South Africa is at an advanced stage with formulating its national policy on mitigating the effects of climate change.

According to Environment, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Barbara Creecy, South Africa’s National Climate Change Bill is now at an advanced stage and is expected to be passed into law in the near future.

The purpose of the Bill is to build an effective climate change response and ensure the long-term, just transition to a climate resilient and lower carbon economy and society.

This will be done within the context of sustainable development for South Africa, and will provide for all matters related to climate change.

“It is heartening to see that since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015, many African countries have made significant progress in moving towards the development and implementation of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),” the Minister said.

NDCs embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

“For Africa, addressing and responding to the impacts of Climate Change is critical for the sustainable development of our Continent. Climate Change also presents opportunities for our Continent which we should work on harnessing, in order to realise the aspirations contained in Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want,” she said.

She said despite the progress being made on the continent to implement the NDCs, creating the enabling policy environments to fully harness the opportunities arising from the implementation of NDCs still requires further work on the continent.

“We need to create a conducive environment for this to happen. We have a number of encouraging NDC case studies on the continent which demonstrate that Africa is prepared to make its fair share of the contribution towards the global effort to combat Climate Change.

“We should learn from each other and make further efforts to exchange our experiences in implementing the NDCs, as well as the challenges we are experiencing,” the Minister said.

She was delivering opening remarks at the Africa day side event taking place during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) CoP25 in Madrid, Spain, on Tuesday.

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