NAIROBI, Sept 5 (IPS) – With less than 100 days to go until COP29, the highest decision-making body on climate issues under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), creative and innovative solutions are urgently needed to protect lives and livelihoods.
The 2023 Africa Climate State of the World report shows that temperature trends have increased in all six sub-regions of Africa over the past 60 years. In Africa, 2023 was one of the three warmest years in 124 years, leading to unprecedented climate genocide. The result is food insufficiency, poverty, damage, migration, and loss of life.
But where many people see difficulty, there also exists opportunity.
“Climate action is the greatest economic opportunity of this century. It can and must be our greatest opportunity to lift up Africa’s people, communities and economies after centuries of exploitation and neglect,” said Simon Steel, UN Climate Change Executive Director, speaking at the African Ministerial Meeting of Environment Ministers (AMCEN) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, today.
“The opportunities are enormous. But so are the costs that African countries face from unchecked global warming. The continent is warming at a faster rate than the global average. From Algeria to Zambia, climate-related disasters are worsening, disproportionately harming those who cause them least.”
Africa is disproportionately affected by the climate crisis, with the continent warming slightly faster than the global average, according to a climate report jointly released by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the African Union Commission on September 2, 2024, at the 12th Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA12).
2023 was the hottest year on record for many countries, including Mali, Morocco, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Uganda. Warming was fastest in North Africa, with Morocco experiencing the highest temperature anomalies.
The report notes that severe droughts are expected in parts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Zambia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2023. Following a severe drought in the Great Horn of Africa, widespread and severe flooding has occurred in three countries, including Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, killing at least 352 people and displacing 2.4 million people.
Amid the widespread devastation and damage, the UN climate chief stressed that the climate crisis is an economic sinkhole, sucking away economic growth in every region, just as it is in Africa, and in fact many African countries are losing up to 5% of their GDP due to climate impacts. It is African countries and people who are paying the highest price.
The report found that many countries are “spending up to 9% of their budgets on unplanned spending to cope with extreme weather events,” which could put an additional burden on poverty alleviation efforts and significantly hamper growth. It estimates that by 2030, 118 million people living in extreme poverty (or on less than $1.90 a day) will be exposed to droughts, floods and extreme heat in Africa if adequate measures are not taken.
Steele shifts perspective: “Imagine a world where food production is hit so hard that famines are returning, while global prices are skyrocketing, driving up inflation and the cost of living. Desertification and habitat destruction are forcing people to migrate. Supply chains are already being hit hard by the accelerating impacts of climate change.”
“It would be completely wrong for any world leader, especially the G20 leader, to think, ‘This is incredibly sad, but ultimately it’s not my problem.’ The economic and political reality in an interdependent world is that we are all in this together. We rise together or fall together. But if the climate and economic crises are globally interconnected, so too are the solutions.”
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, climate adaptation is estimated to cost between $30 billion and $50 billion, equivalent to 2-3% of the region’s GDP over the next decade. Following the first inventory of global climate action at COP28 (a mid-term review of progress towards the 2015 Paris Agreement), COP29, dubbed the “finance COP,” is an opportunity to match climate finance contributions to projected global demand.
COP29 will be an opportunity to build on previous successes, including the ambitious commitments of the most successful COP28, including a rapid and fair transition away from all fossil fuels, tripling renewable energy, doubling energy efficiency, and shifting from responding to climate impacts to truly transformative adaptation.
While recognizing this huge commitment, Steele said that delivering on it would unlock a goldmine of human and economic benefits across Africa, including cleaner, more reliable and cheaper energy. It would support more jobs, stronger local economies and more stability and opportunity, especially for women. Electricity and night-time lighting in the home would help children do their homework, improving education outcomes and boosting economic growth through key chain productivity gains.
“Cooking with conventional fuels produces greenhouse gas emissions almost as much as all the world’s aviation and shipping combined. It also causes 3 million premature deaths a year. It would cost $4 billion a year to address this in Africa. By any accounting, it’s a great investment,” he said.
He also stressed the need to link nature-based climate solutions with biodiversity conservation and land restoration, which would drive progress across the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. But he reiterated that the enormous potential for African countries to drive climate solutions is being thwarted by the pandemic of underinvestment.
“Of the more than $400 billion spent on clean energy last year, only $2.6 billion went to African countries. Africa’s investment in renewable energy needs to increase at least fivefold by 2030. COP29 in Baku must demonstrate that tackling the climate crisis is a core business for all governments, and that it requires commensurate financial solutions,” Steele said.
“It is time to flip the script. From a potential climate tipping point to an exponential shift in business, investment and growth. A shift that will further strengthen African countries’ climate leadership and their critical role in global climate solutions across all dimensions. Your role at COP29 and your voice in the run-up to it is more important than ever, as you help guide the process towards the most ambitious outcomes the world needs.”
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal Source: Inter Press Service
