Tembea Village Climate Action Now (VillageCAN)
In the face of climate-crisis worsened by climate-inaction on account of evident financing-gaps, TEMBEA strive to enable all villages take urgent-action to combat climate-change & its impacts. Climate is changing in ways that pose increasing risks to people and ecosystems, evidenced by: destructive-floods, prolonged-droughts, unpredictable weather patterns, declining-livestock, disease-outbreaks and low farm-land productivity. Scientific evidence shows that frequency, intensity and duration of extreme events will likely increase hence it will be important to build climate-smart systems, especially around community and youth livelihoods and in education sector so that we protect the hard-earned gains in children education and learning. However, Financing-gap is glaring, UN says climate adaptation funding gap is 50% higher than estimated. UNEP estimates annual financing shortfall for adaptation alone now stands at $194-366 billion, with existing financial flows reaching just $25 billion during 2017-2021 Period. Wealthy nations failed to deliver $100 billion in annual climate finance by 2020. In 2019, Insurer Swiss Re says extreme weather events cost global economy $146 billion despite 50-80% disasters un-insured.
Climate inaction, economists warn could lead to the next big financial crisis considering likely climate-induced changes in asset-valuation, loan-pricing, insurance-claims and productivity capacities leaving vulnerable countries in the global south exposed to climate-change impacts. Though climate-change is a rising priority in governmental policy agendas, its often not translated into scale-up programmes, funding is often limited and resources underestimated. No one nation can solve financing-gap hence urgent need for vulnerable countries in Africa to explore options away from industrialized nation’s failed funding frameworks. Funding options rooted in voluntary contributions is ideal, estimated at $32 billion annually from populations living proximal to each other like college-students and informal economy sector households.
It is against this background that TEMBEA convened a Siaya County participatory climate multi-stakeholders forum during World Environment Day on 5th June, 2024 to chart a village climate-action path. The forum, led by County Government of Siaya under its line department of Water, Sanitation, Environment, Climate-change & Natural Resources conceptualized and developed villageCAN Siaya Project. This project aims to enable all villages in Siaya County take urgent-action to combat climate-change and its impacts through climate-smart markets, finance, enterprise, data and workforce. The main goal is to unlock climate-action finance led by and for youth climate-action skills and enterprises. For TEMBEA, Siaya will serve as a prototype County, whose success will motion climate-partnerships with other National & Devolved Governments.
Specifically, villageCAN nurtures/works with local youth climate-smart champions to automate:
- Village climate-smart market activations (smart eateries, committees, academies, stores) for regularized and institutionalized village climate-actions
- Village climate-action finance app operationalization, Buy Now Pay Loyalties (BNPL) based on loyalty-slips, education-insurance, impact-bonds, financial-vehicles & fundraiser-events.
- Led by & for youth climate-action enterprise goods/service: seedling-nurseries, food-forest apiculture, vermi-culture, feed-formulation, poultry, centrally procured consumables, etc.
- Village climate-action data app operationalization to aid climate-smart data collection, warehousing and analytics for climate-intelligence and carbon-exchange markets.
- Student skill-hubs operationalization for youth workforce apprenticeship on climate-action skills complete with apprentice stipend, volunteer mentors, and on-the-job skills-training.
