UN
Global Climate Action
24
May
2022 | |
High Level Climate Champions
Newsletter | |
Africa's Race to Sustainable
Development | |
Achieving a
just, equitable transition to a healthy,
resilient, zero-emission future across Africa
requires multilateral collaboration across the
public and private sector – with African
policymakers, financiers, business leaders and
civil society involved throughout. Major
international events in Spain, Rwanda and Kenya
in May brought many of those stakeholders
together to foster that collaboration in the
run-up to Africa’s COP27 in Sharm
El-Sheikh.
At the heart
of Africa’s race to sustainable development is
energy. More than 600 million people in Africa
still lack basic access to affordable, reliable,
clean energy. Additionally,
1.2 billion
people – one in seven – lack access to cooling,
which is crucial to food security, medical
supplies, livelihoods and the prevention of
heat-related deaths, according to Sustainable Energy for
All.
Delivering
clean energy to the communities can drive wider
sustainable development, supporting health care,
food security, education, and jobs, livelihoods
and resilience to climate change
impacts.
The SEforAll
Forum in
Kigali brought together ministers from Africa
and Asia Pacific, development financiers and the
High-Level Champions, to talk about how to
achieve a just and equitable energy transition
and a modern energy minimum of 1 kWh per year
per capita. This marked an important step
turning the financial commitments made at COP26
into action in Africa and Asia, starting in
2022. That calls for de-risking project
pipelines, addressing bankability, crowding-in
private sector finance and supporting enabling
policies and regulations.
In Barcelona,
the Africa
Green Hydrogen Alliance was formally launched
at the Green
Hydrogen Global Assembly, aiming to foster
collaboration on creating a sustainable enabling
environment for green hydrogen development in
the continent. The founding countries, Kenya,
South Africa, Namibia, Egypt, Morocco and
Mauritania are inviting other countries to join
and help make Africa a frontrunner in the global
market.
Green
hydrogen can rapidly decarbonize industrial
sectors such as steel, chemicals, fertilizers,
shipping and trucking. Many African countries
are well-suited to develop green hydrogen, with
strong solar and wind energy potential and large
tranches of non-arable land. This could provide
Africans with access to clean energy, jobs,
public health benefits, domestic wealth creation
and export revenues.
COP27
High-Level Champion Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin
spoke at
the assembly
about the need to address climate change
holistically, shift from pledges to
implementation, regionalize and localize the
climate agenda and get finance
flowing.
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The unchecked
open burning of waste in Africa is fuelling
illness, premature death and climate change. The
challenges of reining it in are big – but so are
the opportunities for Africa, according to a
report released by Engineering
X and the High-Level Champions during this
month’s Africities conference in Kisumu.
Sub-Saharan
Africa generated around 9% of global waste as of
2016, of which two-thirds is dropped in
landfills and open dump sites. This spreads
pollution into the air, water and
food.
But it
doesn’t have to continue. 70-80% of the
municipal solid waste generated in African
cities is recyclable and could be worth US$8
billion per year in a circular economy.
Addressing the structural deficiencies in waste
management and promoting a circular economy will
strengthen local manufacturing, create jobs,
reduce unemployment, support inclusive and
sustainable local and regional economies, and
reduce air pollution and
emissions.
The African
Union aims for African cities to recycle at
least half of their waste by 2023. This requires
a systemic transformation, and the report sets
out recommendations for achieving it. Among
them, it recommends expanding the High-Level
Champions’ partnership with Engineering X by welcoming other
international and regional partners into the
work.
The Champions
will prioritize this work in the run-up to
COP27, with an opportunity to launch a
multi-partnership commitment to reduce and phase
out open waste
burning. | |
African
cities are among the fastest-growing in the
world - and some of the most at-risk from
droughts, floods, sea level rise, cyclones,
landslides, extreme heat and pollution. Water
demand in African cities is projected to triple
by 2030.
This makes
the shift to zero-emission, resilient and
circular development crucial to Africa’s growth.
Cities can adapt to the impacts of climate
change, recycle much of the waste that is being
burned, and reduce emissions – as long as their
development is planned holistically, according
to discussions at the Africities
conference.
The
protection, restoration and management of water
and forest resources is particularly important
in making cities resilient to climate change
impacts and mitigating disaster risk. Smaller
intermediary cities have a strong opportunity to
test new development models. But this is
constrained by limited access to finance, poor
land management, a lack of integrated
development plans and other
factors.
Africa-led
initiatives are working to change that. Among
those is the Catalytic Fund for Urban Water
Resilience, which will launch in full at COP27
with pilot programmes in two African cities. The
fund, supported by WRI and other Marrakech
Partnership partners, will help jumpstart
projects by providing necessary finance for
technical assistance and project
implementation.
There’s also
the Global Evergreening Alliance’s Restore
Africa programme, which on Monday drew US$150
million of investment from Climate Asset
Management. The programme aims to deliver the
world’s largest-ever farmer-led carbon
sequestration project, supporting 1.5 million
small-scale farming households and restoring 1.9
million hectares of degraded land. The programme
was jointly launched with the African
Union’s African Restoration Initiative
(AFR100).
