Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Ms Barbara Creecy will attend the inaugural Africa Climate Summit on 04 - 06 September 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya.
“The Summit is expected to amplify Africa’s voice on Climate Change matters globally and provide a platform for the Continent’s key Climate Change priorities to find expression in existing international fora such as the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), G7/G20 processes, and in particular, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP 28) among others,” said Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Ms Barbara Creecy.
The Summit, which is themed “Green Growth and Climate Finance for Africa and the World”, is bringing together leaders from Africa and beyond; including development partners; intergovernmental organisations; private sector; academia; civil society organisations; women and youth to design and catalyse actions and solutions for climate change in Africa by providing a platform to deliberate on the nexus between climate change, Africa’s development reality, and the need to push for increased investment in climate action globally, and more specifically in Africa.
The Summit will be held concurrently with the Africa Climate Week (4 - 8 September 2023) hosted in partnership with the UNFCCC Secretariat, an annual UNFCCC-led event to promote actions that provides an opportunity to evaluate the Continent’s pathway towards achieving the Convention and its Paris Agreement’s goals and objectives.
The Summit will comprise a number of plenary and parallel sessions at Ministerial and Heads of State level focusing on a number of key issues for the Continent, including just energy transitions; green minerals and manufacturing; sustainable agriculture, food systems and land use; climate resilient Investments in water; ocean governance and the blue economy and sustainable infrastructure and urbanisation. The African Climate Summit will also deal with important cross-cutting issues for Africa, such as adaptation and resilience to climate risk as well as climate finance and carbon credits.
Minister Creecy will be participating in a Panel on Scaling International Climate Finance for Africa, which will explore ways to significantly enhance the flow of financial resources to support the implementation of the Continent’s climate action commitments. Various reports demonstrate the enormous climate change needs of developing countries and how present public climate finance flows are not forthcoming, inadequate and lack in quality. In addition, the current financial architecture features an unfortunate reality where developing countries, those that have least contributed to the climate problem, continue to shoulder climate costs albeit their very limited fiscal space and constrained economies.
“The Africa continent needs access to scaled-up new and additional and predictable grant and highly concessional finance which could be deployed effectively to create enabling environments by beginning to buy down risks and create new asset classes for clean investments that would allow for greater mobilization and leveraging of public and private finance”, said Minister Creecy.
Minister Creecy emphasised that Africa’s approach to climate change must be premised on the principle of equity and the recognition of Africa’s right to development. She further noted the critical links between building low carbon, climate resilient societies and sustainable development necessary to address Africa’s triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
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