencies to our villages we ensure that we cascade the information we have to the people who matter most otherwise thank you very much and as parliamentarians we will ensure what needs to be done and my fellow member from South Africa I think he talked about we must defend our land as Africans very great but please also tell fellow South Africans that they should not be hitting on fellow Africans and they should welcome them in South Africa. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you very much honorable Bashir for that very wonderful presentation. I'll now call upon the honorable GH from South Africa who will give us the South African experience.
Thank you program director.
Let me stand on the protocol that has already been established.
I will touch on the agriculture and waste management sector uh in South Africa.
But before I do that, let me first uh start by saying that climate action is a priority for for our government and and parliament as South Africa is one of the climate vulnerable countries where our constituencies are already experiencing extreme weather events like floods and storms.
Just last week, we have experienced a major extreme weather uh challenges.
We had floods in two provinces, Western Cape and Eastern Cape, and that left our communities in a vulnerable state.
As is the case with our greenhouse gases, methane is a priority greenhouse gas for South Africa because it has a strong short-term warming effect and accounts for a meaningful share of national immersion.
Sorry on agriculture and waste management.
They are central to methane mitigation because they are the major contributors to our methane emissions and offer reduction opportunities closely linked to food systems, municipal service delivery, public health and the just transition.
And our country's methane response is shaped by international climate commitments such as the sustainable development goals and the Paris agreement, section 24 of our constitution and climate equality and carbon tax legislation that supports emissions governance planning and reporting.
We we have identified waste management as a more immediate mitigation opportunity through landfill gas recovery, organic waste diversion, improve waste, waste water treatment and a related infrastructure investment.
We have interventions such as landfills, methane capture, composing and improvements of waste water treatment that are delivering relatively visible gains.
We know that in South Africa we have three spheres of government. We have national, we have province and we have local.
So in our metropolitan municipalities, which is our local sphere, these measures are improving service delivery while also improving equality, reducing local environmental risks and creating economic opportunities.
Honorable members and and and colleagues and guests, while there is progress in projects that reduce methane in agriculture and waste sector, we still need to work on strengthening our farming practices, data collection and processing, finance, institutional capacity and coordination across sectors and spheres of government through our oversight. as my fellow colleague has mentioned and accountability work on climate action.
We want to drive implementation that heals tangible benefits for our communities.
Not just reducing greenhouse gases, but jointly and inclusively building climate disaster resilience and promoting new and sustainable livelihoods, reducing poverty, strengthening our food and waste management systems, and ultimately a better life for our people.
With those few words, thank you very much.
>> Thank you very much indeed. I think we have um overshot by a few minutes. I stand guided but we've heard quite a lot this afternoon. Many issues that I've articulated very well that agriculture really contributes to within production or within release of emission into the atmosphere. And you've gotten different experiences from our scientists based on their research. and that research confirms that the facts are stated. I do not know whether we can now allow questions but I would like to hear from my senior uh Dr. A. What how do we move forward?
Yeah, thank you very much. I remember the last session of course some people might have had some of our members and participants could have had some questions or clarifications they may have wanted done and uh my panelists are also here I will also stick around and in case of anything you can probably ask and we shall intervene. Thank you very much.
>> Uh Joe please take over.
>> Thank you very much. uh please can we appreciate them for such such an insightful session. I I I personally learned quite a lot from that session.
Now we are going to move quickly.
Remember I promised that from the last um session we were not going to have any questions and so we want to try and combine uh so if you can still remember the last session that we had I don't know whether some people took notes or wanted to ask certain things but this is session two which was the methane challenge speeding up climate action in Africa we did have that session moderated by the honorable Tony Henry from Malawi And it had um Sarah Jin Ahmed, it had um Msina Spig Spigler, Michael Lello, the honorable um Dixon Da and the Honorable Mikateo Malo uh who was supposed to sing if you remember, but we but we we we we want to combine it with this session and this time just to ensure that we can spread this around, we We will not have any two comments or questions from any one person or from any two people from a delegation. So if you are from the Gambia if one person speaks that will be it. So we shall go by delegation. So is there anyone from the Gambia who would like to ask anything?
