Members of the public plant tree seedlings during this year’s Kaptagat Forest Annual Tree Planting exercise at Kaptagat Forest in Elgeyo Marakwet County where 11,000 seedlings were planted on July 23, 2021.
African nations are on the cusp of sweeping development and growing energy use across the continent.
If that development is driven by polluting fossil fuels, the consequences will be unbearable.
The evidence has been growing but now it’s beyond doubt: Climate change needs to be a major priority for African leaders. Africans are mostly suffering the devastating impacts of the climate crisis — be it Cyclone Idai, frequent and intense droughts and floods, locust swarms or the ever more unbearable heat. But the recent report from the lead authority on climate science starkly laid out the terrifying reality.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that, without drastic emission cuts, we can expect ever more extreme weather, increasing temperatures and rising sea levels. They said the world will see global heating breach the guardrail of 1.5 degrees Celcius above pre-industrial levels in the next 10-20 years. This figure was a hard-fought victory by African countries when the world’s nations met to hammer out the Paris Agreement in 2015.
