Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IDN
By Babukar Kashka
NAIROBI (IDN) – Paradoxically, Africa — the continent most exploited by giant corporations that plunder its natural resources, and the one which contributes the least to global warming — is now urged to further produce green energy and implement more climate-friendly projects.
In fact, a Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report for the three-day (March 3-6) Second African Carbon Forum, stresses that Africa is lagging behind the rest of the world in developing renewable energy projects with initiatives aimed at producing clean and ‘green’ energy remaining largely under-exploited.
According to the study, examined by some 1,000 participants in the Nairobi Forum, the entire continent has just over 120 carbon reduction projects up and running or in the pipeline in areas ranging from wind power to forestry schemes, and harvesting methane gas from landfills to fuel electricity generation makes up 20 per cent of all such initiatives.
The opening of the Forum coincided with the celebration of the eighth year of the observance of the African Environment Day held on March 3 every year.
While participants in the Forum were examining that day the new UNEP report on the urgent need for Africa to produce more clean energy, the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Luc Gnacadja, came out to remind them of other major problems facing their continent.
“Desertification, land degradation and drought remain Africa’s foremost environmental challenges. But these challenges are now compounded by the entry of a new challenge into Africa’s environment scene: climate change,” he said.
Then he explained that climate change is not just one more source of concern; it has more complex implications. “Climate change brings into Africa at least four new environmental challenges,” Gnacadja said.
These are: droughts will be more frequent and intense, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa; there will be increased pressure on the land; the earth’s warming will lead to moisture loss and water scarcity in turn, and lastly, as sea level rises, a substantial proportion of productive land along Africa’s coasts will be lost.
Meanwhile, the UNEP study submitted to the Forum also reported patchy growth in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing developed countries to reduce emissions and meet global warming commitments by investing in carbon reduction projects in developing countries.
“The growth of the carbon markets in Africa are both cause for optimism, and cause for concern,” UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told participants. “To realise only a few percentage points more of the massive potential for wind, solar, biomass and waste into energy schemes, action across a range of challenges needs to be stepped up.”
RESPONSIBILTIES
He said this was in part “the responsibility of the UN, regional development banks and international funding and donor bodies.”
“But there is also a great deal private banks and individual Governments can do to make clean energy investments more attractive through innovative loans, forward-looking policies and smart market mechanisms.”
Steiner noted that the introduction of a policy designed to encourage the adoption of renewable energy sources in Kenya had triggered interest from a consortium to establish Africa’s largest wind farm in the country.
Larger economies in Africa such as Egypt and South Africa are home to the lion’s share of the schemes, with 32 and 13 projects respectively, while Zambia, Madagascar, Cameroon and Mali only have one or two projects each and several countries have none.
ASIA, LATIN AMERICA LEADING
In a previous report in November 2009, UNEP said that more green energy and climate-friendly projects target Africa than ever before, but the numbers still lag behind Asia and Latin America.
Globally, there are over 4,730 CDM projects operating or close to approval. The lion’s share is in Asia and the Pacific with a total of just over 3,700 projects, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean with close to 820.
The projects, from renewable energies to tree planting, are part of the CDM of the Kyoto Protocol, the global emissions reduction treaty. They allow developed countries to reduce emissions and meet global warming commitments by investing in carbon reduction projects in developing countries.
Around 80 per cent of the projects are in sub-Saharan Africa, with 28 projects underway or planned in South Africa, followed by 14 in Kenya.
In North Africa, Egypt has 13 projects, followed by Morocco with 10. The projects include two large solar water-heating projects in South Africa, the promotion of energy efficient light bulbs in rural Senegal and a municipal waste-composting project in Uganda.
Experts said the latest figures underline the importance of Africa’s governments pressing for reform in the weeks before the UN Climate Change Convention meeting in Copenhagen in December 2010.
In any case, the problem is not African willingness to solve its enormous problems. The point is how and with what financial resources.
NEW DEAL
In fact, UNEP chief called last April on world’s governments to invest a significant amount of their 3 trillion dollars-worth of stimulus packages in a new “green economy” to defeat the crises facing the world.
Governments must play their part in shaping and focusing markets to deliver long-term environmental benefits if the world is to surmount the current food, fuel, financial and economic crises it faces, he said.
Steiner emphasised that time and again resource-efficient, low-carbon and environmentally friendly products and processes have failed to make their way out of research laboratories.
“The market failed to read the writing on the wall or see the climate and energy security street signs coming up fast on the international highway.”
He noted that the oil crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s saw around 1 billion dollars of investment into research and development in solar powered energy halving the cost per unit of electricity, not enough for commercialization.
“The oil price dropped and so did widespread enthusiasm for solar power. Only now are generation prices beginning to fall towards competitiveness (but) we have wasted nearly three precious decades,” according to Steiner.
A UNEP Policy Brief for a Global Green New Deal, which highlights the benefits of investing a significant amount of proposed government economic stimulus money on five key sectors from renewable energy to sustainable transport.
“The question now is how will the around 3 trillion dollars-worth of stimulus packages be spent-on the old brown economy or a new green one that might set the stage for a truly sustainable century?” he asked.
The Brief – developed with economists, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) among others – spotlights how some economies, including China, Korea, the U.S. and the UK, have already committed part of their stimulus packages to green investments.
ONE OF PERCENT OF GDP
Steiner stressed that investing 1 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) into five key sectors could be key to a Global Green New Deal.
These areas include raising the energy efficiency of old and new buildings, as well as investing in renewable energies including wind, solar, geothermal and biomass.
The three other areas are sustainable transport including hybrid vehicles; high-speed rail and bus rapid transit systems; the planet’s ecological infrastructure including freshwaters, forests, soils and coral reefs; and sustainable agriculture including organic production.
The Policy Brief also calls for a range of specific measures aimed at assisting poorer countries to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and green their economies.
The measures include an expansion of microcredit schemes for clean energy, reform of subsidies from fossil fuels to fisheries and the greening of overseas development aid.
Japan, which according to the UNEP chief, has already launched a multi-billion yen green stimulus package for its economy, has announced 5 billion dollars loan fund for developing economies seeking to boost their renewable energy sector.
The point is that the richest continent in natural resources while being the most exploited and impoverished, cannot afford so many trillions or even billions of dollars to face its own problems, such as poverty, hunger, diseases, droughts, desertification, land degradation, earth’s warming, moisture loss, water scarcity and the loss of a substantial proportion of productive land along Africa’s coasts.
And yet a new burden is being imposed on Africa, the burden of producing clean energy for itself and for the rest of the world to offset the damage climate change continues to cause. Though, Africa is by no means the polluter. (IDN-InDepthNews/06.03.2010)
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