Africa to have stronger voice on climate change at Copenhagen

24 September 2009

Africa will have a stronger and more influential voice at the Copenhagen summit on climate change after agreeing for the first time in its history to send a single team to negotiate a major global treaty.

Africa – which will represent more than a quarter of the member states of the United Nations - will be led by Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister, whose appointment was confirmed earlier this month. African leaders outlined some of their key considerations at the UN Summit on Climate Change on 22 September.

Cuts in emissions

Meles has already stated, in a speech given in early September, that while Africa needs assistance to adapt to climate change, its priority at Copenhagen will be to ensure significant cuts in global emissions.

“Our interest is to prevent (climate change and its impacts) from happening in the first instance. That is our primary interest precisely because Africa’s eco-systems are amongst the most fragile in the world,” Meles told the UN-hosted meeting of the African Partnership Forum (APF) in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. “It makes no sense for someone to make large parts of our continent unlivable and then pay compensation for doing so.”

Africa is both the continent the least responsible for global warming and the one with the fewest resources to combat it. The carbon emissions of Africa’s 1 billion people are equivalent to those of Texas’s 30 million, according to the African Union.

Building concensus

The UN Summit is one of several high level events paving the way for December’s Copenhagen meeting on climate change, seen by some as the most important international conference since the Second World War. The Copenhagen meeting aims to negotiate a deal on climate change, including emissions cuts to limit global warming and finance to help developing countries cope with climate change.

Meles acknowledged that some global warming was inevitable but made it clear that Africa would not accept an emissions regime that risks greater than two degree warming, widely regarded as the unavoidable minimum change.

He said Africa would walk out of the Copenhagen negotiations if the deal was inadequate but added that he believed an acceptable agreement could be reached. “I am confident that we will be able to build the necessary consensus to prevent any such disruption,” he told the APF.

The APF, which brings together African countries and their main bilateral and multilateral partners, was set up six years ago to strengthen partnership efforts for the continent’s development.

Urgent actions

“Africa has come together to speak with a single voice on climate change internationally, and press for a deal at Copenhagen that is fair and equitable. Africa has done least to contribute towards climate change but will be the most affected,” said Marcus Manuel, Director of Pan Africa Strategy and Programmes at DFID, who represented the UK at the Addis meeting.

The APF meeting concluded that urgent action needs to be taken by the international community to reduce global emissions, including:

• new, additional, more predictable and sustainable resources to support both adaptation and mitigation
• increased priority given to African and other developing world adaptation in the climate change negotiations
• funding that is responsive to the long‐term sustainable development priorities of Africa.