The second Pan-African Parliament (PAP) sitting in South Africa, Tuesday discussed climate change as well as Africa’s progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

According to a release from PAP, Rwanda’s Senator Augustin Iyamuremye, the PAP’s Chairperson of the Committee on Rural Economy, Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment, said: "It is important to target climate change because of its negative impact on human life”.

He outlined issues like the rise of global temperatures, irrational rainfall, aggravation of food shortages, increasing scarcity of water on the continent, as the visible effects of climate change.

To save the continent, Iyamuremye said, the continental parliament needs to design strategies that revolve around increasing sensitization of member states and the promulgation of laws to protect the environment.

Dr. Abebe Haile Gabriel, the acting Director of the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union Commission, briefed the gathering and insisted that Africa’s previous lack of a common platform made the continent’s negotiators vulnerable and their voice unheard.

Some MPs expressed the need for PAP to formulate legislations that would bind all African governments on the need to help preserve their environments. This, they indicated, can be done when PAP begins to operate as an organ with legislative powers.

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