Volunteerism boosts in response to climate challenge and associated risks
Climate action to boost volunteerism for development
Copenhagen, Denmark - A UNV volunteer delegate to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen has predicted a boost to volunteerism and development programming as the world responds to the climate challenge and associated risks.
The COP15 conference held in Denmark in December 2009 was notable for many reasons including the presentation by UNV of more than 1.5 million hours of voluntary environmental action and the record-breaking attendance of world leaders seeking to negotiate a global climate deal.
Among the 45,000 people who attended the meeting was MacDonald Kadzatsa, a native of Zimbabwe who is working as an International UNV volunteer Disaster Risk Management Specialist with the Directorate of Disaster Risk Management in Namibia.
Mr. Kadzatsa was actively involved in helping Namibia evaluate the negotiations and highlight its own needs for disaster management and risk reduction. Working in snow-bound Denmark until the early morning, day after day, was a difficult but also stimulating task, he said. "It is tough," he said. "I am part of the Namibia delegation to COP15 and have been following the COP work on climate change adaptation and mitigation."
Mr. Kadzatsa is contributing to efforts in Namibia to integrate practices, tools and systems for climate risk assessment and to build management and disaster risk reduction strategies into national policies and programmes. "More extreme weather events in future are likely to increase the number and scale of disasters, while at the same time the existing methods and tools of disaster risk reduction provide powerful capacities for adaptation to climate change," he said.
He noted that volunteers have a crucial role to play in community adaptation to climate change and predicted that the role of volunteerism will grow as the world responds to global warming. "I see a niche for the UNV to scale up in Namibia, and indeed globally, to contribute towards increased awareness about climate change and adaptation and mitigation, especially at community levels. I foresee increased demand in both disaster risk reduction programmes and humanitarian work as disasters increase," Mr. Kadzatsa said.
"Although there is a temptation to regard climate change adaptation and mitigation as a global challenge, there are opportunities in the responses to climate change that will contribute to human development and increased contributions towards poverty reduction. Volunteering for development is thus likely to be strengthened by the global climate debate," he said.