Okay, there we have one.
How about from Malawi?
Any question? Any comment?
All right, the back there.
Malawi, please. Let's have a microphone. Go to Malawi.
>> South Africa.
South Africa. Going once.
Okay. Is there any hand? Please help me see them.
No. No. That hand is from Ghana. I'm talking about South Africa.
All right. Then let's go to to to Ghana.
Can we have someone else from Ghana who'd like to speak? If anyone Okay, please give microphone to one person from there. They can agree between the two of them. And then from the seashells.
From the seashells. Anyone?
Okay. Those are those are three. I would like to get four.
Algeria.
There we go. So, we'll start here with Algeria. Can we start from Algeria?
Then we will go to to Ghana.
And then we proceed like that.
>> We wait Abd member of Algerian Parliament. Uh I would have liked there to be an Arabic translation but I will speak in French.
for agricult Forever track in Fedor.
system.
Modern Poorly agricultural group.
Incapable system.
DP Africa.
Mercy, >> mercy, mercy and fine. We will now go to South Africa.
There was a hand from South Africa. No.
Okay, let's go to Malawi.
Good evening. Uh firstly I want to commend the organizers of this conference for this uh uh discussion on methane. The last I attended one of these functions. It was methane really was indeed a footnote but we are now raised uh the profile of methane and now members of parliament are beginning to talk about it but perhaps what the gentleman said from Ghana this morning about the attrition of members of parliament in our parliaments after a general election. So you have a cohort that is more passionate and then it goes out and then the rest that come in are not as passionate or are not as aware. So to encourage the organizers that parliaments immediately after general elections we have to have a deliberate efforts so that the members of parliament that are coming in are sensitized and are made aware.
Secondly uh there was another gentleman that talked about budgets.
budgets. As members of parliament, this being a cross cutting issue, we have to be able to scrutinize the budget to ensure that all sectors are made aware, but also these mitigation factors are there in all uh budget alliance. And so I thought we could make the approach like gender activists, like gender budgeting, how members of parliament are sensitized on gender budgeting. Now would have members of parliament sensitized on methane budgeting, ensuring that sectors that are impacted that could whose um activities can emit lead to more emissions. we are able to scrutinize and have a tool and have a discussion and engage and be intentional on what we're doing. What is important that we have to ensure that what we preach, what we sign up to is implemented, is domesticated and that the sensitization right to the uh b to the to our communities and the members of parliament are the best persons to carry this message. And so governments the executive once it signs up to these agreements they have to ensure that even officials at the lower levels of government are aware of what we have signed up because there's policies that are there but people don't understand why these policies are there to what end to achieve what so thank you mine is more of a comment but I think there's more more that needs to be done for members of parliament to be able the to be there um uh to carry the message to the communities. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Ghana very quickly.
>> Yes. Thank you so much. Um in let me find panelist patience. Um there is a bigger picture here that rice production.
uh when it comes to the rice production we you always see that the ministry of uh food and agriculture in most cases when when it comes to mitigation of methane it cuts across uh several ministries I wanted to find out from the panelists the kind of uh coord coordination that they they will recommend so that all these ministries will work together for us to achieve the objective of uh getting mitain uh mitigation done in the respective countries. Thank you.
>> Thank you. And and we'll take note of that question. I just want to make sure that uh we get all the voices. Tunisia.
Tunisia.
Okay, there we go.
And then and then after that we'll have Tanzania. We have Tanzania.
Tanzania.
No.
Uganda.
Rwanda.
Ethiopia.
Zambia. I think I heard someone say Zambia. Zambia or the Gambia. Okay. Cameroon, Cameroon, Djibouti.
>> Okay. Great. So, let's start with the Gambia.
>> Please give them the microphone behind the same there over there.
>> Yes, we have it.
Cameroon.
>> Gambia. The Gambia first. Okay.
