By Mary Kasoka Mwiikisa
The impact of global warming is costing African nations up to 5% of their economic output, the United Nations climate chief said on Thursday, calling for more investments to help adapt to climate change.
Despite contributing far less polluting emissions than the industrialised world, Africa which has suffered the brunt of climate change, receives just 1% of annual global climate finance.
“The climate crisis is an economic sinkhole, sucking the momentum out of economic growth,” Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told a meeting of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
African governments and their climate negotiators are considering various strategies at the COP29 preparatory meeting in the West African country.
Stiell also acknowledged that climate action was the single greatest economic opportunity of this century that created an opportunity to offer sustainable and clean solutions to the planet especially in the energy sector.
Meanwhile Stiell announced that more observer badges for COP29 would go to organizations from the global south.
He said in a speech “We have also taken steps this year to boost the proportion of observer organizations at COP29 from the global south, following the guidance from Parties at the June Meetings this year.”
Reacting to this development, Director of Mohamed Adow, Director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-based think tank, said the decision was long overdue as previous COP summits had been largely full of delegates from the global north.
“It’s an example of how too much power at the climate talks has been held by people and organisations based in countries that have caused the climate crisis. Finally, we are getting a fairer distribution of observer badges. It’s only right that people from countries that are most vulnerable to the climate crisis are able to attend the meetings that are supposed to address their needs” Adow said in a statement.
Adow added that People in parts of the developing world only contribute a fraction of the emissions that has caused the climate crisis yet disproportionately suffer its impacts.
“Yet for too long the vast majority of COP badges have been held by people from a small part of the world but with disproportionately high emissions. It is only right that this imbalance is now being rectified.” He explained.
Adow stated “It is encouraging to hear Simon Stiell spelling out the huge opportunities posed by tackling the scourge of climate change, transitioning the world to clean energy and lifting millions of climate vulnerable people out of poverty.”
According to Power Shift Africa’s analysis, 50% of the COP28 badges went to participants from the bloc known as Western European and Other States (WEOG), which includes the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, despite those countries only representing12% of the global population.
AMCEN pre-COP meetings ran from August to 6 September 2024, under the theme “Raising Africa’s Ambition to Reduce Land Degradation, Desertification, and Drought.”