Cape Town — The next round of climate talks, COP27, is scheduled to take place in November 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt where an opportunity or chance will put climate justice and solidarity at the center of international efforts.
African countries are calling for more aid and policy support for dealing with the adverse effects of climate change despite contributing the least to global warming. Extreme climatic events like heatwaves, droughts, floods, cyclones, fires, and shifts in weather patterns, are happening more frequently and with more severity, threatening millions of people around the globe and driving millions into hunger and poverty. In Africa, climate change is already affecting people's health and natural ecosystems, as well as causing social, economic, and environmental problems. The effects continue to cause significant damage across the world.
At a briefing on Africa's agenda for COP27, experts said in a virtual forum that African countries should use domestic financing to accelerate their transition to green and resilient economic development. Jean-Paul Adam, the director for Technology, Climate Change and Natural Resources Management at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has stressed that the 27th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) slated for Egypt in November presents an opportunity for Africa to take a common stand on revitalizing climate finance.
"Every delay in relation to preventing warming beyond the 1.5 degrees has real economic costs which are wiping out the potential for real economic growth in Africa and has an impact on people's lives... African countries will be losing about 5% of GDP to climate change alone. Already, African countries are spending up to 9% of their GDP in responding to climate-related disasters."
"Estimates that have been done by the African Development Bank have shown that the investments needed just based on African Nationally Determined Contributions are in excess of U.S. $3 trillion. African countries went to COP26 asking for about U.S.$1.3 trillion. That's a very, very large sum but relative to the amounts that have been invested in Covid-19 it's actually a very small sum and the return on investment is high." Adam emphasized that investments in climate-smart agriculture and ecosystem restoration alone will shield African countries from climatic stresses besides sustaining their growth and prosperity.
Jacqueline Musiitwa, the senior associate at ZeniZeni Sustainable Finance, an Africa-focused advisory firm, said that investing in a climate-resilient future is key to achieving shared prosperity, stability, and cohesion in the continent. Musiitwa said that robust climate financing, technology transfer, capacity building, and awareness creation were key to attaining carbon neutrality in the continent, cushioning economies and livelihoods from shocks.
"It's great to see more Africans involved, but once again: not enough. The conversation is still primarily dominated by the Global North with not enough participation from the Global South. My hope with COP27 is that we will see more African engagement and more Global South engagement that is really able to trigger new types of partnerships." "Let's get back to the drawing table and let's make sure we find solutions that really do support Africa, that is systemic in nature and are not only looking at one aspect of development or climate but are really able to tackle the larger systemic issues that African countries are facing."
Tasneem Essop, the executive director of Climate Action Network International, a coalition of international green lobby groups, said that African countries should come up with alternative financing tools to boost their adaptive capacity to climate emergencies. "As we sit here, governments are in the middle of approving the IPCC WG2 report, which deals with climate impact. So if there's any milestone in the lead-up to COP27, it is going to be this report. " "We have to ask a fundamental question: are our leaders listening? Are they listening to the science? Are they seeing the devastation already seen around the world? And then: are they going to do something about it?"
Meanwhile, the United States and Egypt have launched the U.S.-Egypt Climate Working Group, to advance bilateral and multilateral climate goals ahead of COP27, with U.S. envoy John Kerry urging more countries to come on board. COP27 will focus less on raising targets to cut emissions and more on getting climate funding to developing countries - both to decarbonize and deal with the impacts of a warmer planet, according to Bloomberg.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry also stressed the urgent need for national commitments to be delivered to limit global warming but made only a passing reference to the issue of loss and damage. Kerry was also cited as saying recently that focus on a loss and damage facility "could delay our ability to do the most important thing of all, which is [to] achieve mitigation sufficient to reduce the level of adaptation." But African climate and economic experts Essop and Adam criticized Kerry for not taking the issue seriously.
Essop said Kerry "clearly doesn't get loss and damage, because loss and damage is beyond adaptation. Rich nations must be prepared for vulnerable countries to raise the issue at COP27, she added. "This is not an insurance issue, this is a compensation issue, it is a climate justice issue, and John Kerry has to actually get with it," she added.
At Glasgow's COP26 summit in 2021, rich nations rejected a proposal by the world's poorest nations to create a new loss and damage fund. The failure to reach an agreement on funding was cited as one of the main disappointments of the conference.
