In any given developmental paradigms, it is the desire of every developing country to be a middle-income country, not poverty stricken or economic basket cases, but where high-quality of life is realised and demonstrated by its citizens.

By Peter Makwanya

As such, low-carbon development initiatives should be properly and appropriately communicated to the concerned citizens, so that they stay knowing those fundamental principles and practices expected of them.

For any country to attain a middle income status supported a sound economic base, industrialisation, technological development, clean energy development, sustainable environment and life-long learning, strategic communication is paramount.

Paramount in the sense of outreaching, conscientising, engaging and educating local communities. It is always the duty of responsible authorities in these countries to make information available to their citizens, not safe-guarded, confidential and State-protected information safeguarding the nation’s security interests, but information designed to improve the people’s lives and their environments, should always be readily available.

What does a low-carbon climate initiative entails? It is there to foster initiatives and innovations that address and manage effects of climate change in order to promote sustainable development.

As concerned and climate conscious governments seek to work on the low-carbon resilient mechanisms, these should be communicated and strongly anchored within the frameworks of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), at the same time protecting the environment.

Major concerns have also been raised about the ability of developing countries to respect their environmental concerns and property rights, which means that the aspects of utmost good faith and ethical considerations always elude these countries.

As developing countries attempt to map their development initiatives and pathways, they should also have to deal with internal obstacles and climate barriers littered all over their ways.

These include ballooning populations, under-performing economies, greenhouse gas emissions and many carbon footprints dominating their landscapes.

Competition for scarce resources in the form of water shortages, arable and grazing land is also another barrier that has contributed to internally driven small-scale conflicts.

Lack of knowledge and ignorance have also contributed to abuse of citizens with regard to their land and forest rights, community participation and shared ownership schemes.

It is always significant for authorities to communicate and make their visions clear, so that they arm their citizens to plan for the future risk and challenges.

No country can prosper with carbon footprints strewn all over. These include degraded landscapes, indiscriminately felled trees, poisoned streams, rivers, dams and lakes as well as smoke-choked and thickened skies. When situations are pointing to the above scenarios then the transition to low-carbon initiatives and responses will not be realised.

This also include the significant reductions of all carbon emissions including a halt to the destruction of natural resources, which should stop forth-with. If all the stated ills and short-comings are stopped, then we can say that, low-carbon climate resilient initiatives have performed the duty of communicating sustainable livelihoods in a people centred and specific ways, enough to contribute to human development.

Sustainable communication practices, fundamental in this regard, need to be harnessed, in symbiotic and complementary ways, channelled from the following pillars of sustainable development: the governments, private sector, civil and ecumenical perspectives, gender streamlined, environmental communities of practices, not forgetting schools and children to complete the equation of sustainable development. These inclusive, actively engaging and participatory paradigms will indeed leave on one behind, as according to the SDGs mantra.

If the governments of developing countries take issues of climate change seriously, then, low-carbon climate resilient initiatives will be achieved, each and every sector will follow suit. In this regard, it is the government’s duty, first and foremost, is to lead by example, through regulating, planning, leading, training, educating, policing, arresting, rehabilitating and unifying.

Job and employment creation, will not only be about just creating jobs in general but green jobs, where industries and companies participate in programmes that assist in limit greenhouse gas emissions, deal with waste disposal, including e-waste, lowering power productions costs through clean methods, and above all and everything else, through, safe-guarding the natural ecosystems.

These sustainable initiatives are done in order to improve the quality of lives of the local people.

Engaging in internally driven adaptation programmes does not mean that international climate funding is not required, but this will always call upon for developing countries to be motivated, and demonstrate a desire and unlimited keen interests to eliminate climate challenges.

After that is said and done, we can then safely say that, our countries are open for business.

Peter Makwanya is a climate change communicator. He writes in his capacity and can be contacted on: petrovmoyt@gmail.com

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