Jessica reports from the first ever Africa Climate Summit, in Nairobi
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Jessica reports from the first ever Africa Climate Summit, in Nairobi
Nairobi Kenya hosted the first ever Africa Climate Summit under the theme; ‘Driving green growth and climate finance solutions for Africa and the world’ with the aim of bringing world leaders together to make Africa integral to global action efforts.
The Summit ended on Wednesday 6th September, 2023 with a call to financial reforms to help African countries - called the “Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change.”
The leaders adopted the joint Nairobi declaration to spotlight the potential that Africa has as a green powerhouse that can provide solutions to the climate crisis for both Africa and the rest of the world.
In his presentation the President of Kenya, Dr William Ruto, mentioned that the declaration will form the basis of Africa’s negotiating position at COP 28 and other world leaders’ talks coming up, such as the G20, UN general assembly, and World Band and IMF meetings.
The leaders agreed that the world’s highest emitters of greenhouse gases and the richest countries should keep their promises of climate finance, noting the unmet promise of 100 billion dollars a year towards climate finance to developing countries, first made 14 years ago and meant to start in 2020.
Further, the declaration seeks to reform a global financial system that forces African nations to pay more as compared to rich countries to borrow money, a situation that leads African countries into recurrent debt crises and makes it harder to invest and tackle the climate crisis.
President Ruto mentioned that there have been some financial pledges made towards the declaration on green growth, mitigation and adaptation and also grid access for the country of Burundi through renewable energy.
Different stakeholders also shared their statements with most asking to be part of finding solutions to climate change and President Ruto thanked the young people for all their support, effort and innovations towards climate action noting that young people play a pivotal role in climate justice.
The Summit was attended by thousands of people from around the globe, it was encouraging to be part of and we've featured some of them in our social media. But there is a lot more to do.