>> Thank you. Uh thank you Mr. Moderator.
Um thank you so much for Thank you to the panelist uh from the previous panelist to the current ones that are seated here. Um even though my colleague from uh that was that was moderating the previous uh panel has stated that the there's uh we don't have any excuse finance should be no should be no excuse about uh what we should do that is very right because we don't owe and nobody owes us our development uh having said that honorable um the first questions I have was for Shah I'm not sure if she's around but I will still ask one of the uh one more general question uh that has to do with u financing because finance is uh uh really important as far as we want to uh mitigate and reduce um uh maintain emission. So mine is a question uh it it goes like this. What are the biggest technical and financial barriers preventing African cities from escaling from scaling landfill mine capture and west to energy systems and which policy models have shown the highest success rate in emerging countries?
Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. I've noted down that question as well. Tunisia.
>> Okay. Mercy.
Zeta Africa.
Uh that could help all those governments in to use the methane that is already there almost everywhere. When we look at all the number of cities that are growing from one country to the other, we have waste that are growing in every city, in every countries.
So, do we have regions and donors that can really help in that sense? For example, in Tunisia, we have we have Japanese that have helped in that regards. We have two projects in Tunisia. I'm going to tell tell you about that tomorrow in the first panel, the first session tomorrow morning. But I understand that I I would like to know if there are other opportunities, other foundations that we can base oursel upon in order to explore that uh resource.
Thank you.
Go to Did you have Zambia?
Yes. Cameroon.
Let's go to Cameroon.
I saw I I saw a hand. Cameroon. No.
Okay.
Okay. Thank you for recognizing me.
uh I would like to queue with the others to do my heart to all the presenters and the organizers of this seminar. Uh that said uh in fact a lot has been said here on financing the crux of the matter seem to be funding and I think Dr. uh Goya was even saying that our finances are inadequate in handling uh the issue of maintain and if we already begin to admit that our finances are inadequate I I see it as a stumbling block you know in pursuit of uh handling this uh climatic issue. Now my question is is the issue of handling maintain more a financial problem or a political will.
Secondly, uh my honorable charity uh gave us a palpable examples of the uh strides that uh Kenya has made in this direction. And one of the things she told us is that Kenya has uh an act you know in uh a ban on plastic waste. We tried this in our country and there was this dilemma between handling plastic waste and the issue of unemployment.
I want us her to share her experience how this dilemma was handled in Ghana uh that is so successful because the ban on plastic waste has not been so successful in our country because we are trying to weigh these two issues. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Djibouti.
I I saw a hand somewhere there.
Is there any country delegation that would like to make an intervention and I haven't recognized them?
>> Okay. One one intervention Yes, there there's there's one here.
>> Uh thank you very much. May I also uh congratulate the organizers of this seminar for the wonderful job and the presenters and the participants.
My concern is also on the aspect of financing.
We have been attending the COP's meetings from the initial one to the latest one and each time the delegations from Africa go to these conferences with the aim of getting finances for whatever activities they want to undertake in the country to mitigate the so-called climate effect.
But uh in all these conferences they have always come back home disappointed meaning the so-called emitters of uh the waste and gases and all these things are always giving very little funding if at all they give. So this means this element of funding will never be materialized. So what options do we have as African countries? Can we come up with our own homebased solutions towards mitigating the effect of uh climate change because it is affecting us as a country and as a continent and definitely we need to do something towards this end. So what is our solution as Africa towards uh these challenges because financing is always going to be the elephant in the room.
Thank you very much.
Thank Thank you. So, uh before we finish, um I I think that um I saw I saw a number of hands from the host country, but I'm only going to give two. So, one member from the from the National Assembly and one from the Senate, and that will be it.
Thank you very much. I want to thank you for recognizing us. one is a very controversial question which I think will be taken in good faith.
