For the past three years, the New York Forum AFRICA has convened in Libreville, Gabon, in early summer. The summit brings together political, economic and social leaders from across the continent to brainstorm solutions, hatch progressive deals and discuss best practices for economic development.
NYFA was established as a response to Africa’s explosive growth and its potential for even greater growth, and in that spirit the organizers of the event, Richard Attias & Associates, have curated another event to immediately precede NYFA 2015: The Climate South Initiative.
The primary purpose of CSI is to be a marketplace for ideas on how to address climate change. In doing so, however, the event will empower African nations to take control of the way they look at and prepare for the warming climate. And the event could not come at a better — or worse, depending on the way you look at the situation — time in Africa’s history. Recent studies have continually indicated that some of the most at-risk nations to climate change, both in terms of immediate environmental threat and response capability, are located in Africa. In fact, the Global Adaptation Index created by the University of Notre Dame lists seven African nations among its top 10 nations most vulnerable to climate change.
The event also comes at a crossroads in the global debate on climate change. Late in 2014, under pressure from leading climate fighters like the United States, China and France, the G20 summit agreed to include climate change adaptability among their priorities. In December, the Lima Accord was signed, in which every recognized country in the world acknowledged climate change as a fact and agreed to pursue legislation to lessen its effects. And in December of this year, the United Nations will convene in Paris for the 2015 Framework Convention on Climate Change, in which the body hopes to enact global, legally binding emission-reduction requirements.
The stated goal of CSI is to be a launchpad for African nations ahead of the 2015 UNFCCC, helping them establish “joint measures” in order to take a leadership role in their personal fight with the deleterious effects of climate change.
To those who don’t regularly follow global climate politics, the idea of Africa controlling its own destiny when it comes to climate change might be obvious. But thanks to a concept known as climate finance, there is not universal agreement that developing, poorer nations like the ones that populate Africa should have much of a say. Climate finance is the idea that larger, developed and industrialized nations, since they produce the greenhouse gases and harmful pollutants that have gotten the earth into this tenuous position, should pay for the less developed nations to equip and respond.
This idea, as touted by the United Nations, spawned the Green Climate Fund, intended to draw funds from industrialized nations and multinational corporations in order to finance their counterparts. While many nations have pledged a billion or more dollars to the fund, it just recently reached the $10 billion mark. The stated goal for the GCF by year 2020? $100 billion. Many nations are hesitant to finance projects halfway across the globe, especially when the pledges are pooled and handed out by the GCF itself.
Thus, just as Africa needs to take control of its own economic future, it also needs to take control of its environmental future. With the CSI joining the NYFA this May 27-31, Africa’s two major considerations will be addressed, together and separately, in an environment of empowerment, respect and togetherness.