Africa’s role in decarbonizing the planet
Africa carries the heaviest burden of climate change effects despite contributing less than 4% of the GHG emissions. However, limiting Africa’s role in the climate dialogue to just Loss, Damage, Adaptation and Resilience, does a huge disservice to the continent’s potential to play a crucial role in the planet’s climate future. It ignores Africa’s potential in making an important contribution to tackling climate change globally by leading the world in limiting emissions, driving climate restoration and orienting Africa towards its strengths which translate into major new segments of economic opportunity.
Africa holds the key to accelerating global climate action. Our continent doesn’t have an “old economy” that needs to be decarbonized. We can invest right away in the green economy that we need — an economy that’s net positive for the planet and the people. Importantly, if our African countries were to grow to middle income status with a similar emission per capita as current middle income countries, we can forget about keeping peak warming below 1.5 degrees.
Africa is blessed with a young and growing workforce, huge endowments of land and various natural resources, and tremendous amounts of untapped renewable energy potential. If properly deployed, these assets could be crucial in driving global mitigation efforts, while creating new economic opportunities for the continent. At the Climate Action Platform for Africa (CAP-A), we see three distinct pathways that Africa can pursue, by leveraging these assets, to combat climate change:
Africa can follow a low/free emissions growth path by leapfrogging directly to green pathways without legacy energy and agricultural assets, employing the latest sustainable technologies and business models for consumption and production. Some may view this as a prohibition against allowing Africa to use fossil fuels for its growth.
However, research has shown that sustainable technologies may offer more attractive benefits including job creation, better public health and improved climate change resilience for the continent than other alternatives.
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