Release funds to combat climate change impacts

Dr Henry Kwabena Kokofu, the Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), says climate change impacts are causing irreparable damages, hence the urgent need for the west to release funds for Africa’s adaptation and mitigation measures.

He also called on development partners and businesses to accelerate resource allocation to developing countries to stimulate their action to combat climate change.

“On a daily basis climate induced disasters like flooding, erratic rainfall, long-dry-spell are happening. Many people are dying as a result. The talk is enough. Give those who are experiencing the impact of climate change unconditional funds to implement our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),” he said.

Dr Kokofu made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency during an official side event at the on-going COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom.

It was on the theme: “Mobilizing Green Finance to Catalyze Climate Action: Lessons from Multilateral and Bilateral Funds”.

He indicated that Ghana recognised the prohibitive future cost of climate change and the counterproductive risks to her socio-economic gains and had flagged it in the national development agenda.

“To this end, Ghana has committed to implementing 47 mitigation and adaptation actions across seven economic sectors in its NDCs to maximise the synergies between adaptation and economic diversification, resulting in mitigation co-benefits,” he said.

“Removing the systematic institutional, policy, and financial barriers is the surest way to making the NDCs work and positively affect the lives of the vulnerable.”

The updated NDCs must, among other things, have access to adequate finance and technology from the international and private sectors.

Dr Kokofu reiterated Ghana’s requirement of between US$9.3 and US$15.5 billion of investment to implement the 47 nationally determined contribution measures from 2020 to 2030.

He explained that US$3.9 billion would be needed to implement the 16 unconditional programmes of action till 2030.

The remaining US$5.4 billion for the 31 conditional programmes of action would be mobilised from public, international, and private sector sources and carbon markets.

Ghana would need an additional three million US dollars biennially to support coordination actions and the regular global reporting of the nationally determined contributions.

Some of the challenges the country faced in mobilising climate finance include the lack of clear domestic catalytic fund, and limited involvement of domestic commercial investment banks due to the high-risk nature of climate finance.

The rest are lack of patient capital and policy clarity on the role of co-finance to mobilise green finance at scale.

The COP26, which has assembled some 30,000 delegates including world leaders and innovators, is seeking to discuss and identify ways to accelerate climate action over the next week.

Some of the millstones attained in the past week of the conference include promise by
more than 100 world leaders, including President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to tackle deforestation, which plays a critical role in absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide.

A total of 450 organisations controlling $130 trillion dollars – around 40 per cent of global private assets – agreed to back “clean” technology.

This story was produced as part of the 2021 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organised by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Centre for Peace and Security.