The Vice President of Uganda Jessica Alupo has criticized the Western world for selectively fighting the East African Crude Oil Pipeline- EACOP .
Alupo made the remarks while representing President Museveni at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.
She said that it is hypocritical for countries that are at the centre of polluting the environment to begin preaching to countries which have borne the impact of these environmental violations how to act responsibly.
“It is regrettable and hypocritical that some of the regions and nations that mismanaged the environment and are disproportionately responsible for global warming have embarked on a rigorous campaign to thwart efforts of other countries, to responsibly and sustainably develop the oil and gas sectors. Our view is that development should be environmentally friendly, inclusive and provide benefits for all; it should leave no one behind,” Alupo said.
She explained that the African continent like many developing regions of the world suffers the effects of Climate Change to a disproportionate degree and that Uganda has continued to experience prolonged droughts, floods, erratic rainfall patterns, landslides and melting of ice caps at its highest mountain; Mt. Ruwenzori despite contributing an insignificant amount of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Alupo said that Uganda has continued to scale up investments in climate adaptation and mitigation measures such as; increasing access to clean energy to enhance production and increasing forest and wetland cover among other interventions.
“We, therefore, urge the developed countries in line with the Paris Agreement to fully deliver on the USD100 billion goal commitments per year, to assist developing countries in their climate change actions to mitigate the adverse effects,” Alupo said.
Meanwhile, the Vice President also stressed the need to reform the UN Security Council to have a proportional representation of Africa.
“The present geopolitical realities are more compelling for a comprehensive reform of the Security Council to make way for equitable representation. Africa with more than one billion citizens, and with over seventy per cent of issues on the agenda of the Council, continues to suffer the historical injustice of having no representation in the Permanent category of the Security Council, and is under-represented in the non-Permanent category too,” Alupo said.