Ravages of climate change will catch Africa napping

• Developing nations demand financial aid from rich countries to combat problem

According to proposals by climate change lobby groups, the continent requires at least $200 billion a year, in annual public funding, to adequately and effectively meet these challenges.

Kenya has already indicated that it requires at least $20 billion annually to enable it tackle the problem.

Environment minister John Michuki says the money will be used to boost projects in various sectors of the economy to assist the country beat the crisis.

Even as he made the announcement, he urged other African countries to follow suit and come up with similar claims that would justify their financial demands in Copenhagen.

“As things stand, Africa may come out of the Copenhagen negotiations with nothing. If this happens, we shall have spent our meagre resources for two weeks in Denmark in vain,” said Mr Michuki.

He went on: “This will, however, only happen if we don’t develop concrete programmes to justify our demand for adequate compensation from developed countries to both mitigate and adapt to the negative effects on climate change.”

The conference also resolved to press the industrialised countries to come up with “ambitious and binding” commitments to reduce their emissions as stipulated in the Kyoto Protocol.

Specifically, they want the countries to reduce their global emissions by at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by between 80 and 95 per cent by 2050.

“This is in order to maintain the concentration of the atmospheric carbon dioxide below 450 parts per million and temperature below two degrees centigrade.”

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change binds rich countries to fund developing nations to help them adapt to and mitigate climate change.

“The financial resources required to address climate change should be new, additional, adequate, predictable, sustainable, and provided primarily in the form of grants,” the leaders said in their resolutions.

Pressure has been mounting on the rich countries to demonstrate their willingness to not only put adequate funding on the table, but also assist developing countries accelerate the uptake of clean technology, reduce deforestation and embark on wide scale adaptation programmes.

On Thursday, President Kibaki appealed to African countries not to allow themselves to be manipulated by developed countries during the Copenhagen conference.

“There is need to stand firm in ensuring that this declaration is adopted in Copenhagen. The spirit of the Nairobi summit should be kept alive in all future climatic global meetings,” he said.

He urged African leaders to unite in pushing for the continent’s agenda in the forthcoming climate change conference. “We have to speak with one voice on climate change because the rest of the world should be made to understand what we want,” he said.