Researcher Pedro Vicente told Lusa that climate change is an opportunity to reform public policies on the African continent, specifically in terms of agriculture and urban reorganisation.
‘The African continent is suffering the most from climate change, due to poverty and the inability to respond to it, particularly in agriculture, where there are more droughts, and in cities, where there are more extreme events, such as floods,’ explained one of the founders of the NOVAFRICA research centre at the Faculty of Economics of the New University of Lisbon.
At this juncture, Pedro Vicente sees an opportunity to implement changes, because ‘climate change is calling for reactions from governments in terms of public policies, in terms of agriculture – because on this continent it’s not productive’ (…) and then, ‘underlying this is the issue of urbanisation’ (…) because ‘in order to do better agriculture there also needs to be people leaving it and doing more productive things’.
Subsistence farming is not good, it’s a path to poverty, he warned.
‘We need to look at the issue of urbanisation and migration in general – I’m not talking about migration to Europe, because that’s obviously a complicated and more specific problem – but just the issue of people leaving the countryside for the cities,’ he said.
In this context of rural exodus, there is a need for good integration, including into the labour market, through vocational training to improve the skills of people, particularly young people, who are moving to the cities, he suggested.
‘These measures are related to a set of public policies at city level that some governments are not very orientated towards implementing,’ he warned.
The researcher gave the example of Mozambique, where NOVAFRICA has projects, which is an example of a country that doesn’t have the ‘political motivation to embrace the issue of urbanisation because it doesn’t want to do it’.
‘Urbanisation [in Mozambique] is happening because people have no alternative, not because it’s public policy,’ because the government is allegedly focusing more on rural development, he explained.
Another issue specific to Mozambique is that there are no properties, only concessions, and ‘this is part of a set of public policies that can be changed,’ he said. ‘Land is state property and cannot be sold, or in any other way alienated, mortgaged or pledged,’ according to the Land Use and Utilisation Law on the government’s website.
And he argues that African governments should draw more attention to the fact that they are being harmed by pollution from other nations and ask for more help – including at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, which starts on Monday.
The main perpetrators of climate change are developed and emerging countries and ‘African countries have to make it clear that they need help, in a logic of justice, and that they deserve to be compensated,’ he reiterated.
Although African countries bear little responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, the truth is that some contribute to the continent’s deforestation, he added.
However, ‘it’s relatively cheap to pay people not to deforest, and those who can afford it, once again, are the developed world, which probably prefers to invest in other types of measures to combat climate change,’ he concluded.
The summit, which will bring together representatives from 197 countries and the European Union in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is seen by various environmental organisations as ‘a crucial moment for governments to commit to halving emissions by 2030, increasing climate finance and accelerating action ahead of COP30,’ which is scheduled for Brazil in 2025.
Lusa
