Africa Business

The United States launched Wednesday a partnership with private funds aimed at supporting the transition to renewable energy in developing nations, based on a carbon credit system criticised by climate activists. 

The government scheme, launched at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt along with the Bezos Earth Fund and Rockefeller Foundation, would help emerging economies attract finance “to support their clean energy transitions”, Washington said.

Companies, like Microsoft and Pepsi who have expressed interest in the plan, would invest in renewable energy projects, allowing countries to show reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that could then be sold back to those companies as carbon credits.

“Our intention is to put the carbon market to work to deploy capital… to speed the transition from dirty to clean power,” US climate envoy John Kerry said, promising “safeguards” against greenwashing.

Kerry said he hoped the project, which Chile and Nigeria already said they may join, would get off the ground within a year.

Climate campaigners have criticised the US scheme, launched a day after a UN expert panel said carbon credits should not be used to “offset” emissions instead of actually cutting them.

– ‘Accounting trick’ –

Earth has warmed on average nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, provoking an accelerating onslaught of climate change impacts like storms, floods and heat waves.  

Under the Paris climate deal, countries have agreed to limit warming to well under 2C, preferably 1.5C.

That more ambitious goal requires slashing global emissions in half by 2030 and reducing them to net zero by mid-century, scientists say.

“We need to see deep emissions reductions in both the global north and south — not rich polluting companies in the north paying for the privilege of continuing to destroy the planet,” said Mohamed Adow of the think tank Power Shift Africa.

“These carbon offsets are an accounting trick which will create loopholes for polluters to carry on polluting.” 

Harjeet Singh of Climate Action Network told AFP similar schemes had not helped reduce emissions in the past.

The UN expert report said some offsets could be effective, like supporting energy transitions in developing countries — but stressed this should only be an additional measure after companies cut their own emissions.

Kerry acknowledged that prior abuses of carbon credit schemes had “discredited” these tools in the eyes of many.

He said the programme would only be open to companies ready to also commit to short-term reduction targets.

“We believe we shouldn’t let the mistakes of the past keep us from employing a powerful tool for steering private capital where it’s most needed.”

Angela Churie Kallhauge of the US-based non-profit Environmental Defense Fund said the scheme could help boost energy transitions.

“We’ve spoken for so long about the need to scale up — here is a big opportunity to explore and innovate.”

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor said Wednesday he had urged eastern Libyan military chief Khalifa Haftar to “prevent” crimes by his troops, as investigations into their actions continue.

Karim Khan, the first ICC prosecutor to visit the war-torn country in a decade, arrived in Libya on Saturday.

The North African nation descended into chaos following the NATO-backed revolt that brought down dictator Moamer Kadhafi’s regime in 2011 — with rival administrations based in east and west and a myriad of militias scattered across the country. 

Khan visited the town of Tarhuna, where mass graves were discovered in 2020 after Haftar’s troops withdrew following an abortive attempt to seize the capital Tripoli, and met Haftar on Tuesday.

“I made it clear that we had received evidence and information regarding allegations that were crimes committed by LNA troops,” he told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, referring to Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army.

“I said that those were and are being investigated, (and) that military commanders must prevent, must repress and must punish crimes when they emerge.”

One such group was the Kaniyat, which seized Tarhuna in 2015 and instigated a rein of terror.

The Kaniyat allied with Haftar during his year-long offensive on Tripoli, but after he retreated in mid-2020, residents began discovering bodies.

More than 270 bodies have so far been found, and Khan said victims wanted the truth.

“They want their voices to be heard, and they want allegations to be judicially determined by independent and impartial judges,” he said.

Before taking over as the ICC’s lead prosecutor, Karim Khan defended Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, son of slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi, whose arrest the ICC is seeking for “crimes against humanity”. 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s leader, is in the rare position of heading a UN agency’s response to a humanitarian crisis in which his own family’s survival is at stake.

Tedros, 57, hails from Tigray, the besieged northern region of Ethiopia gripped by two years of fighting and misery.

Last week’s ceasefire deal between Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels raised hopes that the brutal situation in Africa’s second most populous country could ease.

“We are glad that peace is being given a chance,” Tedros told a press conference on Wednesday.  

But he insisted that aid must be allowed in urgently, lamenting that “after the ceasefire agreement, I was expecting that food and medicines would just flow immediately. That’s not happening.”

Since the conflict erupted two years ago, the region’s six million people have been virtually cut off from the outside world. 

They face dire shortages of fuel, food and medicines, and lack basic services, including communications and electricity.

