Africa

Aerial view of the dwindling ice on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten
 
Some of the world’s most iconic glaciers are set to disappear by 2050, according to a new study by UNESCO, which highlights the accelerated melting of glaciers in World Heritage sites. November 2022

By Gadir Lavadenz and Lidy Nacpil
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 7 2022 (IPS)

The 27th Conference Of Parties (COP27) on Climate Change comes at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges due to the magnitude and the interconnected nature of our multiple structural crises. The world’s average temperature is now at 1,1℃.

For many years now, we have been experiencing irreversible damage to the planet, and the loss of homelands, cultures, ecosystems, on a daily basis. Record-breaking heat has hit North America, Europe, China, Australia, India and Pakistan, sparking wildfires in many places. More than a third of heat-related deaths in summer from 1991 to 2018 occurred as a result of human-caused global warming.

European and Latin American cities are among the worst affected by summer heat deaths due to the climate crisis. Terrible floods have swept Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, and South Africa. Super typhoons have brought untold damage to people and communities in the Philippines, the Caribbean, the Pacific and the gulf and southern areas of the United States.

But does COP really hold any value anymore?

We have been seeing consistent efforts to dilute the outcomes of previous climate change conferences, often driven by the world’s fossil fuel addiction and intensive lobbying of big polluters prioritizing their agenda of greed and profit over the lives of billions of frontline communities suffering the devastating impact of climate crisis daily.

At COP 26, the Glasgow Outcomes were presented as if they were more relevant than the Paris Agreement (which is legally binding). The UK presidency had enough time to build up a narrative around false solutions, including the charade of net zero targets for all by 2050 (undermining again the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) through carbon offsets and nature-based solutions that further continue with the agenda of commodification of nature for the profit of the same usual polluters.

World governments, especially rich countries have consistently failed to deliver on their climate finance commitments of $100 billion per year. This annual goal urgently needed by grassroots communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change has not been met even once by the governments.

There has been constant pushback for a loss and damage finance facility and mechanism that can support vulnerable countries and peoples on the ground recover from climate change induced disasters. Loss and damage were only introduced in the COP27 agenda after consistent push by civil society groups globally.

The climate conferences are increasingly becoming spaces for greenwashing of not just the big polluters’ crimes, but also of the regimes and presidencies hosting COP. COP27 is taking place in the Southern Sinai city of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and as all eyes turn to Egypt, the campaigns to Free Alaa and other political prisoners, as well as for civic space to open up in Egypt, is gaining momentum.

As the world leaders and negotiators gather for the summit, it is not only communities in Sinai that continue to suffer from the increasing violence of climate impacts but peoples everywhere, with the most marginalized – peoples of color, Indigenous Peoples, communities in the Global South, frontline communities, women and children – hit first and hardest.

It is imperative that we stand in solidarity with impacted and frontline communities everywhere and reiterate our demands for urgent and drastic action to justly address the climate crisis.

At COP27, DCJ will continue with its struggles and demands for profound social transformation and the achievement of immediate concrete results in terms of drastic reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and enabling peoples to deal with the impacts of the climate crisis.
Like other global crises, climate change arises principally from historically unequal economic and social structures, from practices and policies promoted by rich, industrialized countries, and from systems of production and consumption that sacrifice the needs of the many to the interests of a few.

And it is the communities around the world that have contributed the very least to climate change that are paying the highest price–their lives and livelihoods.

We demand from all governments that if international negotiations are to mean anything, they must deliver outcomes that will prevent catastrophic climate change and ensure just and fair sharing of drastic emission reductions in keeping with the goal of limiting the rise of global average temperature to below 1.5º C.

We demand an end to pursuit and implementation of false solutions disguised in the form of nature-based solutions. We demand that rich countries deliver fully on their obligations to provide adequate and appropriate climate finance on the basis of countries’ responsibility for climate debt and as part of reparations to all affected peoples.

We demand mechanisms that ensure climate finances are rewound to the empowerment and benefit of peoples and communities most impacted by the climate crisis. We demand that developed countries support appropriate technology transfers without intellectual property rights barriers.

Will COP27 be another COP where rich countries and big polluters gather to impede the calls of communities fighting for their lives and livelihood every day? No, we cannot stand back and let that happen. COP27 must deliver a strong message to the world that the multilateral system can still play a role in fighting the climate crisis.

It cannot be remembered as just another meeting, but as a moment to show major progress through real solutions. It must generate outcomes towards an urgent reset of the system. A moment to abandon the old, profiteering, polluting world order, and a time to reimagine and rapidly implement global collaboration that centers equity, science, humanity.

We don’t have to tell you what another failed COP will mean for people and the planet.

Gadir Lavadenz is Global Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice;
Lidy Nacpil is Executive Director, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Corals and coral reefs are found around the islands and atolls of the Pacific. In Vanuatu, the government, with the support of SPC, implemented a coral reef climate change adaptation project based on coral gardening. Photo credit: SPC

By Catherine Wilson
Sydney, Nov 5 2022 (IPS)

Today, the window of opportunity for scaled-up global climate action to prevent disastrous global warming and build resilience in the most vulnerable nations is closing fast. And a major impediment to reducing emissions and accelerating climate adaptation is both lack of financial investment and major bureaucratic hurdles to accessing those funds that are available.

For Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS), the failure of the international community to provide US$100 billion per year to address climate change impacts in the developing world, a pledge made thirteen years ago, has grave consequences. And it will be a major issue for Pacific leaders at the COP27 United Nations Climate Change Conference due to start in Egypt on Sunday.

On Kadavu and Ra Islands in Fiji, SPC supported the implementation of an Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) and climate change resilience project. Photo credit: SPC

“The Pacific is at the frontline of the impacts of climate change. Climate finance is critical to allow mitigation and adaptation actions, yet the region is suffering from a lack of access to the climate finance already committed to global mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund. Due to global priority setting or global priorities, it is not flowing to where it is needed most,” Dr Stuart Minchin, Director-General of the regional development organization, Pacific Community, in Noumea, New Caledonia, told IPS. “It seems the polluters are setting the rules, and consequently, the flow of climate finance is more like a drip feed than the torrent that is required to meet the challenges of the region.”

Island nations scattered across the Pacific Ocean are among the world’s most exposed to climate extremes, such as rising air temperatures, ocean acidification, more damaging cyclones, heatwaves and the critical loss of biodiversity, water and food security, the IPCC reported this year. The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat estimates that the region needs US$1 billion per year to implement its climate adaptation goals and US$5.2 billion annually by 2030.

“Without global funding, Pacific Island countries and territories will not be able to identify and implement climate solutions,” Anne-Claire Goarant, Programme Manager for the Pacific Community’s Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability Programme in Noumea told IPS, adding that the costs will be high. “Already climate-induced disasters are causing economic costs of 0.5 percent to 6.6 percent of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Pacific Island countries. This trend will continue in the future in the absence of urgent climate action. Without adaptation measures, a high island, such as Viti Levu in Fiji, could experience damages of US$23-52 million per year by 2050.”

The unique characteristics of islands, such as small land areas, the very close proximity of many communities, infrastructure and economic activities to coastlines and precarious economies, means that severe weather events can have disastrous impacts. Fifty-five percent of the Pacific Islanders live less than 1 kilometre from the sea, and every year more villages face relocation as their existence is endangered by flooding and sea erosion.  Excessive heat, drought and rainfall are predicted to threaten crop and food production, and by the end of the century, important revenues from Pacific tourism could plummet by 27-34 percent.

The costs of climate adaptation could reach more than 25 percent of GDP in Kiribati, 15 percent of GDP in Tuvalu and more than 10 percent of GDP in Vanuatu. Yet Pacific Island nations are ‘among the least equipped to adapt, putting their economic development and macroeconomic stability at risk,’ reports the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

One of the two largest global sources of climate finance is the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which has the mandate to focus on the needs of developing countries, and another, the Adaptation Fund, supports tangible adaptation projects. However, most of the global funding tracked by Oxfam in 2017-2018 did not reach the most fragile nations. Only 20.5 percent of reported finance was allocated to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and 3 percent to Small Island Developing States.

“On financing adaptation in developing countries, what’s happened thus far is not good enough. We need to scale up quite dramatically the ambition within the multilateral development banks and bilateral donors. And we need to work on blended finance, where some public finance leverages private finance, and there is a proper sharing of risks between the private and public sectors,” Mark Carney, the United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Finance, has stated.

The Pacific Community is working closely with nations across the region to develop and submit climate funding proposals and support them in implementing projects once finance is approved. In Fiji, Nauru, Tonga and the Solomon Islands, for example, it is supporting projects on the ground to build climate resilience expertise and capacity among smallholder farmers with a Euro 4.6 million grant from the multi-donor Kiwa Initiative.

But many countries in the region are experiencing limited success with funding applications. In the Federated States of Micronesia, financial support is needed for increasing resilience in health, protecting coastal areas, lifeline access roads, and critical infrastructure from climate destruction and improving water security, Belinda Hadley, Team Leader in FSM’s National Designated Authority for the Green Climate Fund explained. But funding remains elusive as the island states struggle with overly difficult and resource-intensive application processes.

“The processes to apply for multilateral climate finance are heavy and complex. This makes accessing climate finance a slow and onerous process. In-country capacities within governments and other institutions are insufficient in the face of such complex processes. Many countries don’t have enough sufficient personnel to meet the burdensome requirements set by the donors,” Dirk Snyman, Co-ordinator of the Pacific Community’s Climate Finance Unit told IPS. “Even after project approval, disbursement of funds can still take one to two years. This does not allow countries to implement their adaptation and mitigation actions within the timeframes required.”

Funders need “to facilitate faster and easier access to climate finance in such a manner that the climate change priorities of Pacific communities, rather than the priorities and policies of the donors, are driving the regional portfolio of climate change projects,” Maëva Tesan, Communications and Knowledge Management Officer for the Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability Programme emphasized.

Snyman said that the situation could be improved if multilateral finance providers made application procedures more streamlined and flexible, changed the current compliance-based approach to a focus on positive project impacts and a dedicated climate fund was established for losses and damages in the region.

These views are echoed by the IMF, which recommends that climate finance providers should recognize ‘the shrinking window of opportunity to address the climate crisis’ and ‘consider further efforts to rebalance the risks to shareholders with the urgency of climate adaptation needs of small and fragile countries.’

The COP27 United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on 6-18 November.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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