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DR Congo Hosts African Climate Summit Ahead of COP27

© AP Photo / Erin SchaffBritish Prime Minister Boris Johnson, President of Congo Felix Tshisekedi and President Joe Biden stand before speaking at a session on Action on Forests and Land Use, during the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, President of Congo Felix Tshisekedi and President Joe Biden stand before speaking at a session on Action on Forests and Land Use, during the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021.  (Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool) - Sputnik International, 1920, 03.10.2022
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The United Nations Climate Change Conferences are held annually in different countries and focus on dealing with climate change-related issues such as limiting global warming and stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations, among others. This year, the event is slated to take place in early November in Egypt.
On October 3-4, the environment ministers of about 50 countries, as well as US climate envoy John Kerry, arrived to take part in the African climate summit in Congo’s capital Kinshasa.
The summit will be held ahead of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), scheduled for November 6-18, 2022.
The summit’s program includes an opening ceremony in the Congolese parliament, an opinion exchange on topical climate issues and the discussion of financial help to the countries, which have already been affected by negative changes in the climate.
In 2009, at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen, the world’s high-income countries pledged to loan low-income countries an annual $100 billion in climate finance by 2020. This is, by the way, far from the total needed to tackle climate change, a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released on February 28, 2022 reads.
However, despite 2020 already being gone, the aim hasn’t been reached yet and it seems doubtful that this goal will be reached this year, according to the same report.
Barbed wir secure the entrance of the harbour area where the landfall of the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline located, as the sun rises behind the pipeline facility and the transfer station of the OPAL gas pipeline, the Baltic Sea Pipeline Link, in Lubmin, Germany, Thursday, July 21, 2022. Europe is bracing for the possibility that the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline that brings natural gas from Russia to Germany won't reopen as scheduled after routine maintenance. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) - Sputnik International, 1920, 17.09.2022
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At the same time, an environmental group, Greenpeace, bashed the DRC government’s recent decision to put up 30 oil and gas blocks up for sale and pledged to launch a petition in order to seek international support to block the Congolese authorities’ ambition, referring to the presence of peatlands in the African country.
“In a zone where there are peatlands, any industrial exploitation means the explosion of a carbon bomb,” said the International Project Leader for the Congo Basin forest, Greenpeace Africa, Irène Wabiwa Betoko.
Nevertheless, the DRC’s authorities argue that drilling for oil and gas is a chance for the country to diversify its economy and improve the living standards of of the poverty-struck Congolese people.
According to a publication in The Lancet Planetary Health, the Global South, including the African countries, is responsible for only 8% of the global carbon emissions, while the Global North accounts for the rest.
An activist holds a STOP EACOP placard opposing a pipeline project during an action as part of the La Voix Lyceenne (High School Voice) union initiative in Paris on September 23, 2022. - According to the EU Parliament on September 15, 2022, more than 100,000 people are at risk of being displaced by the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) of France's TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) that signed a $10-billion agreement earlier in 2022 to develop Ugandan oilfields and ship the crude through a 1,445-kilometre (900-mile) pipeline to Tanzania's Indian Ocean port of Tanga. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP) - Sputnik International, 1920, 26.09.2022
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However, the West keeps opposing African countries in their strive to exploit their natural resources under the pretext of climate change as an urgent continental and world-wide problem, protesting against the development of real infrastructure projects in African countries.
In particular, on September 15, the EU passed a resolution which blamed The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) for “posing environmental risks” and called the international community to “exert maximum pressure on the Ugandan and Tanzanian authorities,” the project’s owners.
Uganda's Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa described the EU’s resolution as the "highest level of neocolonialism and imperialism,” while the chairman of the Association of Tanzania Oil and Gas Service Providers (ATOGS), Abdulsamad Abdulrahim, explained that the project is needed to improve African people’s living standard amid undergoing world energy crisis.
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