Total Global Environment Facility Financing For Africa In Past 17 Years - $378 Million - AFP

[hatrack]

The UN-sponsored climate change talks between rich and poor countries offer few benefits to Africa, which bears the brunt of climate change in the world, officials and African delegates said Sunday.

"Many African negotiators have expressed concern that the current regime delivers few real benefits to the continent," Yvo de Boer, head of the ongoing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) conference in Accra, told AFP.

De Boer spoke at the sidelines of the week-long negotiations on reducing carbon emissions by industrialised countries by up to 40 percent by 2020.

"The total value of projects in Africa financed by the Global Environment Facility in the last 17 years stands at 378 million dollars, while the total value of projects worldwide is more than 2.4 billion dollars, which reflects lack of benefits for the continent," he added.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/080824112106.bs4i0dme.html

[GliderGuider]

1. A look at other aspects of the African situation

Unfortunately, similar effects are obvious in a wide variety of areas, especially foreign aid of all sorts. It's as though the rest of the world has already written off Africa (or at least the African people) and are pursuing a policy of depopulation through neglect. I'm reminded of the effect of a neutron bomb, that kills off the people but leaves the resource base intact.

Africa in 2040: The Darkened Continent

This article examines the interaction of a variety of influences on the African food supply over the next three decades. The influences include climate change, rising oil and fertilizer prices, HIV/AIDS, rising population, falling GDP, food import and distribution requirements and global food price inflation. The article then looks at what the growing constraints on fuel, food and finance might mean for the population of the African continent over the coming years.

(snip)

The Director-General of the FAO reported in a speech in 2003 that Africa received about $2 billion in food aid in 2000/2001, or about 25% of the world total. However, American aid -- constituting half of all international food assistance -- has declined by 43% in the last 5 years.

In the same speech the Director-General also said, "The World Bank, the major funding source for Africa, targeted 39 percent of its lending in 1978 to the agricultural sector in Africa. By 2002, this proportion had dropped to 6 percent."

This evidence implies that the world's money and power brokers have, without any fanfare or public announcement, given up on Africa. They have apparently decided that Africa cannot be salvaged by aid or investment, and they appear to be in the process of cutting the lifelines. There are some cold, calculated decisions being made in comfortable boardrooms around the world.

Although some of these deficiencies may be rectified over the coming decade, it seems utterly unrealistic to hope that foreign aid and investment will rise to the levels required to deal with a further expansion of Africa's food shortage. In addition, the global economic crisis that is now underway may severely restrict the future availability of funds for both food aid and development loans.