Yesterday cross-party Peers, Ministers and MPs attended an event hosted by the APPG for Africa and Peers for the Planet to discuss the numbers behind Africa’s climate finance challenge.
At the event parliamentarians heard about the climate impacts Africa is experiencing and the extreme threats climate change poses to a continent that only produces 3-4% of the planet’s emissions.
Parliamentarians discussed a recent report published on the Landscape of Climate Finance in Africa which provides the first independent and accurate analysis of climate flows into Africa and explores how private finance could be mobilised to advance climate solutions in the coming decade.
Key takeaways included:
Africa needs an estimated $277bn investment annually to meet 2030 climate goals – but finance flows currently stand at only $29.5bn a year.
Of these finance flows, the private sector contributes only 14% of total climate finance in Africa, much lower than other regions like South Asia (37%), Latin America and the Caribbean (49%).
Africa strikes a better balance between finance flows for adaptation (39%) and mitigation (49%) than other regions globally where adaptation represents only 7%–16% of total climate finance. This is a positive trend, given Africa’s disproportionately high vulnerability to climate change but this funding still needs to increase substantially.
There is huge potential to invest in clean energy. Africa is estimated to need to invest $133bn annually to meet its energy and climate goals. However, annual investment in renewable energy currently stands at $9.5bn, a fraction of the Africa’s $29bn of fossil fuel investment.
Despite the important of agriculture and land use to Africa economically and socially, and the implications for food security, gender, biodiversity and water security, it drew only 16% of the total climate finance in Africa.
To address the climate financing gap and accelerate investment in Africa’s diverse green growth opportunities, attendees heard that boldness is needed to fund hard-to-abate sectors, catalyse private finance and facilitate climate investment across the whole of Africa.
The event and report come at a crucial time to inform the discussions and negotiations ahead of COP27 in Egypt, by providing credible, independent data that can be used as a reliable baseline to measure climate finance in Africa and how these flows are advancing climate solutions.
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