Download Climate Change & Sustainable Development in Africa

CLIMATE CHANGE & AFRICA –
Who Pays the Price?
By: Grace Akumu (Ms)
Climate Network Africa (CNA)
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://cnaf.or.ke
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INTRODUCTION
Climate Change has been described as the defining global
agenda of the 21st Century
• Sir David King, UK Chief Scientific Advisor
“Climate Change is a far greater threat to the world than
international terrorism”
• Helen Bjornoy, Minister for Environment, Norway
“We need to join forces to communicate that a clean
environment is something worth defending and fighting
for, as an international community and as individuals.
This much we owe to ourselves and to future
generations”
• Bill Clinton, Former US President
“I’m no longer skeptical…I no longer have doubts...I think
climate change is the major challenge facing the earth”
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CONTENTS
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Introduction
IPCC Findings – Africa Region
Climate Change & Sust. Devpt in Africa
Injustices of Climate Change: Who Pays
the Price?
• Implications for Africa
• What Should be Done?
• What Can the EU Do?
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IPCC Findings – Africa Region
• According to the Third and Fourth
Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-TAR
& IPCC-AR4), developing regions like Africa
will suffer the most from adverse impacts
of climate change due to low adaptive
capacity, low resilience and high levels of
poverty; and within countries, the poor will
suffer the most.
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IPCC – AR4 Findings – Africa
Region
• Snow on Mt. Kenya and Mt.
Kilimanjaro is fast melting away.
• By 2015 snow on Mt. Kenya gone.
• Mt. Kenya is the major river
catchment in Kenya. Most rivers are
drying up. Hydro-power electricity
generation is threatened. For
example, 70% of Kenya’s electricity
is from hydro-power.
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Some current impacts
• Tanzania has been experiencing serious
electricity shortages resulting in power
rationing with certain parts of the city of
Dar-es-salaam, being supplied electricity
once every other week because of
drought.
• West African countries are experiencing
similar threats, e.g., the Akosombo Dam in
Ghana also experiencing low water levels
due to drought
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IPCC Findings… Agriculture &
Food Security … Africa Region
• Communities living downstream,
especially, indigenous and
pastoralist communities’ survival
serious threatened. Conflicts over
scarce resources e.g. water points,
are increasing.
• Agricultural and food security in
Africa also seriously threatened.
• Arid and Semi-arid lands in Africa
could increase by 60-90 million
hectares
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IPCC Findings… Agriculture &
Food Security … Africa Region
• Wheat production may likely
disappear from Africa by 2080s
• By 2100, parts of Sub-sahara Africa
will likely experience agricultural
losses of 2% and 7% of GDP
• Extreme wind and turbulence could
decrease fisheries by 50-60%
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IPCC Findings… Agriculture & Food
Security … Africa Region
• Crop revenues will likely fall by as
much as 90% by 2100 with small
scale farmers being the most
affected
• In Egypt, for example, climate
change could decrease national
production of many crops (ranging
from -11% for rice to -28% for
soybeans) by the year 2050
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IPCC Findings … Impacts on
Water Resources - Africa Region
• By 2020, when the EU aims to
reduce ghgs by 20%, between
75-250 million people in Africa will
be at risk of increased water stress.
• By 2050, when the EU aims to
reduce ghgs by 30-50%, 350-600
million Africans will be at risk of
water stress.
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IPCC Findings… Impacts on
Coastal Regions - Africa
• Sea level rise will likely increase the
high socio-economic and physical
vulnerability of coastal cities.
• The cost of Adaptation to sea level
rise could amount to 5-10% of GDP.
• By 2050, previously non-malaria
zones in highland areas of Ethiopia,
Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi could
experience stable malaria. Now,
that is when the EU is aiming to
reduce ghgs by 30-50%.
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Unwarranted Celebrations!
• The world may have to excuse
Africans when they say that they do
not know and they do not
understand, what the EU ministers,
including the present EU presidency,
were celebrating on 9 March 2007.
• They were celebrating what? Our
imminent deaths? Caused by who?
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IPCC Findings … Impacts on
Tourism - Africa
• Africa will experience losses in
animal species
• In some national parks in subSahara Africa, between 25-40%
of species will be endangered
or extinct by 2080
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Climate Change & Sustainable
Development in Africa
In 2000, leaders of 189 nations, along
with almost every major international
body, agreed on the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs).
