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Africa Moyo Deputy News Editor
As climate change-induced disasters continue to ravage the African continent and other parts of the world, Zimbabwe expects the key issues of the loss and damage fund, climate finance and a just transition as coal is phased out, to dominate debates at the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), to be hosted by Dubai.
COP28 will be held at the Expo City from November 30 to December 12, at a time when the world is bearing the brunt of the impact of accelerating climate change.
Libya in North Africa, is the latest to be badly affected by heavy flooding following Mediterranean Storm Daniel passed which slammed through eastern Libya over the weekend of September 9, bringing heavy rainfall and flooding that killed over 11 000 people while over 10 000 others are still missing.
Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar were hit by Tropical Storm Freddy early this year, with most devastation recorded in Malawi where over 1 100 people were killed and infrastructure destroyed.
As a result, COP28 is expected to iron out issues relating to climate finance, the loss and damage fund, which was approved during COP27 held in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt last year.
The loss and damage fund seeks to help countries affected by climate change-induced disasters to rebuild, as opposed to the present situation where poor countries are using own resources to replace damaged infrastructure.
Wealthy nations are responsible for most of the emissions, which are now affecting poor countries.
In an interview, director in the Climate Change Management Department Mr Washington Zhakata said a lot would be discussed at COP28.
“There are many issues to be discussed at COP28. One is the issue of loss and damage and the second is on climate finance, and thirdly on just transition, looking at the phase down of coal,” said Mr Zhakata.
He said in terms of the loss and damage fund, huge strides have been made since COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, up to now. The mechanism of the loss and damage fund has been agreed upon, said Mr Zhakata, adding that remains are discussions around “the architecture of the funding mechanism”.
“Who is to finance the loss and damage? In which fund and based on what? Issues to do with differentiating men’s errors such as physical planning, settlements, building standards, vis a vis climate change, to really say this ‘is a climate change event’ that has affected a portion of the population settled on a steep slope, or at the confluence of rivers and downstream of dams, or areas prone to disasters.
“This may be one of the issues to be discussed first at COP28, before the mechanism of access of any resources is concluded,” said Mr Zhakata.
He predicts that the negotiations would be long drawn out because the developed world “are not very keen” to have another fund other than the Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund. Mr Zhakata said at the moment, discussions around the fund have been around where to place it so that those in need can access it.
Two institutions, one in Africa and another in the Caribbean, have been vying to house it, despite concerns that the institutions may be away from high vulnerability areas.
The climate finance pledge made by developed countries to raise US$100 billion, which was supposed to be in the Green Climate Fund, is still to be met, and African countries are expected to continue to pursue it at COP28.
The issue around just transition in respect of phasing down the use of coal, Mr Zhakata said, had been slowed down by the geopolitical situation in Eastern Europe, which has seen some European countries failing to access gas from Russia, and had reverted to using coal.
Some of the countries that have moved back to coal to supplement their energy requirements include Germany and the United Kingdom, and there was general silence on the issue at COP27.
If the wealthy countries continued to call for the phasing down of coal, they would have been affected in terms of their energy requirements.
Said Mr Zhakata: “It means at COP28, depending on the status of the geopolitical situation (in Eastern Europe) and the status of energy availability for the developed countries, we may find it surfacing again or there would be continued silence, which will work very well to our advantage.
“There is a small problem with respect to this; at the Africa Climate Summit there was a declaration tabled to Heads of State. It had some clauses on the just transition, on the need to accelerate the process of transition to renewable energy and moving away from coal, which was not well received by most countries, including Zimbabwe.
“So this declaration seemed as if those who produced it wanted it to be tabled at the (78th) United Nations General Assembly as well as being one of the pillar documents for the Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN) at COP28, which the AGN has not agreed to and there is going to be some resistance to this declaration as a position for Africa because quite a number of African countries are still using coal and we still need time to work on our energy mix.”
African countries want to be allowed time to gradually increase energy generation from renewable forms of energy, so that they don’t plunge citizens in darkness by turning off coal power stations.
Online Reporter