KATOWICE, Poland (PAMACC News) - The Africa civil society organisations under the umbrella of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) have called on the negotiators at the ongoing United Nations climate conference in Poland to come up with a comprehensive work plan that will help in implementation of the Paris Agreement.
“We join the African Governments and experts in underscoring the vital importance of ambitious outcomes from this conference,” said Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director at PACJA.
“We need to uphold equity, justice and act as an anchor in the Paris Agreement’s implementation,” he told a press conference at the UNFCCC COP 24 in Katowice, noting that the pre-2020 ambition remains vital to stay within the closing window as indicated by the recently released IPCC report and the Paris Agreement implementation.
Sudanese scientist and climate activist, Dr. Shaddad Mauwa also said that climate finance should be taken seriously as a critical issue of negotiations for COP 24. “We expect a clear roadmap for fulfilment of climate finance commitment of USD 100 billion per year by 2020,” he told a team of journalists in Katowiche.
Dr Shaddad said that parties should agree to discuss a new post - 2025 quantified climate finance goal from the floor of USD 100 billion, and also agree on accounting rules for climate finance that are robust and provide full transparency on actual assistance provided and to be provided to the developing countries.
The activists also pointed out that there is need to focus on how Adaptation Fund will serve the Paris Agreement. “Parties should agree on maintaining the current balance of the Fund’s board membership, operational policies and guidelines for developing countries to access the funds when it serves the Paris Agreement,” said Shaddad.
They called on parties to negotiate on the Nationally Determined Contributions timeframe in relation to the Paris Agreement. They noted that a single five-year common timeframe for NDC implementation should be agreed at the ongoing COP 24 in order to enhance consistency and comparability of NDCs.
On loss and damages, the civil society representatives pointed out that Africa continues to suffer enormous economic losses in billions of dollars as a result of climate change impacts.
“It is worrying to keep hearing the answer for loss and damage as insurance, this might be possible in developed countries but in developing countries especially in Africa, it is a far-fetched dream,” said Mithika. “We call for the commitment in the implementation of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage and need a predictable a financing approach for Loss and Damage in Africa,” he added.
Rebecca Muna, the Director of Civil Society Forum on Climate Change (FORUMCC) in Tanzania noted the importance of gender considerations in policies that supports activities on adaptation, mitigation, finance, technology development and transfer, including capacity building.
“We call for Parties to increase their efforts in ensuring that women are represented in all aspects of the Convention process, and gender mainstreaming is achieved in all processes, and activities of the Convention,” she said.
“We are calling on parties here in Katowice to fresh energy and push the negotiations towards concrete outcomes that will address this grave concern to Africa. The world is watching and the outcome from this COP24 as it will determine whether the Paris Agreement will be a reality or a mere rhetoric,” said Mithika.
KATOWICE, Poland (PAMACC News) - As the 24th round of negotiations on ways and means of curbing climate change and adapting to its impacts go down in Katovice, Poland, the World Bank Group has announced a major new set of climate targets for 2021-2025, doubling its current 5-year investments to around $200 billion in support for countries to take ambitious climate action.
According to the press statement released alongside the United Nations conference on climate change (COP 24), the money will be channeled into three major climate resilience sectors that include renewable energy, green cities and in food through improvement of integrated landscape management in some 50 countries.
“Climate change is an existential threat to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. These new targets demonstrate how seriously we are taking this issue, investing and mobilizing $200 billion over five years to combat climate change,” said the World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim.
The new plan significantly boosts support for adaptation and resilience, recognizing mounting climate change impacts on lives and livelihoods, especially in the world’s poorest countries. The plan also represents significantly ramped up ambition from the World Bank Group, sending an important signal to the wider global community to do the same.
“We are pushing ourselves to do more and to go faster on climate and we call on the global community to do the same. This is about putting countries and communities in charge of building a safer, more climate-resilient future,” said Yong Kim.
The $200 billion across the Group is made up of approximately $100 billion in direct finance from the World Bank (IBRD/IDA), and approximately $100 billion of combined direct finance from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and private capital mobilized by the World Bank Group.
A key priority is boosting support for climate adaptation, recognizing that millions of people across the world are already facing the severe consequences of more extreme weather events. By ramping up direct adaptation finance to reach around $50 billion over FY21-25, the World Bank will, for the first time, give this equal emphasis alongside investments that reduce emissions.
