It is now years since the world has come to experience what is called climate change that has been admitted to have been provoked by the reckless use of the earth’s resources by man. One of the evils of the industrial revolution has been the massive use of certain products that have caused equally massive pollution and this has begun to cause unprecedented damage to the earth’s atmosphere changing its temperature levels to unprecedented levels.
The gas emissions that humans have caused to the atmosphere have resulted into aberrations on the normal cycle of the climate. We have seen protracted levels of drought particularly in certain countries this has caused famine in the poor nations that depend totally on rain fed agriculture. At the same time we have seen unprecedented rainfalls and the resulting flooding have been causing extensive damages to communities and even big cities with modern facilities made to prevent such natural or man made calamities.
In the past few years the damage to the environment has been so high that the frequency of the catastrophes has increased and the devastating situations have also multiplied. The heat waves that we see in several parts of the world are nothing but a direct result of climate change. Scientists have been warning governments and policy makers that we need to adopt drastic measure to curb our carbon emissions and reduce significantly the level of heat created in the atmosphere so that this harsh phenomenon of climate change could be reduced to acceptable levels.
Even so however the promises made in the various climate conferences little progress has been and there are some political leaders who continue to insist that the current disasters related to climate change are not a result of what scientists have come to call climate change. These people are labeled climate change skeptics and their influence has been hampering the good measures that governments would otherwise take even at the expense of certain other less important projects.
These measures that scientists want governments to take are for instance reduce the use of fossil fuel and carbon and focus on clean energy, the covering of vast land with greenery with planting trees in substitution of the felling of trees that generations of people have been carrying out for decades and with the expansion of cities in a tremendous manner, the phenomenon of population explosion has multiplied the use of trees for various purposes by leaps and bounds and all this has created extra pressure on nature. People did not seem to realize that the earth’s resources are limited and the consequences on the environment and then the climate are here to be experienced tangibly.
The rise of temperatures has caused massive wild fires in various parts of the earth and right now there are extensive fires in Canada and all of Western Europe with record levels of temperatures and massive winds that have contributed to the widespread of the flames. Millions of people have been affected by this phenomenon.
At the same time the drought experience across many African countries have undergone has been cause for millions to be needing humanitarian assistance because these people are often entirely dependent on subsistence rain fed agriculture or pastoralists. The change in the climatic conditions has caused them the loss of all they have. Many have been uprooted from the natural habitat in search of water and this has created another pressure on the other communities who are forced to host them. And this has sometimes resulted in conflicts and rivalries over the usage of very limited resources.
African countries due to their essential poverty have often been massively affected by this phenomenon of climate change which has been caused largely by the richer and industrialized countries who use massive amount of energy and create equally massive pollution and gas emissions that have caused the normal climatic cycles to falter.
Little attention has been given to what was going on with the atmosphere and the environment until recently but for many years scientists have insisted that whatever the industrialized countries have been doing to face this huge danger has not been enough at all and more urgent measures need to be taken so that temperature levels are reduced significantly and the warming of the climate stopped. Africa as a victim of this phenomenon has asked for reparations from the industrialized countries and there has been made pledges to support Africa in its bid to use only clean energy and not contribute in any way to the warming of the earth.
Ethiopia has been one of the countries that have been consistently using climate friendly, environment friendly operations in its attempt to grow industrially and improve the livelihood of its one hundred twenty million people. It has embarked in the development of clean energy such as geothermal energy and solar energy while continuing to use hydropower to provide its industries with electric power. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the river Nile, the Abay is one example of this huge venture.
Another one is the Green Legacy Initiative which has been solicited by the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) with the planting of billions of saplings in continuous years. During the last four years alone, more than twenty five billion tree seedlings have been planted in the entire country with billions more to be planted in the second phase of the Green Legacy Initiative.
