COP 28 agenda: Africa prioritises adaptation, resilience against climate action
Africa's core focus at Conference of Party (COP 28) will be to enhance action on adaptation and resilience against the consequences of climate change, the Lead Coordinator and Negotiator for Africa on Climate Adaptation, Patience Thelma Melfah Damptey, has disclosed.
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She explained that Africa was exceptionally vulnerable to climate variability and climate change, which affect millions of people and make adaptation efforts more pressing as rapid changes in weather patterns erode the productivity of local water and food systems and generate unintended consequences for sustainable development.
“It is expected that COP 28 would adopt a concrete, science-based framework to achieve the goal on adaptation and enhance for adaptation efforts,” she said.
At the Pre-COP 28 meeting in Accra last Tuesday, Mrs Damptey said “due to historical greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, we in Africa have had to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change in the past decades, so we need to find efficient and effective ways of implementing our adaptation needs and priorities for our survival, especially for the younger generations.”
Road to COP 28
The meeting, organised by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (CSIR-STEPRI) in collaboration with International Water Management Institute West Africa (IWMI), was on the theme: “Road to COP 28 –Harmonising science and policy perspectives towards Ghana’s climate adaptation priorities and resilience building to support global efforts.”
It aimed to enhance advocacy and knowledge of climate adaptation, to collectively identify important pathways for addressing critical climate priorities and challenges towards climate resilience building for Ghana and Africa at large.
The meeting is in line with CSIR-STEPRI's mandate of policy engagements under a six-year European Union (EU) funded research project: “Resilience against Climate Change-Social Transformation Research and Policy Advocacy (REACH STR) Project.”
Report
The 2023 Gap Report indicates that despite the clear signs of accelerating climate risks and impacts worldwide, the adaptation finance gap is widening and now stands at between US$194 billion and US$366 billion per year.
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Adaptation finance needs are 10–18 times as great as current international public adaptation finance flows – at least 50 per cent higher than previously estimated.
The report also states that international public climate finance flows to developing countries decreased by 15 per cent to US $21.3 billion in 2021, after having increased to US $25.2 billion between 2018 and 2020.
It thus calls for an increased focus on several topics underlying effective and adequate adaptation.
These include governance arrangements, transparency of policy processes, capacity-building, technology transfer, finance and equity.
Collaboration
The Deputy Minister of Energy, Herbert Krapa, said to advance Ghana’s climate adaptation policy, it was necessary to invest in research and innovation to better understand the climate risks the country faced.
He said that would create a conducive atmosphere that fosters collaboration between scientists, policymakers and communities.
The collaboration, he said, is essential for ensuring that climate adaptation policies are aligned with scientific evidence and meet the specific needs of our communities.