Collective Efforts of Technology, Innovation and Policy to Curb Climate Change.
Climate change was a false idea to the vast majority and the agenda seemed to belong to some folks with their own personal interests. Increasingly, governments and business leaders recognize that the opposite is true; to date, climate change has everyone’s attention, especially business leaders.
Direct economic catastrophe is difficult to estimate due to the less analysis done thus far, but the impairment in the business line has been tapped. Climate change has been distressing the customer behaviours, choices and eventually purchasing preferences that fast-track the dynamics in the supply chains hence the market shock in the leading sectors like Agriculture with a repercussion to Tanzania’s per capita income.
Making my head spin; Tanzania’s largest commercial “Dar es Salaam” has been stressed by environmental challenges like poor roadside air quality, noise pollution, poor water quality, business areas becoming the victim of floods, a drastic increase in temperature that aggrandizers the influx of pets and disease and deterioration of aquatic systems and decrease of crop yields that have a great influence on the economy.
Dar es Salaam’s population is growing rapidly, the increase of population is termed as “dysfunctional”, this process has been accelerating the depletion of the forests, removal of the little existing urban green spaces and jeopardizing the water bodies which leads to the increase of the carbon footprints eventually narrowing the climate change effects. For Tanzania to respond to this global and walk the talk it needs both a technological & Innovation approach and a governance approach.
In the Innovation approach, it’s a perfect time for Tanzania to challenge businessmen to reinvent climate-smart technologies to improve resource productivity, creating enough for new supply chains and therefore unlocking the new markets. This gives a degree of foresight to innovate potential market-based instruments like solar panels and wind turbines, design drip irrigation systems, design greenhouses, and introduce new crop hybrids. Also, use the technological approach to enable them to quantify, reduce and monitor emissions in an efficient & transparent fashion manner.
Having that said, I had an opportunity to engage with Ankit Agarwal who’s a senior consultant at NIRAS, an Experienced consultant in low-carbon technologies across India, South Asia, Africa and the UK and Dr Siima Bakengesa( PhD) who’s the Director of Forest Production Research at Tanzania Research Institute (TAFORI).
Following our discussion; during the engagement, I was prompted to ask a couple of questions and their response brought a couple of eye-opening details.
What are the technological and innovation approaches used in the UK to combat climate change in a fast-growing city like London?
With respect to clean energy development, the UK is the leading offshore wind developer in the world today with a current installed base of nearly 8 GW. Besides this, the UK (particularly) Scotland has invested significantly in the R&D and commercial deployment of other innovative technologies such as tidal and wave energy technologies said, Ankit Agarwal.
How is Tanzania using technology as an enabler in curbing the climate change threat?
At TAFORI we are contributing to the implementation of the National Determined Contribution Framework 2021 which calls for use of technology in climate change mitigation and adaptation actions. We are supporting interventions that build resilience to ensure sustainable development through developing green landscapes, especially forests. We are supporting nationwide forest landscape restoration programmes and initiatives, by making sure that we develop technology in collaboration with partners and disseminate it to end-users. One of the technologies used, one that matches sites with tree species to be planted to reduce off-site planting that reduces productivity and erodes return to investment. Through SSMT, we are committed to supporting the Government commitment done by our President Samia Suluhu Hassan at Glasgow- Scotland of planting 276 million trees, success in efforts to combat climate change said, Dr Siima Bakengesa( PhD).
On the other side of the story, It’s very interesting seeing few investors in Tanzania investing in green ventures by tailoring them step by step, unit by unit to become market-based green companies. Of course, despite the government pledges made; business managers cannot afford the financial risk associated hence the renewable sector receives less attention compared to nonrenewable investment companies because the investment atmosphere is accompanied by a hedge of challenges that blocks gigantic essentials of reforming the production aptitude to produce new products. How long are they willing to wait? Not sure!.
In this case, not all the shareholders are trailblazers as a result there is a risk of some shareholders withdrawing their investments from the companies because they strictly do not buy the climate-smart idea. On the other hand, it’s a perfect time to upload the politicians to stop championing ineffective green policies and start encouraging the policies that will create a smooth infrastructure for shareholders to invest in green innovation. Substantial reduction of GHG emission by 2030 needs strategic leaders who are daring and compelling in shifting the thinking of the investors to invest in clean energy.
Tanzania is marked to have one of the best environmental policies, yet the collective efforts are insufficient. These particular policies are hindered by inadequate resources, poor coordination, professional mismatch and sustainable implementation strategies. On this point, We also had a chance to dive into the policies, like what are the low hanging fruits and how can they be utilised. Here is what we talked about;
What are the policies that can be used in Tanzania to encourage climate action?
This is of-course really broad but there is a need to support/promote private-sector-led market development approaches through appropriate policy and regulatory framework. With respect to clean energy, while Tanzania has one of the most supportive policy and regulatory frameworks on paper, in practice, project developers and energy enterprises face challenges with respect to lack of substantive financial and licensing support due to the prioritization of the national grid extension by TANESCO said, Ankit Agarwal.
Nonetheless, the response to such global threats needs intense academic reasoning, where Tanzania must see the need of raising the climate-smart business minds by injecting climate literacy, by integrating its education curriculum. Climate change education is likely to make the younger generation more aware of the nation’s vulnerability and chances to its survival, it paves the way for the key drivers to curb the future business crisis likely to worsen in the next 10–20 years.
Achieving the economic potential in climate change adaptation and mitigation needs a 360-degree combined effort of the citizens, politicians, and businessmen. It is also a great chance to reform societies, incubate responsible citizens, fabricate critical thinkers to come up with tangible alternatives in the production line and insert behavioural change that has a direct connection to the economy of the nation.
