Africa Climate Week ends in Accra … with call for action on climate change
PThe Africa Climate Week (ACW) 2019 ended last Friday in Accra with a call on African governments to create an enabling environment to attract and shore-up investment in climate change actions.
According to a communiqué issued at the end of the event, the funding for the various national interventions could be raked in if public finance was used strategically to boost investor confidence in clean energy and other projects.
This, the communiqué said, would help achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature goal, in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Organised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the event saw about 2,000 participants, comprising global state and non–state climate actors, converging for five days to deliberate on the blight under the theme, “Climate Change action in Africa: A race we can win.”
To help identify opportunities to plan, finance and implement actions at all levels and across all sectors, the communiqué recommended that data was made consistent, reliable and comparable.
It called for the alignment of climate mitigation and adaption plans with national development agenda, so that the country could pursue its development and fight climate change simultaneously.
On energy transitions, energy policy makers were urged to accelerate energy solutions, including further developing mini-grids and off-grids, micro-hydro and geo-thermal technologies and clean cooking stoves.
Participants underscored the importance for governments to “de-risk finance and tailor financial instruments, such as green and climate-themed bonds, special purpose bonds and crowd-funding.”
The communiqué also urged for best practices that promoted the sustainable management of ecosystems, including reforestation activities to shore-up resilience and reduce emissions.
In his closing remarks, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy to the 2019 Climate Action Summit, Luis Alfonso De Alba, called for less talk and more actions to address climate change.
He said after years of negotiations and other engagement Africa did not have to reinvent that wheel as the solutions to climate change could be identified on the continent.
The Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, said government would not rest on it oars in the implementation of its climate change actions, and urged African countries to do likewise.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
Caption: A cross section of participantsPicture: ACW 1/samba/Ayoo/22/03/19
