Salutations: The Honored Chairperson; the distinguished participants. Good afternoon. My statement will address the issues of Climate Change, Resilience Building, and Global Governance In the Horn of Africa
I. Introduction
1. The urgency of focusing on climate change, resilience building and global governance is demonstrated by the UN Climate change Summit in New York on the 27th of September 2019, which concluded that Climate change is the defining issue of our time and now is the defining moment to do something about it. As to the importance of Human resilience building to adverse climate change, the first global Sustainable Development Goal (SDG1) calls to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere;” and the second ((SDG2) to ‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and to promote sustainable agriculture by 2030.” The realization of these goals seem distant for the large part of the poor people of the world; and current trends suggest meeting such targets would be constrained by the impact of adverse climate change.
2. My statement will accordingly address the linkages of climate change, human resilience and global governance in the case of the Horn of Africa (HoA), which comprise the regional economic community of Inter- Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), and member countries of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda. The region has an estimated population of about 270 million as of 2018, and all the countries, except for Kenya, are among the least developed countries in the world. Also, according to UNEP, nearly 44 percent of the population of the region live in areas prone to extreme food shortages and the impacts of climate changes are expected to further endanger sustainability and human survival.
3. Data collected by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in 2016 in 150 countries reveal that nearly one in ten people in the world (9.3 percent) suffered from severe food insecurity corresponding to more than 700 million people (in 2018). Pronounced differences in the prevalence of severe food insecurity are observed across continents. Africa has the highest levels of severe food insecurity, and the number of food insecure people in the HoA is 27 million, equivalent to 11% of the population in 2018.
4. The long standing principal causes of this critical food insecurity include:
· Low crop yields that are largely due to inadequate water, as less than 1 percent of cultivable land is irrigated, compared with 37 percent in Asia. Yet, even farmers who have the benefit of more reliable rainfall tend to lack access to relevant knowledge, finance and markets.
· Also, relatively few efforts have been made to improve pastoral economies and systems by the relevant communities, Governments and international organization. Even where local interventions have been successful, these measures have only served to increase overall livestock numbers and have therefore led to overgrazing in the face of adverse climate impact.
· Many areas are marginalized by inadequate infrastructure such as transport systems and by lack of telecommunications services and energy sources. As a result, many people are cut off from national and regional economies and have no significant access to local markets, let alone world markets.
· As limited rainfall and temperature changes directly influence agro and ago-pastoral production, Climate-related shocks, such as drought, floods, and heat stress limit crop growth and reduce the yield. Mounting evidence points to the fact that climate change is already making the challenge of ending hunger and food insecurity more difficult over time.
5. The global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development makes an explicit link between climate action and sustainable development, which lays emphasis on the impact of climate change on human resilience. It is because of this causality that global governance should focus on climate change and human resilience to look for innovative approaches to address these worsening crises more sustainably.
II. Impact of climate and environmental change
6. The urgency of the need to address climate change is explained by the experience in recent decades, which include more prevalent recurrence of severe droughts and the frequency of recurring famine. According to FAO, increasing severity and frequency of droughts are attributed to climate change and desertification. With multiple, consecutive years of poor rains and drought, immediate and massive efforts are critical to save lives and prevent the loss of development gains made in recent years.
7. Climate change impacts translate from climate to the environment, to the production sphere, to economic and social dimensions. The transmission of a stress can be amplified or reduced, depending on the vulnerabilities and over time if households face repeated shocks that steadily erode their assets. Climate predications point to more variable and less reliable rainfall, and more severe and frequent extreme events. This could make the environmental factors behind humanitarian disasters in the region stronger and harder to deal with. The 2015/16 drought was considered as one of a thirty year event, but rising temperatures mean that this kind of severe weather events could become more frequent.
8. National governments and multilateral organizations have given much emphasis and priority to disaster prevention and preparedness. There are huge challenges that aggravate the food insecurity including rampant unemployment, migration and internal displacement. Addressing these issues require research-based evidence and knowledge sharing that contribute towards the formulation of informed policies. Yet there has been little progress in ensuring cooperation, particularly as it relates to collective efforts to face the challenges of climate change.
9. Climate change if not well managed could be detrimental to the region’s ability to reduce poverty, and will make rural livelihoods even more vulnerable. The IGAD economic community has focused on “drought and desertification” from its formation in the mid 1980’s and has shown enduring concern on the issue, but has been unable to lead the way to developing sustainable and effective solutions to address this worsening and perennial problem.