Uh we have seen and heard and followed Bill Gates championing this methane agenda and uh in it as an aspect of artificial meat and also improving on species of rice. What is the point of convergence between this movement of ours and what Bill Gates is doing towards this agenda of Medina? Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. So I have uh I have questions here which which which I think now I will pose to to the >> Thank you. I forgot to say I'm senator Senator for Bongo and Majority Whip at the Senate.
>> Thank you very and chairman of the committee of agriculture, livestock and blue economy.
>> Thank you very much.
So um I I want to throw it here and I think members of the other panel if you're still around please feel free to to to chip in. So the the first question I think finance has cut across a number of questions. There was a question uh from Tunisia that basically talked about the financing problem or obstacle uh for using methane for example for for for clean energy and wondering whether there are models or ways in which this can be resolved or whether there are donors out there that are willing to to make this a reality and then there's a question of whether the methane question is really financial or just a matter of uh political will and the other question of finance is u what the the financing options are. I think that was the last question here given that all these cops and the different international processes don't seem to be delivering. So I don't know who wants to take the finance question from up here. Anyone any volunteers either now or the do I have any members of the previous panel?
Oh yes please let's let's let's take the microphone here and uh and for the benefit of everybody please do introduce yourself. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much.
>> No no no not not you sir let's start here. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Yeah I can um a little bit on the finance. I think I mean those are all very important questions that have been raised and I think it's um on the framing of is it the finance or the political will I think it's the both I mean to share a few numbers for example from the global methane status report it it has shown that finance specifically on methane has increased quite a lot by roughly 18% in the last year so um I think in 2023 it was almost 14 billion US dollars globally which of course is a much lower number than the estimated need for um all of the methane abatement that would be needed to by 2030 to achieve the global methane pledge target which would be close to 130 billion. So of course there's a big gap but to put that a little bit into perspective that is actually the the full amount that will be needed for methane is just around 6% of what we've seen in global climate finance flows. for example, from I think the last numbers from from 2023, for example. So, it's definitely an an overcomeable hurdle and there is a lot of um growing financing available. But but one thing that we've also often heard especially from finance institutions and private sector is that what can be done on the really national level is creating those enabling conditions. So having actionable having um predictable regulatory frameworks in place that can then really attract that and so of course that does come with some upfront cost to really like work on those and to have like for example MRV that has been mentioned a lot having those in place. So for that of course um there is a a continued need on some of the concessional donor funding or whether it's through philanthropies or international organizations that support on that. Um and so yes in terms of what's also been raised by the um Tunisian member of parliament colleague over there um that certainly is something that I think is is we've seen increasing for example in in the waste sector. So I there is some support on that available including for example the the CCAC um supports some of these waste um pilot projects as well to really um use methane as a as a revenue generating resource. Um so maybe I'll end it here if if anyone else wants to contribute on these questions.
>> Thank you. Uh honorable DA you could uh go very briefly and then we can come up here.
>> Thank you very much. Um, as I indicated in the face of the overwhelming evidence that we have that climate actions and specifically actions against me uh is economically beneficial.
So as honorable member from Kenya suggested while we look for funding from donor partners, development partners, it is also important we consider homegrown policies to generate resources to undertake such measures. Most importantly, some of these uh actions do not require uh so much funding as uh Dr. Chieven uh illustrated in the rice farming uh these actions are very cost effective cheap measures that do not require substantial funding. So as much as funding is very important lifeblood for maintain action. It is also important we don't let external funding become stamping stamping block to our African initiatives. uh to reduce methane emissions because after all economically we stand to benefit. If you reduce methane in rice production you increase productivity. So economically it makes sense whether there is funding or there is no funding. That is the point I want to reiterate uh for us all.
Thank you.
>> Thank thank you. Thank you very much. Um there was a question that I think um came last. the the questioner actually said it was controversial about artificial meat and and different types of rice species. Um it's it's kind of political, but I wanted to find out what the the debates look like right now. The whole question of artificial meat versus I think there are things that are going on around improving breeds and that sort of thing. I wonder whether there's anyone who wants to try.
>> C can I say something?
>> Yes, please do.
