14 African Development Bank — Advancing Climate Change Action and Green Growth in Africa (Mahmood & Jia, 2018). If water use patterns on the continent go unchanged and population growth continues at present rates, African countries could exceed the limits of “economically usable, land-based water resources” before 2025 (Ashton, 2002). Models predict increasing inter-annual climate variability in Africa and substantial multi-decadal variability in the Sahel region. Severe flooding events have already increased in frequency in the Niger Basin over the past decades, and the risk of flooding is likely to increase with rising temperatures (Serdeczny et al, 2016). Frequent severe droughts, floods and storms that affect the health of populations, ecosystems, and economies have become the new normal in Africa, and they threaten to halt or reverse development gains. When eastern and southern African countries were recently devastated by El Niño weather patterns, several were forced to reallocate resources from national development funds to disaster relief. Thus, severe weather events can pose a great threat to economic development. For instance, in 2017, Lesotho spent about $12 million from its limited development budget on relief after El Niño-related weather events, South Africa reallocated nearly $700 million to drought relief programmes, and the African Development Bank provided an emergency drought package worth $549 million to assist 14 countries affected by El Niño (AfDB, 2016). Projections suggest that Africa’s climate change vulnerability will grow more severe between 2030 and 2050, and that the economic cost of climate change in Africa will increase as a result. If global temperatures were to increase by 4°C by 2100, it is projected that the economic cost of damages would grow to on average 7% of African countries’ GDP (UNEP, 2013). To summarise, on the one hand, economists are optimistic that Africa’s ‘lion economies’ will continue to achieve steady economic growth at rates faster than the global average. On the other hand, there is great concern that the continent cannot maintain its current levels of economic growth without using its natural capital sustainably and addressing the negative impacts of climate change. It is therefore imperative to merge Africa’s efforts to achieve and sustain economic development with the climate change and green growth agendas. Africa’s economy needs to grow in such a way that it does not compromise environmental protection and social inclusion, while meeting the needs of future generations of the African population, which is expected to double to 2.5 billion by 2050. The African Development Bank Group has had a long-standing commitment to action on climate change. The Bank recognizes the importance of pursuing Africa’s development aspirations and that African governments must lift communities out of poverty. In this regard, the Bank has been a strong partner to all those striving for green growth and enhanced living standards across the African continent, and fully acknowledges the opportunities associated with the green economy. At the same time, the Bank recognizes that Africa’s hard-won development gains will be diluted, and further progress stymied, by climate change, unless the threat is curbed and African nations are better able to manage the consequences. As an institution comprising African countries that are, and will continue to be, amongst the most detrimentally affected by climate change impacts, the Bank has been a steadfast champion of climate change adaptation and resilience. The African Development Bank can play a crucial role in ensuring that while growth continues to transform Africa, the development it supports is smart, green, sustainable, climatecompatible, and climate-responsive. It is with this intent that the Bank seeks to steer African countries towards a resilient, secure and low-carbon future. To ensure that the Bank maximizes the impact it can have on global and continental efforts to combat climate change, desertification, and biodiversity loss, and on the efforts to prepare for the consequences, it is adopting an ambitious Climate Change and Green Growth Strategic Framework. This will better position the Bank to drive meaningful results on climate change adaptation and mitigation, and green growth. The Framework embodies the Bank’s goal of operationalizing the Paris Agreement through its externalfacing initiatives and in its internal institutional activities. This ten-year Climate Change and Green Growth Strategy for 2021–2030 is a key element of the Bank’s first Climate Change and Green Growth Strategic Framework. It is a companion document to the Climate Change and Green Growth Policy (open-ended, with no pre-determined terminal date) and is complemented with an Action Plan (2021–25; and for regular update thereafter). The Bank has long recognized that climate action is a core component of sustainable development that it seeks to promote. The Strategic Framework originates from the Bank’s established position on climate change and green growth and its recently strengthened commitments under the Fifteenth Replenishment of the African Development Fund (ADF-15) and the Seventh General Capital Increase (GCI-7) processes. It guides the Bank’s investments and interventions in aligning development finance with climate action principles and sets out a vision for how the Bank will contribute to the actualization of the objectives of the Paris Agreement while achieving sustainable, decarbonised development and prosperity in Africa, in line with the Bank’s ten-year strategy and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 “The Africa We Want.”
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