Ahead COP27: Africa’s climate burden weighs, but financing must avoid debt

Even though it produces historically low carbon emission and contributes the least to the global climate crisis in comparison to more industrialised continents, Africa has been hard hit by extreme climate change effects, which have seen the continent emerge as the most drought-affected region and the second most flooded area in the world.

This is a huge concern for stakeholders within and outside the continent who have focused conversations leading up to the 27th edition of the United Nations climate change conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, in November on ways to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on Africa.

Stakeholders who gathered at the Africa Climate Week 2022 (ACW2022) in Libreville, Gabon, last week were concerned that the effects of climate change were hitting faster than expected “as record-breaking heat waves ripple across the globe, including the Continent of Africa.

“Climate change-induced drought, combined with the cost-of-living crisis, is leaving millions of people in regions such as the Horn of Africa facing hunger and famine,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator.

“With our window to take decisive action, we need to quickly roll out innovative solutions and forge strengthened partnerships to slow the steady march of climate change: a key objective of the upcoming Africa Climate Week,” he said ahead of the ACW2022.

The ACW2022 was part of the Regional Climate Weeks 2022 series with similar ones already held in the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean

Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign affairs minister, decried the ‘Climate Injustice’ Africa faces. He said the continent pays for the sins of others because though it contributes less than four percent of global emissions, it is now confronted with the impacts of climate change that have curtailed its efforts for sustainable growth and testing the resilience of communities.

“These impacts have left almost no region in Africa unaffected, making the continent one of the most devastated by the impacts of climate change,” Shoukry said.

“Africa is obliged, with its already limited financial means and scant level of support, to spend around 2-3 percent of its GDP per annum to adapt to these impacts; a disproportionate responsibility that cannot be described as anything other than ‘Climate Injustice’,” he said.

Shoukry urged African governments, and all other African voices, from civil society, youth, women groups, farmers, workers, academia, and the thriving African private sector, to continue to call for climate justice based on equity and the availability of means of implementation, and guided by the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.

Ovais Sarmad, deputy executive secretary, United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, advocated a sort of financing of climate change projects across Africa that would not put the continent back into debt, saying funding for adaptation and mitigation should be in the form of grants. He urged the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), who are involved in the provision of financing to climate adaptation projects, to find a way of not causing Africa to incur debts in the attempts to fight climate change.

Sarmad, who spoke on the sidelines of the AWC2022 in Libreville, said the delegates were there because of the extreme situation in which Africa finds itself with climate change, adding that “any delay on Africa’s part will deepen the situation”.

Mahmoud Mohieldin, the COP27 Climate Champion, described the Africa Climate Week as “an important moment for climate action in Africa to showcase the continent’s contributions to the global movement to address climate change and to highlight its special needs.

“The just transition towards the green economy is a priority for Africa through balancing its need to combat climate change with an urgency to develop the continent’s economies. The adaptation agenda needs a boost at COP27 to promote its global visibility and in particular in Africa, we should be reminded that every dollar spent on adaptation generates two to ten dollars of economic benefits,” he said.

Abdoulaye Seck, World Bank country director for Gabon, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea, said the Africa Climate Week is a critical milestone to mobilise all actors on the continent around the climate agenda ahead of the Africa COP in Sharm el-Sheikh.

“It is time for African countries to accelerate actions and agree on key priorities to avert the climate crisis. This will require ramping up of climate finance, and at-scale investments to protect and enhance natural capital and build resilience of vulnerable people and communities against the impacts of climate change in Africa through a collective effort,” Seck said.

Africa is at the forefront of the climate crisis, but it is also a place of immense potential for action, according to Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP.

Andersen said the COP in Egypt represents a unique opportunity to accelerate implementation of effective climate solutions and that “with renewables and increased efficiency, we can reduce emissions and tackle energy poverty and air pollution.

“With nature-based solutions, we can restore ecosystems, build resilience against zoonotic diseases, floods and heatwaves. By reducing food loss and waste, we can mitigate emissions and food insecurity, and reduce pressure on land and water resources,” Andersen said.

Delegates at the ACW2022 looked upon Gabon as a leading example of walking the talk in climate change initiatives. The positive perception comes as Gabon last year became the first in Africa to receive payment for reducing emissions by protecting its forests after independent verification of its deforestation rates in 2016 and 2017 under the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI).

In addition to receiving payment for its forest initiatives, Gabon has published its second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCS), in which it commits to remain carbon neutral up to and beyond 2050. Under the Paris Agreement each country is requested to outline and communicate its post-2020 climate actions, known as their NDCs. Together, these climate actions determine whether the world achieves the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement and to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The country is also set to rake in $2 billion from 190 million of carbon credits it has earned over the past nine years, Lee White, minister of water, forest, the sea and environment, said.

Carbon credit is a tradable permit or certificate that provides the holder of the credit the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide or an equivalent of another greenhouse gas, according to the Corporate Finance Institute, a financial training centre in Canada. Its main goal is the reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from industrial activities to reduce the effects of global warming.

Gabon, one of the countries in the Congo Basin, is considered the world’s second-largest rainforest after the Amazon. It is also home to as many as 30,000 critically endangered gorillas and chimpanzees. There are about 10,000 plant species recorded in Gabon. This is more than the total diversity of all countries in West Africa, with 15 percent unique to Gabon.

White said the money to be generated out of the carbon credits will be used to mitigate poverty among the rural poor and partly to support the country’s budget.

He said following the country’s efforts to protect its forests, the elephant population has increased to about 95,000, and this has also brought about some consequences for the farming communities. As a result,  the government is spending $10 million to provide  electric fences to stop the animals from destroying farms.

White, who spoke before the opening of the ACW2022, said Gabon has created a network of 13 national parks to protect the country’s biodiversity. The country has also declared 22 percent of its land as protected areas and another 60 percent being managed in sustainable forestry concessions harvested selectively, extracting one to two trees every 25 years.

He said efforts by the government to conserve the forests are not only important for the preservation of the Congo Basin forest of which Gabon is part but have turned the country into a key ecological player in the fight against global climate change.

White said the lack of African academics to research into climate change is really a challenge for the continent because it takes over 10 years to train in the area, adding that the situation is “serious” because Africa needs to do a lot of research into climate change in order to find solutions to the problems that have come with it.

“Climate change remains our greatest collective challenge. For Gabon, the African Climate Week is an opportunity to advance the implementation of the Glasgow Climate Pact (COP 26) in order to position Africa as a leader in global climate action ahead of several other countries in the world,” Tanguy Gahouma, permanent secretary, Gabonese National Climate Council, told participants at the ACW.

The opening session of the ACW featured a ministerial dialogue on the challenges of mobilising and accessing climate finance at scale to spur the implementation of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and priority national climate plans and strategies.