“Climate change is the single greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, threatening water and food security, health, livelihoods, and the safety of billions of people” – UNDP
Top-ranking government officials, policy makers and ministerial representatives from across the world will be in Ghana for the Africa Climate Week next week.
Multi-lateral organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the World Bank, will join investors and other key stakeholders to advance national climate action plans or the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the climate change conference (COP24), held late last year in Katowice, Poland, urged stakeholders to work towards an outcome— “to waste this opportunity in Katowice would compromise our last best chance to stop runaway climate change.”
The next UN climate change conference – COP25, recently announced to be taking place in Chile this December – will be the pinnacle of the year where governments’ true ambitions towards tackling climate change will be clarified on the international stage. The UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September, attended by world leaders, presents a final opportunity urge governments to raise ambition and deliver at COP25.
In the build-up to these global events, a series of Regional Climate Weeks are scheduled in Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The Africa Climate Week is the first of opportunity this year to beat the drum on climate change, and build on the growing understanding of our need to drastically increase our climate action on the ground.
“Climate change is the single greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, threatening water and food security, health, livelihoods, and the safety of billions of people,” stated Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, UN Assistant Secretary General and Director of UNDP’s Development Policy Bureau. “Financing the global transition to a low-carbon and climate resilient economy will require an investment of at least 60 trillion USD. The 100 billion USD per year financing commitment from the public sector must be used to strategically leverage and de-risk private investment to accelerate climate action. We need to urgently invest in new technologies where they are needed the most. This why the investment focus of this Africa Climate Week is so necessary and welcomed.”
