UN climate chief Simon Stiell has urged world leaders “to flip the script” on climate action in Africa and move from “an epidemic of under-investment” to a “goldmine of human and economic benefits”.
Speaking at a conference of African environment ministers on Thursday in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, Stiell said investments in renewable energy and climate resilience “can and should be the single greatest opportunity for Africa, to lift up people, communities, and economies”.
African countries face a disproportionately heavy burden from climate change, with temperatures across the continent rising slightly faster than the global average, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Deadly floods, droughts and extreme heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe, with increasing knock-on effects on economies and societies.
African countries are losing between 2 and 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) every year as a result of climate-related hazards, according to a new WMO report cited by Stiell in his speech.
The UNFCCC chief cautioned world leaders – especially those from the G20 group of the largest economies – against dismissing climate impacts across Africa as someone else’s problem. “It is African nations and people who pay the heaviest price,” he said. But, he added, “the economic and political reality – in an interdependent world – is we are all in this crisis together”.
Green investment pleas
Stiell went on to call for “exponential changes in business, investments, and growth” that would strengthen Africa’s role in climate solutions, including renewables such as solar and wind power, energy efficiency, clean cooking and adaptation measures.
African countries need an estimated $277 billion a year to bankroll plans outlined in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – governments’ climate action blueprints – but they can currently count on a fraction of that sum.
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Investments in clean energy and related electricity grid upgrades amounted to $39 billion across the African continent in 2023, just 2% of the global total, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Fossil fuel supply and power generation still attract the bulk of energy investments in Africa.
Efforts to prepare for, and adjust to, the escalating impacts of climate change are similarly underfunded.
Climate adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to cost between $30 billion and $50 billion a year over the next decade, according to the WMO report. But the region only received an estimated $10.8 billion in adaptation finance between 2021 and 2022, according to the latest data published by the non-profit Climate Policy Initiative, which tracks adaptation finance flows.
Youssef Nassef, the UNFCCC’s director for adaptation, told journalists on Wednesday that climate change is exacerbating poverty, undermining food security and harming children’s development on the African continent.
Yet only 21 out of 54 African countries have so far submitted National Adaptation Plans, which are a key tool for mapping out and funding climate resilience measures – mainly due to the limited ability of the poorest nations to prepare them, he said. That, he added, is “a cause for concern”.
Climate finance focus at COP29
At the COP29 UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, this November, countries are set to agree on a new collective quantified goal (NCQG) for finance that should channel more money into both adaptation and clean energy in developing nations. But governments remain deeply divided over many of the fundamental issues, including the size of the goal, what it should fund and, crucially, who should contribute.
Rich countries want high-emitting emerging economies, like China and the Gulf states, to pitch in. While hitting back at attempts to include them in the NCQG donor base, some of those countries are already providing climate finance bilaterally, outside the UN process.
China’s President Xi Jinping and African leaders stand for a group photo during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) on September 5, 2024. ADEK BERRY/Pool via REUTERS
Beijing pledged on Thursday to step up its financial support to Africa with a fresh $51-billion funding offer to develop infrastructure, agriculture and trade across the continent. That should include 30 clean energy and green development projects, according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which did not provide further details.
Stiell said on Thursday that COP29 “must signal that the climate crisis is core business for every government, with finance solutions to match”.
He called for progress on a range of finance sources besides the NCQG, from getting a global carbon market up and running to making the new loss and damage fund operational – all of which would help drive climate progress in Africa and beyond.
“An Africa ascending, an Africa empowered to take bolder climate actions is in every nation’s interests,” the UN climate boss emphasised.
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)