By Kofi Adu Domfeh
Ghana needs $22.6 billion in investments from domestic
and international public and private sources to finance its climate mitigation
and adaptation actions.
The country’s 31 programme of actions will drive the
strategic focus of a “10-year post-2020 enhanced climate action plan” that
would be developed after the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris.
This is contained in Ghana’s Intended Nationally
Determined Contribution (INDC) submitted on September 23, 2015 to the UNFCCC, ahead
of the deadline.
An INDC is a government's proposed 'contribution' to
the UNFCCC as to what it will do about climate change.
The Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC invited parties
to communicate to the secretariat their INDCs well in advance of the Paris
climate summit in December 2015 “in a manner that facilitates the clarity,
transparency and understanding of the INDCs.
As at October 1, there were 108 submitted INDCs on the
UNFCCC website, including that of Ghana.
Ghana’s INDC is anchored on the medium-term development
agenda (Ghana Shared Growth Development Agenda II – GSGDA 2), National Climate
Change Policy and the Low Carbon Development Strategy, as well as the
anticipated 40-year long-term development and the universal sustainable
development goals.
According to the document, “the proposed measures to
achieve the INDC goal will build on existing measures and strategies”.
In all, 20 mitigation and 11 adaptation programme of
actions in 7 priority economic sectors are being proposed for implementation in
the 10-year period (2020-2030).
The implementation of the actions are expected to help
attain low carbon climate resilience through effective adaptation and
greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction in the priority sectors: Sustainable
land use including food security; Climate proof infrastructure; Equitable
social development; Sustainable mass transportation; Sustainable energy
security; Sustainable forest management; and Alternative urban waste
management.
Mitigation
Goal
Ghana’s emission reduction goal is to unconditionally
lower its GHG emissions by 15 percent relative to a business-as-usual (BAU)
scenario emission of 73.95MtCO2e by 2030.
An additional 30 percent emission reduction is
attainable on condition that external support is made available to Ghana to
cover the full cost of implementing the mitigation action (finance, technology
transfer, capacity building).
With this external support, a total emission reduction
of 45% below the BUA emission levels can be achieved by 2030.
The total investment cost for implementing the 20
transformational mitigation actions is $9.81 billion – representing 45% of the
total investment. Out of this, Ghana will mobilize $2.02 billion (21% of the
total investment cost) to finance the two unconditional INDCs. An additional $7.79
billion will be needed to finance the remaining 18 mitigation actions in order
to achieve more ambitious emission reductions in the 10 year period.
Adaptation
Goal
The long-term goal of Ghana’s adaptation is to increase
climate resilience and decrease vulnerability for enhanced sustainable
development.
Ghana will require $12.79 billion for adaptation – $4.21
billion (34%) will be mobilized at the national level, whilst the remaining $8.29
billion is the international contribution Ghana is looking for in order to meet
the cost of implementing its adaptation actions.
Adaptation under Ghana’s INDC is informed by: good
governance and inter-sectoral coordination; capacity-building, the role of science,
technology and innovation; adequate finance from both domestic sources and
international cooperation; promoting outreach by informing, communicating and
educating the citizenry; and adhering to accountable monitoring and reporting.
Ambitious
climate resilient economy
Africa and other developing countries remain vulnerable
to the impacts of climate change.
In Ghana, the agricultural and food economy are already
under threat as local farmers reel under the severity of the weather.
Achieving a 2oC global temperature target is
ambitious but means for adaptation and mitigation remain critical to the
vulnerable.
In preparing and submitting its INDC, Ghana is mindful
of its international obligations as a Party to the UNFCCC while simultaneously
pursuing a national development agenda that seeks to achieve the long-standing
objective of becoming a fully-fledged middle-income economy.
Ghana’s response to the threats posed to this objective
by the impacts of climate change has been to pursue coordinated domestic policy
actions that in effect seek to develop a policy framework that integrates
adaptation, mitigation and other climate related policies within broader
development policies and planning.
This is in order to safeguard developmental gains from
the impacts of climate change and build a climate resilient economy.
Ghana holds the view that the INDCs should cover
mitigation, adaptation, finance technology, capacity building and transparency
and agrees with the common position of Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment