From EI Nino-induced drought across southern Africa to rising seas in West Africa, Africa, which produces the least carbon emissions, suffers the worst impact of climate change.
Amnesty International says richer countries most responsible for global warming must commit at CoP29, the United Nations Climate Conference starting next week in Baku, Azerbaijan, to pay more as climate change displaces millions across Africa.
The activists say wealthy nations must agree to fully pay for the catastrophic loss of homes and damage to livelihoods taking place across the continent. They also demand that the worst emitters must fully fund African governments’ adaptation measures to stop human rights violations and accelerate a fair phase- out of fossil fuels blamed for the climate crisis.
The call for climate justice gave rise to the Loss and Damage Fund adopted in 2022 in Cairo, Egypt, with its rules concluded last year at CoP29 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Amnesty International wants the largest emitters to urgently finance the Loss and Damage Fund.
However, rich countries have pledged less than $700 million of the $400 billion required by low-income countries to offset the loss and damage by 2030.
“African people have contributed the least to climate change, yet from Somalia to Senegal, Chad to Madagascar, we are suffering a terrible toll of this global emergency which has driven millions of people from their homes. says Samira Daoud, Amnesty International regional director for west and central Africa.
He says it is time for the countries that caused “all this devastation'” to pay up so African people can adapt to the climate change catastrophe.
President Lazarus Chakwera dialled up the call slowed by resistance from wealthy nations. From CoP26 in Scotland to the UAE edition, he demanded that more loss and damage funds be provided in a predictable manner and not as conditional aid, but reparations for the suffering of poor people in least- emitting nations.
He said the bloc had to “insist that concrete solutions be found for enhancing climate adaptation and resilience for the most vulnerable countries.”
Across the continent, droughts, floods, storms or heat are displacing people within countries and across borders.
These results in human rights violations including loss of shelter, disrupted access to food, health care and education, the risk of gender-based violence and even death, Amnesty International warns.
About 5.7 million Malawians require food aid following dry spells caused by El Nino weather pattern across southern Africa. The tragedy struck a year after Cyclone Freddy affected over 2.2 million people across the country’s Southern Region, damaging crops, homes, roads and irrigation fields.
Amnesty International reports that in Somalia, more than a million people have been displaced by protracted drought and recurrent floods which have decimated farms, killed livestock and destroyed houses.
“The disaster has forced communities already vulnerable from decades of Civil war to flee to camps for internally displaced persons or to Kenya and Ethiopia,” it reports.
In Senegal, rising seas have destroyed entire villages, forcing thousands of people inland where they lack jobs and shelter.
In Chad, rising temperatures have pushed livestock herders southwards to find grazing land and water, leading to deadly clashes.
A six-year drought in southern Madagascar has forced more than 56 000 Antandroy people off their ancestral lands to search for new settlements while remnants struggle for food, water and health care.
Says Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s regional director for east and southern Africa “Given the scale of climate-induced displacement and human rights violations in Africa, half-measures and lip service are not enough from the richer countries who caused this crisis.
Source: The nation- James Chavula-staff writter-7 November 2024