UNDP rescues Minister Macford, funds trip to COP 17

THE United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) has rescued government by providing funding for Minister of Tourism and Environmental Affairs Macford Sibandze to attend the Conference of Parties (COP 17) in Durban.
The conference started on Monday. “As part of its support to the country, UNDP is providing technical and financial support to a delegation from Swaziland to attend the global conference in Durban, South Africa.
“The UNDP is particularly pleased that the delegation will be led by the minister of tourism and environmental affairs and confident that their participation would strengthen the country’s systems and capacity for resilience to environmental shocks which often have direct implications on development,” reads a statement issued by the organisation.. The importance and impact of climate change and environment issues on development have increased over the years. Environmental degradation impacts on access to clean water, affordable energy services, causes food shortages and increases poverty.
Pollution due to industrialisation and the burning of fossil fuels has resulted in the depletion of the ozone layer, fuelling climate change and global warming that is resulting in increasingly violent storms, worsening of droughts, unprecedented floods and new diseases.
“These problems will be part of the agenda of the ongoing 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),” the organisation said. The statement also states that UNDP helps countries increase their capacity for environmental sustainability and disaster risk reduction at the global, national and community levels through sharing best practices, providing innovative policy advice and linking partners through pilot projects.
The organisation also states that UNDP, in collaboration with the Swaziland Environmental Authority (SEA), has undertaken a campaign to remove and dispose of all ozone depleting gases from the environment.
It also reveals that UNDP is also currently supporting the SEA to decommission industrial equipmentcontaining gases that contribute to climate change and replace them with hydrocarbon natural gases.
Further, the organisation supported the deputy prime minister’s office in preparing a disaster management policy and decentralised disaster preparedness plan aimed at preparing local development committees to deal with possible floods, drought and bush fires.
After the 2008 forest fires that decimated commercial forests and crippled the forestry industry, UNDP supported the government develop a multi-sectoral bushfires contingency plan to address the problem at the community level.

KING MSWATI III of Swaziland

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Wealth

Mswati has been criticized for his lifestyle, especially by the media. Following criticism of his purchase of luxury cars, including a $500,000 luxury automobile, he banned the photography of his vehicles. According to the former CEO of the Office of the king, the purchases were personally funded and the king of Swaziland earns a high salary as Head of State, has investments within and outside the country and owns an unspecified amount of shares in different companies within Swaziland^{[citation needed]}.

According to the Forbes 2009 list of the World's Richest Royals, king Mswati is worth a reported $200 Million USD.^[7] This does not include a sum of about $10 Billion USD that his father king Sobhuza II put in trust for the Swazi nation during his reign, in which Mswati III is the trustee.

In January 2004 the Times of Swaziland reported that the king requested his government to spend about $15-million to redecorate three main palaces and build others for each of his 11 wives.^[8] The Prime Minister's Office issued a press statement saying the article in the Times of Swaziland was "reckless and untrue" and that the proposal was for the construction of 5 State Houses, not Palaces, and the cost was only E19.9 million.^[9] Later that year the go-ahead was given to build five new palaces at a cost of more than $4-million out of public funds.^[10]

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