>> Before I leave the scientist to deal with artificial meat and the rice varieties, but let me say this about financing. Uh from the illustrations this afternoon, it has been very clearly uh proven that if we improve on the quality of the animals that we have, we reduce the amount of methane. If we improve on their health, we reduce on the amount of methane that they make to the environment. If we also improve on the quality of feed that we give them, we still reduce. So we can do a lot that is not necessarily requiring financing in the national strategic options that are taken to improve on the livestock production and even aggressive production. If you look at on the other side of the rise it was very clearly illustrated that intermittent watering I I saw that that can also reduce the amount of by a large percentage. So we need to revisit our strategic options as a country and the application of science as it were so that we can do the normal things that we are doing in natural development and therefore reduce me then even as we look for financing for the more critical and know demanding issues.
>> Thank you. Thank you Dr. Claudia. I saw you holding the mic.
>> Thank you. So I wanted to touch on different topics that have been raised.
So there's a question that was raised about bio gas for for small holders. So we had the African component bio gas program and they actually were able because for biogas yes you need to install the bio gas digesttors. It's a burden to the farmer overall it's profitable when you look at time saved and so on and that program actually has generated carbon credits to help farmers install the bio gas. So in this this situation it's very helpful. We're really talking about smallcale bio gas digesttors nothing too big and it was smallcale farmers that were able to implement these um in other topics of financing. So there are different um applications that can be written like for the green climate fund. Um they are long processes. It takes a lot of time.
Um there has a dairy intervention for mitigation adaptation project been approved for East Africa is four countries Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Randa. And that project is actually worth uh 358 million and it's working uh as I said on dairy and ephod has is implementing partner there. We are helping backsting technically there then um but like there is um possibilities there. These projects can be written.
There are organizations you can reach out for to to think that through and how you could do that. But the interventions we're talking about um biogas yes you need an upfront um investment but for some you don't need that much upfront investment and you also don't want your farmers to be like going depth to change what they're doing and they're probably also going to be changing slowly. There's not that a farmer will change like everything. I talked to somebody Madagascar from rice and she's like our farmers they did the alternative wetting and drying but they would start with a small parcel and see if that works for them. It's their livelihood. They cannot make a massive change on their production system. They need to start small. So it's a small scaling as well. They cannot like they also need to learn these these new uh solutions. They need to do it slowly. So we cannot I don't know if like massive financing there is helping them. They they just need to I think capacity building is really what we're looking at what we need finance for but not necessarily for the for the farmers and they know all the countries we have big countries um and extension is hard uh because of distances but there are other methodologies through applications through the phone and so on. looking beyond that um then there was a question around gates funded projects so um uh well I can speak from our lab we have one project that is gates funded we're looking at low methane forages what does that mean we're actually looking at forage assessions in our gene bank these are forages that we just stored basically the genetics so we make sure they're not getting lost because they're not growing that often anymore but we and we're also looking through forages that are grown on farms right now where we started out and we're looking some of these forages have tenants they have components that can potentially reduce methane. So we we're screening these we're having a laboratory procedure where we can look first in the lab and if there's a forage that looks promising then we're doing an animal experiment and measure the methane. But when we're looking at that, the idea is that we have a forage that um does not reduce productivity. Often we're looking at legumes there. We're having often low protein diets in animal production system. So adding legumes would actually help. So there's no like genetic modification or anything happening there. We have a poster around that. You can look at it uh in the breakout site.
um artificial meat.
I don't think Africa is necessarily working on it. Maybe get me wrong. Uh I've been a while to to seminars where that was discussed. I think it is a technology that's worked on. I don't know how big the market for that is actually. It's it's not that easy to do because you can grow muscle fibers but then you don't have fat inside. It's not an easy technology and I don't think the mark like at this point is even more expensive than if you have normal meat and um the emissions you also need to look emissions associated with that and I don't think they were that small at this point either. So there's the technology that needs to be developed and then in the end it's a consumer's choice. So uh I don't see that pushing into Africa anytime soon if you're honest. Thank thank you very much. We are completely out of time. I have got a lot of um questions and and and many people um requesting to speak but allow me to just give these panelists 30 seconds each to finish so that we can go because dinner is actually approaching rather rapidly.
