The Women’s Climate Centres International (WCCI) has developed a community hub project in the eastern Ugandan town of Tororo to address climate change issues.
Development Diaries understands that climate change is one of the major threats to Uganda’s sustainable development and efforts to end poverty.
It is understood that the rate of forest cover loss in Uganda stands at 2.6 percent annually, one of the highest in the world.
According to the 2016/17 Uganda National Household Survey, more than 80 percent of the country’s rural households use firewood for cooking.
The high demand for wood fuel and limited access to energy saving alternatives means that forest cover is at risk of continued degradation.
Lead administrator at WCCI and founder of Uganda Women’s Water Initiative (UWWI), Comfort Mukasa, sees the climate centre as an opportunity to tap into low-cost indigenous climate solutions.
‘The end goal for WCCI is to create a one-stop climate solutions centre for local, national, and international learning’, she said.
The East Africa Coordinator and one of the network’s founding members, Rose Wamalwa, noted the value of community hubs for women in the climate sphere.
‘As an African woman, I believe it is important to have a physical space to address climate change because it will promote equity and inclusion, and that means it will encourage community engagement in decision-making processes.
‘Globally we know that women’s environmental leadership has proven time and again to be one of the greatest leverage points for increasing our collective environmental and climate resilience initiations’.
Wamalwa, who is also the founder of Women in Water and Natural Resources Conservation (WWANC), said she felt motivated to create a platform for women’s voices in the area of climate resilience and environmental protection and conservation after conducting a survey in the region and discovering that many rural women held similar desires.
‘We want the women to be involved, not just as beneficiaries of climate change projects, but as planners, decision-makers, and managers, and we feel that through this approach of climate centres they will have a voice and platform where they can raise their issues’, Wamalwa said.
‘Women have the solutions, they have the power, and they have the potential. So as WCCI we are creating this platform and calling upon all local and international stakeholders to join us in pushing this initiative. We want to see women climate centres in all countries’.
WCCI says it has large ambitions and hopes to use the first few climate centres it establishes as a model and catalyst for community hubs that empower women to be at the forefront in addressing climate change across the world.
Source: Climate Home News
Photo source: Fred Mugeni/Climate Home News