Teferi Melesse Desta, the recently appointed successor to Fesseha Shawel Gebre as Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has affirmed the importance of climate cooperation as part of the two countries’ diplomatic relations.
The ambassador has set among his top priorities the promotion of trade, tourism, and investment between the two nations as an integral part of comprehensive and sustainable climate policies. An important factor for this goal is Ethiopia’s participation in the upcoming COP26 UN Climate Conference to be held in Glasgow.
The focus on climate change is especially crucial for Ethiopia at this time given recent natural disasters that have had devastating effects on the nation’s agricultural industry. The most recent of these disasters was the locust-swarm that wreaked havoc across the country.
Emphasis on climate change is not only limited to Ethiopia’s relation with European countries, however. In October of last year, the International Fund for Agricultural Development launched a 305.7 milion USD program to assist farmers increase the resilience of their crops.
Continued cooperation, especially in resource sharing, is essential to Ethiopia. More than 80 percent of the population is employed in the agricultural sector and agricultural disaster, like the one in 2018 that left 8.5 million in need of assistance, are situations that a nation with the capacity that Ethiopia has, should not be crippled by.
Bloomberg, Relief Web, The Voice