A Conservative British prime minister, Harold Macmillan (who served from January 1957 to October 1963), was once asked what was the most difficult thing about his job. “Events, dear boy, events,” was his alleged response. Prime minister’s Macmillan response should be what every responsible leader is thinking about regarding this EVENT. This article seeks to find out what African leaders are thinking about this event which is going decide the future of the world’s weather conditions. The African continent is expecting financing for climate change to be balanced between adaptation and mitigation strategies to enable the continent to cope with climate change and achieve sustainable development, this despite the fact that Africa contributes the least of greenhouse gas emissions. However, African leaders feel COP 21 (Paris conference) represents a unique chance for Africa to assert itself in global climate governance and influence the outcomes of Paris towards aligning with the continent’s long term sustainable development agenda.
The governments of more than 190 nations will gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, aimed at reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and thus avoiding the threat of dangerous climate change. COP21, also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, will, for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, aim to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C. France will play a leading international role in hosting this seminal conference, especially after being disturbed by sudden terror attacks that left over 200 people dead, and COP21 will be one of the largest international conferences ever held in the country. The conference is expected to attract close to 50,000 participants including 25,000 official delegates from government, intergovernmental organizations, UN agencies, NGOs and civil society. But the question that everyone once to know is why now?
The answer is quite simple the developed world feels that the current commitments on greenhouse gas emissions run out in 2020, so at Paris governments are expected to produce an agreement on what happens for the decade after that at least and potentially beyond. This is a noble idea and the commitment that has been shown by some of the world’s strongest and industrialised nations is encouraging. A legally binding commitment alone will not be enough because industrialised powerful nations have a way of getting away with everything. The U.S. and China announced significant steps in their efforts to combat climate change, including a pledge by China to launch a program by 2017 to cap some emissions and put a price on carbon and to contribute $3.1 billion to help poorer countries finance their own transition programs on the 25th of September 2015. The sincerity of these statements needs to be taken with caution since both countries have been in the past under reporting on the amount of coal that they have been using. China’s environmental commitment could have been necessitated by events in recent years amid rising worries at home about pollution. Chinese government researchers have also warned that rising sea levels could affect hundreds of population centers along the country’s crowded coastline.
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Now coming back to Africa what has our leaders planned to take to COP 21? A gathering in Khartoum Sudan on 1 October 2015 where 80 experts from 54 African countries prepared a unified position on climate change issues which include minimization of emissions, adaptation, funding, technology transfer and capacity-building to be presented in the forthcoming Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris, December 2015. It is quite unfortunate that African experts where busy agreeing on mitigation measures that are out of their league. The concern on appropriate migratory measures is quite an important issue but not an urgent one to the African continent. Adaptation should be the major priority and it should be taken from a country and regional perspective since each region experience different climatic impacts.
The issues surrounding COP 21 are more migratory than adaptive. The cited reason why it is important to act or to focus on mitigatory measures are that scientists have warned that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the world will pass the threshold beyond which global warming becomes catastrophic and irreversible. That threshold is estimated as a temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial levels, and on current emissions trajectories the globe is heading for about 5 degrees. That may not sound like much, but the temperature difference between today’s world and the last ice age was about 5C, so seemingly small changes in temperature can mean big differences for the Earth. The major culprits are the heavily industrialised countries who are not willing to commit. African leaders should use the law of numbers to challenge the world order using the same statistics provided by the western scientists.
Why has nobody thought of getting a global agreement on this before now? Western media has given the reason that global negotiations on climate change have been carrying on for more than 20 years. The history of climate change goes back much further: in the 19th century, physicists theorised about the role of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, and several suggested that the warming effect would increase alongside the levels of these gases in the atmosphere. But this was all theoretical. Only in the past few decades have scientists begun the measurements necessary to establish a relationship between current carbon levels and temperatures, and the science conducted since then has consistently pointed in one direction, those rising greenhouse gas emissions, arising from the use of fossil fuels and the industries, lead to higher temperatures.
With regards to the causes of climate change, many are generally agreed that the highly-industrialised countries, with a long history of fossil fuel use have emitted the largest stake of Green House Gases (GHGs) which are believed to be the major cause of global warming, and hence climate change. It is for this reason that the developing countries (including those from Africa) have argued that the industrialised nations should take the lead in addressing climate change. Whilst the Northern countries are to blame for current atmospheric mess, they, however, boast vibrant economies and financial resources to insulate themselves from the vagaries of climate change. Yet, the South, particularly those from Africa, lack the resources needed to protect themselves from the adversities of climate change.
Africa should seize the opportunity of the Paris Conference on Climate Change in December 2015, to raise its concerns on climate change issues. Of late, it is noteworthy that most African countries have for the very first time committed themselves to binding climate mitigation commitments by submitting their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat Africa should come up with one voice and come up with strategies that addresses both the mitigatory and the adaptation mechanisms. However,, as a continent we should not shoulder the blame for having a hand in the ever increasing carbon pollution in the atmosphere.
Tafadzwa Blantinah Karonga is Zimbabwean Law Student interested in developmental issues- ([email protected]). Tapuwa O’bren Nhachi is a social scientist with the Institute of Sustainability Africa (INSAF) – [email protected]
