Climate change: lessons from China’s green revolution

WHILE Africa is struggling with climate change related challenges, China, the biggest trading partner with the continent for a consecutive 15 years, has realised a green revolution surpassing other world economies by establishing a wholistically transformative green transition global economy.

- GIDEON H CHITANGA

China is the second largest economy in the world, and now the leading multilateral actor in efforts to combat climate change while driving the green energy transition. Climate change has exerted profound and escalating impacts across African countries exacerbating existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities and undermining sustainable development efforts.

In 2024, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialised-agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation onatmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics said that Africa was facing itswarmest decade on record.

The WMO’s State of the Climate in Africa 2024 report revealed that extreme weather and climate change were intensifying hunger, insecurity, and displacement across Africa, impacting every facet of socioeconomic development.

The impacts of climate change generate conflict and insecurity, reduce investor confidence,raises complex intersectional governance problems, particularly in most of the poorercountries with the lowest education, health, infrastructure and human development indicatorsglobally.

The EM-DAT international disaster database shows that since 1984, Africa has endured 1 865 climate-related disasters, which affected an estimated 702 million people, and accounts for US$53 billion (about R852.7bn) in direct financial losses. Rising temperatures — occurring at a rate faster than the global average in many regions ~ have intensified the frequency and severity of droughts, floods, and heatwaves,particularly in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and Southern Africa.

An Institute of Security Studies Futures report published in 2024 says that climate-related disasters now account fornearly 70% of all natural disasters, with extreme weather events increasing in frequency and severity.