Globally recognisable as the face of the international Covid-19 response, Tedros frequently uses his platform to speak out on his homeland.

Tedros was a top figure in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which forms the backbone of the Tigrayan rebellion.

“Yes, this affects me personally. I don’t pretend it doesn’t,” the WHO chief told reporters on October 19.

“Most of my relatives are in the most affected areas, more than 90 percent of them.

“But my job is to draw the world’s attention to crises that threaten the health of people wherever they are.”

– War of words –

In seeking to open the floodgates for aid, UN agencies will need to tread carefully to avoid alienating the Ethiopian government.

Tedros therefore has to walk a fine line, knowing that in evoking the suffering in Tigray, he opens himself up to allegations of overstepping his brief.

Going further than most UN leaders, Tedros said on November 1 that the risk of “genocide” in Tigray is “real but can be averted if we act now”.

Addis Ababa has repeatedly accused him of being partisan and abusing his position, and warns that his interventions threaten the WHO’s integrity.

At the WHO’s executive board meeting in January, Ethiopian ambassador Zenebe Kebede Korcho accused Tedros of “using his office to advance his personal political interest” at Ethiopia’s expense. 

Addis Ababa also slammed Tedros’s re-election in May and urged the WHO to investigate him for “misconduct and violation of his professional and legal responsibility”. 

– Tedros and the TPLF –

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray on November 4, 2020, accusing the region’s ruling TPLF of attacking federal army camps.

The TPLF was the dominant force in the four-party Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition which controlled Ethiopian politics from 1991 for the best part of three decades.

Tedros sat on the TPLF’s nine-member executive committee until he was appointed to the WHO in Geneva.

Tedros led the Tigray Regional Health Bureau before becoming Ethiopia’s health minister from 2005 to 2012.

When prime minister Meles Zenawi died in 2012, Tedros was seen as a possible successor as head of the TPLF — and potentially therefore of Ethiopia.

But he instead became Ethiopia’s foreign minister and served until 2016, before starting as the WHO director-general in 2017.

He was therefore out of the country when Abiy came to power in 2018 on the back of years of anti-government protests.

When Abiy dissolved the EPRDF and formed the Prosperity Party in 2019, the TPLF refused to go along. The Tigrayan rebellion leaders emerged from the TPLF’s ranks.

– Tigray childhood shaped Tedros –

Tedros has said his gut motivation for his public health career lies in his family’s suffering, saying growing up in poverty and seeing, aged seven, his younger brother die from a preventable disease influenced him in a big way.

At the WHO’s weekly press conferences, Tedros usually leaves it to the experts alongside him to answer questions on most global health issues.

However, when Tigray is raised, he typically speaks at length, from the heart, in a stream of consciousness on the human impact of the crisis.

In August he lamented that he could not reach his relatives or help them.

“I don’t know even who is dead or who is alive,” he said.

And on Wednesday, he stressed that many Tigrayans were “dying from treatable diseases” and starvation.

“Even in the middle of fighting, civilians need food, need medicine. It cannot be a condition,” he insisted.

The ceasefire deal could provide a window for a humanitarian corridor, and all eyes will be on Tedros to see if he can finally get the international community to heed his pleas.

Tensions mounted between France and Italy on Wednesday over the fate of an NGO ship carrying 234 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean, with Paris calling the refusal by Italian authorities to let the vessel dock “unacceptable.”

It was the latest European standoff over where to disembark migrants picked up after trying to reach Europe from North Africa, with Italy increasingly frustrated at taking in the bulk of those rescued.

The row centres on the Ocean Viking, a charity ship that has sailed away from Sicilian waters toward France after unsuccessfully waiting for permission to dock in Italy since late October.

Run by the European charity SOS Mediterranee under a Norwegian flag, the ship has appealed to France to accept it as it headed toward Corsica and potentially the French mainland, where it has also asked for access.

“It’s a total blockage on the part of the Italians,” SOS Med director Sophie Beau told AFP, saying it had lodged 43 official requests with no response.

As of Wednesday morning it “still had no official response” from French authorities, Beau said.

Italian leaders have claimed that France is ready to accept the migrants, but Paris has warned that the ship was in Italian waters and branded the refusal to let her dock “unacceptable”.

In Brussels, the European Commission urged the “immediate disembarkation, at the nearest place of safety, of all persons rescued and who are on board the Ocean Viking.”

It did not single out Italy or France by name, but noted the “clear and unequivocal” legal obligation to rescue distressed persons at sea.

