IF HOSTING A MAJOR EVENT is any strong indication of participation in the discussions on issues in that event, then Africa could very well be said to have made a good showing on climate talks last year. The hosting of Conference of Parties (COP) 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, a city on the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, on the coastal strip along the Red Sea, in the South Sinai Governorate of Egyptian countryside, was that long-awaited chance for Africa. As if to further increase the benefits to Africa, the 2023 event – which is COP28 – is taking place in the nearby United Arab Emirates (UAE), within the same Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region that Egypt belongs to. So, for two straight years, the Middle East and Africa have been served well with great opportunities of hosting and participating in climate conferences of global and local relevance. For Africa, in particular, the Dubai location is still in close proximity to Africa, particularly East Africa and North Africa. They have many ecological characteristics in common, especially those bordering on desertification, high environmental temperature, food and water security challenges, as well as the existential challenges of terrorism.
At the continental level, it could be asked now, what has Africa made of COP27 since last year? It needs to be known, for instance, if the African Union (AU) or any of the regional economic communities (RECs) has come up with any programme in response to Sharm el-Sheikh’s conference of last year. And if not, what are they waiting for? What progress reports are they intending to present at Dubai in a couple of days’ time? Although COP28 might be free from the perennial protests that have characterised many past conferences on climate issues, an important idea among those things that inform the protests deserves a mention. The event 24 years ago in November 1999 in Seattle, US, brought to the fore the concerns of the protesters who expressed the fears that trade and globalisation – the way they were evolving – might put the environment in jeopardy. The 1999 Seattle WTO protests ended up becoming more of the newsmakers than the actual WTO conference. Whether or not keen watchers and analysts learnt the right lessons from Seattle is debatable as COP on climate gains more and more popularity.
The relationship between growth in global trade – in volume and value – and the increase in environmental degradation is that of a straight line positive correlation, which is why local, national, regional and global leaders should be worried. The 1999 protesters in Seattle had a strong point which has been justified in retrospect. They seemed to have had a clearer idea of what to expect in the future on climate change more than the actual participants in the aborted WTO conference. In particular, the accession of China to the WTO in December 2001 marked a watershed and a turning point in global trade, with enormous consequences. It tilted the balance of manufacturing from the EU and North America to Asia. Although China is being praised for the remarkable growth in its economy, its contribution to global value chain, and the feat that earned it the description of “global manufacturing powerhouse” or “workshop,” it bears a huge responsibility for rising to the top as the world’s number one polluter since its manufacturing edge and domination of global logistics and value chains became obvious.
The relevance of Sharm el-Sheikh to the global logistics and maritime trade was highlighted last year in a publication under this column. Reference to the location of the COP27 was linked to the location of Sharm el-Sheikh near a major trans-continental maritime route and close to a major maritime choke point, the Suez Canal, through which thousands of ships transit between the Eastern and Western hemispheres monthly. Now, with the choice of Dubai as the event’s host this year, a similar set of questions warrants attention. Dubai is one of the seven Emirates making up the United Arab Emirates (UAE), facing the Persian Gulf to the West and is a major maritime trade route. Like Sharm el-Sheikh, therefore, Dubai holds great relevance when examined in the context of contribution to climate change and global warming through trade. Of the seven Emirates, Dubai is the most populous. Given its vast maritime importance, the ports in Dubai in particular and the UAE in general have played a major role in the development and growth of the country. There are no fewer than 10 sea ports in the tiny UAE, whereas so many bigger countries elsewhere in Africa do not even have half of the number the UAE has. These ports are major shipping hubs spread throughout the various emirates.
