“Loss and damage” necessary but insufficient - reflections from a panel at the African Centre for Cities’ Infrastructure Futures conference

The African Centre for Cities (ACC), at the University of Cape Town, has a reputation for hosting very fine gatherings…..not only because of the ‘blow-the-fuses’ coffee they serve. ACC’s African Infrastructure Futures event in November took place almost five years after their last gathering and, as we have come to expect from the Centre, the seemingly narrow focus implied by the conference title, provided a platform for a span of interdisciplinary ideas, styles and creativity.

A one-day academic conference was followed by a two-day policy conference. The combination showcased ACC’s ongoing intent to produce ideas that are both academically and ‘real world’ relevant for (and from!) rapidly evolving African cities. There were many highlights, not least the chance to be part of the remarkable pan-African community of researchers, government officials, policy-wonks, activists and business people that comprises the extended ACC family. The Re-imagining Infrastructure exhibition showcasing the euphemistically termed “infrastructure innovations” and the poetic exposition of possible Port Harcourt futures using architectural renders of the city by Michael Uwemedimo got people talking and thinking.

I joined a panel for the third session of the policy conference: “The Stakes - Bringing Agenda 2063 to Life: A Vision for Green Industrialisation and Pan-African Connectivity” focussing on how infrastructure, place-making and industrialisation come together (or don’t) on a continent experiencing unprecedented climate change.

I raised the challenge of merging industrial, climate and urbanisation policy conversations into a singular effort to shape home-grown people-centred, nature-restoring, deeply sustainable human development. I had been provoked by the “loss and damage” deliberations at the Sharm-el-Sheikh climate conference (COP27) a few days before the ACC event. Behind the deliberations was the tricky questions of which countries should be considered ‘developing’, whether a nation ever stops being a ‘developing country’ in the context of climate change, and whether these tags remain useful or part of a global bias predicated on a narrow definition of climate vulnerability that inevitably raises the cost of capital for the countries that can least afford it.

The historical case for “loss and damage” could not be clearer. Twenty three of the richest countries (Annex 2 countries under the United Nation’s definition) are responsible for over half the historical emissions driving the climate crisis. These countries unambiguously should be making the most aggressive greenhouse gas cuts and should be compensating poorer countries impacted by climate change for both the biophysical impacts and truncated development options. It is unacceptable that the European Union only cut CO2 emissions by 0.8% in 2022 and the United States increased emissions by 1.5% at a time when cuts of 6-8% per annum are required. Since 2020, however, the picture has been somewhat different. China, the United States, India and Russia have been the greatest emitters, with South Africa in an uncomfortably high 13th position despite the country’s sluggish economy and shrinking electricity output. Is this because green climate finance has not been forthcoming on reasonable terms or is South Africa and other African countries missing a trick?   

The announcement of a Loss and Damage Fund at COP27 represents an important opportunity to draw the countries of the world towards each other around the concept of climate justice. The fund holds symbolic significance after decades of disagreement, but we know from the Green Climate Fund that it is unlikely to attract enough money and money that has not been shuffled from other sources.

Strategically, it seems African countries confront a choice. They could to stand on their alleged climate vulnerability and developing country status, hope for some loss and damage money (which almost certainly won’t be enough or well-timed) and fight a morally justified rear-guard action over their right to emit the last 380bn tons (or is it 260 billion tons once the impact of sulphides is factored in) with the likes of China and India. Alternatively, they could get busy building the supply chains needed to meet growing and relatively predictable urban demand (23 million people are added to African cities every year) for construction material, energy, mobility, sanitation services, food and nature-based services of flood buffering and carbon storage, in green, labour intensive and sustainable ways. Support for the second strategy is provided by macro-economic modelling work done in Tanzania and Ghana. An African industrialisation that reconciles demand emanating from African cities for green energy, mobility, material, food and waste handling services, with local supply chains will attract more investment, create more jobs and provide a more powerful socio-economic lift than traditional, extractive and centrally planned industrialisation involving Special Economic Zones. It is not that SEZs cannot be useful in supporting industrial complexes and exports, it is just that they have tended to be associated with the brand of extractive and environmentally damaging industrialisation designed around capital and not labour and which does not work in a climate crisis.

If green industry, of the type that combines urbanisation, infrastructure and place making and climate resilient development, is recognised as the most desirable development pathway, the question remains how to cohere and sustain it. Nobody should be naïve about the difficulty all governments experience in joined-up policy making and more specifically, harnessing the potential of urbanisation and cities is tricky in many African countries given the lack of devolution to local government and multi-level governance arrangements. There is no blueprint, but the policy conversations around industrialisation, urbanisation and climate change that currently take place in distinct arenas need to become one conversation and one effort at people centred, nature centred, deeply sustainable human development. In practice this involves overcoming the aversion of the climate community to conversations about industry and growth in order to ensure that African countries find ways of supporting industry that decouples growth from emissions and meets human needs. It involves the agencies working on urbanisation National Urban Policies and multi-level governance to be much more explicit about climate change and climate resilient development, and it involves closer articulation between Nationally Determined Contributions (53 out of 54 African countries have submitted NDCs) and industrialisation, infrastructure and energy programmes.

The weaving together of these strands of policy is necessary for the respective success of industrial, urban and climate efforts in African countries. It will allow the continent to contribute the low-carbon, nature protecting inclusive development that both African countries and, more importantly, the world needs. The world cannot afford to let the Central African rain forests be logged in the same way as many other rain forests; climate targets will not be met if fossil-fuel powered car ownership among 2.5 million Africans in 2050, approaches the 18% currently enjoyed by the world, or if per capita emissions in Africa approach the global average in 2022, thereby adding roughly 4 billion tons of CO2 per annum to existing global emissions. In this way African countries will show that the only way to decarbonise at the pace and scale required to limit warming to 1.5°C, is to link decarbonisation to infrastructure programmes that reduce poverty, inequality and the destruction of nature and restore long-severed links between people, places, nature and well-being. Recasting people as part of nature, not in some destructive dominion over it, is something that African countries understand better than many others, something in which African countries could be said to have "competitive advantage" in the industrial strategy sense.