A risk whose impacts can already be felt in the country. Whether talking about prolonged droughts in the north, or landslides in the east, and devasting floods. The urgency to confront these challenges is palpable globally.Devising incentives to power adaptation and mitigation actions is imperative. It is against this back drop that the meeting with the Uganda Bureau of Standards was held to evaluate feedback on the integration of climate and environmental benchmarks  market incentives for the cassava value chain called ^“EBAFOSA Compliance Market Incentives for Agro-industrialization Guide”,  to inspire and mobilize actions  in a way that drives low emissions development.

The actions discussed at the meeting demonstrated the practical aspect of implementation. They tackled how Uganda can produce more food, without compromising the environment. They tackled how they can add value and create enterprises without compromising the environment. They also tackled how Uganda can expand earnings along its value chains, without compromising the environment and how to do so without re-inventing the wheel, but rather leveraging what they already have which is leveraging on its people skills, talents, passion and their enterprising resourcefulness in engaging value chains. Leveraging on the locally available raw materials and most importantly, leverage on the existing standards and benchmarks of UNBS.

Developing the cassava value chain in Uganda will add value and pave way for an opportunity to commercialize Uganda’s cassava value chain, to save the country up to $300 million per year in wheat importation. Focussing on avenues to commercialize the cassava value chain will generate feedback, that will enhance the marketability and popularity of these benchmarks. Feedback that will position these existing standards and benchmarks, as practical tools to enhance Uganda’s response to climate change, through incentivizing climate resilient enterprises.

This guide had been developed earlier by UNEP in collaboration with the UNBS. EBAFOSA has been leading UN Environment work with the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) to restructure implementation of Uganda’s National Standards to ensure they incentivise enterprises to take up climate actions. The result was adoption by the UNBS, of a guide to inform this restructuring. This guide was then to be test run among ground actors to establish gaps and make recommendations to ensure smooth uptake of climate and environmental benchmarks in maximising productivity of Uganda’s cassava value chain. Specifically, benchmarks that were tested were the use of nature-based Ecosystems Based Adaptation (EBA) approaches to cultivate cassava in a manner that ensures the health of ecosystems as well as that of consumers. The other benchmark was on value addition, the use of clean energy to power various levels of cassava processing.

Solar dryers were applied in drying cassava in readiness for processing and cassava by-products, the peelings were recovered and used to manufacture fuel briquettes which are easy and affordable to make. This was done in the two weeks training program that was facilitated and coordinated through the Africa Youth Agro-Industrialisation Academy (AYAIA) to use local materials cassava peeling & other material to make briquettes. The training has been instrumental to showcase the value of cassava and thus provided lessons on the various benefits of the product.  Technical actors from the National Cassava Programme were engaged to validate results and compile feedback to inform revisions of existing benchmarks by UNBS towards integrating these climate and environmental aspects.

The discussions yielded the following results; expand test runs and collating more test results, for sharing with stakeholders along the cassava value chain across Uganda. UN Environment will continue and expand engagement of ground actors along the entire cassava value chain continuum on adoption of climate resilient approaches and collect more feed-back to enrich recommendations as these guidelines continue to be rolled out. This will be from upstream on-farm actions; to midstream processing & value addition; and on to downstream product promotion and connection to markets. This ground information will form a permanent feedback loop for UNBS to inform relevant revisions and refinements of the standards to optimise implementation for climate action.

Expanding ground actions through enterprise actions in all the test areas on-farm production by expanding collaborating with the NCP to provide better planting materials and lessons; expanding fabrication of clean energy solutions using locally available material and linking these to farmers affordably. Using the clean energy solutions to create multiple cassava-derivative product lines that can be sold at a premium to local consumers; Through these, expand use of these approaches and hence demand for the relevant UNBS specifications. The need to work with the engaged actors who are now expanding their enterprises, to certify all their fresh and clean energy processed produce with the UNBS. Cassava can be processed into up to 300 diverse products and the aim is to have these enterprises produce in all these product lines. Ensuring each product passes through UNBS certification. There is also the need to guide to become a national benchmark that will help Uganda implement their standards sustainably. Specifically, the guide will be adopted into the standards template of UNBS and become the benchmark to drive agro-value chain sustainability focusing on cassava value chain.

EBAFOSA shall therefore work with UNBS to organize future stakeholder meetings aimed at discussing the expanded test results from the decisions arrived at the meeting, to accelerate uptake and expand the lessons to other agro-value chains.

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