The planes from Johannesburg to Mozambique’s airports of Maputo, Tete and Pemba are full of business people these days. My neighbours on the flight from South Africa last week were not heading to Mozambique’s beautiful resorts but there to take up the opportunities from the oil, gas and coal revolution that is transforming parts of the country and potentially the entire economy.  As well as oil and mineral firms, associated service industries from supermarkets to telecoms are all part of this energy bonanza. In March, the global energy group CWC hosted its first Mozambique Gas Summit. The gathering brought together more than 550 attendees from over 300 companies, and 55 countries in Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia and the Americas.  Mozambique is not alone in its mineral boom; oil and gas has been discovered in recent years in numerous African countries, including Angola, Namibia, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania.

Mozambique has reason to celebrate its new mineral wealth: it provides an opportunity to transform the economy and livelihoods of ordinary Mozambicans. The country’s brutal civil war ended in the 1990s but despite being a donor aid ‘darling’ it remains ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world (185 out of 187 countries in the UN’s Human Development Index, 2013).

Economic growth would support the much-needed public health, education, roads and other public services that ordinary Mozambicans need. It is also likely to stress the country’s social, economic and political institutions, particularly if the growth is uneven. As one local colleague told me, “we don’t have the capacity to keep up with the change.” Besides issues of governance, use of resources, impacts on equity and the natural environment, there is a question of what the energy bonanza means for Mozambique’s climate policy. The urgent development needs of Mozambique’s poor and the high-carbon profile of the country’s natural resources raise some tough questions about how ‘climate compatible’ Mozambique’s development path could be.

Energy extraction and use cannot be disassociated from climate change, as we were reminded of this week when global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in 3-5 million years.  Mozambique is on the front line of climate change: its 3,000 km coastline and five major river basins expose the country to flooding and weather extremes. In 2000, flooding killed 800 people and displaced half a million, which led the government to start mainstreaming disaster risk management into development planning. Mozambique has prepared a National Climate Change Policy focused around adaptation and disaster management and is now one of Africa’s most advanced countries in this regard.

Even this determined response has not been enough to prepare for every emergency: this February, severe floods in the Limpopo Basin displaced 150,000 people and caused over 100 deaths.   The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2012) has shown that climate change is likely to increase the severity and frequency of extreme weather events as well as sea level rise. Mozambicans are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks because of high poverty: they lack the resilience to bounce back after extreme events. Mozambique’s ongoing work to build its climate resilience is essential. Leaders thus face a question: how can Mozambique steer a course that embraces immediate needs for economic growth and the prospect of real poverty reduction – including energy access for all its citizens –  but also contribute to a climate-resilient, low carbon future? There are no easy answers, but there are a few places to start.

At national level, a whole-of-government approach is needed, where energy security, economic development and climate resilience need to be considered in a joined-up way. Mozambique’s climate-energy dilemma also calls for several forms of support from international partners: donors, businesses and others.

First, the international community owes Mozambique –  and least developed countries like it – an ambitious, equitable global climate deal in 2015 that recognises its low greenhouse gas emissions and its need to develop and pull its citizens out of poverty. Second, the country’s international partners owe Mozambique the opportunity to leap-frog old, polluting technologies and access the cleanest, greenest industrial technologies available to drive economic growth (for example, developing renewable energy options for Mozambique’s dispersed population). Third, they need to work with Mozambique to tap into international climate finance – beyond traditional aid budgets – to fund climate-resilient and low-emissions trajectories.

Fourth, there is an emerging evidence base on countries’ practical experiences in climate compatible development including those policies, programmes and strategies that deliver low carbon, development benefits without undermining climate resilience and economic growth. Mozambican leaders could do worse than to learn from others’ experience, and foster an open, national debate about the options for a sustainable and equitable development path.

Photo courtesy of Flickr – CDKNetwork

The Challenge

The increase of international financial flows supporting mitigation of GHGs and adaptation to climate change creates many opportunities for developing countries. During UNFCCC COP 15 and 16 (2009, 2010 respectively),
industrialized countries pledged overall an amounts of 30 Bn USD until 2013 (Fast start finance) and up to 100 Bn USD annually until the year 2020 (long term finance) for climate change adaptation and mitigation activities in developing countries. However, several governments in Asia perceive access to climate funds as difficult and many have not yet been able to make use of all of the available national and international financing options available to them for sponsoring low carbon, climate resilient development. Most governments have also failed to engage the private sector in developing CCD investment markets, leaving a significant source of financing untapped.

Objective

GIZ and CDKN are collaborating to strengthen the access and use of national and international climate finance in Indonesia and Vietnam. The project seeks to explore the climate funding options available to Indonesia/Vietnam and strengthen the capacities of the government to optimise these opportunities for enabling climate compatible development.

Expected outcomes: 

•  Analysis of national climate finance priorities, existing activities, and financing opportunities;
•  Defining jointly with the partner country governments and stakeholders the needs for action through a roadmap framework;
•  Communicating the experience from pilot countries regionally and globally to exchange lessons learned;
•  Coordination between stakeholders (public and private);
•  Identification of public finance mechanisms to leverage private investments in the field of climate change;
•  Development of a learning exchange platform for sharing climate finance experiences;
•  Survey of current and future sources of external / international climate change funding, and their implications, mechanisms,  requirements;
•  Analysis of investment climate in target countries.

