Africa needs to build adaptive capacity, foster resilience and address loss and damage on Climate Change while to achieve this, the continent need a predictable, appropriate and at-scale funding stream and technological support.
South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa who made this known in his statement at the Climate Change Conference COP27 in Egypt on Tuesday, said African continent is experiencing the worsening effects of climate change.
According to him, “For the sake of the African continent and the world, we need a dramatic increase in global mitigation ambition to keep the world on the 1.5-degree pathway as we all agreed at Paris COP 21”.
Ramaphosa placed a great responsibility on developed economies to honour their commitments to those countries with the greatest need so as to confront the greatest environmental, social and economic effects of climate change.
“The multilateral development banks need to be reformed to meet the needs of developing economies for sustainable development and climate resilience.
“At present, multilateral support is out of reach of the majority of the world’s population due to lending policies that are risk averse and carry onerous costs and conditionalities”, he said.
The President said further that the world need a clear roadmap to deliver on the Glasgow decision to double adaptation financing by 2025. “Our emphasis must be on the health, well-being and food and water security of the most vulnerable”.
He noted that at national level, South Africa is fully committed to achieving the most ambitious end of the mitigation range in its updated Nationally Determined Contribution.
“As a country, we are guided by a Just Transition Framework and an Investment Plan that outlines the enormous scale and nature of investments needed to achieve our decarbonisation goals over the next five years.
“We are already scaling up investment in renewable energy, and are on course to retire several of our ageing coal-fired power plants by the end of 2030”, the President said.
Ramaphosa recalled that at COP 26 in Glasgow last year, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union offered support in the form of a Just Energy Transition Partnership.
“It is our hope that this partnership will offer ground-breaking approach to funding by developed countries for the ambitious but necessary mitigation and adaptation goals of developing countries.
He said South Africa reiterates its support for the Egyptian Presidency and its confidence in the successful outcomes of COP 27.