Kepsa launches private sector strategy on climate change

"Our goal is to constantly re-evaluate intervention strategies through concerted efforts to enhance the competitiveness and status of the country as envisioned in Vision 2030," said Carole Kariuki, Chief Executive Officer of KEPSA during the launch in a city hotel.

She said as a cross-sectorial phenomenon, climate change impacts the gains made towards competitiveness, thus calling for urgent action, intervention, leadership at the highest level, and commitment by all to support and contribute to fighting the vagaries of climate change.

"The Private Sector Strategy on Climate Change (2022- 2030) has thus been developed as a national guide for the private sector to invest and implement climate change solutions at national and county levels in line with the reviewed Kenya's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)," she added.

Ms Kariuki said it prioritises private enterprises vulnerable to the impacts of climate change including Medium, Small and Micro-Enterprises and is anchored on four pillars. The pillars are climate change mitigation ambition, climate change adaptation and resilience, climate information and capacity building and public Private Partnerships (PPPs) for climate solutions.

"Engaging the private sector in climate action as implementers is essential if we are to accelerate the transformation to a low-carbon development pathway," added Ms Kariuki.

Private entities dominate many decisions key to adaptation, for example, the location and design of roads, buildings, and other infrastructure investments, agricultural research on drought-resistant seeds). Others are waste and water management infrastructure and technologies, model of financing, development of adaptive technologies in all sectors and dissemination of adaptation products and services.

But even as the private sector launched the strategy, financing was mentioned as among the challenge towards implementing the above business climate solutions. This is due to lack of access to financing options to create low-carbon and climate-resilient development pathways. Others challenges are technical capacity in climate science nexus and business modelling, awareness of opportunities for investment in climate change-related issues, and community engagement and alignment.

Developed nations have been blamed to be the cause of climate change through producing the highest carbon emission to the atmosphere. Kenya contributes less than 0.1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually yet its most affected by in terms of droughts and flooding.