In the last few days there was the conference of African ministers of environment which was held here in Addis Ababa where more than forty environment ministers and more than four hundred forty stakeholders from all over the world were here attending the four day conference. The theme of the conference was “Seizing opportunity and enhancing collaboration to address environmental challenges in Africa. The name of the conference was African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN). During this conference Ethiopia has shared its experience of the Green Legacy Initiative to its African brothers and sisters.
In a key note address by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen he said the conference was a good platform to come together and tackle the climate change impacts which have resulted in drought and flood in various African countries. Demeke said climate induced effects also hamper food security and sustainable development in Africa. He stressed that collaboration with international partners was imperative if mitigation of climate change is to be achieved. He called on African countries to strengthen their collective voice on climate issues.
Ethiopia has explained to the participants how the Ethiopian Green Legacy Initiative program has been important to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals the UN has carved, the AU’s Agenda 2063, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Bonn Challenge, the AFR 100, the New York Declaration of Forests and other environmental agreements. It was stated on the occasion that the Green Legacy Initiative has various implications for the country that range from natural land restoration to food security and from ecosystem protection to climate change adaptation and mitigation in efforts to build a green economy.
Ethiopia has called on participants of the conference to join in scaling up Ethiopia’s nature based solution to fight climate change and this has been unanimously accepted by the African ministers of environment. It was stated that the main objective of the conference was to strengthen collaboration among various institutions and enhance implementation of regional and global environmental frameworks in order to address the environmental challenges of the continent.
On the same occasion Minister of Planning of Ethiopia Fitsum Assefa has made a call on African countries to work together and to make progress towards a sustainable future for the planet. The nineteenth African Ministerial Conference on the Environment had as outcome the adoption of a declaration called the Addis Ababa Declaration which sets out a number of commitments for countries to take in order to address the continent’s environmental challenges. Ethiopia took up the presidency of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment for the coming two years from Senegal.
One of the participants at the conference was the United Arab Emirates Industry and Advanced Technology and COP 28 President-Designate, Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber who emphasized the urgent need to increase climate finance to African countries to allow them to seize the opportunity of a zero-carbon, climate resilient future. He said on the same occasion that “both the science and common sense are telling us that our collective responses to climate change are nowhere near good enough.”
He highlighted how Africa has been the hardest hit by climate change and for protracted periods of time. He recognized the efforts of African countries and praised Ethiopia for its Green Legacy Initiative stating that Ethiopia has planted twenty five billion tree seedlings in the Green Legacy Program and this has enhanced sustainable agriculture, strengthened food security, exported healthy food to foreign markets and created about a million new green jobs along the way.
Al Jaber said further progress in the field of efforts to curb climate change on the continent has been restrained by lack of climate finance. He added that the conference is important to mobilize African leaders ahead of the COP 28 and prepare the round for strong outcomes on finance, adaptation and loss and damage.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell said that many African countries are setting ambitious targets in Nationally Determined Contribution, NDC despite facing many development challenges. He said “we need transparent, equitable and simplified access to climate finance, particularly for vulnerable countries in Africa. We need to see increased investment on climate resilient infrastructures, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture.
On the same occasion Ethiopia has agreed to work closely with Kenya so that it can replicate what Ethiopia has been doing over the last five years and intends to do in the second phase of the Green Legacy Initiative. Ethiopia agreed to help Kenya plant fifteen billion tree seedlings in the coming years. Speaking at the closure of the conference Ethiopia’s Minister of Planning Fitsum Assefa urged African countries to work closely and avert the dangers of the climate change and she also highlighted how important the green diplomacy is which can be a powerful tool to promote peace and cooperation among countries.
Similarly, African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy, and Sustainable Environment Josefa Sacko said the first Africa Climate Summit is very important for the continent to take a common stance and speak with one voice about the challenges that climate change presents to the continent.
The African Climate Summit will be held in Nairobi, Kenya this coming September under the theme “Driving Green Growth and Climate Finance Solutions for Africa and the World.” Ethiopia will certainly be one of the major participants in that summit.
BY FITSUM GETACHEW
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD TUESDAY 22 AUGUST 2023