“People are losing their lives and livelihoods because of the disastrous effects of climate change. We must fight the causes, but also adapt to the consequences that are often most dramatic for the world’s poorest people,” said World Bank Chief Executive Officer, Kristalina Georgieva.
“This is why we at the World Bank commit to step up climate finance to $100 billion, half of which will go to build better adapted homes, schools and infrastructure, and invest in climate smart agriculture, sustainable water management and responsive social safety nets.”
The new financing will ensure that adaptation is undertaken in a systematic fashion, and the World Bank will develop a new rating system to track and incentivize global progress. Actions will include supporting higher-quality forecasts, early warning systems and climate information services to better prepare 250 million people in 30 developing countries for climate risks. In addition, the expected investments will build more climate-responsive social protection systems in 40 countries, and finance climate smart agriculture investments in 20 countries.
“There are literally trillions of dollars of opportunities for the private sector to invest in projects that will help save the planet,” said IFC CEO Philippe Le Houérou. “Our job is to go out and proactively find those opportunities, use our de-risking tools, and crowd in private sector investment. We will do much more in helping finance renewable energy, green buildings, climate-smart agribusiness, urban transportation, water, and urban waste management.”
The new targets build on the World Bank Group’s 2016 Climate Change Action Plan. In 2018, the World Bank Group provided a record-breaking $20.5 billion in finance for climate action: doubling delivery from the year before the Paris Agreement and meeting its 2020 target two years ahead of schedule.
The World Bank Group will continue to integrate climate considerations into its work, including screening projects for climate risks and building in appropriate risk mitigation measures, disclosing both gross and net greenhouse gas emissions, and applying a shadow carbon price for all material investments.
To increase system-wide impact for countries, the World Bank Group will support the integration of climate considerations in policy planning, investment design, implementation and evaluation. It will also support at least 20 countries implement and update Nationally Determined Contributions and increase engagement with Ministries of Finance in the design and implementation of transformative low-carbon policies.
KATOWICE, Poland (PAMACC News) - As the 24th round of negotiations on ways and means of curbing climate change and adapting to its impacts go down in Katovice, Poland, the World Bank Group has announced a major new set of climate targets for 2021-2025, doubling its current 5-year investments to around $200 billion in support for countries to take ambitious climate action.
According to the press statement released alongside the United Nations conference on climate change (COP 24), the money will be channeled into three major climate resilience sectors that include renewable energy, green cities and in food through improvement of integrated landscape management in some 50 countries.
“Climate change is an existential threat to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. These new targets demonstrate how seriously we are taking this issue, investing and mobilizing $200 billion over five years to combat climate change,” said the World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim.
The new plan significantly boosts support for adaptation and resilience, recognizing mounting climate change impacts on lives and livelihoods, especially in the world’s poorest countries. The plan also represents significantly ramped up ambition from the World Bank Group, sending an important signal to the wider global community to do the same.
“We are pushing ourselves to do more and to go faster on climate and we call on the global community to do the same. This is about putting countries and communities in charge of building a safer, more climate-resilient future,” said Yong Kim.
The $200 billion across the Group is made up of approximately $100 billion in direct finance from the World Bank (IBRD/IDA), and approximately $100 billion of combined direct finance from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and private capital mobilized by the World Bank Group.
A key priority is boosting support for climate adaptation, recognizing that millions of people across the world are already facing the severe consequences of more extreme weather events. By ramping up direct adaptation finance to reach around $50 billion over FY21-25, the World Bank will, for the first time, give this equal emphasis alongside investments that reduce emissions.
“People are losing their lives and livelihoods because of the disastrous effects of climate change. We must fight the causes, but also adapt to the consequences that are often most dramatic for the world’s poorest people,” said World Bank Chief Executive Officer, Kristalina Georgieva.
“This is why we at the World Bank commit to step up climate finance to $100 billion, half of which will go to build better adapted homes, schools and infrastructure, and invest in climate smart agriculture, sustainable water management and responsive social safety nets.”
The new financing will ensure that adaptation is undertaken in a systematic fashion, and the World Bank will develop a new rating system to track and incentivize global progress. Actions will include supporting higher-quality forecasts, early warning systems and climate information services to better prepare 250 million people in 30 developing countries for climate risks. In addition, the expected investments will build more climate-responsive social protection systems in 40 countries, and finance climate smart agriculture investments in 20 countries.
“There are literally trillions of dollars of opportunities for the private sector to invest in projects that will help save the planet,” said IFC CEO Philippe Le Houérou. “Our job is to go out and proactively find those opportunities, use our de-risking tools, and crowd in private sector investment. We will do much more in helping finance renewable energy, green buildings, climate-smart agribusiness, urban transportation, water, and urban waste management.”
