Africa’s Climate Crisis, Energy Transformation and Environmental Justice
The Global North holds disproportionate responsibility for the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, and disproportionate resources and capacity to respond. These should be moments to respond with urgency and to propose long-term solutions to our current systems’ dysfunctions.
In 2023, the Global North sent important signals on the need to phase out “unabated” fossil fuels and setting targets for a massive scale-up of wind and solar – yet the communiqué was riddled with loopholes. It was concerning to see the call for the increase of LNG deliveries and public investments in gas, which ignored calls from the IPCC and IEA to stop new investments in fossil fuel production and showed a dangerous submission to the gas lobby.
As well, serious concerns remain regarding targets to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, which were adopted at COP28, about whether such unproven technologies will ever generate electricity safely and affordably including its waste and global peace and security impacts
2023 was by far the hottest year on record, with 1.48°C of warming above pre-industrial averages. With that came more severe and more frequent climate impacts like wildfires, droughts, hurricanes and floods, across the world, hitting marginalized peoples and communities the hardest. Despite this devastating reality, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tell us that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is possible, provided, that we exponentially increase our efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions, and involve “fundamental changes to how society functions, including changes to underlying values, world- views, ideologies, social structures, political and economic systems, and power relationships. From the discussion and outcomes of COP28 in Dubai, the need to phase out fossil fuels and to accelerate the energy and ecological transition is now clearly outlined. Limiting warming to 1.5°C is at the center of the Global Stocktake (GST) decision which recognizes that this requires deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global average emissions of 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 from 2019 levels. Yet, fairly sharing the global mitigation effort among Earth’s peoples and countries requires countries who have a large historical responsibility and capacity in the face of the climate crisis to do more, and faster.
Both the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change highlight the equity principle of common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities. The Paris Agreement further explicitly acknowledges that the peaking of emissions will occur later in developing countries. This means that Global North countries need emissions reductions above the global average 1.5°C-aligned pathway, and to contribute substantially financially to international climate finance to do their fair share of the global effort to limit warming to 1.5°C.
As they gather for one of the first high-level Ministerial events in the 2024 climate diplomacy calendar G7 Environment and Energy Ministers should seize the opportunity to show the level of ambition that truly grapples with their responsibility for the climate crisis. They should reaffirm links to formal multilateral climate negotiation issues, and demonstrate actions on shared commitment to deliver and build on the outcomes from last year’s Summits including the G7, the G20, the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai
(COP28) and the UN Biodiversity Summit in Montreal (CBD COP15). We call on the Global North countries to pay careful attention to avoid any potential backsliding on both their respective previous commitments, and that of Africa on energy, climate, finance and nature.
Therefore, we urge the Global North governments to take action in the following areas:
- Tackle Climate and Energy Security Coherently
- Demonstrate strong implementation of the COP28 agreement to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels. The Global North nations must send clear signals on implications for future fossil fuel production and a commitment to deliver 1.5°C aligned orderly national transition plans that include the phase- out of coal, oil, and gas, and agree to include these reduction goals in their 2035 NDCs.
- Demonstrate proactivity and send a clear message that just renewable energy transitions are the way to respond to the climate and energy crises, and advance energy security, and will need adequate resourcing to accelerate.
- Exclude the promotion of any false solutions and unproven technologies – like carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen, nuclear, biomass and so-called “transitional fuels” – in their climate mitigation efforts.
- Deliver actions under the Global Methane Pledge – a special initiative to cut at least 30% methane emission from 2020 levels by 2030.
- Implement their commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 and commit to present national action plans that ensure transparency and accountability of progress.
- Uphold the commitment to phase out international support for fossil fuels by 2022.
- Commit to achieving a fully renewable-based power sector by 2035, including contributing to a tripling of renewable energy capacity by 2030 compared to 2022, and to a doubling of the global annual rate of energy efficiency improvements compared to 2022 levels, as soon as possible and by 2030 at the latest, and urge other OECD countries and the EU to do so a well.
- In line with the Nairobi Declaration agreed in September 2023, strengthen the implementation of carbon pricing mechanisms, including taxes, on fossil fuel trade, maritime transport and aviation and channel revenues to compensate those vulnerable and finance the green and just transition.
- Demonstrate that they are implementing Just Transitions domestically, through guidelines and plans for a Just, equitable and inclusive transition that helps leave no one behind, that fosters social dialogue and identifies social safety nets and job training plans, identifies ways and means to ensure access to transition within and across countries.
- Reform and increase climate finance
- As recommended by global south youth, they must commit to ambitious and far-reaching reforms of international financial architecture and new climate finance pledges, including, inter alia, new and additional finance on adaptation and loss and damage finance, based on grants instead of new forms of debt for the most vulnerable economies.
- Provide clarity on meeting their commitment to mobilize at least $100 billion annually until 2025 for climate finance, including by making up for the shortfall in the previous years and improving transparency on reporting.
- Support the setting up of an ambitious post-2025 climate finance goal (New Collective Quantified Goal – NCQG) at COP29, of which the provision of public finance is the central component of a multi-layered NCQG, which must go beyond a siloed approach to mobilization. As well the Global North should support the NCQG encompassing sub-goals for grants and highly concessional finance for mitigation, grants for adaptation and grants for addressing loss & damage.
- Commit to increase adaptation finance and investments in resilience that have fallen short in the past, deliver transparency on the doubling of adaptation finance by 2025, and strengthen global and national action on adaptation and loss and damage by centering the protection and restoration of nature, and Indigenous knowledge systems as the basis for future sustainable development plans.
- Tackle the converging nature, biodiversity and plastics crisis
- Boost effective and ambitious implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) adopted at COP15 in Montreal.
- Reaffirm their continued commitment to deliver all four pillars of the Nature Compact and to meet the goals of the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land-Use, including to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.
- Demonstrate early ambition through revised and enhanced National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAPs) and putting KM-GBF goals and targets in effect through national plans, regulations, and legislation.
- Commit to leading on the KM-GBF finance targets, including increasing total biodiversity-related international financial resources from developed countries to developing countries to at least US$ 20 billion per year by 2025 and to at least US$ 30 billion per year by 2030; increasing the level of financial resources from all sources by 2030, mobilizing at least US $200 billion per year; identifying by 2025 and eliminating, phasing out or reforming harmful incentives, including subsidies harmful for biodiversity by 2030, mainstreaming biodiversity across sectors, aligning financial flows, and supporting the establishment and allocation of funds towards the GBF fund.
- Commit to land an ambitious global Plastics Treaty in 2024 through taking a strong stand in support of capping global plastic production.
- Push for an agroecological transformation of food systems to decrease their impact on climate change, increase resilience and the inclusion of communities including women and Indigenous People.
- Uphold a rights-based approach
- Recall a strong commitment to a whole-of-society approach and the importance of a full, effective, inclusive, equitable and child- and gender-responsive participation to achieve a just and equitable low-carbon and climate-resilient future.
- Ensure that all policies, measures and investments respond to the needs and aspirations of Indigenous Peoples, and safeguards their rights.
- In a world where the climate crisis and the dramatic loss of biodiversity will make access to resources and services increasingly difficult, it is of strategic importance to strengthen the protection of human and civil rights by investing in women’s rights and gender justice organizations (including women human rights defenders, children, youth and Indigenous women’s organizations), and people with disabilities within all Global North priority objectives through domestic financing and official development assistance.
