REMARKS

BY

H.E TUMUSIIME RHODA PEACE
COMMISSIONER FOR
RURAL ECONOMY AND AGRICULTURE
AFRICAN UNION COMMISSION

Financing Transformational Change and Achieving Sustainable Development Goals in Africa

DELHI SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SUMMMIT
6 FEBRUARY 2015

Excellencies,

Distinguish participants,

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is an honor and a privilege to be here in New Delhi, to take part in the Ministerial Session of the 15th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit. On behalf of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, H.E. Dr. Dlamini Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and, indeed, on my own behalf, I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the government and the people of India, and the organizers for convening this important meeting.
Excellencies – Honorable Ministers,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) under the able leadership of Dr. Rajendra Pachauri has contributed significantly towards generating consensus on climate change as a reality. In the same vein, we value the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit as being timely and pertinent in the sense that it provides a platform to consolidate ideas in the movement towards the desired success of the climate change, SDGs and other related processes and thinking through the difficult aspects including finance.

For us in Africa, the picture is such that while the economies are growing we are worried that if the world does not get united on a common front to fight climate change, that growth will be reversed and the gains eroded.

Africa’s predominant economic activity is agriculture. African agriculture is rain-fed. However, the rains have reduced, droughts have increased and the effects of climate change are intensifying across the continent.

As part of the global village and in the build up to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). African stakeholders came together and highlighted important areas to be underlined at Rio+20 spanning the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Fortunately, quite a number of the concerns expressed in the African Consensus Statement were incorporated in the Outcome Document on The World We Want.

Currently, we are again engaged in and anxious about the outcomes of the three different but interlinked processes:
- Next month in Sendai, Japan, we shall dedicate our collective efforts to a global framework of action on disaster risk reduction;
- In September in New York, the Sustainable Development Goals process will reach its height, and this process, compared to the previous MDGs, has this time round been engaging globally in a botton-up fashion. Africa has come up with a Common Position on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Besides its being an input to the global process, it will define the Africa We Want and it is part of the African Union Agenda 2063 adopted by the AU Heads of State and Government meeting at the end of last month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

- The December 2015 in Paris, the 20th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (CoP21) will also be considering concluding the global agreement on climate change in order to bridge the gap between the aggregate efforts of mitigation pledges and aggregate emission pathways consistent with having a likely change of holding global average temperature rise below 2 degrees to avoid the catastrophic events on the most vulnerable continent – Africa and the most vulnerable people – the women and children.

The Common Africa Position on Sustainable Development Goals has among its priority areas the issue of finance and partnerships to mobilize domestic resource and innovative finance.

On Climate Change, I am happy to also inform this Conference that Africa will continue to speak with one voice in the global climate change negotiations through the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change with the guidance of the African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN) under the political leadership of the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC). The priority for Africa is adaptation and means of implementation. The African leaders have reaffirmed Africa’s commitment to working with all Parties to achieve a legally binding Agreement in December this year in Paris.

Having said that, I would like to point out that Africa recognises the nexus between these processes and expects that the world will build common understanding and intensify joint efforts towards positive outcomes that will commit to reduction of green house gases and increase financing for climate change adaptation and mitigation and also copying with disasters especially in developing countries particularly those in Africa. We consider as critical the capitalization of the Green Climate Fund, the provision of the Means of Implementation for Adaptation as well as the transfer of technologies and capacity building.

We hope that, also, the International Conference on Financing for Development in July, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia will accord special attention to climate finance that will be transformative in the sense of enabling the achievement of SDGs.

As Africa engages in these global negotiation processes it is also engaged in country level and regional processes to implement programmes and projects to adapt to climate change and increase resilience and reduce the vulnerability of households, communities and nations.

Excellencies – Honorable Ministers,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Before I to conclude, let me state that these frameworks on disaster risk reduction, SDGs and climate change, will further help to consolidate the achievements in the past millennial and also take into account emerging issues. This timing provides an unprecedented opportunity to set a clear path for international development for the next generation. These framework agreements should be seen as complementary, with opportunities for mutual benefits in areas such as resilience, economic development, climate adaptation and low carbon development with new flows of finance.

Thank you.