The new targets build on the World Bank Group’s 2016 Climate Change Action Plan. In 2018, the World Bank Group provided a record-breaking $20.5 billion in finance for climate action: doubling delivery from the year before the Paris Agreement and meeting its 2020 target two years ahead of schedule.
The World Bank Group will continue to integrate climate considerations into its work, including screening projects for climate risks and building in appropriate risk mitigation measures, disclosing both gross and net greenhouse gas emissions, and applying a shadow carbon price for all material investments.
To increase system-wide impact for countries, the World Bank Group will support the integration of climate considerations in policy planning, investment design, implementation and evaluation. It will also support at least 20 countries implement and update Nationally Determined Contributions and increase engagement with Ministries of Finance in the design and implementation of transformative low-carbon policies.
Digitalisation to transform farmers’ productivity and profits
WAGENINGEN, The Netherland (PAMACC News) - Digitalisation can transform agriculture and enable farmers to increase their production and income.
Partnerships and multi-sectoral investment are key in scaling out successful technologies for smallholder farmers and to achieve Sustainable Development Goals, says Michael Hailu, Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), a joint international institution of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the European Union (EU). Interview excerpts:
What does digitalisation mean for the work of CTA?
CTA has been using ICTs for many years to bring technologies for application in agricultural operations at different levels of the value chain. For more than 20 years, we have been testing and introducing different technologies in ICTs, starting from CD-ROMs up to the new technology, like mobile technologies and satellite data. We have been testing the technologies with farmers and seeing how they can be useful in improving productivity and profitability. We have been doing some of this on a small scale. But now there is a great deal of interest from the private sector to governments in harnessing ICTs for agricultural development, and a key issue is, how do we take these technologies to scale? We hope our experience capitalisation activities will help us find answers to this question. Our role is catalytic. We have been making these technologies accessible to farmers, but to scale up we need to work with the big players, like the private sector, governments and development partners.
Can digitalisation help scale out technologies of use to farmers?
Absolutely. I think there is much that digitalisation can offer in terms of connecting farmers to markets, for example, and helping in the process of improving productivity and creating resilience. Farmers can tell how much fertilizer they can use. They are able to reduce inputs while increasing yields and returns. There are so many possibilities where you can apply digitalisation. We need to make the strategic investment in digital innovations, so we can make them available to a large number of farmers.
In your view, is there political will in the ACP region to support digitilisation as an opportunity for farmers and farming?
When you talk about the ACP region, it is a large region of 79 countries. Policies differ from one country to another, but overall there is global recognition that digitalisation is a disruptive technology. The top five companies in the world are technology companies, and this tells us the importance of this technology to development and investment, so we cannot ignore it. We are saying that if you bring technology to agriculture, it can create huge opportunities for inclusivity, and for many farmers to benefit by making agriculture profitable. There is strong recognition from many countries about the importance of agriculture. Digitilisation is a game change in this sector.
I attended the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) Forum in Kigali recently, and this whole issue of digitilisation was high on the agenda, highlighting that we need proper data about production so that decision-makers have easy access to different kinds of data on agriculture. There is need to leverage technology to make data available to different kinds of users. There is a very strong appreciation for what technology can bring to agriculture.
Given CTA’s interest in ICTs for agriculture, has anything not worked?
When you test a new technology, it is always the case that there are more failures than successes. Technology innovations have a large rate of failure compared with successes. We have had a lot of failure for different reasons; either the technology was not appropriate, or there were no supporting mechanisms when we deployed it. There are things that continuously fail, but when you succeed there is significant potential. For example, we have been working with partners in Uganda profiling tea farmers in cooperatives. We have been able to capture details about their farms and cooperatives, demand using drones. Farmers have double their productivity and profits because of technological interventions. We can scale up these successes.
How do you see CTA’s new strategies strengthening your work with ICTs?
Our current strategy has three key intervention areas. One is promoting youth entrepreneurship and creating employment for young people. The second is the agenda of digitalisation to improve agricultural productivity and profitability, and the third is promoting climate smart agriculture innovations. There is a lot of interaction among these different priorities. For example, when you talk about using entrepreneurship in agriculture, technology is critical because young people are attracted to technology. To be engaged in agriculture, technology can play a key role. A lot of our work on entrepreneurship is around technology and digital innovation and how these can help start-ups by young people.
