On Monday, world leaders will gather in Durban, South Africa, for the start of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 7th Meeting of the Parties (CMP7) to the Kyoto Protocol.
Central to their agenda is discussion of the aforementioned Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty world governments adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 to strengthen coordination of the global response to climate change.
The urgency with which the global community needs to commit to and implement the Kyoto Protocol cannot be stated nor emphasized enough. Humanity is standing at a precipice.
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), greenhouse gasesÔÇöwhich include carbon emissionsÔÇöfrom human activities will contribute to an increase in the average global temperature in the coming decades.
An average temperature increase above 3 degrees Celsius could result in extreme weather patterns (droughts, floods) leading to mass migration, social instability and deterioration of human welfare worldwide.
The United Nations has declared climate change the world’s greatest environmental challenge, while the World Health Organization has declared it the 21st century’s greatest global health challenge.
The UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which is an assessment of the global ecosystem, states that climate change will lead “to a strong increase in the pressures on many of the world’s ecosystems,” accelerating the loss of biological diversity.
With a global population now officially at 7 billion and projected to reach 9 billion by 2030, population growth is leading the pressure on our already stressed planet.
It is somehow fitting that the 17th UNFCCC is taking place in Africa since the effects of climate change will be experienced most severely in the developing world.
With a few exceptions, the continent of Africa continues to be the world’s basket case for underdevelopment.
Climate change could trigger negative development. The consequences of such a happenstance in an already overburdened continent are frightening. Sadly, the crisis in the Horn of Africa is but an example.
Social unrest stemming from the current global economic and financial crises underscores the need for equitable and inclusive development that places the poor, youth and women at the center.
Currently, the global community is failing over 1.2 billion people who live in absolute poverty, lack access to clean water, food or shelter and struggle for basic survival everyday.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) the youth unemployment rate rose drastically during the 2008/2009 global economic crisis. Prolonged unemployment and poverty among young people has the potential to breed social discontent globally.
As an African woman, I’d be amiss if I didn’t digress here to highlight our own challenges and constraints.
African women contribute 75% of the agricultural work, are responsible for almost 80% of the food production and perform almost 50% of the animal husbandry. Labour input of rural African women is estimated to be nearly three times that of rural African men.
In addition to collecting water and fuel, African women provide food for their families, and care for children, the elderly and sick.
Despite these contributions, gender inequality and other socio-economic, political and cultural constraints present enormous challenges for women to achieve economic empowerment.
First, African women earn only 10% of the continent’s incomes and own less than 1% of the assets. Upon widowhood, many women lose their meagre assets, livestock, farm equipment and cultivation rights due to feudal patriarchal customs.
Despite owning nearly 50% of all enterprises in Africa, women experience the hardest time gaining access to financial and credit services, perhaps due to the fact that the majority of working African women is employed in the informal sector.
But the lack of access to financial services from formal financial institutions is still shocking considering that the informal sector contributes anywhere from 40% to 60% of the GDP of many African countries.
In 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration which recognized a direct link between gender inequality and poverty. The Declaration further acknowledged that female economic empowerment enhanced the wealth and well-being of nations, and that economically empowered women contributed directly to their children’s development and to their nation’s growth and development.
African women are the backbone of the rural and informal economy; their economic empowerment is key to achieving sustainable development. And as primary users and custodians of local natural resources, African women are an invaluable asset in community-based natural resource management.
Consensus is slowly growing for a shift to a global green economy to protect the earth’s ecosystems, build up natural capital to strengthen pro-poor economic growth, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and waste, and to ensure energy, water and food security.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, 2% of global GDP in this scenario would be invested in greening sectors such as water, waste, agriculture, energy, transportation, buildings, manufacturing, forests and fisheries.
The water-agriculture nexus demands quick emphasis since lower agricultural productivity will be one of the most serious potential effects of climate change in the developing world.
Agriculture consumes 70% of freshwater globally. Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. forecasts a 40% gap between existing freshwater supplies and projected demand by 2030.
Water supply changes will directly affect food security. This will be doubly catastrophic for the 2.6 billion people who depend on agriculture for their livelihood, hundreds of millions of whom live in Africa.
We call on African leaders to steer the helm in creating a visionary global strategy on sustainable development that is people-centric and includes a comprehensive framework to address climate change effects.
The fact is that most African countries require economic diversification and growth to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the globally-accepted, quantified targets for addressing absolute poverty and realizing sustainable development.
It is therefore incumbent upon African governments to articulate the development needs and concerns of 1 billion African peoples spread across 54 independent nations and territories, and to bind industrialized countries to the Kyoto Protocol’s greenhouse gas emission reduction targets that will limit global temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius.
The symbolism of the global community descending on Africa, the birthplace of modern humans, to craft a future for humanity cannot be missed, as is the irony of Africa serving as a backdrop against which the global community will be reminded of the Bruntland Commission’s definition of sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Mpule Kwelagobe is the Global Sustainability Manager in the Office of Sustainability, a research-based organization in New York City. Ms. Kwelagobe has addressed the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), the United Nations General Assembly, members of the United States Congress, the UN Least Developed Countries (LDC) Conference, the UN World Youth Summit and the United States Congressional Black Caucus on Sustainable Development issues.
