Africa and Latin America, common climate challenges, shared legislative solutions

II Parliamentary Summit on Climate Change and Just Transition of Latin America and the Caribbean

Lilia Chanaoui, Network Mananger's speech transcript:

First of all, many thanks to OPCC and ECLAC for inviting us. I represent the Climate Parliament, an international network of legislators working to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. We support parliamentarians in promoting laws that attract climate finance and investment and which increase political ambition on climate issues.

We work with parliamentarians from the Global South and to some extent in Europe as well, but this year we have focused our efforts on a project we are implementing in 15 African countries, called Parliamentarians for Climate Finance. We are implementing it together with our partner, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and is funded by the Green Climate Fund.

So today, I would like to share with you the voices of African parliamentarians who could not travel to Brazil, and offer their perspective, as Africa and Latin America face common challenges.

The urgency and scale of the energy transition in Africa are immense. It is the fastest-growing continent in terms of population, and many countries are experiencing a sharp increase in energy demand. Yet over 600 million people in Africa still lack access to electricity. Like Latin America, Africa is a vast continent with a young population. It is one of the regions that emits the least greenhouse gases, but also one of the most vulnerable to and most affected by climate change, facing prolonged droughts, erratic rainfall, floods, and cyclones. These phenomena are damaging infrastructure, displacing communities and entire regions of the continent risk becoming uninhabitable in the near future.

In my experience, Africans are among the most climate-conscious people, I’ve never met a climate denier in our work there. Still, it can be difficult for parliamentarians to return to their communities and say: we must stop extracting oil, stop using coal, stop cutting down forests. Because the people respond: the countries in the North did all of this to develop, why shouldn’t we? Latin America is in a similar position.

Africa represents only 4% of global emissions. That is why mitigation is not the number one priority for most people. The top priority is economic and social development. But the reality is that climate change is already undermining that development. Beyond the ecological urgency, there’s another important narrative, which is that the green transition represents a huge economic opportunity. This is where we focus our efforts. Climate change should not be an ideological issue, or a divisive one.

The economic cost of climate change is already substantial. Climate disasters are costing African economies between 2% and 5% of GDP every year. I’m sure that in your respective countries, the figure is also significant.

Africa and Latin America share enormous potential: with sun, water, and wind more than sufficient to cover their entire energy needs and even to export. For African parliamentarians, the transition is not only about decarbonising what exists, but about building green industries from scratch and leapfrogging to a more resilient development model.

In the project we are currently implementing in Africa, with readiness funding from the Green Climate Fund, we facilitate dialogues between parliamentarians, national and international investors, project developers, regulators, academics and development banks, all with the aim of identifying solutions and legislative reforms. Laws and regulations are often the missing link between ambition and implementation, and that’s why legislators are key. Public finance alone cannot meet the scale of the challenge. The limited public funds available need to be used strategically, to create the conditions that will attract much larger flows of private finance. This is exactly what we are doing with African MPs: helping them create investment-friendly conditions, with incentives, guarantees and mechanisms to reduce risks and capital costs, and improve project viability.

That’s why we are working to promote the development of Green Energy Zones, geographic areas similar to special economic zones in some countries, where regulations and risk mitigation instruments are concentrated, along with tax incentives to attract green investments. With a strong local dimension, because concern for local communities and fair benefit-sharing is a key issue in both Latin America and Africa. For the transition to be just, we must ensure that local communities directly benefit from green projects, and that the transition creates new economic opportunities and productive uses of energy, such as clean cooking, small business development and jobs. Especially for youth and women, who are often the most vulnerable to climate impacts.

In our work, we always try to combine expert exchanges, peer learning and field visits. For example, last month we organised a visit to Namibia, a country that borders South Africa for parliamentarians from Southern Africa, to see how Namibia is leading on green hydrogen. They have one of the world’s first zero-carbon green steel factories, which uses green hydrogen. We visited that factory with MPs from seven countries and now many are exploring how to replicate similar initiatives in their own countries.

We aim to expand the project we are delivering in Africa to Latin America and Asia. These are funds that cost your countries nothing. They are allocated by the Green Climate Fund to each country; they are not loans and do not need to be repaid. To be allocated, they only require the approval of national governments and of the Green Climate Fund. We would be very happy to explore how we could use these funds to support you in Latin America.

South–South exchanges are incredibly valuable. In November, we will be organising an event in Rio de Janeiro with parliamentarians from across our network, and we would be delighted to welcome you and to continue building this alliance together, especially with our Brazilian friends and hosts.