NAIROBI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta Tuesday urged the global community to support the rollout of Africa's climate change adaptation programs.
Kenyatta said that adaptation measures will help Africa to strengthen its resilience against the effects of changes in climate patterns.
"While it is relatively more difficult to design and implement adaptation projects and while fewer resources are currently available for adaptation, we should not lose sight of the fact that adaptation is, without doubt, smart economics," he said in a speech delivered virtually during the launch of the State and Trends on Adaptation 2021 report by the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA).
Kenyatta cautioned that in the absence of urgent climate change adaptation action, Africa's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) risks contracting by up to 30 percent by the year 2050.
Kenyatta pointed out that despite Kenya significantly increasing the amount of financial resources invested in adaptation programs in recent years, the country needed more international support to fully implement its updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
He observed that in order to implement the country's NDCs, Kenya plans to invest approximately 888 billion Kenya shillings (8 billion U.S. dollars) over the next ten years.
"This is just 10 percent of the total investment needed of the NDCs and we, therefore, need support from our international partners," Kenyatta said.
The Kenyan leader added that the COVID-19 pandemic had exacerbated the funding situation with countries around the world collectively allocating over 20 trillion dollars to the pandemic thereby greatly reducing resources available to combat climate change.
According to the report released by GCA, even if the Paris Climate Agreement goals are achieved, the economic costs of climate change in Africa are projected to be large.
The findings show that it is likely that Africa will experience higher relative impacts than most other regions, even though it is less responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions than other major regions of the world.
Akinwumi Adesina, president of African Development Bank (AfDB) said that his bank is currently mobilizing 25 billion dollars in order to scale up climate change adaptation actions and drive investments in green growth.
Adesina said that the pan African lender is also planning to scale up access to climate-smart digital technologies and associated data-driven agricultural and financial services to at least 30 million farmers in Africa. Enditem
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