“Wealthier … African nations … show lower levels of climate ambition” – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Do you think there might be a connection?

Africa’s climate change balancing act: green energy vs economic development

Published: January 17, 2025 11.50pm AEDT
Oluwafikayo Akeredolu
PhD Candidate, University of Oxford

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I research climate finance and investigated what drives sub-Saharan Africa’s climate ambitions. I also wanted to find out whether wealthier sub-Saharan African nations were more likely to prioritise economic development over aggressive climate commitments than the region’s more impoverished nations. 

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I found that wealthier sub-Saharan African nations (measured by gross domestic product per capita) show lower levels of climate ambition. Nigeria and South Africa, for instance, are wealthier than many others in Africa. But they’re under political and economic pressure to expand energy access and industrial capacity. This can limit them from curbing greenhouse gas emissions. 

It’s clear from my study that gross domestic product per capita was the only statistically significant determinant of climate ambition among sub-Saharan African countries. This reveals how economic priorities often shape countries’ climate commitments.

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I have several recommendations based on my findings.

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Third, renewable energy must be promoted, particularly through investments in solar, wind, and hydropower. The region’s natural resources must be used to move countries away from fossil fuels.

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Read more: https://theconversation.com/africas-climate-change-balancing-act-green-energy-vs-economic-development-244758

The referenced paper;

African climate politics and multilateralism: Domestic factors and cross-country variation in climate ambitions

Fikayo Akeredolu

Pages 273-292 | Received 29 Feb 2024, Accepted 03 Oct 2024, Published online: 28 Oct 2024

ABSTRACT

This article examines how domestic factors explain variations in the ambitions of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Although Africa contributes only 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is highly vulnerable to climate change. All 54 African countries have ratified the Paris Agreement, and by May 2022, 44 had submitted updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs), showing strong commitment to mitigating global temperature rise. Although SSA countries’ NDCs are more robust than the global average, significant cross-country variations exist. This article builds on the limited research on these variations to explore whether democracy, GDP, oil consumption, and historical emissions influence NDC ambition across 44 SSA countries. The analysis finds a statistically significant negative relationship between GDP and NDC ambition, while other variables show no significance. This study is crucial for understanding how domestic factors shape climate commitments in SSA.

Read more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10220461.2024.2413686

The odd part of this article is, having discovered a statistically significant inverse correlation between climate ambition and national wealth, the author’s recommendation is to promote green energy and try to raise climate ambition in wealthy nations? Does she want to keep Africa poor?

Surely a more reasonable conclusion is there may be something about “climate ambition” which damages national economies?

Africa is not alone in showing such a correlation. High climate ambition Britain, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have suffered years of energy poverty and economic difficulties. Yet despite the Biden Presidency, the USA, with consistently lower climate ambition, has a much healthier economy.

China is the odd man out when it comes to climate ambition vs economic progress, though some of the damage can be attributed to “climate ambition”. Despite their recent climate efforts, China is a coal powered economy which appears to be on the brink of a deep recession. But there are other factors affecting the Chinese economy, such as China’s gross mishandling of the Covid pandemic, Xi Jinping’s incompetent management of Chinese energy needs, China’s belligerent and disruptive posturing on the world stage, China’s brutal Maoist crackdown on business leaders, extreme local and regional government debt, and the ongoing banking crisis caused by their government’s long term failure to contain their property asset bubble, which I believe can more than account for China’s current economic woes.