Prof Dr Patrick V. Verkooijen, President of the Global Center On Adaptation and President Macky Sall of Senegal
Before the “African COP” – historic – on climate change, known as COP 27, which is to take place from November 7 to 18, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh on the shores of the Red Sea, in Egypt, the Global Center for Adaptation (GCA), in collaboration with the African Union (AU), the African development bank (AfDB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Africa Adaptation Initiative (AAI) and the Climate Vulnerable Forum, is convening the Africa Adaptation Summit in Rotterdam (Netherlands) to set the foundations for advanced adaptation for Africa at COP27.
This represents a historic opportunity for the global community to deliver on the Glasgow Climate Pact and the need to close the multi-billion dollar a year adaptation finance gap for Africa.
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The Africa Adaptation Summit, hosted at GCA headquarters in the world’s largest floating office in the Netherlands, will serve as a platform for action to operationalize commitments to the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) and initiate new coalitions of partners and initiatives to accelerate action on the ground across Africa.
World leaders at work
This Summit bringing together world leaders, international organizations, multilateral development banks, central banks, the private sector, mayors, representatives of civil society, young leaders and other stakeholders should raise the ambitions adaptation measures for the African continent so that the negative effects of climate change, due to socio-economic and environmental vulnerabilities, can be mitigated, if not contained.
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The challenges of climate change in Africa, from the point of view of the state of knowledge, the general problem, vulnerability, impacts and adaptation strategies have become, over time, one of the main hypotheses of work of successive COPs. Even if the share of the continent in the risks incurred by Planet Earth remains low compared to other industrialized areas of the world.
Paradoxically, Africa is the most affected by the effects of climate change, according to COP26. A warning coast that reminds us that three of the areas that experienced a drying up during the 20th century are located on this continent. Africa is a very compact continent in addition to being the most tropical of all the continents with 90% of the land located inside the tropics, and in terms of physical environment, Africa is the continent of extremes. It is therefore not surprising that serious impacts of the main environmental challenge of climate change are expected on this continent.
Since 2000, many initiatives have emerged in Africa
Curiously, Africa is also the continent that very early became aware of the challenge that climate change represents for its development by initiating a global study on the subject, three months following the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Rio on March 21, 1994, and by evaluating, the following year, the cost of implementing Agenda 21 on the continent. Unfortunately, and because of the continent’s lag in economic development, it has been noted that the institutional capacities available to African countries only allow very few of them to develop action strategies in a such a complex field, and a fortiori to network the said institutions within the framework then suggested. A series of capacity building initiatives followed, generally resulting in the development of national communications, without really establishing a dynamic for managing climate change on the continent.
It should be recognized that since the beginning of the 2000s, a certain number of initiatives in the form of projects have emerged in Africa, initiatives targeting the impact of climate change on development sectors as well as urgent and priority actions to reduce these impacts. Adaptation to climate change has thus become the primary concern for Africa through these initiatives. At the same time, the continent is gradually getting organized both at sub-regional and continental levels to take a more active part in climate negotiations, particularly post-Kyoto.
After the publication of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) report on Human Development 2007/2008, it became clear that climate change must be approached from the angle of socio-economic development, which implies taking taken into account in the overall and sectoral development strategies of African countries. It is therefore today another challenge which is looming for Africa and which will necessarily have to be met in order to guarantee a future for future generations on this continent.
From our envoy from Rotterdam
