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African nations should focus the vast majority of their climate action on adaptation rather than mitigation as the continent’s emissions represent only a sliver of the global total, according to a veteran politician.
Countries in the region should allocate 80% of resources toward handling the impacts of a warming planet and 20% on fighting temperature rises, said Valli Moosa, previously a South African government minister and a former chairman of state-owned utility Eskom.
“We’ve got a lopsided emphasis,” Moosa told the Innovation for Cool Earth Forum in Tokyo on Wednesday. “Partly because the global community puts enormous pressure on African countries to think about renewable energy and mitigation and not to think about adaptation.” Moosa served as a member of South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission until last year.
The Group of Seven countries and China accounted for almost 60% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2023, according to data compiled by the European Commission. African nations account for less than 4% of the total.
Adaptation projects have so far only won a fraction of climate finance, with investors and banks focusing mainly on clean energy and other decarbonisation technologies. However, infrastructure projects and nature-based solutions are beginning to offer more attractive returns and drawing greater interest.
Revenue generated by climate adaptation could hit $4 trillion by 2050 and deliver investment opportunities in sectors from firefighting technology to flood insurance, according to a report co-authored by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte.
