COP 28: President Akufo-Addo urges building of safety nets for developing world

Ghana has urged the industrialised countries to support the V20 loss and damage fund to cushion the developing world against the shocks from the climate crisis.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, making the appeal at a side event of the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 28), said such assistance was needed for robust social safety nets for the developing world.

He was addressing a COP 28 finance summit when the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and Vulnerable (V) 20 Finance Ministers held a stocktake of reforms in the international financial architecture to spur development-positive climate action.

This follows a day after the current and incoming chairs of the CVF endorsed and launched the COP28 finance declaration.

The finance declaration, endorsed by CVF members Ghana, Barbados, Kenya, Colombia, and Senegal, is to build on the V20 Accra-Marrakech Agenda, Bridgetown Initiative 2.0, and Nairobi Declaration, among other initiatives.

It highlights the need for a more equitable and effective global financial system in the context of climate change.

“We are all now aware that climate change has an enormous impact on the fundamentals required for our survival on earth,” President Akufo-Addo stated.

“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 drew the attention of the international community to the widespread and growing impact of the climate risks.

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 served as the global shield against climate risk, and ultimately 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, hosted by the United Arab Emirates.

They are expected to present their plans to cut heat-trapping emissions and mostly seek unity with other nations to avert climate catastrophe.

Discussions at the Conference centre on varied climate change-related issues, including the progress made in several workstreams.

They are also hammering out the details of the loss and damage finance facility to help vulnerable communities deal with immediate climate impacts.

They are also focused on driving towards a global goal on finance that would help fund developing countries’ efforts in addressing climate change, accelerating both an energy and a just transition, closing the massive emissions gap, among others.

In addition, the first-ever global stocktake will conclude at COP 28.

The global stocktake is a process for countries and stakeholders to see where they are collectively making progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, and where they are not.

Meanwhile, leaders of developing nations went into Saturday’s second day of a UN climate summit to press rich industrial countries to share their know-how to fight global warming and ease the financial burdens they faced, while trumpeting their own natural resources that swallow heat-trapping carbon in the air.

Source: GNA