Sudanese G77-chair Di-Aping Lumumba told IPS:
Africa demands up to five percent of the GDP of industrialised nations every year, because of their historical debt and the continuation of causing the harm…We are talking roughly about two trillion US dollars annually till 2050 for adaptation, mitigation and technology transfer. We do not believe this is a big amount of money as the U.S. spent 22 trillion on saving Wall Street.
A tithe would be better, but Africa deserves 5 percent of the industrialized countries’ GDP. More. The other 5 percent should go to Latin America and South Asia. But the tithing is going the other way. Sub-Saharan Africa pays 15 billion dollars a year on debt service. Most of the debt is “odious,” hence, illegitimately incurred. Africa has no responsibility to pay it. 15 billion dollars a year is the amount sub-Saharan Africa pays on its ~227 billion dollar extant foreign debt, 70 percent of Africa’s over-all debt. That’s monetary. Africa’s ecology will pay, too. Its agriculture will be devastated by a global temperature rise of more than 2 degrees. A global average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius means African temperatures rise 3 degrees Celsius. Many African countries close to the equatorial belt will see their grain production essentially destroyed–African corn and wheat production is already close to its survival thresholds at current global temperatures. In Mali, Niger, the Sudan, and much of the Horn of Africa---West Africa, too---arid and semi-arid agriculture will likely be wiped out. Somalia and Sudan are already wracked with climate wars.
So what Africa is demanding are reparations. Not for the slave trade, but for ravaging the commons. As Bolivia’s climate negotiator put it, “Twenty percent of the population have actually emitted more than two-thirds of the emissions, and as a result, they have caused more than 90 percent of the increase in temperatures.” If you’re responsible, you’re culpable. Right? Barack Obama sent a special envoy to Copenhagen to convey the US outlook: we “categorically reject [any] sense of guilt or culpability or reparations.” Obama is an African name, Kenyan. Kenya will lose 3 percent of its 35 billion dollar GDP by 2030 due to climate change. Kenya's not atypical. That’s why Africa and most of the G-77 is demanding a hard cap on warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and a reduction in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations from the current 387ppm to 350 ppm.
No one will listen. Not yet. Why? Capitalism. As Lord Nicholas Stern has said, "it is difficult to secure emission cuts faster than about 1 per cent a year except in instances of recession." 350ppm is incompatible with growth. Here’s another African name: Lumumba. When asked what would happen if (when) no one listens to African demands for a 40 to 45 percent cut in CO2 emissions from developed countries, relative to 1990 levels: “It’s very simple… then we know why we are dying.” It would not be the first time that colonialism leads to holocaust. Then, the “impact of the drought on the agricultural society of the time was immense. So far as is known, the famine that ravished the region is the worst ever to afflict the human species.” Redux.
Related posts:
- Climate Change as a War on Development? Yup A clunky rewording of Joan Robinson’s quip that the “United...
- Fiddling With Idiocy while the Maldives Drown Here’s a profoundly misleading article in the NYT about the...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
“A global average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius means African tem peratures rise 3 degrees Celsius.“
Can you cite this or did you make the model predictions yourself? The reason being that the effects of climate change aren’t known exactly for each region. Considering Africa is a fairly large continent i’d like to see the data on what regions are predicted to go up in temp. If the global average is 2 C then that means that other places on the planet are going to see a smaller increase than 2 degrees.
“Not for the slave trade“
Indeed, reparations should be made from modern slave traders. Mostly arabs who are involved in modern slave trade.
“No one will listen. Not yet. Why? Capitalism.“
How is capitalism responsible for global warming? Most countries that don’t have a capitalist system have much worse GDP/Emissions rates, including most of your favorite countries North korea and Iran.
On point 1: Read through the links, research them, research the issue, get back to me. All IPCC models predict that Africa will be hit hardest.
On point 2: Next time, anti-Arab bigotry will be edited out, with a link to calculator.com to figure out the historical reparations owed for any modern slave trade vs historical African slave trade.
On point 3: They don’t emit very much CO2.
1) I never argued that Africa would not be hit the hardest. I asked you for a citation to the statement you made claiming the Temp would rise 3 degrees for every average 2 degree rise. I’m interested in the scientific reasoning behind it. That is all.
2)Are you kidding me? You’re so engulfed in hatred of the west that you are not even able to point out some of the problems in the east?
3) Obviously you missed the point. The point being that if they had higher GDP’s under their current systems they would emit more whether or not they were capitalists. Thus, you’re reasoning is simply erroneous. Blame capitalism for economic disparities, but you can’t say CO2 emissions is purely an outcome of capitalism.
(3) No one said “CO2 emissions” are “purely an outcome of capitalism.” You normalize the present and in naturalize it. Your thinking is pure ideology. It’s cute.
I totally agree with you about the moral and even practical need for developed countries to come up with this money, but I do have questions on how this money is likely to get spent. I´m sure I don´t have to remind you of the substantial risk that these large sums of money would have for levels of governance, corruption, etc. Moreover, even if we assume that the money does get spent “legitimately”, there´s still a question of what, concretely, it should get spent on. My guess is that the bulk will be spent on “adaptation”, which has still not been clearly defined or differentiated from standard “development” projects. It therefore seems probable that a lot of governments will spend the money on large mega-projects in a bid to leap forward in development and therefore build economies which are more resilient to climate change, but in doing that they could easily become locked in to energy intensive development paths. I´m not saying that these issues are insurmountable, but there seems to be an atmosphere where the need to get a strong deal at Copenhagen, as well as the moral question of the west´s ecological debt to the developing world, is driving hard for a large transfer of cash without enough consideration as to the way in which that money will be spent. Personally I would like to see more developing countries demanding money in order to guarantee the non-exploitation of their fossil fuels. Ecuador has already been trying this with the Yasuni-ITT , (although it seems to be going down the path of carbon markets in order to get that money, something that seriously damages the environmental credibility). However, given that a serious distribution of finance could become more politically viable, it could be a chance for more developing countries to claim money for not exploiting their resources, so that they could then finance both adaptation and renewables while guaranteeing some additional avoided emissions reductions.
[…] is an insult to the global South, and to the world’s collective intelligence. As the courageous Lumumba quipped, “Ten billion will not buy developing countries’ citizens enough coffins.” Perhaps […]
[…] A Dude Named Lumumba Said It Sudanese G77-chair Di-Aping Lumumba told IPS: Africa demands up to… […]
[…] A Dude Named Lumumba Said It Sudanese G77-chair Di-Aping Lumumba told IPS: Africa demands up to… […]
[…] A Dude Named Lumumba Said It Sudanese G77-chair Di-Aping Lumumba told IPS: Africa demands up to… […]
Wow!, this was a real quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this too — taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I keep putting it off and never seem to get something done
[…] A Dude Named Lumumba Said It Sudanese G77-chair Di-Aping Lumumba told IPS: Africa demands up to… […]