Building safety nets vital for developing world – Akufo-Addo
Ghana has urged industrialised countries to contribute to the V20 loss and damage fund to protect the developing world from the effects of the climate issue.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made the request at the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 28), which is being held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
He said such support was required for developing countries to have strong social safety nets.
“We are all now aware that climate change has an enormous impact on the fundamentals required for our survival on earth.
“It imposes developmental constraints and burdens on our already stretched resources and we, in Ghana, are witnessing this phenomenon for ourselves at first hand.
“A few weeks ago, some parts of my country were confronted with the severe humanitarian crisis triggered by the spillage of water from our country’s largest hydroelectric dam due to unusually high rainfall patterns,” the President narrated.
He drew the international community’s attention to the widespread and growing impact of the climate crisis.
Finance Ministers of the V20 group of vulnerable nations, a coalition of more than 40 developing countries, last year, agreed to design and test a funding facility to address the losses and damages of lives, livelihoods and infrastructure caused by climate impacts.
They will use resources from a joint V20-Climate Vulnerable Forum Fund in achieving the Fund’s objectives.
President Nana Akufo-Addo said the Fund, which serves as the global shield against climate risk, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), should be resourced to benefit humanity.
About 150 presidents, prime ministers, royals, and other leaders are participating in the COP 28.
They are expected to present their plans to cut heat-trapping emissions and, more importantly, to seek solidarity with other nations to avert climate disaster.
The Conference will focus on a variety of climate change-related problems, including the progress made across several workstreams and the details of the loss and damage finance facility to assist vulnerable communities in dealing with urgent climate impacts.
It focuses on moving towards a global finance target that would assist fund developing nations’ efforts to address climate change, including expediting both an energy and a just transition and bridging the vast carbon gap, among other things.
Furthermore, the first-ever global stocktake will be completed during COP 28.
The global stocktake is a procedure that allows countries and stakeholders to assess where they are and are not making progress toward fulfilling the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
Meanwhile, leaders of developing nations went into the second day of a UN climate summit to press rich industrial countries to share their knowledge to fight global warming and ease the financial burdens they faced, while touting their own natural resources that absorb heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere.
Source: GNA