NAIROBI, Sep 05 (IPS) – With fewer than 100 days to go to COP29, the best decision-making physique on local weather points beneath the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change (UNFCCC), is getting shorter and the necessity for inventive and progressive options to guard lives and livelihoods is extraordinarily pressing.
The State of the Local weather in Africa 2023 report exhibits all six African sub-regions have skilled a rise within the temperature tendencies over the previous six a long time. In Africa, 2023 was one of many three warmest years in 124 years, resulting in unprecedented climatic carnage. The results are such that there’s not sufficient meals, deepening poverty, harm, displacement and lack of life.
However the place many see challenges, there are additionally alternatives.
Talking to the African Ministerial Convention on the Atmosphere (AMCEN) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, right now, Simon Stiell, Government Secretary of UN Local weather Change, mentioned “local weather motion is the one biggest financial alternative of this century. It could actually and ought to be the one biggest alternative for Africa to raise up folks, communities, and economies after centuries of exploitation and neglect.”
“The chance is immense. However so too are the prices for African nations of unchecked international heating. The continent has been warming at a quicker charge than the worldwide common. From Algeria to Zambia, climate-driven disasters are getting worse, inflicting essentially the most struggling on those that did least to trigger them.”
Collectively launched by the United Nations Financial Fee for Africa (ECA), the World Meteorological Group (WMO) and the African Union Fee on September 2, 2024, on the twelfth Local weather Change and Growth in Africa (CCDA12) Convention, the local weather report exhibits Africa is disproportionately affected by the local weather crises because the continent is warming at a charge that’s barely quicker than the worldwide common.
The yr 2023 was the warmest on file in lots of international locations, together with Mali, Morocco, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Uganda. The warming has been most speedy in North Africa, with Morocco experiencing the best temperature anomaly.
The report signifies that elements of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Zambia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo skilled extreme drought in 2023. Following extreme droughts within the Larger Horn of Africa, three international locations, together with Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, skilled in depth and extreme flooding, with at the very least 352 deaths and a pair of.4 million displaced folks reported.
Amidst the far-reaching devastating loss and harm, the UN Local weather Chief emphasised that in Africa, as in all areas, the local weather disaster is an financial sinkhole, sucking the momentum out of financial progress and that in actual fact, many African nations are shedding as much as 5 % of GDP on account of local weather impacts. It’s African nations and individuals who pay the heaviest value.
Inserting extra burden on poverty alleviation efforts, which may in flip considerably hamper progress, the report exhibits many international locations are diverting “as much as 9 % of their budgets into unplanned expenditures to answer excessive climate occasions. By 2030, it’s estimated that as much as 118 million extraordinarily poor folks—or these residing on lower than USD 1.90 per day—can be uncovered to drought, floods and excessive warmth in Africa if ample response measures will not be put in place.”
Placing it into perspective, Stiell mentioned, “Think about meals manufacturing being hit exhausting, contributing to the re-emergence of famine, whereas additionally pushing up international costs, and with them inflation and the price of residing. Desertification and habitat destruction are driving pressured actions of individuals. Provide chains are already being hit exhausting by spiralling local weather impacts,” he mentioned.
Additional cautioning that “it could be completely incorrect for any world chief—particularly within the G20—to assume: though extremely unhappy, in the end it isn’t my downside. The financial and political actuality—in an interdependent world—is we’re all on this disaster collectively. We rise collectively, or we fall collectively. But when the local weather and financial crises are globally interlinked. So too are the options.”
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, it’s estimated that local weather adaptation will price USD 30 billion to USD 50 billion, which interprets to 2 to 3 % of the regional GDP per yr over the following decade. With COP28 having concluded the first-ever stocktake of worldwide local weather motion—a mid-term overview of progress in the direction of the 2015 Paris Settlement—COP29 has been dubbed the ‘finance COP’—a possibility to align local weather finance contributions with estimated international wants.
COP29 may also be a possibility to construct on earlier success, particularly within the heels of a most profitable COP28, whose formidable commitments embody: to transition away from all fossil fuels rapidly however pretty; to triple renewable power and double power effectivity; and to go from responding to local weather impacts to actually transformative adaptation.
Whereas recognizing these massive commitments, Stiell mentioned delivering on them will unlock a goldmine of human and financial advantages that features cleaner, extra dependable and inexpensive power throughout Africa. Extra jobs, stronger native economies, underpinning extra stability and alternative, particularly for girls. That electrification and lighting at night time within the residence means youngsters can do homework, boosting schooling outcomes, with main flow-on productiveness features driving stronger financial progress.
“Cooking with conventional fuels emits greenhouse gases roughly equal to international aviation or transport. It additionally contributes to three million untimely deaths per yr. It will price 4 billion US {dollars} yearly to repair this in Africa—an impressive funding on any accounting,” he mentioned.
Additional stressing the necessity to hyperlink nature-based local weather options with biodiversity safety and land restoration, as this may drive progress proper throughout the 17 Sustainable Growth Targets. But, he reiterated, African nations’ huge potential to drive ahead local weather options is being thwarted by an epidemic of underinvestment.
“Of the greater than USD400 billion spent on clear power final yr, solely USD2.6 billion went to African nations. Renewable power funding in Africa must develop at the very least fivefold by 2030. COP29 in Baku should sign that the local weather disaster is core enterprise for each authorities, with finance options to match,” Stiell emphasised.
“It’s time to flip the script. From potential local weather tipping factors to exponential adjustments in enterprise, funding, and progress. Modifications that may additional strengthen African nations’ local weather management and important function in international local weather options, on all fronts. Your function at COP29—and your voices within the lead-up—are extra essential than ever, to assist information our course of to the highest-ambition outcomes the entire world wants.”
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