Mohamed Al Munya (Abu Dhabi) - The 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) comes after a summer that witnessed harsh heatwaves and record-breaking forest fires in various regions of the world.
The summer also saw droughts that threatened agricultural crops, forest and pastoral areas, and biodiversity around the world, including on the African continent, where rural development is an economic pillar and the majority of the population relies on agriculture and animal rearing. At the end of the summer, the first Africa Climate Summit was held in Nairobi, where African Union leaders met and issued a document calling for more resources to help vulnerable countries adapt to extreme weather phenomena, preserve natural resources, and enhance clean energy systems.
For several decades, Africa has borne a noticeable share of the negative consequences of climate change, including droughts, floods, and extreme temperatures, which pose a threat to humans, animals, and the environment, as well as to infrastructure, production, and services.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted by 154 countries, including the majority of African nations, was established during the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The convention called for the adoption of policies to protect ecosystems and achieve sustainable economic development. This was followed by the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and later replaced by the Paris Agreement in 2016. In these three milestone agreements, Africa has been a voice calling for more international cooperation and joint action to protect the planet and address the warming climate that threatens all life on its surface.
Slow Industrialisation
African economies largely depend on agricultural and pastoral activities for their workforce at nearly 60% of GDP on average, with many countries transitioning towards industrialisation at a slow pace. This, in turn, means that these nations contribute an insignificant quantity of the global carbon dioxide emissions that are causing climate change. The entire African continent produces only around 4% of total global emissions, with per capita carbon emissions estimated at about 0.8 tonnes annually, much less than the global average of 5 tonnes annually.
Due to high poverty rates, weak service structures, and food insecurity, African countries are the most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change, despite being among the lowest emitters. As the ramifications of climate change worsen, these complicating factors make adaptation and mitigation mechanisms difficult.
Eastern and Western Africa, which are home to around 80% of the world’s most food insecure people, are experiencing the most severe drought since the 1980s, affecting countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania.
Drought and erratic rain patterns caused by climate change has led to acute food shortages for approximately 800 million people in Africa, which has a total population of 1.4 billion. Nearly 270 million Africans experience extreme hunger.
Drought, water scarcity, and shrinking agricultural land lead to decreasing resources in a region experiencing high demographic growth, and with it an increasing demand for food and water, intensified competition for dwindling resources, greater displacement and migration, and internal conflicts over the already scarce resources.
Annually, African countries incur losses of tens of billions of dollars due to climate change-caused natural disasters. However, Africa receives only $36 billion annually out of the $300 billion needed to cope with climate change, a paradox that will be unpacked during COP28 in the hope of obtaining new support commitments from developed countries.
Early Climate Awareness
African countries have long recognised the risks of violent environmental changes to economic development. Many countries in the continent have established committees and specialised bodies to monitor climate change and develop collective mitigation policies. Sub-groups concerned with the environment, agriculture, combating desertification, and managing shared river waters have also been formed.
Demonstrating this early awareness, the African Union held the first Africa Climate Summit last September, during which African leaders proposed a global carbon tax system. The summit’s final document called on major polluting countries to allocate more resources to assist vulnerable countries with adaptation financing.
The document also proposed a global carbon tax system, including a carbon tax on the fossil fuel trade, maritime transport, and aviation, as the basis for a negotiating stance that the continent is betting on at COP28.
COP28
In the context of its expectations from COP28, African countries are expecting the UAE, which has continuously been a leader in providing development and relief aid to African countries, to support the call for adaptation financing support.
The UAE has also widely contributed to establishing many renewable energy projects in several African countries in the past several years.
In 2022, the UAE launched the “Etihad 7” programme, which aims to provide 100 million people across the continent with clean electricity by 2035.
In September last year, concurrent with the Africa Climate Summit, the UAE announced a funding initiative worth Dh16.5 billion to enhance Africa’s capabilities in clean energy. This initiative crowns a historic path of joint cooperation between the UAE and African nations to accelerate natural resource protections and sustainability efforts through renewable energy projects.
Such sustained support is at the core of Africa’s expectations as it faces the challenges of climate change and brings its environmental vision and developmental agendas to the UAE for COP28, aiming to stimulate global efforts to reduce carbon emissions and to assess the progress made in combating climate change.