“The situation onboard the vessel has reached a critical level and needs to be urgently addressed to avoid a humanitarian tragedy,” it warned.

– ‘Arm-wrestling’ –

The standoff echoes disputes four years ago between Italy and other EU nations, when French President Emmanuel Macron in particular clashed with Italy’s populist, anti-immigrant interior minister Matteo Salvini.

The arrival of Giorgia Meloni at the head of Italy’s most right-wing government in decades could again lead to strained ties that complicate decision-making on a range of subjects at the EU level.

“We’re seeing diplomatic arm-wrestling between France and Italy that could open a breach for similar conflicts, because Italy is clearly challenging a European accord (on migrants) that was in its favour,” said Matthieu Tardis of the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI).

Meloni on Wednesday defended the decision to allow only the most vulnerable migrants to disembark from three other NGO rescue ships in recent days, saying they are “not shipwrecked but migrants”, according to media reports of comments in a closed-door meeting.

Italian health authorities later ordered the remaining migrants to be let off as well, a choice “we found bizarre”, Meloni said, according to ANSA.

With regards to the Ocean Viking, Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani claimed in an interview that France had offered Marseille as a port of safety. 

But Paris has not confirmed this and on Wednesday, government spokesman Olivier Veran said “the current attitude of the Italian government” was “unacceptable.”

Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged a rapid disembarkment and warned that “politics should not be pursued at the expense of people in distress.”

“The migrants need our unconditional support — humanity demands it,” he said in a statement.

– Hardball –

Under international law, ships in distress or carrying rescued passengers must be allow entry in the nearest port of call — which means Italy and often Malta are shouldering the burden of taking in those rescued after trying to cross the Mediterranean from Libya.

In June, around a dozen EU countries, including France, agreed to take in migrants who arrive in Italy and other main entry points.

For Tajani, Rome’s reluctance to offer its ports is a signal to European Union nations that they must play an even bigger part.

Rome wants “an agreement to establish, on the basis of population, how migrants with a right to asylum are relocated to various countries,” Tajani said ahead of a meeting of EU ministers next week.

So far this year, 164 asylum seekers have been moved from Italy to other nations in the bloc that have volunteered to accept them.

But that is a tiny fraction of the more than 88,000 that have reached its shores so far this year, of which just 14 percent arrived after being rescued by NGO vessels, according to the Italian authorities.

According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, 1,891 migrants have died or disappeared while trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year.

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Planet-heating emissions from oil and gas production could be three times higher than reported, according to a satellite monitoring project launched Wednesday that the UN chief said made it harder to “cheat”.

The new tool — unveiled at United Nations COP27 climate talks in Egypt — has pinpointed more than 70,000 sites spewing emissions into the atmosphere.

The project, run by a group of research institutions, charities and companies, monitors sites including heavy industry, energy production, agriculture, transport, waste and mining.

Using artificial intelligence to analyse data from more than 300 satellites, as well as thousands of sensors on land and in the sea, the Climate TRACE monitor found that the top 14 largest emitters are all oil and gas extraction sites.

Of those, the biggest emitter on the planet is the Permian Basin in Texas — one of the largest oilfields in the world — said former US vice president Al Gore, a project founder.

“With new data on methane and flaring, we now estimate that the actual emissions are three times higher than what they have reported,” Gore said.

Flaring is the burning off of unwanted natural gas from oil and gas wells.

Methane, emitted by leaks from fossil fuel installations as well as from other human-caused sources like livestock and landfills, is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the global rise in temperatures to date. 

Dozens of countries last year pledged to act to cut pollution from the potent greenhouse gas.

– ‘Wake-up call’ –

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres praised the initiative for shining a light on actual emissions using direct observations. 

“You are making it more difficult to greenwash or — to be more clear — to cheat,” he said.

“This should be a wake-up call to governments and the financial sector, especially those that continue to invest in and underwrite fossil fuel pollution,” he said. 

Climate TRACE first determined what industrial activity was at a given site and therefore what type of emissions to look for, said Gavin McCormick, another co-founder and director of the US environmental technology nonprofit WattTime.

Every time a satellite passes over, they can then interpret “what are we seeing”.

Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his climate advocacy, said the top 500 sources identified emit more per year than the United States — and half of the pollution is from power plants. 

All the data from the project is available free online at climatetrace.org to increase “transparency, collaboration and accountability for climate action”, Gore added.

