We’ll push for environmental justice in Glasgow, vows PS
Things are heating up. They have been doing so since the industrial revolution. Slowly, but surely.
According to scientists, warming in Kenya could reach an average 2.2°c by 2050, with the greatest temperature increases experienced in the west of the country. They warn that the worst is yet to come.
Climate models predict that Earth's global average temperatures will rise to 2.7°C (range 2.3–3.3°C) by the end of the century, if we stay on the current path. This will render large parts of the Earth uninhabitable and displace millions.
Already, here in Kenya, rising lakes in the Rift Valley have generally affected an estimated 75,987 households, with a total of 379,935 people displaced. It is estimated that the country will need Sh17.6 billion to aptly intervene over this crisis.
Kenya is also simultaneously going through the ravages of drought. The food security situation has been on a worsening trend in the Arid and Semi-Arid (ASAL) counties; attributed mainly to the poor performance of the October-December 2020 short rains and the March-May 2021 long rains. Both seasons were characterised by late onsets, below average cumulative quantities, and poor distribution both in time and space. The latest National Drought Early Warning report says 12 counties namely Marsabit, Mandera, Garissa, Wajir, Kilifi, Tana River, Makueni, Lamu, Samburu, Kitui, Isiolo and Laikipia are facing drought.
At least 2.1million people need food assistance. In September 2021, President Uhuru Kenyatta declared the drought a national disaster. Close to Sh1 billion is needed to tackle the humanitarian crisis.
These are some of the ongoing humanitarian crises attributed to climate change that are affecting Kenyans.
The impacts of rising temperatures are expected to grow significantly in the coming decades, according to the newly released Emissions Gap Report 2021 by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Projections from the report on the climate status of the region point to an increase in the duration—nine to 30 more days— of heatwaves ; meaning even drier weather. While precipitation patterns are expected to remain highly variable and uncertain; average rainfall is expected to increase by 2050, particularly during October and December.
Currently, Kenya is experiencing increasing inter-seasonal variability in precipitation patterns but also a greater likelihood of extreme events like droughts and sea level rise along its coastline.
And these climate extremes, particularly floods and droughts, are expected to become more frequent and severe.
Climate disasters in the recent past have caused severe economic losses. According to the State and Trends in Adaptation Report 2021 released by the Global Center on Adaptation last Wednesday, in Kenya, droughts from 2008 to 2011, for instance, caused losses amounting to Sh1.13 trillion (compared to a loss of Sh311 billion during the 1998-2000 drought) in livestock and crop production.
According to the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, it is a “catastrophic pathway” we are on.
“The world must wake up,” he said at a UN meeting last Tuesday ahead of the COP26 climate change conference that opens today. “We’re on the edge of an abyss and moving in the wrong direction.”
Responding to these increasing vulnerabilities from climatic warming requires global effort to limit warming to 1.5°c and well below 2°c above pre-industrial levels. We are currently at 1.2°c above pre-industrial era temperatures.
At the UN climate conference—COP26 — leaders from around the world will take stock of the progress made since the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep the earth from exceeding a 1.5°c temperature threshold.
Because, as Kenya’s Environment and Forestry PS Chris Kiptoo put it during a recent interview, “The impacts are coming in sooner and harder than was initially anticipated. So there is an even more urgent need now to ramp up our actions against climate change than ever before.”
To get on track to limit global warming to 1.5°c, the world needs to take an additional 28 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) off annual emissions by 2030 over and above what is promised in updated Nationally determined contributions (NDCs)— a country’s actions targeted at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 emissions in order to limit warming.
Eight years
Yet, according to UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen, “Climate action so far has been characterised by weak promises, not yet delivered.”
“To be clear, we have eight years to make the plans, put in place the policies, implement them and ultimately deliver the cuts,” said Ms Andersen.
“In 11 years—2010 to 2021—we have put in place policies that will lower annual emissions by 11 GtCO2e by 2030 compared to what would have happened without these policies. But we need to make 'the difference', not a difference. We cannot keep doing the same things and expect a better result,” she added. “The world has to wake up to the imminent peril we face as a species. We need to go firm. We need to go fast. And we need to start doing it now.”
