By Yemi Olakitan
In November, COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh ended with a last-minute agreement to create a “loss and damage” climate fund for Africa and other developing nations.
For centuries, Africa has focused its climate change agenda on climate justice, a desire to hold industrialised nations accountable for the majority of global carbon emissions.
In a type of deliberate blindness, this has happened while a majority of Africans grappled with the most basic issues: ineffective urban sanitation; poor stormwater management; a lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities; willful and uninterrupted deforestation; and environmental deterioration.
Africa’s pleasure over the latest climate financing pact is likely déjà vu, given the poor implementation of previous agreements.
Rich countries’ “dishonest and misleading accounting to inflate their climate finance contributions” has left OXFAM confused about the true size of global climate financing in recent years.
In 2020, worldwide climate money raised was $21–24.5 billion, not $68.3 billion as indicated.
Both figures missed the $100 billion annual goal.
African nations base their climate agenda on this opaque accounting, which has limited their role at COP to that of a stubborn pressure group grovelling for reparations.
The continent based its climate agenda on this ambiguous, dishonest accounting, which has limited their role at COP to that of an intractable pressure group constantly grovelling for reparations.
Africa’s ruling elite is nonetheless responsible for climate change’s 1.4 billion victims, even without developed country climate finance.
The rising gap between the haves and have-nots has exacerbated climate change, disproportionately affecting the poor and vulnerable.
Africa’s climate change plan is a failure, and its continuous participation at COP hasn’t helped its greater population.
Instead, the conference has become a financial burden, a vacuous jamboree for public leaders and their aides, straining the continent’s meagre resources without providing any meaningful benefit.
Beyond developing countries’ insincerity and unwillingness to pay up, waiting for reparations is a waste of time because the fund isn’t big enough to address the massive climatic concerns we face.
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Even as a means to an end, climate change financial advocacy is ineffective.
South Africa, the region’s largest GHG emitter, emits half of Africa’s 3.8% carbon emissions, making it the continent most vulnerable to climate change.
Droughts and floods are increasing, spreading waterborne diseases.
From 26,000 square kilometres in 1963, Lake Chad Basin water has decreased to 1,500 square kilometres.
The Senegal and Niger basins experience the same.
Farmers and pastoralists have fought for food and water in violent armed battles due to these water problems.
These conflicts and other climate change-related environmental challenges are already reducing food production and the mean yield of essential crops like rice and wheat, which might drop by 21% by 2050.
These frightening trends might worsen poverty and malnutrition and force millions of people to flee the continent.
Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt have the resources to lead Africa on climate change.
If they prioritise climate change adaptation and mitigation, they can afford at least $500 million each year.
If they cut government waste, they could find the money in their national budgets.
Africa must set its climate change agenda independently from COP and industrialised nations’ half-hearted pantomimes.
Each country must design a bioregional climate agenda that recognises the unique social and socioeconomic circumstances of each subgroup of its local people, then gather the resources to pursue its climate change agenda on its own terms.
Therefore, it must rip up all prior climate accords that interfere with its economic lifelines and unyoke itself from any vow that hinders its ability to quickly pursue adaptation and mitigation methods that ensure a sustainable future for its population.
Africa should avoid pinning its climate destiny on affluent nations, most of whom have not shown environmental leadership or commitment to COP targets.
The UK just opened a new coal mine in Cumbria, claiming that UK climate policy permits it to spew as much carbon as needs until 2050, when it hopes to magically achieve net zero emissions.
Another hollow promise, another kicked can.
