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CLIMATE CHANGE & AFRICA – Who Pays the Price?

By: Grace Akumu (Ms)Climate Network Africa (CNA)

Nairobi, KenyaEmail: cnaf@cnaf.or.ke

Email: gakumu@yahoo.comWeb: 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

• 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 Intergovern-mental 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%, between75-250 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 sub-Sahara 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 under-developed.

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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!!