President Cyril Ramaphosa during a walkabout of the South Africa Pavillion on the sidelines of the Sharm El-Sheikh Climate Implementation Summit this week. Picture: Supplied
Emerging economy leaders yesterday called for the developed world to fulfil its pledges and commitments toward financing initiatives aimed at dealing with climate change.
The world leaders were delivering their national statements during the first part of the high-level segment of the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) in Egypt yesterday.
COP27 is a gathering of UN Member States who have pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to well below 2ºC and work hard to keep the 1.5ºC, in a bid to limit global warming.
The Paris Agreement outlines long-term goals that guide governments towards limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5°C.
According to a recent report by UK NGO Debt Justice, sub-Saharan African countries will go almost $1 trillion (R18trl) into debt over the next 10 years unless wealthy countries provide enough finance to tackle the climate crisis
President Cyril Ramaphosa drummed up the message that African countries needed significant financial support to build adaptive capacity, foster resilience to keep the world on the 1.5°C pathway.
To achieve this, Ramaphosa said Africa would need a predictable, appropriate and at-scale funding stream and technological support, as well as international equity and transitions that are just and inclusive.
“This places a great responsibility on developed economies to honour their commitments to those countries with the greatest need and that confront the greatest environmental, social and economic effects of climate change,” Ramaphosa said.
“The multilateral development banks need to be reformed to meet the needs of developing economies for sustainable development and climate resilience.
“At present, multilateral support is out of reach of the majority of the world’s population due to lending policies that are risk averse and carry onerous costs and conditionalities.
“We need a clear roadmap to deliver on the Glasgow decision to double adaptation financing by 2025.”
Eric Njuguna, national co-lead for Fridays for Future, Kenya, said the youth in Africa had had enough empty promises, inaction and double standards from governments.
“At the 9th International Policy Conference we came face to face with a number of African government ministers, senior UN and African Union representatives, and ambassadors from rich countries,” Njuguna said.
“We made it clear we expect them to act on their commitments at COP27. If they don’t, they will compromise not only our future rights and well-being, but those of billions of young people around the world.”
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe lambasted rich countries, especially in Europe, for turning to fossil fuels to mitigate against the energy crisis.
Wickremesinghe said the “chequered implementation” of previous decisions, including those of COP26 was extremely disheartening.
“Regrettably, the ground reality is that the fossil fuel-based industrialised countries of G7 and G20 who have been the main promoters of green hydrogen are now backtracking to use of fossil fuel,” he said.
“In the last year, carbon dioxide emissions increased by 2 billion metric tonnes – from 34.3bn to 36.3bn metric tonnes.
“Such double standards are unacceptable. Developed nations should be given leadership to overcome climate challenges rather than abdicating their responsibilities.”
Wickremesinghe also proposed to establish an International Climate Change University in Sri Lanka with an ancillary institute in the Maldives to counter obstacles in implementing climate action plans.
More than 100 world leaders have gathered at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt to work towards implementation of existing climate agreements.
Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and secretary general of the UN Antonio Guterres kicked off the summit on Monday, delivering messages on the importance of urgent action to address climate change.
The world leaders are discussing a range of pertinent climate change issues including on just transition, food security and innovative finance for climate and development.
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