Climate finance, Africa’s workhorse at COP27

Hit by extreme natural disasters that cause humanitarian crises, Africa goes to the UN Climate Summit (COP27) that begins this Sunday in Egypt with a great workhorse: securing the financing promised by rich countries to the poorest to combat the climate crisis.

African unease with the broken promises of developed nations was manifested in a very graphic way last September in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, which hosted the Africa Adaptation Summit, a forum to ask for funds to help the countries of the continent adapt to global warming.

Only one European leader attended the meeting in person, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

“I cannot fail to note with a touch of bitterness the absence of leaders from the industrialized world,” lamented the head of state of Senegal and rotating president of the African Union, Macky Sall.

“They are the main polluters of this planet and they are the ones who should be financing adaptation,” Sall said.

According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), climate change is Africa’s biggest “existential challenge,” home to about 20 percent of the world’s population, although it produces less than 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

However, the continent loses between 5% and 15% of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth each year due to the climate crisis, according to the AfDB.

Extreme natural events – such as cyclones, unusually long droughts or untimely floods – are shaking communities across Africa and creating food insecurity, a stark reality that can trigger population displacement and migration.

Oxfam International recently warned that famine in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, caused by the worst drought in forty years in the Horn of Africa, will cause one death every 36 seconds until the end of the year.

More than 3.4 million people were displaced by devastating floods that hit Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroon this year, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned last week.

CLIMATE FINANCE UNFULFILLED

Faced with this vulnerability, rich countries pledged in 2009 at COP15 (Copenhagen) to contribute 100,000 million dollars per year until 2020 to help the poorest fight the climate crisis and promote greener economies.

However, “promises of climate finance have not materialized,” as COP27 president and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry acknowledged this week in an article published in the Kenyan weekly The East African.

“It is simply unfair to ask the people who contribute least to the current climate crisis to bear the costs of a clean transition and hinder their own development,” Shoukry said.

According to the NGO Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), African countries only received 12% of the 250,000 million dollars per year needed to implement their climate plans in 2020.

In a context of international economic slowdown marked by the global ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it remains to be seen whether COP27, which is being held in the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheikh from November 6 to 18, will meet African demands.

Well-known Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate believes that at the summit “there must be an increase in climate finance for renewable energy in Africa and make that financing in the form of grants, not high-interest loans.”

In addition, “governments of the Global North must stand in solidarity with climate-vulnerable communities around the world and call for the creation of a loss and damage center at COP27,” Nakate, who will attend the Egypt conference, told EFE.

According to the acting director of Greenpeace’s Africa Program, South African Melita Steele, African governments “must go beyond their just demands for climate finance and divert their economies from the expansion of fossil fuels and the colonial legacy of extractivism.”

“COP27 is a critical moment for the voices of the south to be really heard,” Steele told EFE.

But not all voices in Africa embrace what the president of the African Energy Chamber, Cameroonian Nj Ayuk, calls the “green agenda of rich nations,” which, in his view, “ignores the tremendous role Africa’s oil and gas industry plays in generating revenue for African countries.”

“We are not willing to accept the global timeline for the transition to renewable fuels at the expense of our own energy security and economic well-being.”

Source: Yahoo