It has been six years since Morocco, an African country, hosted the UN climate conference. After Europe has been the center of international climate diplomacy since 2017 with conferences in Germany, Poland, Spain and Scotland, the states of the African continent now want to use the 27th World Climate Conference (COP27) in Egypt from November 6th and focus on Africa again. The continent has long been affected by the consequences of climate change like no other, and the expectations ahead of the conference are enormous.
The negotiating goals of the African states have hardly changed since the world climate conference in Glasgow last year. Ephraim Mwepya Shitima, the Zambian chief negotiator for the African group at the COP, has already announced that Africa will once again remind developed countries of their financial commitments. However, the situation has changed. Now the African states could fail again with their demands due to the war in Ukraine.
Solutions more important than ever
“Trust in the multilateral system is currently at a low point,” says Faten Aggat, an expert in climate diplomacy at the think tank African Climate Foundation. It is now more urgent than ever to find common solutions. A few days before the world climate conference, millions of people in the states of the Sahel zone from Nigeria to Chad are affected by massive floods. In South Sudan, almost entire states are flooded. The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Hundreds of thousands face starvation. Seven of the ten climate crises identified in a recent study by the non-governmental organization Oxfam are in Africa.
For these already noticeable consequences of climate change, the African states are demanding compensation from the industrialized countries, which have massively contributed to global warming. Statistically, Africa, so the argument goes, has not even contributed four percent to global warming and is paying the highest price. In the conference chargon, the term loss and damage is common for this.
“According to the African Development Bank, African countries are already losing 15 percent of their gross domestic product due to climate change. The effects are there and measurable,” says Aggad. So far, however, the industrialized countries have not recognized such claims. Science is still at the beginning of the question of how strong the influence of climate change is on a singular weather event.
What are consequences of climate change?
How difficult this assignment is is shown by the massive drought in Madagascar that has been going on for years. For many observers, this was clearly caused by climate change. World Weather Attribution scientists disagreed in a study last year. It is also questionable who should have access to the possible financial pot for climate damage compensation. “How do you deal with climate damage in industrialized countries? If you think of the floods in the Ahr Valley, for example, these people should also be paid from a loss and damage fund,” says Anja Berretta, head of the regional program for energy security and climate change in sub-Saharan Africa the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
In addition, the industrialized countries first have to keep the promises they have already made – for example when it comes to financing climate projects in the Global South. Since 2020, states have committed to raising 100 billion US dollars annually for this. The aim is to save emissions and finance projects to adapt to climate change. It has long been known that the industrialized countries have not met this goal. According to an OECD calculation, the industrialized countries had provided a total of only around 83 billion US dollars.
Glossy balance sheets?
According to a study published by Oxfam in mid-October, the industrialized countries are said to have improved their balance sheets. Instead of 83 billion, not even 25 billion dollars flowed. The reason for the discrepancy: the industrialized countries generously included programs in their support that actually have no focus on climate change at all. The European Court of Auditors came to similar conclusions, describing the official information from the EU about its climate aid as exaggerated.
Since the war of aggression in Ukraine, the NATO countries have spent a lot of money on rearmament. Germany alone is planning a special fund of 100 billion euros for the restructuring of the Bundeswehr. “Globally, the financial pots for the fight against climate change are tighter than they have been for a long time,” agrees Berretta. Germany’s Energiewende project has cracked since Germany’s dependence on Russian gas was exposed to the world public. This arouses desires, especially in the gas-rich African states in North Africa, but also in Nigeria, to make money from the current gas bottleneck. It would be all the more important now that the African states act as one.
