Whenever I think about climate change, the images I conjure in my mind are the melting glaciers, the tornadoes sweeping across the US and, most recently, the Australian forest fires with stranded kangaroos and koala bears facing the brunt of it all.
Closer home, evidence of climate change is there for all to see. In recent months, unpredictable, intense floods have washed across parts of Rwanda, Kenya, Somalia, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti and Tanzania, ruining homes and livelihoods as people and governments try to battle a global pandemic. The events depict just how fast and drastically greenhouse gas emissions are changing our planet.
Pre-Covid, I travelled to China with a group of developers, and in our first stop, Quanzhou, I was surprised to see every resident wearing a mask. I later learnt that this was a necessity as the city's air was polluted by smoke and chemical fumes. The city was heavily blanketed in fumes that blocked the sun rays, making Quanzhou foggy and dark.
In the last few decades, data show, there has been an increase in the emission of greenhouse gases mainly due to human-related activities. The greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere.
The net effect is that the world is now experiencing GHGs that are out of balance, which has started to drastically affect the survival of living things on this planet. The atmospheric levels of these gases are at record levels, especially carbon dioxide which is the most dangerous and prevalent. This is what is changing our climate.
What can we all do about it?
The Kyoto Protocol operationalises the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by committing industrialised countries and middle-income economies to limit and reduce greenhouse gas emission according to the agreed individual targets.
The overall target amount is divided among the major emitters in the economy so that each industry knows how many tonnes it can emit each year.
Since companies struggle to restrict their emissions to the set limits, they are free to engage in carbon trading, which provides flexibility on how to meet their individual targets. They can choose to emit more than their target and buy the excess allowances of another emitter that can operate below limits.
Africa only enjoys two percent of the carbon trading market, with the most considerable portion of this being South Africa and North Africa, under the clean development mechanism. Nonetheless, this has not saved the continent from the erratic weather patterns caused by climate change.
Therefore, it is crystal clear that we all need to play our part in the fight against climate change, local government and private sector alike. Each effort counts.
As a regional lender we are cognisant of our role in the climate change battle and instituted the KCB Group Social and Environmental Management System framework, which integrates social and environmental risk management into the business process as a decision-making practice.
It ensures that KCB avoids and manages loans with potential social and environmental risks by conducting social and environmental due diligence prior to loan disbursement. This effort saw the group receive approval for $150 million from the International Finance Corporation to support the growth of the bank’s sustainable climate finance portfolio and scale-up lending to micro, small and medium enterprises including youth and women-owned businesses.
Among the expected beneficiaries are youth-owned micro-enterprises the KCB Foundation is supporting under the 2jiajiri programme. In addition, KCB Bank Kenya also got the Green Climate Fund Accreditation to address the mitigation and adaptation issues for projects in this space ranging between $50 million and $250 million.
To manage these increasingly severe impacts, we must all respond with transformative adaptation and mitigation approaches. There is a need to embark on changes that help protect the environment and reduce the escalating risk of climate change.
We need to act now if we want to get ahead of these extreme weather patterns.
Ag. Chief of Party, KCB Foundation [email protected]
