Climate change impacts such as drought, floods and wildfires, are projected to increase. But the impacts will be devastating among poorer nations and societies worldwide.
Climate change effects in Africa have increased the frequency and intensity of extreme events. The State of the Climate in Africa 2020 report illustrates our disproportionate vulnerability.
The report estimates that up 118 million people living in extreme poverty in Africa will be exposed to floods, drought and extreme heat by 2030. According to the World Food Programme, 98 million people in Africa suffered from acute food insecurity and needed humanitarian assistance.
The achievement of Sustainable Development Goals is in peril by the impact of climate change. In sub-Saharan Africa for example, the cost of climate change adaptation is estimated at $30–50 billion or up to three per cent of GDP annually for the next decade.
Africa needs to invest in climate-resilient development approaches, from energy to water to agriculture to housing to information and early warning.
But who is going to pick up Africa’s adaptation and mitigation costs? As Africans – leaders and citizens – we argue that the impacts of climate change we are experiencing have been caused by industrialised nations.
For example, China, the United States of America, the European Union, the United Kingdom and India have contributed to 55 per cent of the total greenhouse gas emissions.
It follows logically, in my view, that the cost of dealing with the impacts of climate change must be borne by the richer, polluting countries. But the rich nations, especially the United States of America and the European Union, disagree.
Perhaps the US and Europe fear that paying for historic emissions would set precedence, obligating them to bear the cost of billions of dollars of climate impacts in developing countries for decades to come.
The idea that richer nations should pay for climate change-induced loss and damage dates to 1991 when the Alliance of Small Island States called for a mechanism for compensating countries affected by sea-level rise. But over time loss and damage, as it is known, has been a critical but unresolved plank of negotiation by developing countries at every COP meeting.
Two weeks of meetings in Bonn to set the agenda for COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, this November have produced no consensus on a funding facility for loss and damage. Such a facility would essentially cover the cost of the impacts of climate change beyond the adaptive capacity of poor nations.
Speaking at the 2022 Africa Development Bank annual meeting in May, Akinwumi Adesina urged the global community to apply the polluter pays principle. This is part of a set of common-sense principles based on the simple proposition that those who produce pollution should meet the cost of managing its impacts.
Financing the cost of loss and damage arising from climate change must not be something that industrial, wealthy nations have the luxury of considering, and perhaps opting out of. It is a moral obligation to humanity.
The views expressed are the writer’s
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