The International Energy Agency has decried the enormous amount of methane that leaks from fossil fuel operations, estimating the amount lost last year globally was broadly similar to all the gas used in Europe’s power sector.

In October, NASA said a methane plume about two miles (3.3 kilometres) long was detected southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin.

The WHO called Wednesday for a massive influx of food and medicines into Ethiopia’s Tigray region following the ceasefire deal, saying desperately-needed aid had not yet been allowed in.

The World Health Organization said people in Tigray needed urgent assistance after two years of bloody conflict, with access to the region severely restricted.

The conflict between government forces and Tigrayan rebels has plunged Ethiopia’s northernmost region into a severe humanitarian crisis, with only a trickle of relief having got through.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed the breakthrough ceasefire agreement reached last Wednesday but warned it was already a week on “and nothing is moving in terms terms of food aid or medicines.

“Many people are dying from treatable diseases. Many people are dying from starvation,” he told a press conference.

“Even in the middle of fighting, civilians need food, need medicine. It cannot be a condition,” he insisted.

“Especially after the ceasefire agreement, I was expecting that food and medicine would just flow immediately. That’s not happening,” he said.

“Let’s give a chance to peace. But we would also urge the immediate delivery of food and medicine.”

Tedros is himself from Tigray and was Ethiopia’s health and foreign minister.

He called for the reopening of basic services such as banking and telecoms, and called for journalists to be allowed into the region, “because everything that has happened in the last two years has been done in total darkness and six million people have been completely separated, shut off from the rest of the world as if they don’t exist.”

– Unrestricted access call –

The government in Addis Ababa and the Tigrayan rebels reached an agreement on November 2 after nine days of talks under the aegis of the African Union in Pretoria, less than 48 hours before the second anniversary of the outbreak of the war.

The two parties indicated in a joint statement that they will cease hostilities immediately, disarm the rebels, allow the resumption of aid deliveries and restore basic services.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan welcomed the notion of a humanitarian corridor into Tigray, but said experience in other crises showed it was vital that the corridor remained both open “and unrestricted”.

“The people in Tigray need immediate, massive, overwhelming assistance now,” he said, including not just food and healthcare but also goods, commodities, plus the free movement of staff to deliver the aid.

Ryan said a “drip-drip” flow of aid, or help being turned on and off “is not going to work”.

A week on from the ceasefire, “we still remain on standby to take advantage of any opportunity to provide life-saving assistance to the people there right now,” he said.

Kenya Airways pilots returned to work on Wednesday, after a court ordered them to end their days-long strike which had led to hundreds of flight cancellations and stranded thousands of passengers. 

The strike, which began on Saturday, exacerbated the woes facing the troubled national carrier, which has vowed to “do everything possible to return to normalcy in the shortest time”.

“The strike is off, we are back to work,” a spokesperson for the Kenya Airline Pilots Association (KALPA) told AFP Wednesday, hours after a Nairobi court ordered the union to end the walkout.

Kenya Airways said that it expected to be up to 50 percent of normal operations by Thursday, rising to 70 percent by Friday and operating normally by November 12.

Officials at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport said the airline was still struggling to clear the backlog from earlier flight cancellations.

“We have had several KQ flights on schedule today take off after the pilots resumed work,” an official at the Kenya Airports Authority told AFP, using the shorthand airline code.

“Things are getting back to normal,” he said. 

The airline said it was “doing everything possible to return to normal scheduled operations within the shortest possible time”.

“Over 5,000 of the 12,000 disrupted passengers have been uplifted”, it said in a Wednesday statement.

The dispute has added to the challenges facing Kenya’s recently elected President William Ruto, who has inherited a country already battling a cost-of-living crisis and a record drought.

Passengers at the airport told AFP they were cautiously optimistic after being forced to reschedule their travel plans because of the strike.

Peace Wamala told AFP she was hoping to finally make it to the Ugandan town of Entebbe following a cancellation on Tuesday.

She said she didn’t yet know “the exact time for our flight but we have been assured we will fly today”.

Another passenger, who only gave her name as Londiwe, told AFP: “I have had the worst experience on KQ during the strike for the past two days, but finally I have been told I will fly this evening.

“So I am just hoping the pilots will not go on strike again.”

KALPA launched the walkout in defiance of a court injunction issued last week against the strike, prompting the government to threaten the pilots with disciplinary action.

– ‘No disciplinary action’ –

Kenya Airways, which is part-owned by the government as well as Air France-KLM, is one of the biggest in Africa, connecting multiple countries to Europe and Asia. 

