Meeting recently in Brazzaville, Congo, stakeholders from the sub region insisted on the need for governments to include climate change in development planning.

In preparation for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 17^th Conference of Parties, (COP 17) summit beginning in Durban, South Africa on Monday November 28, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s Sub-regional Office for Central Africa, from November 8 to 10 in Brazzaville, Congo organised a stakeholders’ seminar to come up with a common front.

Rising from the seminar, participants that included national development planners and parliamentarians, called on their governments to henceforth include climate change issues in their development planning and policies. Speaking to Cameroon Tribune yesterday Thursday November 24 in Yaounde on the outcome of the seminar, the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s Central African Sub-regional Office Economic Affairs Officer, Prof. Daniel Gbetnkom, said the seminar was necessitated by the fact that many governments in the sub region do not include climate change mitigating activities in their development planning, though it is a major challenge to development all over the world.

He pointed out that the role of planners as initiators of development policy and parliamentarians as those with oversight authority over government action, was crucial in the success of the initiative.

Other recommendations include: the setting up of an internet climate change exchange forum among stakeholders in the sub region, boosting the activities of environmental protection institutions to include climate change in their activities, putting in place a sub regional policy and strategy on climate change, and an economic programme for climate change by member states.

In 1992, countries joined the climate change treaty to cooperatively consider what they could do to limit average global temperature increases and the resulting climate change, and to cope with impacts which were by then, inevitable. The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, will bring together representatives of the world's governments, international organisations and civil society to assess strides made and the way forward.