COP27: Africa at the Climate Change Summit
By Yunusa Isa Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt’s resort city will host the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change from November 6 – November 18. As venue for the global climate summit, the resort town aims to live up to its “green city” status by facilitating all buses and cars to be electric and […]
By Yunusa Isa
Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt’s resort city will host the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change from November 6 – November 18. As venue for the global climate summit, the resort town aims to live up to its “green city” status by facilitating all buses and cars to be electric and hotels will run on solar energy among other sustainable environment transformation. In his welcome statement ahead of the summit, Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said: “Egypt will spare no effort to ensure that COP27 becomes the moment when the world moved from negotiation to implementation and where words were translated to actions, and where we collectively embarked on a path towards sustainability, a just transition and eventually a greener future for coming generations”.
The United Nation’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 2nd part of the 6thAssessment Report (AR6) published in February 2022 warns that further delay in global action to combat climate change “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.
At last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, about 100 countries, whose collective territory is home to 85 per cent of the global forests, agreed to end deforestation by year 2030 while another set of 100 countries pledged to cut down 30 per cent of methane emissions by 2030. Similarly, countries agreed to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and submit enhanced NDC (Nationally Determine Contributions) plans by September 2022. COP27 host country, Egypt submitted her 2030 climate plan in early July 2022.
Africa’s biggest economies, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa significantly rely on natural gas, oil and coal for energy and source of foreign income hence their calls for a just energy transition in the wake of a global push for divestment from fossil fuels by richer nations. Diplomatic discussions held between SA’s President Ramaphosa and President Biden and Nigeria’s VP, Osinbajo and US special climate envoy John Kerry in mid-September both in a bid to seek US’s support for a just energy transition ahead of talks at the COP27 summit.
According to Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), “Africa will require $2.8 trillion between 2020-2030 to implement its NDCs in fulfillment of the 2015 Paris Agreement”. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s president signed the Climate Change Act in November 2021 and inaugurated the National Council on Climate Change on September 28, 2022 towards a comprehensive climate policy implementation and pathway to achieving Nigeria’s NDC goals, Net-Zero-Target by 2060 and global collaboration to tackle climate change.
The IPCC defined Mitigation as “a human intervention to reduce emissions or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases”. The IPCC 6th report (released in Feb., 2022) stated that “substantial” reductions in fossil fuel use, use of renewables and alternative energy fuels such as hydrogen will help cut emissions. The near 8,000km Africa Great Green Wall (AGGW) project, Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative aiming to plant 20 billion planting trees between 2019-2022, Kano State’s one million tree planting project, the Mangrove restoration projects by local communities in the delta areas of southern Senegal, the DACS (Direct Air Carbon Storage) & Carbon Capture and Storage (e.g. the Orca plant in Iceland) are few examples of global warming mitigation efforts.
Meanwhile, China being the world’s 2nd biggest emitter of GHGs (Greenhouse gases) has increased its forest cover by about 40 per cent in the last 30 years thereby augmenting the global carbon sequestration initiatives. The incoming left-wing government in Brazil had received positive hopes among nature conservationists and environmentalists at least for the sake of the Amazon rainforest. According to scientists, protecting and restoring forests could contribute one-third (1/3) of the climate mitigation needed by 2030 to meet the Paris agreement goals.
Increased heat waves, wildfires, floods, coral reefs bleaching, biodiversity loss, droughts are all signs of a changing climate. Finding means to live with these threats is referred to as climate adaptation. A recent study by researchers at Northwestern University published Tuesday, October 11, 2022 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds that “it’s raining harder in most of the United States which is tied to climate change and to warmer air’s ability to hold more water” according to Matthew Cappucci writing in the Washington Post. Because of increased rainfall and the melting of millennia old glaciers in the arctic, Himalayas and other places from warming temperatures, vulnerable and flood-prone communities across the globe must seek ways to sustainably adapt to storm surges, flooded coastlines and flash floods to minimize impacts from these catastrophes.
Loss and Damage
“Loss and Damage” is a phrase the Global North had frowned at its inclusion in the COP26 Glasgow Climate pact but which had increasingly become factually evident for equitable climate change negotiations especially as it affects vulnerable nations who least contributed to it. According to World Resources Institute (WRI), about $2.9 trillion was lost to disasters impacting over four billion lives since 2000 and the bulks of these disasters are attributable to extreme weather events caused by climate change. The droughts in East Africa, monsoon rains in Southeast Asia and intensifying hurricanes in America are all attributable to climate change.
Africa is responsible for about four per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions but sadly often end up bearing the brunt of climate change impacts. According to Africa Development Bank (AfDB), “Africa has been hit disproportionately hard by the fallout from climate change, which has aggravated droughts, flooding and cyclones (e.g. cyclone Idai that ripped through Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe) across the continent in recent years”. The recent flooding in Nigeria, South Africa and the Lake Chad, resulted in loss of lives, forced displacements and destruction of food crops while dwindling crop harvests arising from droughts in East Africa posed a looming threat to food security for a continent grappling with impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and global supply-chain hiccups aggravated by the on-going Ukraine-Russia conflict.
The 2009 Cancun, Mexico pledge by rich nations to contribute $100 billion annually to poor nations for climate-related financing remains unfulfilled. Recently, some officials in the US and EU have hinted a shift in stand by voicing some support on the topic. US special climate envoy, John Kerry remarked thus “the US recognises that increased efforts must be made to avert, minimise, and address loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change”.
While COP26 president, Alok Sharma also stated that “the topic of loss and damage will undoubtedly feature at COP27 and I hope to see progress on this issue”. Denmark became the first EU nation to pledge $13 million towards funding “loss and damage”. Meanwhile, Germany and Chile will lead talks on the topic at COP27.