But it has been running losses for years, despite the government pumping in millions of dollars to keep it afloat.

In a breakthrough for the beleaguered airline, Justice Anna Mwaure on Tuesday ordered KALPA members to resume their duties “unconditionally” by 6:00 am (0300 GMT) Wednesday.

Mwaure also ordered the airline’s management to allow the pilots “to perform their duties without harassing them or intimidating them and especially by not taking any disciplinary action against any of them”.

Transport Minister Kipchumba Murkomen had urged the pilots and the airline’s management to obey the court order.

“In the past three days, this strike has disrupted travel plans for over 12,000 customers… forced the cancellation of over 300 flights, and affected 3,500 other employees who were not part of it,” he said.

The protesting pilots, who make up 10 percent of the airline’s total workforce, are pressing for the reinstatement of contributions to a provident fund and payment of all salaries stopped during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a statement released Tuesday, the airline’s CEO Allan Kilavuka said: “We commit to complying with the court’s directions.”

The airline and the government have accused the union of engaging in “economic sabotage”, with Kenya Airways warning that the strike would lead to losses estimated at $2.5 million per day.

The airline was founded in 1977 following the demise of East African Airways, and flies more than four million passengers to 42 destinations annually.

It has been operating in large part thanks to state bailouts following years of losses.

Campaigners on Wednesday slammed a South African court ruling to allow construction to go ahead on Amazon’s new African headquarters, dealing a blow to indigenous groups who say the development will desecrate ancestral land.

Developers now have the go-ahead to re-start work  on a multi-million-dollar project that is to host the US tech giant’s offices –- which had been halted by a previous court decision.

The High Court in Cape Town concluded Tuesday that a representative for several groups opposing the construction had “misrepresented the views of some indigenous leaders without consulting with them”. 

Campaigners opposing the development said they were “deeply disappointed” at ruling. 

“We do not believe that the facts put before the court enabled the court to make a fair judgement,” a collective of campaign groups representing indigenous people said in a statement. 

Amazon was not directly named in the case that has pitted indigenous groups against property developers.

Construction of a nine-storey business and residential complex on a greenfield site that will be anchored by Amazon was first approved by city authorities last year.

But work on the four-billion-rand ($225 million) complex were suspended in March this year after indigenous people took legal action. 

Some of the country’s first inhabitants, the Khoisan, said the development lies on a battlefield where their ancestors fought Portuguese colonisers in 1510.

Once hunter-gatherers known under the now-discarded label of Bushmen, the Khoisan suffered deeply during the colonial-era and under apartheid.

Indigenous communities in South Africa still face vast social inequalities and lack of economic activities, with their history often overlooked.

Located on what was previously a golf course, Amazon’s new HQ will have a total floor space of 70,000 square metres (7.5 million feet) — equivalent to almost 10 football pitches.

The project holds the promise of thousands of jobs in a country where unemployment is cripplingly high.

Several Khoisan groups had thrown their support behind the project after the developers agreed to build a heritage, cultural and media centre that will be operated by indigenous groups.

The US midterms made waves Wednesday at a UN climate summit on the shores of Egypt, with activists urging President Joe Biden to take bolder action against global warming regardless of the election outcome.

Campaigners were confident that Republicans would not be able to undo Biden’s $370 billion green energy legislation even if they take one or both houses of Congress.

But with Biden due to join the UN’s COP27 climate conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Friday, some had a strong message for the US leader.

“I think it would be a catastrophic mistake if President Biden does not seize this literally once-in-the-universe opportunity now to be the climate president that the world needs him to be,” said Jean Su, energy justice programme director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a US environmental group.

“We are literally at the tipping point for an unlivable world,” she said at a news conference, urging Biden to phase out fossil fuel production and use his presidential powers to declare a climate emergency.

But Su and others were also pleased to see candidates who campaigned on climate change gain seats in Congress.

“A lot of climate champions did win across states, governorships, legislatures and more,” said Frances Colon, climate policy director at the Center for American Progress.

“What we expect is that they will turn these winds into more climate action,” she said.

– ‘Dodged a bullet’ –

Republicans are on track to reclaim the House of Representatives, but Biden’s Democrats appear to have a decent chance of keeping their Senate majority.

“We may have dodged a bullet,” US climate envoy John Kerry said at COP27 talks, a day after telling the summit that Biden’s climate policy “cannot be changed by anybody else who comes along”.

Colon said Republicans had campaigned on the issues of soaring inflation and high fuel prices.