III. Climate change risks and resilience building
10. Climate change mitigation and adaptation, resilience building and ensuring sustainable food production are high on the agenda among different stakeholders in the region, including government policy makers, research and academic institutions, and the member countries development partners. As entire communities depend on pastoralism and agro-pastoralism. There are initiatives being pursued to diversify their livelihoods by devising alternative sources of income, by agricultural practices through high value cash crops, and off-farm activities and employment. Also, there are efforts to address livestock commercialization, early warnings and insurance systems, and livelihood diversification.
11. Technological Innovations for Transformative Change are being promoted to address investment and innovation opportunities. Effective measures to build resilience can be achieved by increasing adaptive capacity for every type of risk. To reduce vulnerability and promote adaptation, proper strategies are needed to address multiple stressors that interact with climate change. In the short-term, interventions to improve food access are critical. In the medium-term, interventions to rebuild livelihoods are necessary. And Long-term solutions must include investment in agricultural development and diversification.
12. Thus, global strategies should reflect how to address vulnerabilities and building resilience that can reduce the overall negative impacts of climate on production and food security. Such an undertaking requires appropriate institutional arrangements, effective plans and policy changes at national, regional and global levels. Most countries in the HoA, have national plans and policies on disaster risk management, and have also improved their preventive measures and means of mitigating climate disaster management.
13. Some countries (especially Ethiopia) managed to respond better to the 2015-16 El-Nino drought crisis, than to any other previous crisis of that magnitude. The country’s ability to manage the drought that year was partly through a more effective response than in previous years (through a Safety Net Program that support 8 million beneficiaries). This was significant progress, but the costs of the drought were still severe in both human and economic terms.
14. On the other hand, conflict and generalized insecurity highly constrained the response to the severe drought of 2015-16 by other member countries in the region. As a consequence, considerable number of people were affected and there was high mortality on account of drought and malnutrition. Most countries have contingency plans to respond to climate crisis, but these are often not comprehensive or adequately funded, which can cause delays and limit the capacity to deliver timely support for affected communities. The region needs to show collective will and efforts to attract Global climate finance, and to spend it effectively alongside development and humanitarian finance.
15. Not responding to humanitarian crisis is costly for any economy, and post-emergency response is often slow and expensive in human and economic terms. While it is too simplistic to assume standard saving in every case, frequently quoted studies show that appropriate prevention saves lives and money, and assume the preparedness and post emergency response costs ratio is at 1:4. In addition, not responding to humanitarian crisis is much more costly for the economy in the medium and long term.
IV. Regional response to climate change
16. The collective efforts of the member countries responses to climate change and food insecurity disasters, thus far, have been largely reactive and firefighting for the most part. Most of the activities were done on an emergency response basis. Furthermore, the region is characterized by weak institutional capacity, limited infrastructure and equipment for disaster management, and limited financial resources. Also, the regional strategies to build food security were ineffective because of initiation from the top with little appreciation of the constraints, needs and priorities of the target beneficiaries, and perhaps most importantly most of these initiatives lacked secure sources of funding.
17. The regional economic Community (IGAD) developed a food security strategy that identified four regional strategic outputs: as harmonized policies, information dissemination, capacity building, and science and technology. Overall, it was to enhance capacity of member states through closer regional cooperation in sustainable food production, marketing and poverty reduction. The areas of regional action proposed in this strategy cover the three stages of food production, marketing and consumption.
18. An IGAD Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDDRSI) aimed at ending drought emergences was taken at a Summit convened in September 2011, following the severe drought that devastated the region in 2010/2011. The Summit took the decision to address the effects of recurring droughts on the vulnerable communities, calling for increased commitment by affected countries and their Partners to support investments in sustainable development, especially in the Arid and Semiarid Lands. The new approach includes cross-border programming, by putting resilience at the heart of development and relief efforts.
19. The IDDRSI initiative identifies 7 priority intervention areas that include:
(i) ensuring equitable access and sustainable use of natural resources; (ii) enhancing market access, facilitating trade and availing versatile financial services; (iii) providing equitable access to livelihood support and basic social services; (iv) improving disaster risk management capabilities and preparedness for effective response; (v) enhancing the generation and use of knowledge, technology and innovation; (vi) promoting conflict prevention and peace building; and (vii) strengthening coordination and institutional arrangements for collaborative actions.
20. The new approach being favored is to focus on the underlying causes of the need for humanitarian aid, and approach disaster management through pro-active, preventive and development oriented solutions. The new approach emphasizes the need for countries to work together as a region; adopt the twin track approach where emergency response is linked to recovery and long-term development; focus on priority intervention areas as identified by target communities and member states; and ensure that the design, development and implementation of the interventions take into account all aspects of building human resilience.