Apart from three major ports in Abu Dhabi, Dubai is known for busy ports such as Port Jebel Ali (AEJEA), Mina Rashid port (AEDXB) and Mina Hamriyah (AEHAM). Mina Rashid port (AEDXB), the first commercial port in the Emirate. Port Jebel Ali, which shipped over 15 million TEUs of containers in 2019. Currently, Jebel Ali is rated as the ninth busiest sea port in the world, the busiest in the Middle East, and handles a significant proportion of container traffic through the region. It is linked with the Dubai International Airport and the Airport Air Cargo Village. This gives huge prominence to the city in the global context. It reportedly recently cut down carbon emissions by a staggering 30 percent – an issue of great relevance here. The Dubai International Airport is a distinct hub consisting of three terminals and a total capacity of 83.6 million passengers in 2016, 88 million passengers in 2017 and 90 million passengers annually by recent estimates. Terminal 3 is the second largest building in the world by floor space and the largest airport terminal in the world and the world’s busiest by international passenger traffic and the airport with the highest average number of passengers per flight.
These should point Africa into introspection, particularly as the continent is making a point about the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a continental common market platform that commenced trading in January 2021. While nothing significant has been achieved since the AfCFTA trading took off, the years ahead might prove different. With airports in some landlocked countries becoming major aviation hubs in the continent, a lot is expected to happen anytime soon. The Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa is an example. Of less capacity, though, is the Kigali airport in Rwanda, presently gaining some popularity. The airports in Cairo, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos and Dakar deserve some considerations in the context of environmental consequences of their operations. These are in addition to the major sea ports in many parts of Africa, including those in Abidjan, Cotonou, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Durban and Mombasa. These ports are expected to get busier in both intra-continental and intercontinental maritime trade in the years ahead. How the success of AfCFTA will impact on the operations of these ports and the environmental outcomes deserve serious attention now.
What happens when Africa’s exports to other continents increase greatly? How will Africa handle the environmental consequences of increased emissions? How will monitoring of the changes be done and how will infractions be handled and offenders held accountable? What safeguards will be in place and how will they be applied? Could the implementation of environmentally sustainable measures increase the volume of trade, reduce cost of transportation and handling of infrastructure and increase national income to encourage sustainability in best practices? Although trade and logistics may not account for much of the issues of environmental concerns in African countries as much as that of UAE, other issues peculiar to Africa are no less important. Moreover, environmental issues are very broad in terms of causes, effects and interplay of factors. Therefore, a wide array of issues of environmental importance relating to Africa will deserve urgent and detailed attention. As African leaders troop to Dubai this month for COP 28, the lessons from there should make positive impact on African participants, particularly the political leaders and government representatives who travel in the interest of Africa. Dubai affords Africans another opportunity to revisit Afro-centric issues that were not given adequate attention in Sharm el-Sheikh. Key among them are desertification and the water crisis.
Subtle and overt wars brewing between some countries because of water deserve urgent attention and lasting solutions. The crisis between Egypt and Ethiopia on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) still persists in spite of repeated mediation efforts by various international organisations. While the crisis on River Niger earlier this year was ignited by political consideration in the aftermath of the Niger coup of July 26, it is nonetheless of serious environmental relevance as Niger Republic might soon respond in kind to neighbouring Nigeria’s breach of agreement on the Niger River, in which case the latter might build its own dam upstream. The anticipated effect of that decision on energy and water availability in Nigeria is somewhat worrisome. The UAE’s COP28 is expected to look into transboundary water disputes between Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the Euphrates-Tigris rivers, between Iran and Afghanistan, or public discontent over water shortages in Yemen. It should create a platform to look into the problem of droughts and effects on livestock and armed conflicts in Somalia as well as the security implications of growing water scarcity in Egypt.
The Middle East water crisis is a major one. The Middle East has only one percent of the world’s fresh water shared among five percent of the world’s population. The lack of cost-effective water supply options in the Middle East is a potential threat to social security in that region. This should be of concern to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. North Africa is particularly vulnerable and shares a lot in common with the Middle East on this score. Africans at COP28 need to look very closely at the issues dealing with the peculiar Middle East situation and how solutions for the region can be adaptable to Africa. COP28, in essence, could very well be said to be an extension of Sharm el-Sheikh and another opportunity for Africa to make robust statements on the continent, using the platform of the overlap between the Middle East and Africa, especially the North of Africa. The world is waiting. Africa needs to make appropriate provision ahead of the opening up of its economy to the world. With COP28, it has a chance that it must not fritter away.
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When applause travels faster than hunger