Your Excellency Dr Fitsum Assefa Adela, President of AMCEN, Minister of Planning and Development, Ethiopia,
Your Excellency Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko, Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy, and Sustainable Environment of the African Union,
Dr. Kevin Kariuki, Vice President, Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth, African Development Bank Group,
Ms. Hanan Morsy, Deputy Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa,
Ministers, Excellencies and colleagues.
Let me begin by thanking the Government of Cote d’Ivoire for hosting a successful AMCEN Special Session in September. This session powerfully highlighted the links between drought, land degradation and desertification, biodiversity conservation and climate change. And it highlighted the need for united action across the three Rio Conventions and other multilateral environmental agreements.
We need this action to slow the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature, land and biodiversity loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste. A crisis that hits African nations far harder than most – which we can see as Southern Africa suffers its worst drought in century.
This is why COP29 is so important for African nations. Because it is at this COP that the New Quantified Goal on Climate Finance is expected to be finalized. The African Group of Negotiators will, I am sure, push hard for this goal – backed with policy guidance from AMCEN. They are right to do so.
The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Africa report tells us that, by 2030, an estimated 118 million extreme poor on the continent will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat. On average, countries are losing up to five per cent of GDP from climate impacts. And countries will struggle to fund responses to extreme weather events, as debt burdens increase alongside more loss and damage stress budgets.
The international community must step up. As the 2024 Adaptation Gap Report tells us, the adaptation finance gap is estimated at US$187-359 billion per year. But Africa also can get creative. Explore new financing structures such as private sector investments, debt-for-nature swaps, and debt-for-climate swaps. Embrace initiatives aimed at building climate resilience, like the African Development Bank Climate Action Window, the UN Secretary-General's Early Warnings for All initiative and more. Promote community participation, Indigenous knowledge systems, and gender-responsive approaches to enhance adaptive capacities.
Excellencies, adaptation is only part of the climate puzzle. Mitigation is crucial.
Look, we know that African nations are not responsible for the climate crisis. Nowhere was this more starkly shown than when the African Union joined the G20. The addition of the African Union brought the bloc’s total emission up from 77 per cent to 82 per cent. That is only an extra 5 per cent for more than doubling the number of nations under the G20 umbrella from 44 to 99.
So, yes, in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the big emitters must do the heavy lifting to get on track for 1.5°C. This means promising and delivering 42 per cent off greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 57 per cent by 2035.
But we know that Africa is growing fast. And we know that Africa itself would suffer the most in terms of climate impacts if the continent builds that growth on high-carbon development models.
When African leaders submit their new NDCs, they must do so in the knowledge that these pledges can serve as development plans that drive low-carbon growth, create green jobs, drive universal access to renewable energy and adapt to the impacts of climate change through prioritizing nature-based solutions.
Africa is, after all, a continent of solutions.
Solutions to food security, with fertile lands and natural resources. Solutions for innovation in a youthful and energetic population with the hunger to succeed. Solutions to the climate crisis, in terms of vast potential for land restoration and critical energy transition minerals.
As I said at the last AMCEN session, African nations can capitalize on surging demand for such minerals and resources, which are essential to the energy transition. This is a clear opportunity for African nations to increase revenues for poverty reduction, sustainable development and long-term investment. As long as value addition is done at home. And as long as nature and people are protected through responsible mining – including clear policies on circularity that ensure critical minerals are re-used rather than mined to exhaustion.
Climate change is indeed a huge challenge that has been imposed on Africa. But global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change provide your nations with many opportunities to become global leaders. I urge you to take them.