“Being propped up by fossil fuels, election denying, and climate denying really didn’t work out so well for them,” she said.

Republicans will not be able to reverse the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s flagship programme to green the US economy.

“What you might see from them is that they try to slow down things, try to present some obstacles to what the Biden administration will do for the next two years,” Colon said.

But activists said a Republican victory in the House would endanger Biden’s pledge to contribute $11.4 billion to a $100 billion per year fund from rich countries to help developing ones green their economies.

Colon said Democrats need to pass the legislation before the new Congress is sworn in in January.

– Trump shadow –

After the new Congress is known, all eyes will quickly turn to the 2024 presidential election, with Donald Trump hinting that he will announce his intentions on November 15.

Climate activists fear a Trump comeback. The former US leader pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement in 2017 — a move that Biden reversed as soon as he took office.

“We know that there’s a huge climate denier that may announce (his candidacy) pretty soon,” said Ramon Cruz, president of the Sierra Club, a major US non-government organisation.

“We knew how difficult that was not only for the US, but for the whole world,” he said.

The Sierra Club, which supported candidates in this year’s election, already has 2024 on the “horizon”, he said.

But one campaigner had a different take on the impact of US elections on the climate agenda.

“The US has acted in bad faith irrespective of elections,” said Harjeet Singh, senior adviser at Climate Action Network.

Singh said that, for years, the United States has blocked attempts to create a “loss and damage” mechanism through which rich polluters would compensate developing countries for the destruction caused by climate-induced disasters.

The United States has dragged their feet on the issue, but loss and damage has taken centre stage at COP27 as it was finally put on the official agenda following intense negotiations.

“The US has been an obstructionist, always,” Singh said.

“Please look at the US role beyond what happens in this election. It is for the US to change course and be more constructive in its approach.”

A trickle of climate “loss and damage” funding pledges from rich countries at the COP27 summit in Egypt have been welcomed by observers and developing nations, who say they must pave the way for a broad global financing deal. 

The controversial issue is a key focus of the UN meeting, as a relentless surge of impacts wreak death, destruction and mounting economic losses on developing nations least responsible for planet-heating emissions. 

A handful of European nations and regions have announced small funding pledges during the Sharm el-Sheikh talks, with Germany, Austria, Ireland and Belgium saying they would make contributions. 

“These are good gestures. It shows that the issue has been acknowledged after years of advocacy,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network.

But he said that this should not distract from calls by developing nations for a robust framework that can pay out when countries are hit by increasingly ferocious floods, heatwaves and droughts, along with slow-onset impacts such as sea level rise. 

Pledges so far are miniscule in comparison to the damages already incurred. 

Austria has offered $50 million and Belgium says it will give $2.5 million to Mozambique, adding to $13 million that Denmark has earmarked for loss and damage in North Africa and the Sahel. 

Scotland, which kicked off the loss and damage pledges last year when Britain hosted the COP26 summit, has also upped its contribution to $8 million. 

Meanwhile, Germany is touting its “global shield” project, due to be officially launched in Egypt next week, as a way to provide climate risk insurance and prevention to vulnerable countries. 

It announced $170 million for the project this week, while Ireland said it would contribute $10 million for 2023. 

– Heatwaves, droughts, floods –

These countries “have begun to show the way” by recognising the need to provide funds to countries already being slammed by the impacts of climate change,” Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, told delegates on Tuesday. 

“It would be right for the major polluters — particularly those that have been involved in the historical use of fossil fuel energies — to follow this example.”

The summit is taking place at as a devastating drought is threatening millions with starvation in the Horn of Africa. 

Heatwaves and droughts have caused crops to wither on four continents, while Pakistan is still reeling from catastrophic flooding that destroyed homes, roads and bridges and swallowed vast areas of farmland. 

The World Bank has estimated the Pakistan floods alone caused $30 billion in damages and economic loss. Millions of people were displaced and two million homes destroyed.

Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program, Union of Concerned Scientists, said climate disasters and rocketing fossil fuel prices were hurting countries already burdened with “crushing debt”.  

She said that while measures like Germany’s insurance programme are important additions to loss and damage, they would be “inadequate” to deal with loss and damage more broadly.  

“We’re talking about losing land to sea level rise and desertification. Insurance can help you up to a point but climate change is now creating conditions in many parts of the world that are beyond the bounds of what’s insurable,” she said. 

“In a year like this, on this climate vulnerable continent of Africa, it would just be unconscionable to come away without an agreement on a loss and damage facility.”