China offers Africa green future

CHINA and African countries called world leaders to strive to urgently raise pledged funding to $100billion (about R1.6trillion) to fight the climate change war, which has now become the biggest global threat facing the world, while forging ahead with crucial co-operation to urgently address growing threats.

In the past half decade, China and Africa have intensified efforts through critical policy and political convergence on tackling climate change.

Major China-Africa engagements have produced groundbreaking frameworks prioritising climate change as an immediate threat to humanity, the China-Africa Co-operation Vision 2035, Dakar Declaration of the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation, Sino-African Declaration on Climate Change and the Focac Dakar Action Plan (2022-2024).

The later is profoundly groundbreaking, and, has the potential to address the growing challenges of climate within blossoming China-Africa mutually beneficial co-operation.

China offered to support the implementation of African initiatives related to climate change, including the Great Green Wall Initiative, the Initiative for the Adaptation of African Agriculture and the Initiative for the Adaptation of Africa, bolstering initiatives to fight climate change in Africa.

Climate change has become a major issue in international media as the EU countries and the USA grapples with unprecedented outbreak of wildfires, floods and extremely high temperatures. Much as climate change is an urgent challenge confronting the whole of humanity, its impact in Africa could be worse.

The African continent suffers the heaviest impacts of the climate crisis, including increased heatwaves, severe droughts and catastrophic cyclones, like the ones that hit Mozambique and Madagascar in recent years.

The Intergovernmental Panel on climate change report of 2022 suggests that crucial development sectors have already experienced widespread loss and damage attributable to anthropogenic climate change, including biodiversity loss, water shortages, reduced food production, loss of lives and reduced economic growth.

While Africa emits only less than 5% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, it bears the greatest burden in terms of associated impacts of climate change.

Large populations in the African continent are poorer, largely rely on natural resources and ecosystems for their livelihoods, and are vulnerable to floods, the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

Climate change is an urgent developmental challenge with the potential to derail progress towards achieving all eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa.

The World Bank estimates that Africa’s average annual temperature is likely to rise to an additional 3-4 degrees by 2099. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said that 75 to 250million people across sub-Saharan Africa could face water shortages, and rain-fed agriculture could contract by 50% in some African countries.

In 2019, tropical Cyclone Idai left a trail unprecedented destruction in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, triggering a series of secondary disasters such as flash floods, mudslides and landslides.

The Reliefweb says that cyclone Idai killed over 1 000 people and destroyed more than 100000 homes. Cyclone Eloise affected more than 250000 people in the central Sofala province in Mozambique. At the end of 2020, tropical Storm Chalane destroyed shelters, and displaced for a second time, over 270 families already living in settlements for survivors of Cyclone Idai.

A study from the World Weather Attribution group says that extreme rainfall, floods and storms resulting from global warming have become common in southern Africa.

Zimbabwe, Malawi, Madagascar and other countries in the region were hit by three cyclones and two tropical storms, affecting more than one million people which left 230 people dead.

In 2020 The Conversation publication suggested that the future of Africa’s forests and savannahs is under threat from droughts. According to the Fin24, South Africa and other African countries will feel Europe’s heatwaves in rising food prices for importers across the continent, exposing many people to the risk of poverty, famine and diseases.

As predicted by the Famine Early Warning System Network in November 2021, the Horn of Africa is reeling under unprecedented drought. The east African subregion is facing severe drought, and recently, serious floods in Uganda.

The UN Environment Programme said that east Africa, particularly, parts of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya, are experiencing the driest conditions and hottest temperatures since satellite record-keeping began, exposing 13 million people to acute food and water shortages. Some 25 million people are already facing the same fate in 2022, mainly small farmers and herders in the region.

Millions of people across the region have been displaced and are at risk of famine. In September 2021, the

President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta declared drought affecting the country a national disaster, with millions facing malnutrition, famine and food instability.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network reports that seven million livestock in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have died.

Government officials in Kenya suggest that climate change impacts have become the major threat to environmental degradation as more elephants die from climate change- linked causes more than illegal animal trade and poaching.

Given this context, the focus on climate change in China-Africa co-operation is commendable. China and Africa launched a groundbreaking joint declaration on combating climate change at the eighth Ministerial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) meeting in Dakar, Senegal between 29 and 30 November in 2021.

The declaration on climate change co-operation, recognised that climate change has become a major challenge to the natural ecological environment, social and economic development of China and Africa. The declaration envisions the strengthening of co-operation in green energy, agriculture, forestry, and other low-carbon infrastructure projects.

This joint declaration, along with three other key documents released after the summit, locate combating problems of climate change at the heart of Africa-China co-operation in the coming years.

The two sides pledged to build a China-Africa strategic partnership on climate change to broaden areas of co-operation including in clean energy, the use of aerospace technology in addressing climate issues, agriculture, forestry, low-carbon infrastructure construction, meteorological monitoring and forecasting, and disaster mitigation.

The two sides further agreed to advocate innovative, co-ordinated, green, open and shared sustainable development, and will work for the “green recovery” of the post-epidemic world economy.

Furthermore, China will support Africa’s Great Green Wall movement by deploying cutting-edge technologies to improve the continent’s abilities in disaster relief and swift adaptation to climate change, including the China High-resolution Earth Observation System, BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, and Fengyun weather satellites.

China’s aerospace technologies have already been widely applied to help Africa in meteorological monitoring and climate change adaptations. China’s Fengyun meteorological satellites provided real-time tracking and monitoring of weather-related disasters in African countries, and provided a weather application platform to the affected countries.

Since 2013, China implemented meteorological assistance to countries such as Comoros, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Namibia, Cameroon, and Sudan. China has built 42 sets of automatic weather stations, 100 sets of artificial weather observation systems, five sets of lightning locators, two sets of Fengyun-3 satellite data reception and processing systems, and over 10 700 weather warning radios.

China also sent experts to Africa to install and debug the equipment, while training locals, thus transferring scientific knowledge and infrastructure with African countries.

China has implemented over 100 clean energy projects in Africa, supporting the continent to make better use of its solar energy, hydroelectric power, wind energy, biogas and other readily available renewable sources of energy in the continent.

The major co-operation initiatives between China and Africa, such as the Focac and the Belt and Road Initiative are going green.

Such efforts are important in mitigating the impacts of climate change, while improving the livelihoods of the people of Africa and China.