Luanda - The Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Monday urged member states to take a proactive stance and strengthen anticipatory action programmes to mitigate climate risks, scheduled for the 2024-2025 season.
According to the final communiqué of the organisation's extraordinary session, dedicated to analysing the situation of drought and floods induced by the El Niño phenomenon, the states took note of the multifaceted and cascading impact of drought and floods induced by this phenomenon.
The communiqué adds that this impact is felt in various sectors, such as agriculture, livelihood security, food security, nutrition, health, water and energy, which is why it called for coordinated, integrated and harmonised interventions to tackle them.
Similarly, the Summit expressed its concern about the humanitarian situation caused by the drought and floods induced by the El Niño phenomenon, which has left more than 61 million people affected.
In this context, a regional humanitarian appeal was launched for at least USD 5.5 billion, aimed at increasing the internal resources of the Member States affected, including the efforts to mobilise resources from national, regional and international partners in response to the impacts of the drought and floods induced by El Niño.
The summit noted that an addendum to the SADC Regional Humanitarian Appeal will be published in August 2024 to reflect changing humanitarian needs as more member states finalise their in-depth assessments of the impact of El Nino-induced drought and flooding.
The meeting welcomed the pledge of USD 33 million from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and USD 10 million from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for the SADC Regional Humanitarian Appeal and called for additional support from the international community to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of Member States and affected communities.
The Summit welcomed the Member States that have declared a State of Calamity and Emergency or a State of Agricultural Drought for recognising the seriousness of the drought and floods induced by the El Niño phenomenon.
It called on the other member states and international cooperation partners to show solidarity and support the member states affected by national disasters.
The meeting also urged Member States that have not yet finalised their assessment of the impacts of the El Niño phenomenon to speed up the process so that they can calculate the scale of the phenomenon.
The event also called on SADC member states with cereal surpluses to prioritise exports to others with deficits.
It also urged member states to continue supporting affected communities and to draw up and make operational their disaster preparedness and response plans, with the support of the SADC Secretariat and other partners.
The Head of State´s Summit strongly condemned the attempted coup d'état perpetrated by a group of terrorists made up of national and foreign citizens, with the aim of destabilising the democratic institutions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which took place on 19 May 2024, and reaffirms its categorical opposition to constitutional changes in government
In this regard, it thanked the people of the DRC and reiterated SADC's commitment to supporting efforts by the DRC authorities to safeguard the territorial integrity, sovereignty and security of the population. SC/DAN/DOJ
