Climate Change Conference to be held in Africa

The Six Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-VI), the continent's premier climate change conference bringing together stakeholders is held from October 18th -20th, 2016.

The main theme of the Sixth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-VI), organized under Climate for Development in Africa (ClimDev-Africa) programme, is "The Paris Agreement on climate change: What next for Africa?" this builds on the fifth CCDA of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-21) and focused on revisiting article two of the framework Convention.

When the Paris agreement was concluded in December 2015, the expectation was that it would come into force in 2020. In a statement to the climate crisis, it took just 10 months for the Paris Agreement to enter into force.

So far 77 countries have ratified the agreement, exceeding the 55pc threshold for emissions reduction goal. The Agreement aims to limit the threat of climate change by keeping the global temrature rise to well below 2oC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue sustainable efforts to limit it to 1.5oC.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE BREAKING NEWS.

Out of the 77 countries that have ratified the Agreement, 14 are African countries, accounting for only 1.06pc of global emissions.

"The operationalisation of the agreement is significant for our continent in that it brings forward the need to mobilise adequate resources required to facilitate meaningful implementation from all sources," said Abdalla Hamdok, deputy executive secretary and chief economist at UNECA.

There can be no illusion about the scale of resources required to support the mitigation ans adaptation actions while at the same time remaining on course to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he said.

CCDA-VI focuses on urgent challenges regarding the implementation of the Paris Agreement, and will seek to explore ways by which the African scientific, research and policy communities can contribute to ensuring that the agreement and its further development takes full cognisance of the African realities and imperatives.

The forum also provides a contextual analysis of what is at stake for Africa and what the climate agreement offers beyond Paris, as a strategic orientation for Africa in moving forward with the implementation phase.

"It comes at a time when we have made significant progress in defining the framework of Africa's development aspirations as underscored in Agenda 2063 vision of the 'Africa we want' and Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development Goals particularly SDG 13 which calls for urgent action to combat climate change," Kapi Kapoor, the acting vice president for sector operations of the African Development Bank said.

AfDB's Climate Change Action Plan for the period of 2011-2015 prioritised on mitigation, adaptation and climate finance. In this period, approximately 260 projects with climate relevant components were implemented and 12 billion dollars was channeled as climate finance.

It is also announced that ClimDev Africa partnership has approved a phase two program 2017-2022 to assist member states. The Bank which hosts the ClimDev Africa Special Fund as the funding arm will scale up investments for the wide scale access to climate information services in Africa.

The basis of the Paris Agreement is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) submitted by all parties in the lead up to COP 21 as their national contributions to limiting global greenhouse gas emissions. INDCs became Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) subsequent to COP 21.

"The Paris agreement heralds bold steps towards decarbonising the global economy and reducing dependency on fossil fuels. However, there are contentious nuances of the agreement that must be unpacked in the context of Africa's development priorities, particularly in regard to the means of implementation which were binding provisions of the Kyoto Protocol and currently only non-binding decisions in the Paris Agreement," James Murombedzi, Africa Climate Policy Centre officer in charge said.

The Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) conference series was conceived as an annual forum to enable linkages between climate science and development policy by promoting transparent discussions between key stakeholders in the climate and development community. CCDA seeks to mainstream climate information into decision making and strengthen capacities focusing on climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture, food security, energy and transport.