Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation, and the president of Kenya.
The G7 will meet soon to decide on a coordinated response to the several problems roiling our world. In both rich and poor countries, war, food shortages, oil shocks, and inflation are wreaking havoc, but Africa has been in this situation before.
It has gained a lot of knowledge on handling crises from years of hard experience. What can the rest of us learn from Africa?
Africa’s new strategy is centered on looking past the current crisis to address the more fundamental reasons behind often occurring disasters.
It is a tactic developed out of necessity. The greatest devastating driver has been climate change, which has repeatedly derailed Africa’s finest efforts at development.
According to Kenya, the numerous effects of global warming cost the country 3–4 percent of its GDP annually.
Other nations also suffer the same effects. The greatest drought in decades is currently affecting the whole Horn of Africa. Last year, flooding in South Sudan caused the displacement of 850 000 people.
The money used to recover from man-made climatic disasters, which Africa had little to do with causing, is money that does not go toward improving sanitation, power, or telecommunications infrastructure, or toward educating children.
People in the rich world can hardly fathom the extent to which climate change has taken over our life. It is progressively destroying the advancements we have made over the past 20 years while using an increasing percentage of the budget’s limited resources.
The continent has relied on aid and subsidies for a very long period to combat climate concerns.
However, these are frequently emergency measures, not the long-term resilience that Africa needs to withstand both present and upcoming shocks.
We are currently attempting a fresh strategy. The African Union’s 55 member states supported a plan to hasten climate change adaptation on the continent last year.
This is about survival, not some new development craze. A five-year Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program will be funded with $25 billion by the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and African Development Bank (AfDB) (AAAP).
Governments in Africa are supporting it financially and with other resources.
This week’s G7 summit in Germany will provide an excellent forum for debating the longer-term commitments that must be made—immediately—to aid Africa and other regions in adapting to the impacts of climate change.
We are not in the least bit advocating that the G7 overlook the crises just outside their door.
But a more impartial strategy is required. We will all benefit if we plan ahead and lay the groundwork for a more resilient world rather than lurching from crisis to crisis and from short-term fix to short-term fix.
We have learned this lesson from our repeated crises, and we hope the G7 will consider it as it discusses how to react to the seismic shocks that are shaking all of our economies and populations.
Coordinating Needs
The immediate global food crisis, fuel shortages that are affecting Africa’s non-oil producing countries and could soon result in rationing in Europe, and other urgent issues must be addressed by the G7.
However, as in other regions, it is important to strike a balance between short-term needs and long-term support for development and prosperity, both of which depend heavily on climate adaptation.
Africa is currently investing its talent, work, and resources here. The G7 should give the continent their full backing.
The AAAP could speed up initiatives that will increase Africa’s capacity to withstand the effects of climate change and, hopefully, lay the groundwork for a new kind of development if the G7 matched just half of the funding allocated to it.
The old and modern approaches are very different from one another. Climate disaster emergency financing is a sunk cost. It is a response to life-and-death crises. Spending on climate adaptation is an investment. It necessitates long-term preparation and can bring about wholesome benefits.
The Global Center on Adaptation estimates that the yearly agricultural adaptation cost for Sub-Saharan Africa is $15 billion but the cost of inaction could be more than $201 billion).
Our economies can be climate-proofed to prevent much worse losses.
The AAAP is an illustration of how Africa is jointly considering its future. The program has contributed to the improvement of the climate-adaptation aspects of $3 billion worth of assets alone in the last year through its upstream finance facility.
A plan to address climate vulnerabilities in Ghana’s road and electricity networks, civil works to safeguard seaports in Gambia and Benin from storm surges and increasing sea levels, and initiatives to increase the resilience of infrastructure connecting farms and markets are a few examples.
This is in addition to the $66 billion that African nations have already committed to spend in order to fulfill their obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement.
These initiatives, while undoubtedly little in comparison to Africa’s overall investment needs, are nonetheless positive advances.
It will not be a waste of money to increase Africa’s capacity to adapt to climate change. Investing in adaptation won’t end hunger today, but it will significantly increase Africa’s capacity to feed itself in the future, improving global food security in the process.
The G7 should remember Africa when it meets in Germany, despite the flurry of events taking on right outside its door.
We all must work together to succeed because we all inhabit a one, interrelated environment.