Don’t treat climate financing as charity- Adnan Amin tells industrialised countries

As climate negotiations kick-start in Glasgow, Scotland, development economist with the African Climate Foundation, Adnan Amin has warned of dire implications in Africa if developed countries fail to live up to their commitments towards resolving the climate crisis.

Speaking during the second episode of the African Climate Foundation’s podcast series “Africa’s Voices: Messages for the COP”, the development economist said that developed countries are not funding African countries well enough to deal with a problem to which they have contributed less.

Latest report by the United Nations has warned that more than 100 million “extremely poor” people across Africa are threatened by accelerating climate change that could also melt away the continent’s few glaciers within two decades.

The report released last month  by the World Meteorological Organization presented a grim forecast that Africa’s 1.3 billion people remain “extremely vulnerable” as the continent warms more and at a faster rate than the global average – when the continent’s 54 countries are responsible for less than 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

“The seeds of conflict are being sown today and unless we improve adaptation spending, we are going to see some very serious potential conflict situations emerging in the African continent unfortunately,” Adnan Amin lamented.

Year-on-year, wealthy nations have failed to mobilise $100bn for developing countries to reduce emissions and also adapt to the impact of climate change.

The pledge, made in 2009, was to raise this money between 2020 and 2025. But as the 26th United Nations Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland convenes, the reality is that the 2020 target, like previous years, was not met.

What has, however, been met is the prediction that poorer countries will continue to bear the brunt of climate change to which they lack the systems and investments to tackle and adapt to.

Adnan Amin says that industrialised countries should not be treating developing countries as if they are doing them a favour.

“…developed countries have approached climate financing much as they did development financing in the past which was that implicitly, they view it as a charity,” the Advisory Council Member of the African Climate Foundation, said.

He explains that developing countries, which are among the world’s fastest growing economies, are being told to cap their greenhouse emissions at a time when they are “hungry for energy, hungry for investment in manufacturing” that creates jobs.

He says in order for poorer nations to cap emissions, they require financing that mitigates the impact of extreme weather conditions and also adapt their economies to green initiatives and sustainable methods of development.

While developing countries look up to wealthy countries, these countries have acted in ways that are “poisonous to trust,” and “ignores the nature of the climate crisis, which is that this is a global responsibility,” he said.

Citing a proposal at the Green Climate Fund that developing countries in need of climate finance should declare net zero emission targets before they can receive funding,  Amin said the proposal is “utterly cynical” because “we are asking countries whose mitigation will make no difference to declare mitigation targets.”

He was also worried that despite a global agreement to finance mitigation and adaptation to climate change equally, more has gone into mitigation.

“This means while developing countries are being asked to cut back on emissions, they are not given much finances to fall back on and adapt their economies to sustainable development”, Amin said.

“Why is it so easy for billions of investments to be made available for huge multinational oil companies to start drilling for gas and oil in Africa but we can’t have those billions either for renewable energy development or for agricultural resilience or for water management. Where are those priorities?” Adnan Amin criticised.

He said just as the US, in post-world war II, financed the development of a devastated Western Europe Germany in what was known as the Marshall Plan, wealthy nations must do similar to developing countries grappling with climate change.

“We need to start conceptualizing climate finance as a type of Marshall Plan for the world”, he said, noting, the Marshall Plan was not considered as charity towards Western Europe but a responsibility.

About the African Climate Foundation:

The ACF is the first African led strategic climate change grant-making foundation on the continent. Building on the success of partner organisations like the European Climate Foundation and ClimateWorks Foundation, the ACF was established to provide a mechanism through which philanthropies can contribute to Africa’s efforts to address climate change. As an African-led and African-based foundation, we are committed to supporting African solutions to the climate change challenges facing the continent.