Africa must demand an ambitious adaptation deal at COP29

A lot is at stake in baku.

BY FREDRICK OTIENO 

Climate change impacts continue to wreak havoc across Africa. Recently, Kenya was on the receiving end of floods that devastated the entire city of Nairobi.  

In the aftermath of the floods, thousands that were displaced continue to be homeless, as hundreds of others seek to recover from injuries to loved ones, destruction of croplands and even loss of lives.   

This is just but a tip of the iceberg of the many ongoing and agonizing impacts of climate change that vulnerable African communities now live with. 

A record-breaking drought has resulted in massive crop failure in Southern Africa leading to severe food insecurity and starvation. Out of desperation and dire need for food, Namibia and Zimbabwe have announced plans to cull and slaughter dozens of elephants, buffaloes and zebras, distribute the game meat to the starving local population. 

Watch: Africa’s Parched Reality

Such adversities compel Africa to repurpose Jim Carvill’s quip: ‘‘It’s the economy, stupid” to “It’s Adaptation, stupid” for Africa.  

While adaptation is critical for Africa, it is difficult to comprehend how a continent of 1.28 billion mostly poor people can actually adapt to the effects of climate change with a finance gap five times their need.  

Delegates, negotiators, observers and political leaders attending COP-29 in Baku later this year must positively respond to Africa’s loud wail for adaptation finance.  

The bottom-line for climate finance discussions at COP-29 must be twofold.   

On the one hand, it must be recognized that for climate frontline communities in Africa, adaptation is a matter of survival. This is the continent’s priority.   

On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that developed countries owe Africa a climate debt for their historical emissions. The maturity date for this debt is long overdue.  

Most importantly, this discourse must recognize that for Africa, mitigation is only slightly relevant. Mitigation entails reducing heat-trapping gases. 

Our continent does not have any reasonable amounts of emissions to cut. So, the loud cry of Africa from the wild of climate change destitution is adaptation. Adaptation, stupid! 

Best shot at climate struggle 

As a current threat, adaptation is Africa’s perfect shot at climate devastation. Our only lifeline. 

Borrowing   economist Kenneth Boulding on the world economy, we live in a warming earth which has limits to what is tolerable. This earth could be likened to a spaceship. Some of the climate limits have already been breached. This explains the devastating impacts being felt through property destruction damaged, lives lost and economies in free fall.  

So, what does it take to live on a planet under these unprecedented threats?  Skeptics would say that climate change is a hoax. Idealists would direct us to urgently reduce the dirty gases that trap heat and poison our planet.   

Realists, though, would remind us that the planet has been irreparably damaged and that reducing new emissions would give very little or completely no immediate benefits.  

So, for Africa, the need to find ways to live with the current blemished climate cannot be overstated. It is a fact that cannot be gainsaid.   

Besides adaptation, all the other possible climate interventions seem elusive for Africa. 

The default today for our continent is to do as much as possible to prevent and reduce further losses. Only carefully thought out, locally relevant and adequately resourced adaptation practices give African countries a chance to salvage what has been left of their livelihoods, economies, agriculture, infrastructure, health and social systems.  

Africa must adapt now. Lest we consign ourselves to the ‘boiling frog’ syndrome: where climate inaction overwhelms us in the long run.  

While we agree that adaptation is our lifeline as a continent, we must not slumber and fall into the trap of the frog boiled to its death for not fleeing the pot when it could. 

Adaptation is only sensible when we still have options for keeping our lives bearable. The climate may ravage us, but we still have a window of action.  To falsely believe that we have limitless time to adapt will only lead to tragedy. 

Now, African countries may have the room to adjust livelihoods to cope with changing climate, build alternative social systems and backstop economies from giving away to climate pressure.  

But even as we do this, we must recognize that delayed action will push us through the trapdoor of a temperature cliff. This dreadful reality is nigh. The space for adapting is shrinking fast.  

Late adaptation would result in increased costs, rendering such efforts unachievable. Delayed action could also breed maladaptation.   

Like a frog in a boiling pot, Africa must jump out into immediate and deliberate adaptation action or risk being cooked completely. It must jump into safety. 

This ‘‘jump’’, though, must consider the continent’s multiple and overlapping crises. Africa already suffers food insecurity, economic instability and acute poverty. All these factors complicate its ability to adapt in a manner that is commensurate with the urgency. 

To this end, the continent must not be pushed to reallocate its shrinking domestic resources to prepare for and respond to ravaging impacts of climate change. More external funding must come to the continent. 

The road to Baku, therefore, must highlight the need to channel additional, fair and ambitious financial resources, technology development and transfer and capacity building as critical enablers of adaptation for Africa.  

A lot is at stake at COP29.  

Fredrick Otieno is a sustainability and Just Transition Analyst at Power Shift Africa