By Timothy Lukanga
Rt.Hon Justine Kasule Lumumba, the minister of general duties, focal point minister in charge of SDGs in office of Prime Minister pledged to increase on investment in disaster risk reduction and interventions to catalyze and accelerate our understanding of connections among health, environmental in the GEO summit
In her speech while attending the Group on Earth Observation Ministerial Declaration and GEO Post-2025 Strategy in Cape Town South Africa. Representing Uganda she said, our country fully welcomes the declaration and commits to support and participate very actively in the implementation of the new strategy, which in our case coincides, with a new National Development Plan.
The minister highlight areas of priority for Uganda in light of the declaration and the strategy
‘’ Having one of the youngest population average Ugandan is 16 years of age we have special interest in skilling the young people, increasing collaboration in developing capacity, especially in sciences and scaling up employment opportunities for the youth through targeted programmes such as the Parish Development Model that target leaving no one behind,’’Lumumba Said.
Embracing the use of the Global Ecosystems Atlas and participating in the Global Heat Resilience Service programme to deal with challenges of drought and effects of heat on our urban population, the minister added.

GEO is an intergovernmental partnership working to improve the availability, access and use of open Earth observations, including satellite imagery, remote sensing and in situ data, to impact policy and decision making in a wide range of sectors