For more information, download the Project Factsheet

Delivery Partner: Marc-Philip Buckhout, Deutsche Gesellschaft für marc-philip.buckhout@giz.de, Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Tel. + 49 6196 79-2116

Policy Partners: The National Development Planning Agency of Indonesia (BAPPENAS), Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam (MONRE)

CDKN funding: £320,000

Project Manager: Dina Khan

El curso será una oportunidad para interactuar con dos expertas en cambio climático mundialmente reconocidas, Fernanda Zermoglio (SEI-Oxford y Banco Mundial) y Carmen Lacambra (Universidad de Cambridge). Adicionalmente, estarán participando en este escenario de capacitación, Claudia Martínez, representante de la Alianza Clima y Desarrollo (CDKN), organización que apoya el proyecto de construcción del Plan de Adaptación al Cambio Climático en Cartagena de Indias, Omar Franco, director del IDEAM y varios altos funcionarios de las entidades públicas nacionales y locales.

La participación de entidades invitadas como la Alcaldía de Cartagena, ANDI, FENALCO, CARDIQUE, EPA, Corporaciones Autónomas Regionales costeras, Parques Nacionales Naturales, DIMAR y el sector académico de la ciudad, entre otros, será muy importante para que los principales actores de la ciudad sigan trabajando en forma conjunta en la definición de acciones y la planificación para garantizar el desarrollo de Cartagena en un contexto de clima cambiante, que afecta no solo la infraestructura de la ciudad y su zona costera, sino también la dinámica de su economía y su entorno social.

Las investigaciones realizadas por el INVEMAR durante 10 años sobre vulnerabilidad y adaptabilidad de zonas costeras, son la antesala para que se convoquen entidades del orden nacional e internacional como el Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible, el IDEAM, el PNUD y para que Científicos Expertos Internacionales en Cambio Climático y Desarrollo apunten su interés sobre la ciudad y capaciten a los asistentes en conceptos básicos sobre el tema y principalmente en cómo tratar sus efectos a través de un Manejo Integrado. Así mismo la información presentada y analizada en el curso contribuirá a fortalecer los procesos de planificación en la ciudad en temas relacionados a las zonas marinas y costeras.

Cabe mencionar que desde sus inicios en 1999, el evento ha permitido capacitar a más de 500 tomadores de decisiones, investigadores y comunidades. Igualmente, y a raíz del mismo, se ha creado la Red Costera, generadora de información que se transmite a través de boletines bimensuales vía web desde hace 13 años.

Contacto: Adriana Burgos- Comunicadora INVEMAR-proyecto CDKN / Cel 3174294637

Crédito de  imagen: El Universal

As the impacts of climate change begin to bite, climate change is beginning to feature in countries’ foreign policies. Nowhere is this more the case than the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a Pacific island country that is now under drought orders and struggling to cope with rising sea levels.

Minister Tony de Brum of the Marshall Islands, recently wrote on cdkn.org, “Climate change is not a distant prospect, but a reality for us now.  People are starting to ask:  What is happening to our country?  What will my children do?  Not our grandchildren or great-grandchildren, but our children, who are already on the frontline” (See Action to Halt Warming Could Save My Nation).

In April, Minister de Brum was among the high level panellists, ambassadors, climate negotiators and analysts who met  to discuss the emergent field of climate diplomacy and what it can achieve. CDKN, E3G and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office convened the special workshop on climate diplomacy in London. Nick Mabey, Executive Director of E3G, presented the preliminary findings of a CDKN-supported review of the potential for climate diplomacy to propel national action and international  cooperation.

Climate policy “depends upon action in other policy areas to deliver substantive change,” said Mr Mabey, “this requires climate change to be aligned to other, usually more influential, actors in the national interest debate.”  On the home front, for instance, climate champions need to build alliances and negotiate trade-offs with actors who have more clout than they do, such as finance and energy ministries and investors. The same principle goes for the international arena: governments could cite the co-benefits of climate action in bilateral and multilateral relations, or use trade and security issues to negotiate better climate outcomes.

Participants suggested that climate change needs to be understood as a key element of the national interest, both in the domestic debate and in a country’s projection of its interests overseas. Such a framing would lead to climate issues being more effectively taken up in existing political and diplomatic channels.

It’s not just a question of formulating a smart policy line based on your own country’s national interests, though; it’s also about understanding which aspects of the climate debate – climate impacts or new, green growth opportunities – motivate other governments. “We need analysis of the national interests and trigger points of the big emitting nations so that we can speak their language,” said one participant from a least developed country.

The possibilities for climate diplomacy may even extend beyond the preserve of career diplomats, to other arenas for international cooperation, where there’s even wider scope for making the connections. “The UNFCCC deals with emissions reductions and allocation of cuts,” said Professor Michael Jacobs of the Grantham Institute. “Between high level targets and detailed institutional arrangements, there is a massive array of governments and businesses doing adaptation and mitigation and now spending trillions of dollars doing those things. Some are provided for by the international regime but most are not.”

“How do we connect the reality of emissions reduction and adaptation on the ground and work by enterprises (mostly private, some state owned) which is actually what you need to do to address climate change? It’s not what climate diplomats do. It involves the economic and ministries that are doing the work to reduce emissions; it involves the businesses and financiers who are doing this both at national and international level – and it adds a whole new layer of complexity.”