ANALYSIS: Inside details of Climate Change pact brokered in Nairobi

livus, 8 months ago

Excerpts from the article:

The just concluded Africa Climate Summit (ACS) is the first of its sort on the continent. It focuses on delivering climate-positive growth and finance solutions for Africa and the world.

The pact announced on Wednesday and dubbed “The African Leaders Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change,” further renewed the continent’s leadership’s readiness and commitment to global climate action and sustainable development, infusing it with a distinctive African character.

During an engagement at the summit, African leaders repeatedly called for collective global action in resource mobilisation for both development and climate action as they challenged the global community to honour its commitments, citing the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact....

At the Summit, the leaders said they made it clear that they are aware of the unjust configuration of multilateral institutional frameworks that perpetually place African nations behind, through costly financing which plunges the continent’s economies into a debt trap and denies them resources needed to mitigate and adapt in response to climate change crisis threatening lives and livelihoods.

As a continent, the African leaders said they have developed their common position which encapsulates their ambitions for socioeconomic transformation and climate action agenda.

This position, the leaders said, is anchored on the potential that Africa holds to decarbonize the global economy and sets the stage for green industrialisation throughout the world....

Key demands: Among several demands brought to the fore and captured in the declaration document, the African leaders are demanding a fair playing ground for their countries to access the investment needed to unlock the potential and translate it into opportunities.

“We further demand a just multilateral development finance architecture, to liberate our economies from odious debt and onerous barriers to necessary financial resources,” Mr Ruto said....

Climate Change and Concerns for Africa

Over the last decade, extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heatwaves, drought, coastal erosion, wildfires and storms, have become more persistent across Africa and globally.

The aftermath of these extreme climatic events has resulted in significant losses of lives, livelihoods, and biodiversity and has plunged millions of people into unprecedented hardship across Africa and globally.

While this nature’s prevalent changes have been attributed to climate change effects exacerbated by the continuous emissions of Greenhouse Gases, Africa’s emission footprint is only a fraction of the global emissions. Yet, the continent is grappling with the consequences of climate change at an unprecedented scale due to poor climate adaptation and mitigation financing.

The aftermath of the climate change catastrophe is evident in the surge in food insecurity, disruptions of ecosystems and economies, displacement and migration of people due to weather crises and worsening threat of conflict amidst dwindling resources....