A day after Opposition leader Raila Odinga submitted requisite documents for his African Union Commission (AUC) chairmanship bid, he has hit the ground running with his campaigns.
Yesterday, he popularized his candidature during the Africa Green Climate Finance National Designated Authorities Network (AfDAN) conference in Nairobi where he was the key note speaker.
When he took to the podium, Raila did not mince his words. He recounted how Africa continues to bear the brunt of climate change despite emitting the least pollutants globally yet it gets the least share of climate financing to mitigate effects of climate change.
“Climate finance has been here with us, but access to the finances remains one of the biggest challenges in responding to climate change,” he told delegates attending the two-day meeting.
He criticized developed countries for turning African leaders into globetrotters, hopping from one plane to another to attend climate conferences yet nothing beneficial to Africa is yielded from those forums.
“In all those COP (Conference of Parties), it is just the same language, year in, year out. I say that we sound like a stuck gramophone. The more things change, the more the more they remain the same,” he stated.
Raila noted that effects of climate change worst affect vulnerable segments of African population, particularly the poor in both rural and urban communities.
Citing the Kenyan case where worst drought and floods have hit the country sequentially in the last two years, he noted that a lot of infrastructure destroyed and many people displaced, where others are still suffering from the consequences of the floods.
“We are victims. The offenders themselves keep on using language. They come and use language on us and that’s all it is. The solutions are passed, they just ignore. So we need to find a way of forcing implementation of the solutions that have been passed,” Raila emphasized.
He added: “Because of the failure to translate the promises into reality, Africa as a continent still has challenges in the access to some of the climate finance sources including Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility, Least Development Countries Fund, Adaptation Fund, Climate Investment Funds, as well as the bilateral and multilateral development partners, which are all well-established avenues for accessing climate finance. Consequently, Africa can only access 4 per cent of the climate finances, which is way below the impactful part.”
The former Prime Minister said that as Africa rapidly moves to urbanization, it cities must prepare to adapt to climate challenges as well.
He urged leaders to focus more on addressing housing deficit created by the soaring urban populations, which has resulted to sprouting of informal settlements.
“The slums continue to grow in most of our urban areas. Today, as we sit here, over 60 per cent of the population you see on the streets, those who are not Kenyans, live in slums. Those are unplanned settlements where there is no sanitation, no roads, no electricity and no water,” he stated.
According to Raila, cities account for about 75 per cent of the world’s energy consumption, and are responsible for over 70per cent of the global greenhouse emissions.
Therefore, way cities are planned, built, and managed is key to reducing carbon emissions and keeping global warming within the limits of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
