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Global Climate Change: Focus on Africa
On this hot sunny Independence Day, I sit in my comfy chair and browse while this news catches my attention. And I wonder, “If it is so hot here, imagine how bad it should be in places like Africa?â€
Is it really hard for one to accept that it is getting hotter each year? Are we in denial, just to defend our political ideologue?Â
According to a report on BBC, the Gleneagles Summit pledged:
- Help Africa “improve resilience and integrate adaptation goals into sustainable development strategies”
- Work to increase the use of renewable energy within the continent
- Strengthen the Clean Development Mechanism, a Kyoto Protocol process with the potential to help poor countries set up renewable energy facilities
- Work to tackle illegal logging
- Improve Africa’s capacity for environmental and climatic research
Under the Kyoto protocol, which preceded the Gleneagles Summit, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was designed to introduce clean energy technologies into the world’s poorer regions. Richer nations with emissions targets to meet can choose instead to invest in clean energy systems in developing countries and receive carbon credits for doing so.
Yet a year later, less than 2 percent of the 210 CDM projects registered were in Africa. With the major share going to India, China and Brazil, which provide the western world “cheap commodities and serviceâ€. Africa lacks energy technologies in areas including hydroelectric and geo-thermal sectors, promoting the continuing trend of illegal logging, inducing anthropogenic climate change.
The obvious nature of these Summits seems far more self-serving than for the common good of all. If Africa were to provide in return to the richer countries good of value (of less value to be precise), would then have been a more equitable distribution of such (CDM) projects? Africa has and continues to be the most neglected continent, politically and otherwise. What we fail to understand is that climate change is not geographically limited to Africa, failing to address ecologically issues in one area can manifest into a catastrophe elsewhere.
For the BBC report, click here.
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Tags: News, Global Warming, Activism, Conserve, Carbon, weather, Sustainability, Economics, politics, Air Pollution, Africa, Energy, Logging, Kyoto, Gleneagles
Posted by Moderator on July 4th, 2006 filed in Activism, Africa, Air Pollution, Carbon, Conserve, Economics, Energy, Global Warming, Logging, News, Sustainability, politics, weather 3 Comments »
July 5th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Two issues I see:
1) Perhaps the Kyoto Protocol can include repairs to ‘loopholes’ such as the one described in the article. Developed countries’ choice of which country gets funding will need to be watched and a ‘balanced’ decision made under the aegis of the Protocol so that countries in Africa can benefit.
2) When it comes to Africa in specific, it goes deeper than just getting the Protocol to push towards wiser selection of recipient countries/continent. If investing in CDMs for Africa is not in the interests of developed countries, the Protocol can make it so, but not without its share of problems, and certainly not alone. Africa seems to be the largest area being left out of the great continuing technology revolution, let alone CDM itself; plus being complicated by severe internal political problems. Yep, Africa’s a tough one; not impossible, but the Protocol will need immense support to bridge the techno gap.
July 6th, 2006 at 2:51 am
The post was simply to highlight the darker (read political) side of Kyoto protocol and such. For “the common good of all,†should be the motto, not “for the good of some.†The underlying nature of such global treaties is based more on geopolitical interests than strictly issue related.
Really, do you think polluter’s care about the environment one way or another, it is counter intuitive to think that anyone involved in such reckless acts would actually care. If they did, they would not pollute in the first place, rather than finding a band-aid solution by diverting a negligible fraction of their profits to investment in green technology elsewhere!
August 12th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
it is very evident that climate change is already taking effect in this decade,-”