Speaking from southern Africa where Oxfam Ireland has been on a week-long mission meeting with colleagues and partners from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, Oxfam Ireland CEO Jim Clarken, responding to the latest climate finance draft text said:
“COP29 cannot afford to fail. On the key issue of climate finance, we stand firmly by the G77 of developing countries who say they cannot leave Baku without a number – a real commitment – on climate finance. Developing countries need $5 trillion in annual climate debt and reparations via grant-based public financing.
I have been in Zambia and Zimbabwe this week where I have heard and seen first-hand the devastating effects of climate change on the people of southern Africa. Climate change-induced drought and El Niño-linked extreme weather events have led to widespread crop failure. Over 61 million people have been pushed into severe humanitarian need across the region. Water shortages, hunger, displacement and disease outbreak are eroding the development gains that these countries had been making.
Yet again the people of Africa are suffering from the sins of the wealthy countries and corporations who continue to fail in their commitments to reduce carbon emissions. Yet again, the people of the global South are dealing with the severe - indeed the lethal - effects of a global North unwilling to pay its fair share.
The great global gathering that is COP29 knows that the world is watching. The farmers I met in Buhera district in the Manicaland Province are despairing. The ground is dry, the dams have largely dried up making irrigation impossible.
The drought is also impacting energy security as lakes and dams, such as the Kariba dam in Zimbabwe, report historically low water levels. Countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe thought hydropower would be a dependable source of energy. This is true no longer.
The people of southern Africa do not view climate change as an ideological issue, they don’t see climate action as optional. They know it is real because they live every day with the consequences of a global North that repeatedly refuses to act to save them and the world."
“COP29 cannot afford to fail. On the key issue of climate finance, we stand firmly by the G77 of developing countries who say they cannot leave Baku without a number – a real commitment – on climate finance. Developing countries need $5 trillion in annual climate debt and reparations via grant-based public financing.
