Uganda

Uganda submitted its updated NDC to the UNFCCC in September 2022, which included a costed Implementation Plan to cut GHG emissions from 22% to 24.7% by 2030. Significant progress in the country since the submission of the INDC in 2015, including the development of the third National Development Plan (NDP III) and Uganda's NDC Implementation stocktake report, informed Uganda's NDC revision process. These processes harmonised current national climate change initiatives such as Uganda's Long-Term Climate Strategy (LTS), to be submitted in 2022.

Uganda's updated NDC prioritises adaptation. The Adaptation component covers adaptation planning priorities and outlines actions and targets in the sectors of water, sanitation, and ecosystems; agriculture, forestry and fisheries; energy; transport, cities and the built environment; health; and Disaster Risk Reduction. The Business-as-Usual Scenario projects Uganda's emissions to 143 MtCO2e in 2030 and 236.4 MtCO2e in 2050. Uganda plans to employ circular economy measures in Agriculture, Forestry, and Land use (AFOLU); Energy; Transport, and Waste to mitigate these emissions. The government is expected to submit the Updated NDC to the UNFCCC by the end of February 2022.

The first NDC Implementation Plan 2018-2030 puts the country's financial need at USD 5.523 billion for adaptation and mitigation priority actions.

The country completed its Long Term Development Strategy (LTS) for Greenhous Gas emissions in 2022, where it aims to implement a low carbon development pathway while promoting climate resilience by 2050. The country's LTS rests on 15 pillars, including:

• Supporting resilient and low carbon agricultural production and value chains;
• Developing and implementing a land-use regulatory framework to increase land productivity nation-wide;
• Supporting climate-resilient water supply systems and increasing water supply capacity;
• Supporting community engagement for restoration, conservation and safeguarding of forests, catchment areas, riverbeds, and wetlands;
• Creating financial instruments to support the transition to climate-resilience and the recovery from unavoidable loss and damages caused by climate.

The country’s Third National Communication (TNC) to the UNFCCC was also completed in 2022 was officially launched in February 2023 in Mukono, Uganda. The country is now in the process of compiling its 2^nd BUR.

Displaced populations and SDG7

As of June 2022, Uganda was host to more than 1.5 million refugees and asylum seekers, across 13 districts. Numbers have increased by nearly 40 per cent over the last five years, and the refugee population in Uganda is currently the largest in Africa. As with the host communities in which they are embedded, refugees in Uganda face low levels of access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy. A multi-sector needs assessment undertaken in 2018 suggested, for example, that around 95 per cent of refugee and host community households were reliant on firewood or charcoal as their primary fuel source, and on average, host community households owned 1.5 light sources per household while refugees owned 0.7 per household – far below the minimum levels established as a baseline.

Uganda was among the first countries to implement the CRRF, aiming to shift from delivering short-term humanitarian aid to implementing longer-term developmental solutions, in partnership with the international development sector. The global Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) brought the promise of significant additional funding for the country’s humanitarian response, where enhanced coordination of programmes and projects aims to ensure that priority areas are being addressed in a sustainable way while avoiding duplication, gaps or stranded investments:

"The ultimate goal of the CRRF is therefore to enhance the capacities, funds and skills of the government, especially in refugee-hosting districts, including different authorities concerned at national and district levels to address these challenges. This will enable the government to respond and integrate the new arrivals for the benefit of both refugee and host communities. To this end, the application of the CRRF is aligned with local, national and international development plans"