At Least Something For Africa To Take Home

By Ramesh Jaura

NUSA DUA, Bali, Dec 15 (IPS) - If senior government ministers and officials are returning home this weekend with something substantial from the Bali conference, it is not because the two-week climate change talks have been adequately responsive to their concerns.

It is because the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has announced that it is setting up an African Centre for Climate Policy Studies in collaboration with Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and his New Delhi-based organisation, The Energy Resources Institute (TERI). Dr Pachauri and the IPCC team won the Nobel Prize this year.

The joint project made known this week at the UN climate change conference by ECA executive secretary Abdoulie Janneh would help develop the capacities of African countries adversely affected by climate change but unable to cope with its impact because of high level of poverty, reliance on rain-fed agriculture, and other climate-sensitive sectors such as fisheries, forest, and tourism.

The fourth assessment report of the IPCC has attested to the fact that while African countries are responsible for about 3.8 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions, Africa is the most vulnerable continent and least able to adapt to the impact of climate change.

"Climate change will put millions of Africans at risk of water stress and hunger, and further threaten the livelihoods of those who reside in already degraded areas. That is why Africa requires and deserves special attention and consideration," Janneh said, announcing the establishment of the African Centre for Climate Policy Studies.

It is feared that water stress and water conflicts will increase in Africa due to climate change, affecting the livelihood of millions of people on the continent.

According to the UN's Economic Commission for Africa, water levels have seriously decreased in major lakes such as Victoria and Rift Valley. Lake Chad lost 90 percent of its water between 1973 and 2002.

The UN is concerned that climate change would severely compromise agricultural production and food security by reducing yields from rain-fed agriculture by up to 50 percent in most African countries.

The reduced water flows to dams, and depleted biomass energy resources would also impede Africa's industrial development.

The ECA-TERI initiative is expected to safeguard chances of achieving long-term sustainable growth and development by helping African countries devise workable adaptation measures, and mainstream climate risk management into their development strategies and plans.

The ECA would also assist in developing the capacity of African countries through the Climate Information for Development (Clim-Dev Africa) programme which it is implementing in collaboration with the African Union and the African Development Bank.

Clim-Dev will help scale up the capacities of key institutions and stakeholders to improve climate-related data and observation, information services, policies and risk management practices in all climate-sensitive sectors, Janneh said.

The importance of the two initiatives also lies in the fact that climate change will negatively affect the efforts of African countries to achieve the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and sustainable development.

At the ministerial negotiations in Bali this week Nigeria spelt out Africa's concerns in detail. As chair of the African Group, Nigeria's environment minister Halima Tayo Alao said "thirteen years into the life of the Climate Change Convention…we are yet to see, in concrete terms, demonstrable progress in achieving the ultimate objective of the (climate change) Convention and the Kyoto Protocol."

While there is much talk of capacity building to enable African countries cope with the impact of climate change, efforts so far have centred more on seminars and workshops than demonstrable pilot projects or use of local expertise to advance knowledge and capacity to execute projects, the Nigerian minister told IPS.

During the ministerial negotiations this week she pleaded for "putting in place performance indicators that will allow for tracking and measuring effectiveness of efforts towards development and transfer of technology."

African countries are particularly keen to see the establishment of a technology development and transfer fund that guarantees funding for achieving deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

African countries' demands derive from the fact that the industrialised countries have obligations under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol to develop and transfer environmentally user-friendly technologies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change on the continent. (END/2007)

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