It is now widely recognized that meeting
the MDGs (without which there cannot be
sustainable development), faces
enormous challenges, and in many cases
looks unlikely, given the additional
challenges and threats posed by climate
change
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Climate Change & Sustainable
Development in Africa (Contd…)
Threatens to reverse decades of
development efforts
Climate change poses a real risk to
poverty eradication goals, and
Will increasingly affect the poor (34
Least Developed Countries – LDCs are in Africa)
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Climate Change & Sustainable
Development in Africa (Contd…)
Generally, climate change is
superimposed on already
existing vulnerabilities
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Climate Change & Sustainable
Development in Africa (Contd…)
Climate change is today forcing
individuals, families, and
communities to adjust the way they
live and manage their resources.
Good sign of adaptation but with
extremely miserable resources.
 The worst affected are the poorest
and marginalized sections of society
as well as the urban poor and slum
dwellers.
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Climate Change & Sustainable
Development in Africa (Contd…)
• Economies of most African countries
largely dependent on the export of one or
a very small number of primary goods (e.g.
agricultural products or raw materials).
• Despite political independence, the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) is being
deliberately used and manipulated to keep
Africa’s economy and peoples underdeveloped.
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Climate Change & Sustainable
Development in Africa (Contd…)
• This over-dependence on primary,
mainly agricultural products, now
make Africa even more extremely
vulnerable to the vagaries climate
change.
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Injustices of Climate change:
Who Pays the Price?
• Industrialised countries are responsible for
the historical and present climate change.
It started in the 1840s with the Industrial
Revolution.
• All industrialised countries are not willing
to commit to greenhouse gas emissions
reductions on a per capita basis.
• They are also unable to meet the 5%
overall ghg emissions reduction target
agreed to at Kyoto in 1997. Instead, their
emissions are increasing.
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Injustices of Climate change:
Who Pays the Price?
• And presently, they are busy looking
for cheaper ways to reduce their
ghgs, e.g. through market-driven
mechanisms such as the inequitable
Kyoto Protocol mechanisms which
have marginalised whole continents
such as Africa; yet Africa is the most
vulnerable region to the impacts of
climate change.
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Injustices of Climate change:
Who Pays the Price?
• But, Africa is the least contributor to
greenhouse gas emissions (ghgs),
only emitting 3-4% of the global
total.
• Despite industrialised countries
(responsible for global warming)
possessing the wealth, technology,
and infrastructure to cope with the
negative effects of climate change,
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Climate Change: Who Pays the
Price?
those who emit the least, in
particular Africa, will have the
greatest burden to bear from the
impacts of climate change (Ref:
IPCC findings and actual impacts
taking place in the continent).
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Climate Change: Implications for
Africa
• Africa’s dream and aspiration for
development as well as the
achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), New
Partnership for Africa’s Development
(NEPAD) objectives, (e.g. poverty
eradication – top most priority of
African governments), will be
seriously undermined and remain a
mirage.
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WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
• Revisit the equity principle in the Climate
Convention and implement it (the polluter
pays principle). EU should take the
political initiative on this issue at the
climate change negotiations.
• Reconsider the principle of per capita
emissions allocations. This would bring on
board, continents such as Africa, who
despite providing environmental lungs to
the world, faces the greatest injustice ever
meted on human beings.
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What Can the EU Do?
• Current Kyoto Protocol arrangement is
grossly inequitable. Consider an equitable
Post-Kyoto regime based on equal per
capita emissions allocations.
• In the immediate future, consider a
“Special Adaptation Fund for Africa”, in
view of the emergency posed by climate
change, as part of no regret measures. Its
economical to act now that later.
• EU would take the first step by
contributing at least 1% of their GDP to the
“Special Adaptation Fund for Africa”.
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CONCLUSION
• In the short-term, Consider a Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) Investment Fund for Africa in
order for the CDM to pick up in Africa.
• Assist Africa to lobby the USA and other OECD
governments to see the precarious situation of
Africa and the need to act fast based on the
recommendations above; e.g., on the principle of
per capita emissions allocations, Special
Adaptation Fund for Africa and a CDM Investment
Fund for Africa.
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Thank You!!
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