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As The African Climate Week is taking place in Ghana. The countries of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are taking into account the costs of Hurricane Idai, which has devastated villages and towns, leaving hundreds of lives and leaving a trail of destruction.
For a continent already torn apart by the effects of the climate crisis, Idai is another scary reminder of the destructive power of the type of storms that will become more and more common as the world warms up.
The cyclone landed on March 14, the same day as the One Planet Summit in Nairobi, called by French President Emmanuel Macron. After gaining momentum with 195 km / h winds and torrential rains, Idai caused floods and landslides, ruined crops and roads, and has already affected millions of people. The city of Beira in Mozambique was the hardest hit: nearly 80% of homes and public infrastructure were destroyed.
While the most vulnerable communities face the real impact of climate change on the ground, the One Planet Summit's national leaders kept their word in comfortable, acclimatized rooms. During this summit, Macron encouraged global collaboration to ensure sustainable forest preservation and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta is committed to achieving at least 10% forest cover over the next three years.
These commitments would be laughable if they were not so tragic. Africa needs to do much more than that to build resilience to climate change. Cyclone Idai is another powerful demonstration.
While many countries already seem to be reducing their carbon emissions and moving towards an energy transition, Africa's coal basins are open to trade. With some Asian countries (Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh in particular), our continent remains an eldorado for the coal cheerleaders and large companies determined to continue their coal policy. New plants are planned from South Africa to Senegal, from Kenya to Mozambique, as well as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Côte d'Ivoire. Most of them are co-funded by the African Development Bank, whose board of directors includes members from African, European, North American, South American and Asian governments.
This is the case of the coal-fired power plant projects in Bargny (suburbs of Dakar, Senegal), San-Pédro (Ivory Coast), Lamu (Kenya), and the Thabametsi power station in Limpopo Province, South Africa. , near the border with Botswana.
The situation is quite similar for the oil industry, a source of energy that continues to attract investors in Africa, a continent that accounts for 8% of global production with 7.5 million barrels per year. day. Despite the drop in the price of oil over the last five years, new players are added each year to the list of large companies, such as Total, Shell, Exxon, BP and Eni.
In Uganda, for example, a new field will be developed, the result of cooperation between Total, the Chinese company CNOOC and the British company Tullow Oil. The French-British company Perenco has just established in Gabon and the DRC and plans to produce half a million barrels a day. In February 2019, Total announced the significant offshore gas and light oil condensate discovery in South Africa, which could contain 1 billion barrels of total resources.
Although it is estimated that Africa produces only 4% of global carbon emissions – compared with 80% for the most industrialized countries (G20), the continent pays the highest price. For us, climate change is not a risk for the future, it is already an obvious reality for destroyed families, land and livelihoods, as well as for hopeless children and young people who do not have no choice but to look for a future by migrating.
Across the continent, communities are fearful of losing their land, with every season hitting every country with exceptional floods, unexpected storms and increasingly long droughts. Fauna and flora reserves are depleting, access to water has become a privilege and extreme weather events have increased, leaving families without shelter or livelihoods.
Some badume that increasing forest coverage or granting new billions of dollars of funding to governments plagued by poor governance and corruption will prevent such disasters and solve the problem. problem of global warming. This is an insult to people facing untold suffering all over the continent, while new infrastructure for coal and mining and the transformation of carbon into carbon are still allowed.
The proliferation of fossil fuel projects is detrimental to the health of populations, climate and ecosystems. Yet solutions to this crisis are also well known. They include the end of coal extraction and extraction, the halting of financing of new infrastructure for coal – mines or power plants – and the acceleration of investments in renewable energies.
International cooperation and the financing of industrialized economies are needed to combat climate change. And these efforts should start by not promoting or financing fossil fuel projects anywhere in the world.
But before money, the energy transition is a question of vision and leadership. African countries need to step up their efforts against environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions, for example by decentralizing energy supply systems and promoting tax policies that encourage investment in the environment. Solar and wind energy.
African governments need to better protect their people, but fossil fuel companies must also be held accountable for the impact of decades of unregulated coal, oil and gas exploitation on the continent, including before the courts.
Tired of empty promises and empty slogans, students and students from around the world, including South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda, organized a series of gatherings and events asking their Governments to take the necessary decisions without delay to contain climate destabilization. This organic mobilization should continue and develop until concrete measures are taken.
As regional leaders and development partners gather in Accra for the 2019 Africa Climate Week, they should refrain from further promoting false solutions or making empty promises while thousands of innocent citizens die. Ending the extraction and use of coal and other fossil fuels in Africa is a decision that can no longer be deferred. The brutality of Cyclone Idai is another brutal reminder that millions of lives depend on it.
• Landry Ninteretse is the Africa leader of 350.org, which campaigns against climate change
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