27- Jun 2023- Aljazeera
Climate change headlines are rarely positive, but even against that yardstick, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest global warming predictions unveiled in mid-May marked a poignant moment for human civilisation.
In the next five years, the WMO warned, the world is likely to see an increase of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming over average pre-industrial levels for the first time.
While the weather events forecast by the United Nations’s weather body capture outlier spikes in temperatures, they serve as ominous portents of just how hard it will be for the world to achieve its hope of limiting the average temperature increase to 1.5C by 2100.
Yet, the warning signs have been around for a while and have been mounting.
Barbeques are no longer the only smoky markers of the start of summer. Devastating wildfires, like the ones that ravaged Canada earlier this month, signal the onset of rising temperatures with deadly regularity. Meanwhile, cyclones like Biparjoy, which slammed into western India in mid-June, are wreaking havoc with increasing frequency.
Eight years after global leaders gathered in a northeastern Paris suburb to seal the landmark 2015 climate agreement, no country is meeting the emissions cut goals needed to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C, according to the independent research platform Climate Action Tracker.
So is it all a lost cause? Or is there still hope? Are there any countries that are doing better than the rest in trying to mitigate the worst effects of climate change for future generations? And if so, what are they doing right
Power of the sun
To the east of The Gambia, much-bigger and landlocked Mali has a power crisis: 83 percent of its population lacks access to electricity.
Until recently, the country’s solution lay in decentralised diesel-powered mini-grids – sets of small electricity generators – to supply rural areas. Now, it is converting those into small solar grids.
It has already deployed one such system, with support and a $9m loan from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD). The 4MW solar mini-grid system is designed to supply clean energy to 123,000 people across 32 villages. It could help Mali cut total carbon dioxide emissions by 5,000 tonnes – a thousand such mini-grids could almost wipe out the country’s carbon footprint.
And this project is part of a broader trend. Between 2010 and 2019, Mali doubled the number of people connected to renewable mini-grids using solar, hydro and biogas technologies, reaching 11 million people – or more than half the country’s population – in 2019. If these grids now serve up the power they can, the county could dramatically reduce its energy access problem.
But that is not all. Tania Martha Thomas, a researcher at the Paris-based Climate Chance Observatory, an international group that monitors trends on climate and biodiversity, said these solar mini-grids – which store electricity in batteries for local use – save thousands of women h
Can’t do it alone
Burdened with ever-increasing development needs, which are in turn exacerbated by extreme weather events, many developing nations are struggling to meet their climate goals alone
ours of labour. They would previously need to travel long distances to collect water, which can now be pumped using electricity.
Further north, Morocco is leading a North African solar revolution that could serve not just the region’s energy needs but also those of Europe across the Mediterranean at a time when Russia’s war in Ukraine has disrupted oil and gas supplies.
The World Bank’s Dampha was previously the director of administration at The Gambia’s National Disaster Management Agency, where he saw closely how extreme weather events kill people, destroy livelihoods and leave behind a trail of destruction.
A 2020 study by Dampha concluded that most people leaving the country’s island capital city of Banjul are climate migrants.
“Earlier studies revealed that our capital city Banjul will be underwater by 2100 if the world’s mean sea level rises by just a metre,” he said. “If current conditions remain the same, Banjul’s loss to sea level rise could result in a total governance or state failure.”
Banjul is not just The Gambia’s administrative centre but also its economic hub.
During the COP27 conference in Egypt last year, countries agreed to a new fund to cover loss and damage suffered by vulnerable countries affected by climate disasters. Following the announcement of this new fund, African “expectations are high in view of the magnitude of the stakes around climate change”, said Mélaine Assè-Wassa Sama, a climate action project officer at Climate Chance Observatory
Research suggests that in sub-Sarah Africa, as many as 86 million people could be displaced by climate change within their own countries by 2050, and 19 million in North Africa. Cyclone Freddy, which hit Southern Africa in March 2023, forced nearly 660,000 people in Malawi to move.
Without outside help, Sama told Al Jazeera, vulnerable African countries will struggle to fight against the effects of climate change for which they have little historical responsibility – no matter how hard they try with their limited domestic resources.
Dampha agreed. Currently, international financial support is negligible. “The estimated cost of the July 2022 rainfall event was more than the total climate finance received by The Gambia in 2018,” he said.
“Climate reparation or financing is not development aid or charity to those disproportionately impacted by the climate ca
The short answer: Most developed countries are falling far behind their climate pledges. But some developing nations – such as The Gambia, Costa Rica, Morocco and Mali – are taking bold steps to fight a crisis that, though not of their making, often hits them the hardest.
They are harnessing the power of the sun and innovating with agriculture in ways that serve as examples for others. But their journeys also reveal the limitations of how far they can wage this battle alone, without the Global North truly stepping up.
The mangroves of the Gambia River in Serrekunda on September 26, 2021. The Gambia and parts of Senegal gained a 51 percent increase in mangrove cover between 1988 and 2018