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African leaders offer climate model following US withdrawal

African leaders want to provide a global model of tackling climate change through green investments. They said this on Monday after the United States pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which deflated efforts against climate changes.

Ethiopia is hosting its second climate summit, COP30. The continent has been ravaged by landslides and floods in the past year.

"We are here to design the world's next climate economy," Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said at the opening ceremony. "We are here to design the next climate economy," Ethiopian Premier Abiy Ahmed said at the opening ceremony.

Leaders have positioned the 54-nation continental as being ripe for investment in carbon capture, solar energy, minerals critical for green technologies and food production, to keep the development on track despite the climate crisis. Abiy said that if we make the right decisions now, Africa could be the first continent in the world to industrialise its ecosystems without damaging it.

He called for the creation of a new Africa Climate Innovation Initiative, funded by Africa, which would bring together African universities and research institutions, startup companies, rural communities, and inventors in order to develop 1,000 solutions by 2030 to address climate challenges.

Officials say that although leaders sought additional funding at the Nairobi summit two years ago, the continent still receives only 1% of global climate finance each year.

African countries are the most vulnerable and least responsible of the effects of global warming. Yet, they have demanded for years that the COP meetings provide more funding to assist them in adapting to climate change.

Mahamoud Youssouf is the chairperson of the African Union Commission.

Climate justice is needed to address the vulnerability of our members, which has been caused by the climate change, the debt burden, and the structural injustices of the international financial system. Leaders expressed concern about the possible damage that could be caused by a deterioration of the multilateral strategy to combat climate change.

The Trump administration withdrew from the historic Paris climate agreement for the second consecutive time in the first half of this year. It has also pulled out of clean energy partnerships, including those with South Africa.

William Ruto, Kenyan president, said: "Too many commitments are broken, and international solidarity dismissed as weak precisely when the magnitude of the climate crises demands increased cooperation, not lesser," Reporting by Dawit Endshaw in Addis-Abeba and Duncan Miriri, Nairobi; editing by Kevin Liffey

(source: Reuters)