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Nairobi Declaration: Setting Africa’s New Vision on Climate Change

Ismaila Umaru Lere

The African Climate Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya, brought together global leaders, intergovernmental organizations, Regional Economic Communities, United Nations agencies, private sector, civil society organizations, indigenous peoples, local communities, farmer organizations, children, youth, women and academia to discuss Africa’s climate change challenges and formulate sustainable solutions. The summit aimed to foster collaboration, share knowledge, and develop concrete resolutions to mitigate the impacts of climate change in Africa.

One of the primary resolutions of the African Climate Summit was to accelerate the transition towards renewable energy sources. Africa boasts immense potential in terms of solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal energy. Recognizing this, the summit emphasized the need to invest in renewable energy infrastructure, promote research and development, and create favorable policies to attract private investments in clean energy projects. The resolution sought to reduce Africa’s reliance on fossil fuels, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and increase energy access for all Africans.

The Nairobi Declaration capped the three-day event in which African leaders at the summit pledged their support to position the continent at the centre of the fight against climate change.

The leaders were emphatic in their demand for the developed economies to deliver on their promise to provide $100 billion annually in climate finance, for an overhaul of global financial architecture so it better meets Africa’s needs and for doubling of climate adaptation financing by 2025.

They said, it is time for the continent to unlock its vast renewable energy potential and develop and properly price its own carbon assets to generate new sources of enormous wealth.

Kenya’s President William Ruto, said “Africa’s youthfulness is precisely the attribute that has inspired African leaders to imagine a future where Africa steps on to the stage as an economic and industrial power, an effective and positive actor in the global arena.”

President Ruto listed several reasons that the continent is well placed to lead in tackling climate change. “Africa is the continent with 60% of the continent’s renewable energy assets,” he said, including solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower. 

 Africa is projected to have 40% of the world’s workforce by 2100, he said. “We have two-thirds of the world’s uncultivated arable land that can transform smart agriculture into the production store of the world.” Ruto added, “We have the largest carbon sequestration infrastructure in the world.”

 Joining President Ruto were UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, African Development Bank President Akinwumi A. Adesina, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the African Union Commission chairperson, and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, as well as several African leaders.

Chairperson Mahamat urged participants to not overlook Africa’s indebtedness. “Everyone knows that the public debt stock of sub-Saharan African countries at the end of 2022 was estimated at $1.1 trillion,” he said. Out of $650 billion SDRS mobilized, Africa received only $33 billion, or 4.5%. “In view of these staggering figures, it is clear there is no relevant global intervention in favor of Africa without a credible solution for the crippling debt challenge.”

Guterres said Africans bore the brunt of the worst effects of climate change despite having produced negligible carbon emissions. He stressed that “developed countries must present a clear and credible roadmap to double adaptation finance by 2025 as a first step toward devoting half of all climate finance to adaptation.”

The UN chief urged participants to think big. “First, we need far greater climate ambition, with countries hitting fast forward and massively accelerating action to limit temperature rises and impacts.” He added that, “The largest emitters must lead the charge, in line with the Climate Solidarity Pact(link is external) and Climate Action Acceleration Agenda.”

On his part, the African Development Bank’s Adesina said, “The Africa Climate Summit will shape the future pathway of Africa’s development”.

Adesina said the bank, with the Global Centre on Adaptation, had launched the African Adaptation Acceleration Programme (AAAP), the largest such initiative in the world. “That is why the African Development Bank has committed to providing $25 billion towards climate financing by 2025.”

The African Development Bank is implementing a $20 billion initiative, Desert to Power, to harness the power of solar and deliver electricity to 250 million people, Adesina added. “We must power every home every school and every hospital.”

He told the summit that Africa must revalue its wealth by accounting for the proper valuation of its abundant natural resources, including its vast forests that sequester carbon.

Antonio Guterres

“Africa must develop its own carbon markets, properly price its carbon, and turn its vast carbon sink into new sources of enormous wealth. Africa cannot be nature rich and cash poor,” the bank chief said.

Perhaps, the most significant resolution made by the leaders was the call for the introduction of a global carbon tax on fossil fuels, aviation, and shipping. The establishment of a global carbon tax system is expected to be a path to expanding climate finance and incentivizing countries to cut emissions.

Similarly, the leaders, who expressed concern that many African countries face disproportionate burdens and risks from climate change-related, unpredictable weather events and patterns. stressed the importance of decarbonizing the global economy for equality and shared prosperity. They called for investment to promote the sustainable use of Africa’s natural assets for the continent’s transition to low carbon development and contribution to global decarbonization.

“We call for a comprehensive and systemic response to the incipient debt crisis outside default frameworks to create the fiscal space that all developing countries need to finance development and climate action,” the African leaders said in the Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change and Call to Action, adopted at the conclusion of the Africa Climate Summit.

Acknowledging that climate change is the single greatest challenge facing humanity and the single biggest threat to all life on earth, the leaders said the impacts have included prolonged droughts, devastating floods, wild and forest fires, which cause massive humanitarian crisis with detrimental impacts on economies, health, education, peace and security, among other risks.

Underlining that Africa was not historically responsible for global warming, but bore the brunt of its effect, impacting lives, livelihoods, and economies, the leaders emphasized that the continent possessed the potential and the ambition to be a vital component of the global solution to climate change.

“We note that multilateral finance reform is necessary but not sufficient to provide the scale of climate financing the world needs to achieve 45 per cent emission reduction required to meet the Paris 2030 agreements, without which keeping global warming to 1.5% will be in serious jeopardy,” the Declaration said, noting that, “Additionally, that the scale of financing required to unlock Africa’s climate positive growth is beyond the borrowing capacity of national balance sheets.”

The African leaders further called for the acceleration of on-going initiatives to reform the multilateral financial system and global financial architecture including the Bridgetown Initiative, the Accra-Marrakech Agenda, the UN Secretary General’s SDG Stimulus Proposal and the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact.

The summit proposed a new financing architecture responsive to Africa’s needs including debt restructuring and relief and the development of a new Global Climate Finance Charter through the United Nations General Assembly and the COP processes by 2025.

“We call for collective global action to mobilize the necessary capital for both development and climate action, echoing the statement of the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact that no country should ever have to choose between development aspirations and climate action,” they said.

They emphasized the need for concrete action and speed on proposals to reform the multilateral financial system currently under discussion specifically to build resilience to climate shocks and better deployment of the Special Drawing Rights liquidity mechanism.

The Nairobi Declaration was adopted to be the basis for Africa’s common position in the global climate change process to COP 28 and beyond.

It was also agreed that the Africa Climate Summit should be established as a biennial event convened by African Union and hosted by AU Member States, “to set the continent’s new vision taking into consideration emerging global climate and development issues”.

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