Accelerating climate-resilient and low-carbon development : the Africa climate business plan (English)
Abstract
'The Africa Climate Business Plan aims at raising awareness and accelerating resource mobilization for priority climate-resilient and low-carbon initiatives in Africa. It focuses on a dozen priority areas, clustered in three groups, where the World Bank, in collaboration with African Governments and a variety of regional and international partners, expects to help achieve results in the near to medium term.
The plan will contribute to meeting World Bank's corporate objective of increasing the share of World Bank Group financing for climate change by one-third, from 21 percent to 28, by 2020. The first cluster of the plan (strengthening resilience) includes selected initiatives aimed at boosting the resilience of the continent's assets. These comprise Africa's natural capital (landscapes, forests, agricultural land, inland water bodies, oceans); its physical capital (cities and physical assets in coastal areas); and the continent's human and social capital (including improving social protection for the more vulnerable against climate shocks; and addressing the climate-related drivers of migration, thereby mitigating the effects of climate shocks on social cohesion).
The second cluster of the plan (powering resilience) relates to opportunities for scaling up low-carbon energy sources in Africa. In addition to helping mitigate climate change, these activities also entail considerable resilience benefits. The reason is that societies with inadequate access to energy are also more vulnerable to climate shocks. Activities included in the third cluster of the plan (enabling resilience) have a cross-cutting nature: they provide essential data, information and decision-making tools for promoting climate-resilient development across sectors: through strengthening the hydro-met systems at the regional and county level; and through building the capacity to plan and design climate-resilient investments.