21. The new approach also identified opportunities for promoting drought resilience in the region including:
§ Establishing regional and international mechanisms for cooperation to address cross-border drought issues;
§ Creating national implementing and coordination structures; and Strengthening Early Warning Systems.
§ Mobilizing interest of donors to support national and regional initiatives to enhance drought resilience.
§ Demonstrating Capacity development of institutions and key actors in drought management and resilience building;
§ Promoting partnership and facilitating development for Integrated Drought;
§ Mainstreaming drought mitigation and adaptation strategies in relevant government sector ministries and agencies;
V. Climate change response and global governance
22. There is over whelming evidence and near consensus globally that climate change is among the leading causes of rising global hunger according to a report released by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization in September 2019. Pointing to extreme weather events, land degradation and desertification, water scarcity and rising sea levels, the Report details how climate change already undermines global efforts to eradicate hunger. Overall, the number of people living in extreme estimated at 1.3 billion worldwide in 2018 will continue to rise if countries fail to tackle climate change and to build resilience to its unavoidable impact.
23. The heads of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have called for an integrated approach to counter the adverse effects of climate change on food security. They declared that “If we are to achieve a world without hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030, it is imperative that we accelerate and scale up actions to strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity of food systems and people's livelihoods in response to climate variability and extremes,"
24. The number of extreme climate-related disasters, including extreme heat, droughts, floods and storms, has doubled since the early 1990s, with an average of 213 of these events occurring every year during the period of 1990–2016. These disasters harm agricultural productivity of major crops such as wheat, rice and maize causing food price hikes and income losses that reduce people’s access to food.
25. In several regions of the world, in particular the Horn of Africa countries and among the small Island states in major oceans, the global climate crisis could lead to definite existential threat in the near term. In the case of the HoA region, the rising temperatures attributed to Co2 emissions and other Greenhouse Gases is leading to frequent and extreme droughts, floods and extreme heat that has contributed to prevalent food insecurity and famine that is occurring with unheard of frequency. What is particularly relevant is that these worst affected regions and states have extremely limited contribution, if any, to the GHGs emissions contributing to the global warming and its adverse impact.
26. For decades, the member countries of the region and their international development partners have talked up grand Initiatives to address the issue of climate change and building resilience. Among the well-known Initiatives that have contributed to high expectations and to less sustained results are several international initiatives to address food security as a global issue including:
· The Greater Horn of Africa Initiative of the USA in the mid. 1990, espoused by President Clinton’s administration with promises to alleviate the severe food shortage in the HoA in particular, through preventive measures, food stocking, and investments to augment reliable and sustainable food production, particularly by addressing adverse climate change impact.
· The October 2014, the International and Regional Financial Institutions leaders’ pledge of assistance for countries in the HoA region totaling more than $8 billion to promote stability and development in the Horn of Africa, and especially to provide the tools to address food insecurity among the vulnerable communities.
· The EU initiative for the Horn of Africa to open new opportunities for successful development in the region, and to provide several initiatives and active engagement to strengthen its potential and capacities for inclusive development to be realized.
· The financial support China provided to the African continent to improve economic infrastructure that has had material impact on preparedness and prevention of drought related, including the pledge at the Forum for China--Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) of investing US$60 billion.
27. The story of the adverse impacts of climate change on the HoA sub region is a classic example of the lack of fairness or equity in global affairs were power prevails, over the rule of law and justice delivery for sound decision making. Global response to the impact of climate change on food security has not been fully addressed on account of the fact that the largest burden falls disproportionately on those who have the least power to react against it or adapt to it.
28. Global governance of the climate change, according to J. Hattingh “does not focus on the principles of fair decision-making in the international context about the targets that should be pursued to mitigate or adapt to climate change. Many of those who will be most harmed by climate change have contributed little to causing the problem; many of those who emit the most GHGs are least threatened by adverse climate change impacts; and those that are most vulnerable to its harm and are often least able to pay for adaptation measures needed to protect them from the adverse impacts.”
29. To tackle the global climate emergency impact on the HoA and other most affected nations will require an unprecedented effort from all sectors of the local government, business and civil society, and the international community as well. In the words of the Secretary General of the UN at the September Summit, what is needed “is to spark the transformation that is urgently needed and propel action that will benefit everyone. To be effective and credible, these actions cannot address mitigation alone; they must show the way toward a full transformation of economies in line with sustainable development goals. They should not create winners and losers or add to economic inequality; they must be fair and create new opportunities and protections for those negatively impacted, in the context of a just transition.
