By Sandra Onyinye

The United Nations Conference of Parties (COP28) highlights 3 key targets of ending deforestation, tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency in a round up before the next meeting in Azerbaijan.

As usual, countries are foot-dragging to achieve the commitments months after it was pledged in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates UAE.

The G20 nations continue to produce 80 per cent of global emissions without remorse for consequences left on Small Island Developing States (SIDs), coastal communities and developing nations of which sub-Saharan Africa is a part.

According to the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “Climate Action cannot be captive to geopolitical divisions.”

The United States and China have recently embarked on a price war over renewable products. American President Joe Biden in a bid to secure more votes in the November elections slammed a 100 per cent increased tariffs on all China Electric Vehicle import and 25% adjusted increase on solar cells and modules to protect American workers alleging that China is rolling out cheap renewables with the use of coal-power production.

China retorts foul saying that the U.S. is putting economic competition ahead of climate mitigation. In the words of Li Shuo the director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, he said: “The US is prioritizing economic competition at the expense of mitigating the climate emergency.

“The world needs affordable green technology for the energy transition, and China’s record levels of investment have driven down the costs,” Shuo asserts.

Coal which is the dirtiest form of fossil fuels and China is rapidly expanding its coal power plants across the country by 60per cent undermining it’s promise to start cutting down green house gas emissions by 2030.

The effects of these actions fall on the recent El-Nino-triggered climate disasters that occurred in Tanzania and Kenya swelling with heavy floods which forcefully evicted over 200,000 people out of their homes.

Earlier, Russia and Kazakhstan flooded with President Kassyv-Jomart Yokayev pointing that the crises, “might be the biggest disaster in terms of it’s scale and impact in more than 80 years.”

Similarly, Reuters confirms that “Climate researchers have long warned that rising temperatures could increase the incidence of extreme weather events, and that heavily forested Russia is of major importance in the global climate equation.”

Meanwhile, the anticipated collapse of the Labrador Sea current could shift weather patterns for Europe.

Considering the impact of storms that caused so much infrastructural, social and economic damage in East Africa; what could it mean if such similar circumstance occurred in West Africa?

A panel of hundreds of climate scientists recently convened to proffer that temperature threshold is likely to be crossed within the next decade, pushing the planet toward a catastrophe, unless countries rapidly stop burning fossil fuels. The group maintains emissions from existing oil, gas, and coal infrastructure are on track to exceed the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degree Celsius by 2030 above pre-industrial age.

So far, the planet has warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius, and deadly heat waves, wildfires, flooding, and drought-caused famine are on the rise, tells Business Insider.

To reach the 1.5-degree mark of the Paris Agreement G7 and OECD countries must commit to end coal usage by 2030; reduce oil and gas supply and demand by 60 per cent on or before 2035 and provide fossil-fuel-free power systems. Asian countries must stop the outrageous expansion of coal power plant projects across the region which currently stands at a 95 per cent trot.

Accordingly, developing nations must design their nationally determined contributions (NCDs) to capture public private investment plans, budding sustainable development projects, tap into the United Nations Climate Promise Plan and redirect fossil fuel subsidies to renewable energy production. Irrigation mitigated agricultural practices must be revived to address the food insecurity and drought witnessed in Malawi, Puerto Rico, Ethiopia, Botswana, Southern Florida, Madagascar.

Sandra Onyinye, a Maritime Journalist writes from Lagos.