KAMPALA – The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) has recognised Uganda’s leading sustainability champions at the 3rd Edition of the National Environment Sustainability Awards (NESA) 2026, with Bank of Uganda Governor Dr Michael Atingi-Ego urging the country to treat climate change not merely as an environmental concern but as a major economic and financial stability issue.
Held at Serena Hotel Kampala under the theme “Innovation for Climate Resilience,” the awards brought together government leaders, private sector representatives, academia, civil society organisations, local governments, environmental activists, and development partners to celebrate outstanding contributions to environmental conservation and climate action.
According to NEMA, the awards recognise “outstanding individuals, institutions, organisations, companies, and communities that demonstrate exceptional commitment to environmental conservation, climate action, innovation, and sustainable development.”
The ceremony honoured achievements across a wide range of categories, including climate change research and innovation, biodiversity conservation, waste-to-resource initiatives, climate finance, environmental journalism, pollution control technologies, green manufacturing, low-carbon development, climate-transformative leadership, fragile ecosystem conservation, and community-based climate resilience.
Delivering the keynote address, Bank of Uganda Governor Dr Michael Atingi-Ego commended NEMA for creating a platform that celebrates practical leadership and innovation in sustainability.
“The theme of this year’s Awards—‘Innovation for Climate Resilience’—is both timely and urgent. Across Uganda, climate change is already being felt through more frequent floods, prolonged dry spells, landslides, heat stress, ecosystem degradation, and disruptions to livelihoods,” Atingi-Ego said.
He warned that climate-related shocks are increasingly affecting households, businesses, infrastructure, agriculture and the broader economy. “For the financial sector, climate resilience is not a distant environmental concern. It is a core economic and financial stability issue,” he said.
The Governor noted that floods in eastern Uganda, recurring droughts in Karamoja and the cattle corridor, and landslides in mountainous regions are not simply environmental events but economic shocks that reduce productivity, damage assets, and weaken growth prospects.
“Climate change has therefore evolved from being primarily an environmental challenge into a macroeconomic challenge, a financial stability concern, and a development imperative,” he said.
Atingi-Ego emphasised that Uganda’s long-term economic transformation will depend on building resilient infrastructure, enterprises, communities and financial systems. “Investing in resilience today is therefore an investment in Uganda’s future competitiveness, productivity, and prosperity,” he said.
The Governor pointed to Uganda’s commitment under its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 24.7 percent by 2030, describing the framework as a national development compact that requires action across all sectors of the economy.
He also highlighted the role of innovation in bridging the gap between climate ambition and practical action. “Innovation is the bridge between climate ambition and climate action,” Atingi-Ego said. “When we speak of innovation, we must think beyond technology alone. Innovation encompasses new ways of financing, producing, insuring, measuring risk, managing resources, and delivering services.”
According to the Governor, innovation should include advances in artificial intelligence, satellite imagery, geospatial analytics, digital finance, renewable energy technologies and climate-smart agriculture.
He challenged stakeholders to move climate innovations beyond pilot projects and make them accessible to farmers, traders, small businesses, schools and local governments.
“Our challenge is therefore to move promising innovations from pilot projects to scale. That requires research, entrepreneurship, regulation, finance, and public policy to work together in a coordinated manner,” he said.
On financing climate action, Atingi-Ego stressed that public resources alone would not be sufficient to fund Uganda’s transition to a resilient and sustainable economy. “We must crowd in private capital, development finance, insurance, local savings, and institutional investment,” he said.
He noted that banks, insurance companies, SACCOs, microfinance institutions and capital markets all have a critical role to play in financing climate-smart agriculture, renewable energy, resilient infrastructure and circular economy enterprises.
The Governor said the Bank of Uganda has already begun integrating climate considerations into financial sector regulation through environmental, social and governance (ESG) frameworks and supervisory engagement with regulated institutions.
“A resilient financial system is one that can anticipate, absorb, and adapt to climate-related shocks,” he said.
Atingi-Ego further emphasised the importance of climate data and sustainability reporting. “We cannot manage what we cannot measure. Without reliable data, climate risks cannot be appropriately identified, priced, managed, or mitigated,” he said.
Despite progress, he acknowledged that climate financing continues to face obstacles, including high capital costs, limited climate-risk data, collateral requirements and insufficient pipelines of bankable projects.
“The future will belong to nations that can transform risk into opportunity, innovation into resilience, and ambition into measurable results,” he said.
Concluding his remarks, the Governor congratulated all award recipients and called for collective action to build a greener and more resilient Uganda. “Let us continue working together to build an economy that is greener, more resilient, more inclusive, and better prepared for future generations,” he said.