Yeah. So let's let's go that way.
So we'll consider the meat comment at your your final take and then we we keep going.
Yes. And from Ilry, they say that you can visit them out here. They have some solutions they proposing. So, let's let's let's go as as as we go along.
Yes. 30 seconds.
>> All right. Uh thank you. uh I I'm not aware of any artificial rice uh because all the rice that we have is grown from the soil and we do have a breeding program where we take different uh genetic material and then uh we work on improving the varieties for productivity and then also working on those that reduce methane emissions. But we also take into consideration the consumer requirements. For example, in Tanzania, if you bring rice that is not aromatic, not like it. So, we do take into consideration the local requirements.
>> Okay. Thank you. Let's let's let's keep going. That >> Thank you, Joe. I think I I just wanted to answer also from a political point of view the issue of uh artificial meat which is also called cultivated meat and that uh it is it's actually a stem from the animal life and taken to a bio reactor laboratory and all that will mean that it is only now in Europe or America that have those facilities and they'll be able to supply us and so it's business for them and so for Africans I I don't think we need that. We have our live animals here. We'll continue eating our normal animals.
>> Thank you.
>> They can use their own artificial uh and and meat or whatever. On the issue of uh the the rice uh husks and something like that are normally going to waste. It can be used as a feed lot or a foder for animals especially during drought. So we are killing two birds in one stone reducing on the waste of the rice and feeding the animals during drought. So that is something that actually governments and institutions can think about it. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you. Our message from South Africa is that um climate action in agriculture and waste management and other sectors should be integrated into a broader development agenda and it should be funded and capacitated through fair and equitable systems that consider the common but differentiated responsibilities Santa, >> thank you very much.
>> Let me also take the opport this opportunity to thank my panelists for being there for us and giving us the information that we need and probably thank you Joe because I we might miss it out at the end of the day. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you. Thank you very very much.
Please give them a round of applause as they as as they go down.
Wow, what a day it has been, right? How many people believe that this has been a great day?
>> Oh, yes. So, even if I didn't give you a chance to speak, it's it's nothing personal, right?
All right. So ladies and gentlemen, as we conclude this first full day of deliberations, allow me to thank all the speakers, moderators, experts, partners, delegates for what has been exceptionally rich and constructive in this conversation.
Today's discussions have helped us deepen our understanding of one Africa's broader climate realities, the science and policy dimensions of methane and the practical intersections between methane reduction, agriculture development and livelihood such as even the illuminating debates we just had. Now, several important themes emerged consistently throughout the day and I'll just mention a few. First that methane reduction presents one of the most immediate opportunities for climate action. That came very very uh strongly. The second one is that parliamentary leadership is indispensable. Legislation, oversight, budgeting and public engagement will all shape whether climate commitments translate into measurable outcomes or not. The third one is that Africa's climate pathways must remain grounded in the continent's developmental realities.
This came out very strongly across the panels and that climate action cannot be separated from food security, economic development, energy access, social inclusion and so on. And finally, there's immense value in regional learning and collaboration that again came out very very strongly. The exchange of experiences across African parliament is itself one of the strongest outcomes of this first day.
Now tomorrow our discussions will continue with a focus on waste systems, decentralized energy solutions, methane reduction strategies and pathways for coordinated parliamentary action moving forward. I know you're looking forward to that and we encourage you to come early and keep time. So, thank you very much for your engagement, discipline, and contributions throughout the day. I look forward to to tomorrow. And just a logistical note, dinner is served. It will be ready at 6:30 from how I understand it in a place called Al-Masi Banquet Hall in this hotel. So, please um show up for the dinner at 6:30 for more uh conversations. Otherwise, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure being up here. I have loved it. As Santeni Sana
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