Climate impact tops issues as Cop22 kicks off today

Impact of climate change in Africa, which contributes the least in polluting the environment, will be thrown up as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) Conference of Parties 2016 (COP 22) kicks off today in Morocco.

This meeting is coming on the heels of the hugely successful COP 21 held in Paris, in December last year. It produced a historic agreement wherein developed and developing nations agreed to cut emissions to levels of 2C with an aspiration of 1.5C.

It was also agreed that finance would be provided to poor nations to help them cut emissions and cope with the effects of extreme weather. Countries affected by climate-related disasters are to get urgent aid.

The impact of climate change is being felt around the world but the irony is that while Africa is the least polluter it suffers one of the worst impacts.

Seven of the 10 countries most at risk from climate change are in Africa (Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Central African Republic and Eritrea).

Some of the detrimental impact of climate change on Africa includes increased climate-related ‘shocks’ such as droughts, storms, and flooding and temperature extremes. Also the rise in global temperature has impacted agriculture and food security, human health and political stability.

COP 22 will provide an opportunity to appraise the commitments made by developing nations towards funding to reduce the impact of climate change.

“For Africa, it will also bring to fore, some of the major regional achievements in the fight against climate change while highlighting Africa’s precarious exposure to the economic challenges of global warming,” Chijioke Mama, founder/CEO of EnergyDatar, an energy advisory and market research firm.

The 195 countries that participated in COP 21 agreed to a nationally determined contribution that they would make towards meeting the commitments. Environmental experts worry that without legally binding framework they may be not enforceable.

“The key thing for countries signing the Paris Agreement is the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). As the name implies, these are steps that countries have voluntarily said they would take. They are not obligatory or legally binding. That is the sad thing about the Paris Agreement,” said Nnimmo Bassey, an environmental activist based in Nigeria.

Analysts will hope to see a move towards a more binding commitment in COP 22 and increased emphasis on strategies to deepen investments in renewable energy to cut use of fossil fuels.

COP 21 saw the launch of African Renewable Energy Initiative with the backing of all African heads of state, to boost renewable energy on the continent to at least 10gigawatts of capacity by 2020 and at least 300 GW by 2030 at the cost of $500 billion.

Toward this initiative, Nigeria plans to generate about 2000MW of power from renewables by 2020 backed by the 14 solar powers PPA’s signed in summer 2016. Morroco has also made deep commitments to derive more than 50 percent of its energy from renewables by 2030. COP 22 will provide an avenue to check progress of commitments from other nations.