What it will take to achieve change

 

The world will only take meaningful action on the climate crisis once people in rich countries start dying in greater numbers from its effects, Gabon’s environment minister has said.

“With everything that’s happened in the last year in the Horn of Africa and Pakistan – those places really count,” White said. “But with the once-in-a-500-year drought in Europe, fires in France, and the New York subway becoming Niagara Falls, we might be at a point where things are getting bad enough that developed nations start taking the climate more seriously." He pointed out that “It’s a horrible thing to say but until more people in developed nations are dying because of the climate crisis, it’s not going to change.”

Lee White said governments were not yet behaving as if global heating was a crisis, and he feared for the future he was leaving to his children.

He explained that broken promises on billions of dollars of adaptation finance have left a “sense of betrayal” saying the $100bn of promised climate finance from rich nations was not reaching poor countries, which was driving distrust in the UN climate process. He said he had seen only small amounts of climate funding for his country despite big promises.

“Over and over again, developed nations have committed and not delivered. They’ve committed to reduce emissions and they’re not delivering sufficiently. They’ve committed to funding and that funding doesn’t ever seem to materialise..."

Gabon is holding one of the largest ever sales of carbon credits, generated by protecting its portion of the Congo basin rainforest, the world’s second-largest and the last that sucks in more carbon than it releases.

White said his country, which gets about 60% of its state revenue from oil, accepted that the oil economy would go and that greater emphasis needed to be placed on sustainable forestry and timber. 

“We’ve not really actively promoted the death of the oil industry like Costa Rica,” he said, referencing the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance launched at Cop26 in Glasgow by the Central American country and Denmark. “We recognise that the oil industry will disappear.”

Nothing will change on climate until death toll rises in west, says Gabonese minister | Cop27 | The Guardian