By Najib Mulema
Climate change, with its far reaching effects has become one of the greatest challenges facing humankind today.
More frequent natural disasters and weather extremes, increased water scarcity, inundated coastal zones and the accelerating extinction of species are just some of its direct consequences in industrialized and developing countries like Uganda.
However, the good news is that SEED, a global partnership for action on green environment and sustainable development has engaged a number of enterprises, financial institutions, policy makers and business development service providers in a bid to find solutions to the most pressing issues in the climate finance sector.
In a Practitioner Lab Climate Finance dialogue that took place on Tuesday at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala, stakeholders were categorized into four groups and were tasked to define key challenges, discuss solutions, and develop financial product prototypes for their particular groupings.
The groups included;-Energy efficiency financing, renewable energy and infrastructure financing, micro insurance financing as well as Irrigation systems financings.
Mr. Jonas Restle, an official at SEED said the Lab helps to bring together different stakeholders who share the same interests and here they exchange ideas or find financers who can inject funds in a particular project.
He also noted that well-designed climate ?nancial products help to supply ?nance to climate-smart enterprise by reducing risks, enhancing expected financial returns or bridging existing infrastructure gaps.
Mr. Joel Muhumuza, a Partner Support Specialist at Financial Sector Deepening Uganda (FSDU) was a group leader for Micro-Insurance during the dialogue.
He said as FSDU through weather indexing and renewable energy infrastructure ?nancing, they intended to find a solution that can deliver micro insurance efficiently to small scale farmers.
He said farmers incur a lot of losses due to unpredictable climate conditions yet they are ignorant about the insurance premiums which can help them cover their losses.
Meanwhile, the participants managed to transform challenges into innovative ?nancial products after a highly interactive and innovative co-creation process.
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