Former VP advises on new methods to fight climate change

LUDOVICK KAZOKA

AFRICA has been advised to come up with its own approach to address climate change if it is to make headway in the Paris Agreement on Climate change. The Agreement to take effect on November 4th is geared towards dealing with greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaption and financing in the year 2020.

The advice was made in Dar es Salaam yesterday by former Vice President Dr Mohamed Gharib Bilal, who said that although adaption is promoted as the only way forward; addressing African vulnerabilities must be the focus of the continent.

“Africa is a continent that consumes ready - made knowledge even when it’s not relevant to its specific context,” said the former VP while delivering a lecture on Coastal Environment and Climate Change at the ongoing Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Professorial Chair in the Environment and Climate Change.

Dr Bilal, who is this year’s Distinguished Nyerere Lecturer at the annual festival, pointed out the African vulnerabilities as poverty, hunger, malnutrition and deaths from preventable diseases and unplanned population growth.

“While the developed countries are concerned with mitigation of climate change, our key concern is how to address our basic vulnerabilities as climate change is interacting with these effects,” observed the nuclear scientist.

Dr Bilal said for the first time the Paris Agreement puts Africa on the centre stage and places it at the centre point of renewable energy deployment, saying fifty three out of fifty four African countries have now submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

“All of these countries have included renewable energy for their mitigation ambition and adaption in some cases,” he said. The former Vice President said further that the dynamics of climate change in Africa are not the dynamics of climate change in the developed world, noting that the differences should be brought to the fore as the continent hammers out negotiations at the global level.

“These are moral issues that we need to address for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of the future generations,” he said.

Dr Bilal pointed out the Kyoto Protocol that was meant to reduce carbon emissions failed due to unwillingness of the developed countries to change their development path and that the developed countries could deliver their financial pledges to support developing countries to cope with climate change.