Promising climate options for Ethiopia, Kenya

(UN Environment, 9 Nov 2018) A new report draws on the climate change mitigation experiences of a number of countries to highlight “win-win” options for Ethiopia and Kenya.

The Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – have valuable experience in developing solutions that can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and save money in the longer term.

All these countries are moving towards carbon neutral economies. Finland, for example, aims to be carbon neutral by 2045. However, in their journey along this road to date, they have often had to learn climate change mitigation the hard way – through failures and repeated experiments.

A report launched last week, Nordic Green to Scale for Countries/Africa, sets out how Kenya and Ethiopia can benefit from this experience – as well as the experiences of countries such as Brazil, China, Costa Rica and Germany – to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 16 per cent of the projected business as usual emissions by 2030, and chalk up economic and environmental gains along the way.

“The report identifies nine tested ‘win-win’ solutions which, apart from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, can also have significant benefits for people and the environment,” says Tuuli Hietaniemi, a climate specialist with the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, the driving force behind the report.

She was speaking at a presentation opened by Joyce Msuya, the Deputy Director-General of UN Environment, underlining the importance of the report to UN Environment’s programme of work.

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UN Environment, 9 Nov 2018: Promising climate options for Ethiopia, Kenya