African environmental effort is rejected by climate groups

Organisations claim that the plan is deceptive and places neo-colonial obstacles in the way of Africa’s real development.

The recently created Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) has come under fire from environmentalists who claim that it will impede attempts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions at their source rather than achieving the targets it has set for the continent.

The ACMI has been compared to a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” that will cause “numerous new and serious problems while not providing any real benefits” by the climate-focused organisation Power Shift Africa and allies in a report made public on Tuesday.

In order to increase Africa’s output of carbon credits to 300 million credits annually by 2030 and to create jobs on the continent, the ACMI was introduced last year in Egypt during the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, often known as COP27.

This week during the first African Climate Summit, which was held in Kenya, the effort is believed to have generated pledges totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. In order to buy $450 million worth of carbon credits from the ACMI by 2030, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Carbon Alliance promised.

Kenya, Malawi, Gabon, Nigeria, and Togo are just a few of the African nations whose governments view carbon credits and other comparable market-driven financial instruments as essential to increasing energy access while unlocking billions for their economies’ needs in climate finance.

According to the research by Power Shift Africa, the ACMI is now a “threat” rather than a “opportunity” for African countries due to “failures” in the carbon markets. According to the article, polluting businesses in developed nations purchase shady pollution licences rather than reducing their emissions.

Market brokers, fossil fuel producers, and polluters all profit from carbon markets. The authors caution that this will cause pollution to exceed climate constraints and create neocolonial barriers in the way of real African growth pathways.

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One of the authors of the research, Maimoni Mariere Ubrei-Joe, Coordinator of the Climate Justice and Energy Programme at Friends of the Earth Africa, is of the opinion that the carbon-market plan won’t reduce emissions at their source.

“We must reject any initiative that does not put 100% renewable energy on the African continent as its primary goal,” Ubrei-Joe continued.

More than 400 civil society organisations signed a petition to Kenyan President William Ruto last month, expressing “grave” worry about being left out of the upcoming African Climate Summit in Nairobi.

According to the group, Western countries and organizations—including the American firm McKinsey—had taken control of the summit and were “hell-bent” on promoting a pro-Western agenda and interests at the expense of Africa.