The High-Level Champions are working
closely with
the Marrakech Partnership to ensure that summits
such as the recent May Ministerial in Copenhagen
result in project-ready solutions that are
matched by needed financial flows. They will
focus on mobilizing finance and investment,
reducing reliance on debt instruments, expanding
insurance coverage, and projectizing
everything.
| |
Latin America and the Caribbean Climate
Week 2022: Get
Involved! | |
The Latin
America and the Caribbean Climate Week 2022
(LACCW 2022)
is scheduled for 19 to 22 July in Santo Domingo,
hosted by the Dominican Republic. The Glasgow
Climate Pact from COP26 recognizes the Regional
Climate Weeks as a platform for national
governments and stakeholders to strengthen the
credible and durable response to climate change.
LACCW 2022 will be a collaboration space for
national and subnational governments, indigenous
communities, the private sector and civil
society to explore the resilience against
climate risks, the transition to a low-emission
economy and partnerships to solve pressing
challenges.
Join LACCW
2022 as a side event host or show your success
stories in the Action Hub by submitting your
Expression of Interest before the 31 May
deadline.
| |
Spotlight on our Youth
Fellows | |
The
High-Level Champions have appointed five
youth
fellows to
work with the team over 2022, and will spotlight
one in each of the following
newsletters.
Shravani
Sharma grew
up watching her Indian city of Guwahati expand
from a simple, quiet town to a bustling
metropolis. Without realizing it, as a teen she
gained first-hand understanding of inadequate
urban planning, infrastructure shortfalls and
transport challenges. As more Indians achieved
their aspiration of owning a car, they
inadvertently contributed to growing congestion,
air pollution, road accidents and health
problems.
As an urban
and transport planner pursuing a PhD in
transport and human factors, Shravani now works
to understand what drives or impedes positive
behavioural change. Factors such as passions,
disabilities and mental health can influence
decisions to, for instance, commute by bus, foot
or bike. This helps understand if transport
choices have any impact on the wellbeing of
citizens and capture a country’s progress beyond
economic parameters.
The key,
Shravani says, is to make targets inclusive and
holistic, taking into account the consumer’s
perspective. “After all, it is for the people
and by the people that these initiatives need to
be accepted and adopted to be able to tackle
this common goal.”
Shravani
Sharma is Transport Youth Fellow on the
Champions’ team. She is earning her PhD in
transport and human factors at Warwick
Manufacturing Group, University of
Warwick. | |
Keeping Up With the
Champions | |
- Dr. Mohieldin last week
took part in the GFANZ CEO Principals Group
meeting, and along with Mr. Topping in meetings
with the Marrakech Partnership members and the
Global Stocktake technical dialogue
co-facilitators.
- Egypt’s COP27
presidency announced it will organize a
series of regional forums with the five UN
Regional Commissions on the “Projectalization
Climate Finance”. This will bring together
public and private sector stakeholders to
facilitate engagement with other partners and
stakeholders to accelerate public and private
investment mobilization and concrete initiatives
through projects. These will correspond to the
needs of each region in addressing climate
change holistically and narrowing the gap in
finance. The forums will be held in coordination
and collaboration with the High-Level
Champions.
- Dr. Mohieldin attended
Africities and gave a press conference, which
you can watch here.
- Mr. Topping and Dr.
Mohieldin convened
stakeholders
in the Marrakech Partnership to share updates on
the current work programme and talk about COP27
priorities.
- The Champions’
priorities for COP27 include adopting a holistic
approach to climate action, focusing on
implementation, mobilizing finance at scale,
setting up regional roundtables, and boosting
last-mile, local delivery, they said in a
statement six months before Sharm
El-Sheikh.
| |
- The Global Stocktake
Technical Dialogue begins with meetings in June,
November and June 2023, according to an
information note by the co-facilitators.
45 seats will be made available for non-Party
participants across three roundtables, with the
High-Level Champions collaborating with the
UNFCCC secretariat on the expression of interest
process.
- Renewables are the
world’s ‘lifeline’ in the race against the worst
impacts of climate change, UN
Secretary-General António Guterres said, setting out five
actions needed to jumpstart the energy
transition. They include treating renewables as
an essential public good, shifting subsidies
away from fossil fuels and tripling public and
private investments in renewables.
- The world set new
records on four key climate change indicators in
2021 – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level
rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification,
according to the World
Meteorological Organization’s State of the
Climate report. Extreme weather led to
hundreds of billions of dollars in economic
losses, wreaked a heavy toll on human lives and
wellbeing, and triggered shocks for food and
water security and displacement that have
accentuated in 2022.
- Companies committed to
cutting emissions in line with climate science
now represent US$38 trillion of global economy,
according to the Science
Based Targets initiative. Almost 80% of targets
approved in 2021 were aligned with 1.5°C.
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