Accra-Ghana, Nov. 15, GNA – Africa’s climate negotiations will focus on demanding enhanced action on adaptation and resilience against the impact of climate change at the 28th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28).
This year’s Conference will be held from November 30 to December 12, 2023, at the Expo City, Dubai.
The negotiators will push for the adoption of a concrete, science-based framework to achieve the goal on adaptation and enhance adaptation efforts.
This was revealed by Madam Patience Thelma Melfah Damptey, Lead Coordinator and Negotiator for Africa on Climate Adaptation, at a pre-COP 28 meeting organised by the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-STEPRI) in Accra on Tuesday.
The meeting assembled researchers, policy makers and stakeholders to identify important pathways for addressing critical climate priorities and challenges towards climate resilience building for Ghana and Africa at large.
Madam Damptey said Africa’s limited adaptive capacity and climate change may undermine decades of hard-earned development gains, which had been eroded by the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said climate change had imposed further economic costs and social disruption, with adaptation alone projected to cost the continent at least $50 billion annually by 2050.
“Climate change can undermine the achievement of our sustainable development efforts without adequate adaptation responses to support food security, poverty alleviation, human health, and other determinants of sustainable development for Africa,” Madam Damptey said.
The 2023 UN Adaptation Gap Report indicates that climate adaptation finance gap is widening and now stands at between US$194 billion and US$366 billion per year.
Mr Hebert Krapa, a Deputy Minister for Energy, called for more investment in research and innovation to advance Ghana’s climate adaptation policy.
He also called for collaboration between scientists, policymakers, and communities to ensure that climate adaptation policies were aligned with scientific evidence and met the specific needs of communities.
Professor Marian Dorcas-Quain, Deputy Director General, CSIR, said the country must take action to protect its water bodies as an important step towards mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change.
“Climate change is water and whatever we do to our water will affect climate change,” she said.
The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international climate summit.
Since 1995, it has been held annually unless Parties decide otherwise. At COPs, world leaders gather to work together on solutions to tackle climate change. There are now 199 Parties (198 States plus the European Union) to the Convention, constituting near universal membership.
COP28 in UAE is a milestone opportunity for the world to come together, course correct, and drive progress.
This year’s Conference will emphasise a ‘leave no one behind’ approach to climate action.
Dr Portia Adade Williams, a Research Scientist at the CSIR-STEPRI, said the outcome of the meeting would be submitted to Ghana’s COP28 Committee to guide the country’s negotiations at COP 28.
