Zimpapers Logo

Jeffrey Gogo Climate Story
THE UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon will tomorrow convene a crucial global summit on climate change in New York at a time when climate risks are boiling, threatening to turn day into night for most of the developing world.
Mr Ban is hoping to mobilise political will for a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to be agreed in Paris next year. Around 125 heads of state and government are expected to attend, except those from China and India.

The summit provides common ground for the usually warring parties – governments, private sector and civil society – to design and agree on strategies that minimise emissions growth and help people cope with changing climates.

Mr Ban is quite serious about the climate summit. He has called for it outside the normal global climate conferences, as provided for under the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Others have shown less enthusiasm. The absence of China and India is a serious blow to world efforts to curb greenhouse gases emissions, which rose to a record in 2013. China has now overtaken the US as the world’s biggest polluter. India is speedily catching up.

But, what hope does the UN climate summit bring to Africa, if any any? There is hope in that the secretary general has managed to organise a preparatory conference outside the UNFCCC ambit and managed to attract over 100 government heads.

If the leaders meeting in New York are not there to make up numbers, then their presence may be interpreted as a genuine gesture of commitment towards renewal of ambitions to tackling climate change.

For this is not the first time global leaders have congregated at global meetings and emerged with half deals. The last UN summit on sustainable development in Brazil was less than satisfactory. Copenhagen was a disaster for the records marred by transparency and trust issues.

On the road to Paris, New York may deliver some early pledges from rich countries for funding mitigation and adaptation in the developing world under the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF), which has remained severely under-capitalised. At some point, the Fund was capitalised to the tune of only US$7 million against Copenhagen promises of US$100 billion per year until 2020. These failures have created serious divisions between developing and developed countries, threatening to derail international climate negotiations.

Adaptation is the overriding priority for Africa. Support for immediate implementation of such actions is needed urgent. New York should provide clarity for accessible and predictable funding.

By March next year, all countries are expected to have provided plans for cutting emissions in their home economies, as part of the new climate deal. This is contrary to the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, which forced only industrialised countries to limit greenhouses gases. There is very little for Africa to look forward to in this respect. Developed countries have sworn to rejecting any deal that does not compel developing countries to commit.

We can expect to see some emission cutting plans at New York. How deep they will be, that’s anybody’s guess. The biggest polluter, China, will not be present to provide highlights of her plans to save the world.

If rich countries fail to display early commitment to the shaping of an equitable deal by taking on deeper cuts, the message from such actions will be unambiguous; expansion of vulnerability in Africa, worsening severity and frequency of extreme events, and multiplied failures in agriculture.

Millions of people on the continent will bear the potentially catastrophic effects of land loss, food and water scarcity. Mr Ban’s climate summit must, therefore, effectively shape the structure and direction of a future deal, and one that accommodates more Africa’s concerns, if they care about us at all.

Paris will be a sun “riser” or sun “setter” in the course that global action will follow in the post-2015 climate and development agenda. The 2011 climate talks in South Africa produced the Durban Platform (ADP), an outcome tasking parties to come up with a new deal, legally enforceable to replace Kyoto in 2020. This agreement first has to be adopted and agreed to by all parties at the Paris COP. The period between Durban and Paris is being used to create that deal.

An acceptable agreement in Paris, as far as Africa is concerned, is one that will raise ambition to 45 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2050.
A deal under these terms is likely to pull the African Group, a coalition of 53 African countries speaking with a single voice at the climate talks, into joining an agreement that forces its members to commit.

Growing  Risks
The UN Summit comes on the back of recent reports by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) that the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrated in the atmosphere rose fastest in 2013 than at any other time during the past 30 years.

Carbon dioxide concentrations grew 2,9 parts per million (ppm) last year to reach 396ppm, WMO reported earlier this September, putting the world on course for an unsustainable warming of above 2 degrees Celsius as early as 2050.

The upper safe limit for atmospheric carbon concentrations is 350ppm. This much amount of warming will bring disaster to food and agriculture in Africa, where over 600 million people are directly dependent on the sector.

Crop output in Zimbabwe is projected to fall by between 30 and 50 percent within the next two decades, in line with yield declines across southern Africa, according to the Fifth Assessment Report of the UN panel on climate change.

This is just one of multiple potential climate impacts waiting in ambush against Zimbabwe’s future growth if the world leaders meeting in air-conditioned auditoriums in New York fail to come up with concrete action plans to help poor people adapt. God is Father.

Feedback: [email protected]