Support NeoGAF

[noshten]

LAKE KARIBA, Zambia — Even as drought and the effects of climate change grew visible across this land, the Kariba Dam was always a steady, and seemingly limitless, source of something rare in Africa: electricity so cheap and plentiful that Zambia could export some to its neighbors.

The power generated from the Kariba — one of the world’s largest hydroelectric dams, in one of the world’s largest artificial lakes — contributed to Zambia’s political stability and helped turn its economy into one of the fastest growing on the continent.

But today, as a severe drought magnified by climate change has cut water levels to record lows, the Kariba is generating so little juice that blackouts have crippled the nation’s already hurting businesses. After a decade of being heralded as a vanguard of African growth, Zambia, in a quick, mortifying letdown, is now struggling to pay its own civil servants and has reached out to the International Monetary Fund for help.

“The Kariba Dam was a big eye-opener, sort of a confirmation that, yes, there could be this problem of climate change,” said David Kaluba, national coordinator of the government’s Interim Climate Change Secretariat.

While the global drop in commodities prices has devastated Africa, drought and other weather patterns related to climate change over decades have also undermined some of the biggest economies across the continent, from Nigeria in the West to Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa to South Africa at its bottom tip.

Over the next decades, Africa is expected to warm up faster than the global average, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Despite an agreement reached in Paris in December, which committed nearly every country in the world to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it is far from clear how much money African nations will have to mitigate climate change and adapt to it.

In the climate deal reached in Paris in December, wealthy nations, which are the biggest emitters of greenhouses gases, pledged $100 billion a year starting in 2020 to developing nations to help deal with climate change. But the amount is not legally binding, and terms were left vague.

The only thriving business appeared to be rentals of diesel generators, a popular source of power — and pollution — in many African nations without enough electricity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/world/africa/zambia-drought-climate-change-economy.html

World Bank to spend 28% of investments on climate change projects

John Roome, senior director for climate change at the World Bank, told journalists: “This is a fundamental shift for the World Bank. We are putting climate change into our DNA. Climate change will drive 100 million more people into poverty in the next 15 years [unless action is taken].”

At least $16bn a year, from across the World Bank group, which includes other development and finance institutions, will be directed to climate change projects, including renewable energy and energy efficiency. The group will aim to mobilise $13bn in extra funding from the private sector within four years, for instance through joint funding programmes. By 2020, these efforts should amount to about $29bn a year, nearly a third of the $100bn a year in climate finance promised by rich countries to the poor as part of global climate change agreements.

The World Bank has attracted strong criticism in the past for backing the construction of high-emissions infrastructure, chiefly coal-fired power stations, and had already made moves away from such investments. Roome refused to rule out fossil fuel investments in the future, but said they would be subject to strict criteria, to do with their necessity, ensuring the most efficient technology was used, and investigation of alternatives. For instance, he said, gas could provide a “transition” away from high-carbon fuels for countries struggling to build new renewable energy capacity.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/07/world-bank-investments-climate-change-environment

So what are the chances developing countries and the World Bank start holding developing nations as hostage for the problems which are mainly perpetrated before a lot of the developing World hadn't even industrialized. If this continues the migration patterns towards the West would just intensify. 2020 is 4 years away and extreme weather is happening right now - in places where the people and government are ill-equipped to deal with it and adapt.