Africa must remain relentless in demanding fair financing at CoP 29

Time has come for African countries to step up their strategies for demanding fair treatment from developed countries that are responsible for causing global warming and, therefore, climate change. For the last decade and a half or so, African countries have had a unified voice, being too aware that the adverse impacts of climate change cause the most damage to the Continent yet it contributes negligible Green House Gas (GHG) emissions totalling only 4 percent. Taking a unified position during global meetings such as the annual Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) known as CoPs, forces industrialised countries to pay better attention. Hopefully this will compel them to take concrete action to fulfil their obligations to compensate Africa for the loss and damage emanating from climate change.

To be sure, most industrialised countries have acknowledged this reality. In response, the global consensus, in the context of the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC, is that industrialised countries must support African countries to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. According to the Agreement, African countries must be supported to enhance their adaptive capacity. This means to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change in the context of the temperature goal of the Agreement: to keep the rise in global surface temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels.

Delayed dues for adaptation and mitigation

Despite no denial by developed nations that they are responsible for the climate change now being experienced and even voicing commitments to finance African countries to adapt accordingly, this commitment has never been fulfilled. Quoting a 2023 report by Fanning and Hickel, Kenya’s Daily Nation e-Paper on September 4, 2024 reported that the climate debt owed by the Global North to the Global South is at a staggering 193 US  trillion dollars. This, according to the article, makes the 700 US million dollars pledged for loss and damage so far, a drop in the ocean. Excluding China, India and the rest of the Global South, Sub-Saharan Africa is owed 45 US trillion dollars. African countries must therefore remain relentless in their demand for these dues.

That is why it is encouraging that African negotiators have called for a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) that prioritises increased public climate finance, backed by a Climate Damages Tax (CDT) on fossil fuel extraction to generate the necessary funds. They have gone further and demanded for public and debt-free financing which would avoid further burdening Africa’s economies. They have rejected support for fossil fuel production and other dangerous distractions that prolong the climate crisis. This is according to a press statement from Greenpeace’s Amos Wemanya, the organisation’s Responsive Campaigns Lead, issued on 19^th September 2024. 

The mitigation injustice

Besides adaptation the other climate dimension that has remained a major point of contention is mitigation. Climate change mitigation is the reduction of GHGs emissions or removal of carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere. On mitigation, industrialised countries have made commitments to compensate African countries by paying them carbon credits. Countries or even companies, commit to pay a certain amount of money in order to be allowed to continue emitting GHGs to certain agreed levels. In a sense, carbon credits compensate Africa and other developing regions for the burden they bear to capture or remove the carbon dioxide being emitted by those buying carbon credits. Pricing of carbon credits has been another frustrating issue for Africa because amounts payable as carbon credits are never commensurate with the benefits that those being paid have to forego to earn them. 

The most practical way of removing carbon dioxide involves increasing the area of the earth under the green cover of plants. Plants capture carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and produce oxygen as a by-product. This includes trees, shrubs, grasses and even mangroves. Generally, greening for carbon removal involves restoration of forests, wetlands, and other green ecosystems, including marine plants such as seaweed and microscopic ocean plants (Phytoplankton). Like other plants that grow on land, phytoplankton perform photosynthesis and, therefore capture carbon dioxide.

So far, the African voice in demanding that targets set for the global adaptation and mitigation funds be fulfilled have not been honoured. Commitments made at past CoP meetings have remained mere intentions as opposed to obligations. Africa is, however, hopeful that this will change sooner than later and that the polluters can finally put their money where their mouths have been. Whether this will happen will become evident when it is known whether negotiations to be fronted by the African contingent to CoP 29 scheduled for  Baku, Azerbaijan between 11^th and 22^nd November 2024 will bear fruit.