Liberia is calling for the establishment of an “African Carbon Credit Trading Mechanism” initiative.
In a five minute address to the Glasgow International Climate Change Conference. President George M. Weah told conference attendees on Monday that his country “will work with pan-African and other global financial institutions to develop a long term regulated market for African carbon credit.”
The coastal West African country is seeing the accelerated effects of climate change with elevated sea levels, more intense rainfalls and localized flooding. Local slum communities West Point and New Kru Town and coastal cities in south eastern Liberia are seeing the rapid encroachment of the Atlantic Ocean which have already wiped out residential structures and displaced inhabitants.
Poor public policies coupled with ill-advised approval of major logging concession agreements which pre-dated the back-to-back wars in the 1990s rapidly depleted pristine forest reserves under previous Liberian Administrations.
Mining agreements which were also poorly negotiated and regulated have also impacted communities.
According to our Correspondent, the Liberian leader did not disclose his Government’s policy programs to tackle the effects of local climate change in his country but expressed the hope that, “…these initiatives will increase the chances of all African countries that depend on their forest reserves to attain sustainable economic growth and national development in line with the vision set out in the 2030 Agenda.”
“We who are the richest in terms of forest resources ad biodiversity, are the poorest in terms of socio-economic development. Although we bear the brunt of the impact of climate change, we benefit the least from the existing solutions and financial arrangements currently in place for tackling climate change,” he said.
President Weah offered to host a conference with other stakeholders to explore details for the establishment of the African Carbon Credit Trading Mechanism. According to President Weah, “Together we can heal the world from the scourges of climate change.
Together, we can save this earth from the deadly consequences of global warming. Tother, we can bring humankind into harmony with nature.”
World leaders in Scotland are hoping to fashion out a realistic plan of action to address climate change. The conference host and British Prime Minister warned that failure of the conference would have dire consequences for the world. The conference is expected to last for 3 weeks.
Comments are closed.