On Monday, African leaders urged their colleagues from richer, more polluting countries to increase money for initiatives that will support their efforts to adapt to climate change.
In the next three years, African nations hope to collect $25 billion for adaptation initiatives, such as improving agricultural resilience and modernizing infrastructure.
The president of Ghana, Nana Afuko-Addo, said on Monday at the Africa Adaptation Summit in Rotterdam, “If we want our continent to thrive, we have to adapt to climate change. To do this, adaptation financing needs to start flowing at scale.”
According to the African Development Bank, half of the funding required for the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Programme has already been committed. The world’s largest polluters were sought after to intervene.
African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said, “Africa does not contribute more than 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but suffers disproportionately from its negative consequences.”
On Monday, $55 million in additional donations were announced by the United Kingdom, Norway, France, and Denmark.
However, Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, expressed disappointment that only a few of their leaders had attended the event.
Sall, who also serves as the head of the African Union, remarked, “I cannot help but note with some bitterness the absence of leaders from the industrial world.”
“I think if we made the effort to leave Africa to come to Rotterdam, it would be easier for the Europeans and others to be here because they are the main polluters.”
The heads of state from Senegal, Ghana, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia were there, along with the only other European leader, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
At their Glasgow summit last year, world leaders committed to doubling the amount of money allocated to these “adaptation projects” for developing countries to about $40 billion year by 2025.
At the UN climate summit COP27, often known as “the African COP,” which will take place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in two months, climate financing is likely to be a key topic of discussion.
