African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

Header Banner

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
Climate crisisEditor's PicksEgypt

2022 is Africa’s year to lead the world on climate change

By Mohamed Adow
January 12, 2022
817
0
Share:
African climate protesters at COP26 in Glasgow, UK.

The COP27 climate summit on African soil will be the continent’s chance to put the needs of vulnerable nations above the interests of rich countries.

African climate protesters at COP26 in Glasgow, UK.

African climate protesters at COP26 in Glasgow, UK. Credit: James Wan.

Nowhere experiences the bitter injustice of climate change like Africa. Despite contributing almost none of the greenhouse gasses that drive the climate crisis, we suffer its most brutal consequences – from the drought gripping the East to the shrinking Lake Chad in the West, from the floods that have devastated South Sudan to the Mozambican communities still not recovered from Cyclone Idai two years on.

The recent international climate summit, COP26, made some progress. But those of us from Africa came away feeling it had been a conference led by the Global North and whose outcomes reflected the interests of the UK hosts. For all the celebratory rhetoric, rich countries failed to deliver on their 12-year-old promise to deliver $100 billion of climate finance to poor nations by 2020. There was little progress on creating a fund to deal with permanent losses and damages caused by climate change.

However, COP26 did lay the ground for 2022 to be the year that Africa changes this course. COP27 will be held on African soil and provides the opportunity for the continent to ensure that the needs of the climate vulnerable – rather than the interests of rich, polluting nations – are met. Egypt will welcome representatives from around the world at the end of 2022 and, as host, they have a crucial role in shaping the outcome and creating space for the correct priorities.

This can finally be time that rich nations cough up the lifesaving cash that is essential to help vulnerable communities adapt to a changing climate. From building the right infrastructure, to creating early warning systems for extreme weather, to providing people with drought resistance crops, the adaptation needs of countries in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South are vast and only growing the longer we delay. $100 billion a year of climate finance needs to be the start of the financial flows that must begin moving from the Global North to the Global South to deal with the climate emergency.

Some climate change impacts, however, cannot be adapted to. You cannot adapt to your island home being submerged forever under rising sea levels, or your farmland turned into desert by rising temperatures. This suffering needs to be addressed through what is called “loss and damage”, something for which the developing world has been calling for special financing. In fact, rich countries have agreed to the principle of such a fund since COP19 in 2013 but have dragged their feet and still haven’t moved to create it.

The chance to deliver it was missed again at COP26, but the good news is the loss and damage was a huge topic throughout the Glasgow summit and can no longer be brushed under the carpet. It is now one of the biggest issues on the global climate stage and will rightly dominate discussions in Sharm El-Sheikh at COP27.

This upcoming African summit is a huge opportunity to prioritise the needs of climate vulnerable countries, but to the ensure it is taken the continent will need to get ready. We need to see a pan-African movement that unites our continent, aligns our priorities, and pools our diplomatic and political resources. There is far more that unites Africans than divides us, and nothing unites like a common enemy. Climate change is that common enemy and we need to work hard, and together, to defeat it.

When Africa speaks as one, it speaks with power. Millions of Africans need their political leaders to become climate leaders in 2022. In parts of the continent, we’re already showing the way with the transition from dirty, polluting energy to the clean, green, renewables of the future. We have the wind and solar resources to be a trailblazer for decarbonisation around the globe.  We now need to see African leaders uniting to make climate funding and loss and damage a red line for Africa at CO27 and ensure this African COP delivers for all those around the world on the front line of the climate crisis.


 

Previous Article

Why Africa needs to make financial inclusion its ...

Next Article

WHO Decides Africa’s Health? Learning from the ...

mm

Mohamed Adow

Mohamed Adow is the director of the energy and climate think tank Power Shift Africa.

Leave a reply Cancel reply

  • An artist in Eritrea paints a patriotic mural of the war. Credit: David Stanley.
    EritreaEthiopiaPoliticsTop story

    How Ethiopia and Eritrea can forge a new relationship

  • People protest against President Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term in 2015. Credit: Igor Rugwiza.
    BurundiPolitics

    Burundi 2020: Is President Nkurunziza already at it again?

  • Politics

    A Celebration of The East African Community and Continental Unity – By Andrew Othieno

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81664
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Popular articles

  • #StopEACOP TotalEnergies Uganda Tanzania

    The bold campaign to defund the East African Crude Oil Pipeline

  • Tunisia's President Kais Saied meeting with then US Defense Secretary Mark Esper at Carthage Palace, Tunisia, in September 2020. Credit: DoD/Lisa Ferdinando.

    Is Tunisia’s democracy slipping away?

  • Students graduating from Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Nigeria. Credit: Rajmund Dabrowski/ANN.

    “We copy it from them”: How campus politics sets scene for big man politics

  • Uganda's military is engaged in Operation Shujaa in DR Congo. Credit: Credit: Rick Scavetta, U.S. Army Africa.

    “Total Success”? The real goals of Uganda’s Operation Shujaa in DRC

  • Monica Geingos has been the First Lady of Namibia since 2015. Credit: Grant Miller/George W. Bush Presidential Center.

    Believing in gender equality isn’t enough. Men must join the fight

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
Cleantalk Pixel
By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
African Arguments wants to hear from you!

Take 5 minutes to fill in this short reader survey and you could win three African Arguments books of your choice…as well as our eternal gratitude.