African leaders met in Morocco this week on the sidelines of UN climate talks to agree a joint stance to fight global warming on the continent.
“Africa is paying a weighty price over the climate issue and is with no doubt the most affected continent,” Morocco’s King Mohammed VI told the summit attended by 20 African leaders.
“These interruptions… significantly hinder Africa’s development and grimly threaten the basic rights of tens of millions of Africans,” he said.
He said the continent should “speak in a single voice, demand climate justice”.
France’s President Francois Hollande and UN chief Ban Ki-moon also attended the summit which took place along with the COP22 climate change conference in Marrakesh.
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Ban said Africa was at the head of the battle against climate change, and that 36 of the 50 states mainly affected by global warming were African.
Senegal’s President Macky Sall said African nations would wait until 2020 for promised aid from urbanized nations to battle global warming.
An agreement after last year’s climate discussion in Paris grants for a green fund of US $100B annually from 2020 to assist poorer states to make the transition to clean energy.
Hollande said the summit would “put down the foundations” for the arrangements to aid Africa from 2020.
“France has made its promises and will uphold them, I will see to it,” he said.
African leaders have called for supplementary financial support from developed states to eliminate fossil fuel emissions and take contingency measures.
“Urbanized nations must bear their historical responsibility for emissions,” Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh said.
The UN, too, has called for more funds, particularly for “adaptation” — shoring up defenses against the consequences of global warming.
This could imply building dykes or uplifting homes as protection against rising seas, improving weather warning systems and planting climate change-resistant crops.
