African countries have been advised to build the enabling environment, to attract climate change adaptation investment.
This was contained in a new report, State and Trends in Adaptation, in Africa 2022, launched by the Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA), on Thursday.
According to the report, Africa was facing a critical shortfall in funding for climate adaptation and that the cumulative adaptation finance to 2030 would come to less than one-quarter of the estimated needs stated by African countries in their National Determined Contributions (NDCs) unless more funding for climate adaptation is secured.
Ghana for instance needs between US$9.3 billion and US$15 billion to implement its revised climate action plan (NDC) under the Paris Climate Agreement.
“In 2019 and 2020 an estimated $11.4 billion was committed to climate adaptation finance in Africa with more than 97 per cent of the funds coming from public actors and less than 3 per cent from private sectors. This is significantly less than the $52.7 billion annually to 2030 it is estimated African countries will need,” the report said.
Prof. Patrick Verkooijen, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), GCA, speaking at the virtual launch, stressed the need for a headway to be made on finance for climate adaptation.
He said that was because adaptation finance was scaling too slowly to close the investment gap in Africa, even as the costs of inaction rise.
Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture for the African Union Commission, said:“Africa’s 1.4 billion people contributed less than 3 per cent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, but finds itself on the frontline of this climate emergency with nine out of ten of the most vulnerable countries in Africa.”
“Adaptation to climate change is very crucial to Africa. At COP27 it is adaptation and financing adaptation which is our priority.”
Dr Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group, said the GCA was doing an incredible work in mapping plans to make climate resilient infrastructure.
“Already the Upstream [Financing] Facility at the GCA, is doing so much analytical work to support countries to build climate resilience into infrastructure, agriculture and to mainstream climate financing into national bodies but also into the financing of large multilateral development banks,” he added.
Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, asked developed countries to initiate credible plans to increase adaptation finance to 40 billion dollars a year, by 2025.
The GCA is an international organisation that works as a solutions broker to accelerate action and support for adaptation solutions—from the international to the local—in partnership with the public and private sectors.
Founded in 2018, GCA operates from its headquarters in the largest floating office in the world, located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. GCA has a worldwide network of regional offices in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Dhaka, Bangladesh and Beijing, China.
BY ABIGAIL ARTHUR
