The highest decision-making body dealing with our most serious existential threat is sent to one of the most vulnerable continents, with a global environmental catastrophe in mind. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) conference will be held in Africa for the fifth time, and Egypt will be visited by politicians from countries responsible for historical carbon emissions. Africa faces a dilemma between climate change action and economic development, and justice is not charity but a fundamental principle of international law. But Africans also have an obligation to drop the rhetoric, and Sameh Shukri, this year’s COP27 presidential candidate, should have dropped Greta Thunberg’s blah blah blah for his comment that negotiations before COP27 allowed policymakers to understand “areas of overlap and potential divergence”. Africa has received nothing but blah blah for decades, including the Glasgow Framework Convention. False promises, denial through inaction and obfuscation by those who, without moral remorse, have overlooked the plight of their historic carbon footprint on the African continent.

Agreements such as the 2003 Warsaw Convention on the International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, which recognize that developing countries are “particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change,” appear to be just another blah blah. And it is even more unfair for the US to urge other developed countries to remove the term “emergency” from Glasgow’s proposal for an emergency climate deal to finance climate catastrophes. In addition, apart from empty words, Africans do not need more promises, which, most likely, will remain promises. And yet this is once again what they got from the so-called Funding Implementation Plan, the failed 2009 promise of “US$100 billion a year by 2020” presented as progress at the last COP. This is unfair to the millions of people who are now suffering from famine in the Horn of Africa. Politicians in developed countries have a unique and symbolic opportunity to fulfill their moral obligation by providing this money, rather than lending it to Africans. “Finance plays a critical role in supporting developing countries to fight climate change,” which they have not caused but are much more likely to suffer.

Climate solutions conceived by the West must match reality, which will require African countries to explore their natural resources in ways that are not always suitable for advanced economies. The State’s right to development is enshrined in international law and mainly includes the right to use its wealth-generating resources. It is therefore logical that Africans are now looking for “a field of action for national policies and programs on the continent”, calling on the international community to respect their vision and aspirations, including the right to development and equality, in their development agenda for 2063. According to UN estimates, to By 2050, up to $500 billion will be needed to save lives from climate change across the continent.

* Mr. Michael Davies-Venn is a Public Policy Analyst. The article was published on the website of the Friedrich Ebert Institute.