| |
|
 |
African
firms start to take action on climate change |
 |
By
Daniel Wallis and
Duncan Miriri
|
NAIROBI(August 16 - 17,2008) - With global warming
expected to hit Africa hard, some companies in the "forgotten
continent" are taking action themselves to fight climate change.
"The environment is not being taken very seriously in most of
the emerging markets, because we haven't started feeling the pressure
yet," Adan Mohamed, chief executive of Barclays Bank Kenya, told
Reuters.
"But it has got to be addressed and it is up to us corporates
to lead that."
Poverty in Africa, where nearly three quarters of people rely on agriculture,
means it is the part of the world least able to adapt to the severe
weather changes forecast to be triggered by global warming, experts
say.
Tens of millions face water and food shortages, they say, as well
as impacts ranging for disease to rising seas.
Kenyan firms including national flag carrier Kenya Airways, brewer
East African Breweries and others are now actively studying ways to
"green" their operations to help lessen the blow.
Even a popular Nairobi radio station, Capital FM, has got in on the
trend, raising public awareness by paying $2,000 to an offsetting
company to become a carbon free enterprise.
It all points to changing attitudes towards environmental protection
in some of the world's poorest counties.
Last November the top U.N. climate official, Yvo de Boer, told Reuters
Africa was the "forgotten continent" in the battle against
warming and desperately needed help.
He said damage to the continent projected by the U.N. climate panel
justified stronger world action -- even without considering likely
disruptions to other parts of the planet.
Big developing countries like China, India and Brazil had won far
more funds than Africa from rich nations to help cut greenhouse gases,
he noted, for instance by investing in wind farms, hydropower dams
or in cleaning up industrial emissions.
Just 2.4 percent of more than 1,100 projects for cutting greenhouse
gases in developing nations are in Africa under the Clean Development
Mechanism, a U.N.-backed scheme.
CHANGING ATTITUDES
South Africa, the continent's largest economy, does have a handful
of such projects.
Sasol, the world's biggest maker of fuel from coal, is pioneering
a plan to sell carbon credits by converting a greenhouse gas into
nitrogen and oxygen, also earning it income.
Based at two plants in South Africa, the project will convert nitrous
oxide and is aimed at cutting emissions equivalent to about 1 million
tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
One tonne of nitrous oxide has the greenhouse gas impact of 310 tonnes
of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for warming.
Some 90 percent of South Africa's electricity is produced from coal-fired
plants. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment will be mandatory
for all new power stations.
No power plant yet operates anywhere in the world with CCS equipment
attached, and only a handful of countries including the United States,
Britain, Canada and Norway, have pledged public money to test the
technology on a commercial scale.
But the picture in cosmopolitan Johannesburg or Nairobi -- where Kenya
Airways plants thousands of seedlings on hills under under it flight
paths, or diners can eat in the leafy garden of Azalea, a carbon-free
restaurant -- remains rare in Africa.
Many nations are focused on the challenges of developing basic energy
infrastructure to eliminate the need to run costly generators. The
emergence of firms offering conscience-salving carbon offsets seems
a long way off.
Desire Kouadio N'Goran, an official at Ivory Coast's Environment Ministry,
said his government was encouraging the use of solar energy and more
efficient stoves, as well as public transport to cut vehicle emissions.
But Mohamed, the Barclays Kenya chief executive, said times were changing,
and that African business had to plan long term.
He said his bank only lent to environmentally sustainable projects,
but declined to give details.
"People are trading carbon units globally," he said. "There's
no reason that can't cross over to emerging markets." (Reuters)
|
| |
|
