After thirty years of paralysis, the COP27, which met in November 2022 in Charm El-Cheikh, in Egypt, has reached a historic consensus: rich countries must create a fund to help the most poor countries vulnerable to cope with climatic disasters. A decision that is only too fair, as science has been telling us for a long time. According to a recent analysis published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health, the United States and Europe are responsible for more than half of the world’s ecological destruction in the last fifty years. Furthermore, it is the poor countries that are most affected by extreme phenomena such as floods, heat waves, forest fires, etc., while countries that contribute the most to carbon emissions climate change remains relatively spared.
In fact, according to The world meteorological organization, The African continent produces only 2 % to 3 % of global greenhouse gas emissions. However, the frequency of droughts has tripled there in thirty years, that of storms has quadrupled and that of floods has been multiplied by ten. In addition, the rise in temperatures contributes to a slowdown of 34 % of the growth of agricultural productivity since 1961 in Africa. It is estimated that a global warming of 1.5 ° C will lead to a 9 % decline in corn yield in West Africa and 20 % to 60 % of the yield of wheat in the south and northern ‘Africa. A trend that will worsen food insecurity and malnutrition.
Now that an agreement has been reached on the creation of a fund, the most difficult remains to be done: a committee of twenty-four countries, rich and poor, must define the terms of these payments. Development countries must affect repairs for the damage they undergo. But they also need private investors and non -profit investors ready to work with government officials to offer them solid, long -term funding. We can no longer be satisfied with punctual investments in carbon emissions reduction projects that are not integrated into large national economic strategies capable of making the transformations imposed by climate change.
Technologies clean energy
So that the world will manage to deal with the climate crisis, each country must obtain the help it needs to develop a strategy adapted to its population. As we have recently seen in the United States with the infrastructure law [2021] and the law on inflation reduction [2022], we already have clean energy technologies, as well as products and practices profitable low carbon that can allow us to improve the lives of populations. The deployment of these large -scale solutions, throughout the world in development, is necessary to respond to the threats that climate change weighs on the whole world.
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