Here is why. From 2010 to 2019, GHG emissions grew by 1.3 percent per year on average, reaching a record high of 58.1 GtCO2e in 2019. Fossil CO2 emissions dominate total GHG emissions (66 per cent since 2010). Fossil CO2 emissions reached a record 37.9 GtCO2 in 2019, but dropped to 36.0 GtCO2 in 2020 due to the Covid-19 global lockdowns. CO2 emissions from Land Use Change have constituted 10 percent of cumulative GHG emissions since 2010.
Hence according to Ms Andersen, there is a 50 per cent chance that global warming will exceed 1.5°C in the next two decades, and unless there are immediate, rapid and large scale reductions in GHG emissions, limiting warming to 1.5°C or even 2°C by the end of the century will be beyond reach.
New or updated NDCs and announced pledges aimed at reducing emissions will only achieve this by 7.5 per cent, compared with previous NDCs. At least 30 per cent is needed to limit warming to 2°C and 55 per cent is needed for 1.5°C.
According to PS Kiptoo, Kenya has updated its NDCs to 32 percent, relative to the previous NDCs (2015) which stood at 30 per cent. These previous NDCs (2015) are, however, yet to be fulfilled.
“In the first NDCs, we committed to implement but we did not have any money committed from our sources. We were to depend wholly on international financing sources. But we did not get that much financing, which means we ended up using our own domestic resources in the little that we could do,” he explained in an interview with the Nation.
“We had projected that US$62 billion (Sh6.9 trillion) would be required over the next 10 years to mitigate and adapt to climate change. We’ll require US$18billion (Sh2trillion) to implement mitigation strategies and US$44 billion (Sh4.9trillion) for adaptation,” said the PS.
In its upgraded NDCs, Kenya says it hopes to raise about 13 per cent of the US$62billion (Sh897m Billion) from domestic resources. The balance will be raised from international sources.
According to the PS, much of the money that has been mobilised internationally goes to mitigation, with very little going to adaptation yet developing countries like Kenya require that money more in adaptation to deal with the impacts of global warming such as the rising lakes and the drought situations that the country is dealing with currently.
Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show about two-thirds of all money raised for the US$100billion climate fund facility—instituted by developed countries to help the developing world cope with the effects of climate change, have to date gone into mitigation projects. Notwithstanding, nearly one year later since the delivery deadline of 2020, a “delivery plan” released ahead of the COP26 climate summit says the target will not be met until 2023.
Based on recent estimates from the OECD released on September 17, 2021, climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries increased from US$58.5 billion in 2016 to US$79.6 billion in 2019, the last computed year. “While it will not be known until 2022 whether the US$100 billion goal has been met in 2020, recent trends show that it appears unlikely,” the Delivery Plan report says.
“This has to change. We’re already suffering greatly due to the global warming crisis. We require that the large bulk of the funds flow to adaptation,” he said. Adding, “We want truly binding, new and additional commitments from the developed world, and adaptation-focused commitments at COP26.”
“But beyond this we also are seeking what we’re calling a ‘Loss and damage’ kitty. To compensate those already in the throes of the crisis. For instance, Kenya’s rising lakes are a clear result of climate change. We need Sh17.6 billion for the humanitarian and business losses caused by the flooding but there is currently no mechanism at the global level to compensate countries that are suffering from the damages inflicted by climate change.”
“And this does not apply to environmental damage only. We have rich countries telling us to abandon our coal, yet we have vast resources of coal in the country, it is cheap and reliable and would get us development much faster, but we’re being told no don’t use it, use something else. But who is going to compensate for this lost opportunity for abandoning our natural resource? Yet the developed world exploited and continues to exploit it to grow and become rich. They’ve caused a problem and now want us to take responsibility and forgo a quicker route to development due to this problem that we did not cause. It is unfair. Again that is where the issue of climate justice comes in,” he said.
PS Kiptoo added: “These countries that are being asked to sacrifice their accelerated development at the behest of wealthy developed countries are already suffering the effects of climate change—that they didn’t contribute to.”
The $100bn funding commitment was a way of rich countries acknowledging that their countries have developed over the last century in large part, thanks to their unfettered ability to burn fossil fuels, which led them to become the primary contributors to the climate crisis.
But there are widespread concerns about the modes through which this finance is being offered, with concerns surrounding use of loans instead of grants and different definitions of “climate finance”.
