São Paulo – The World Bank announced this Tuesday (24th) the development of a USD 16.1 billion plan to help African countries deal with climate change. The project will be presented officially at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 21), in Paris, on November 30th.
According to a statement released by the bank, the plan proposes measures that will impact the population, forests, rural areas, water resources and the cities, in addition to suggestions in the renewable energy and prevention of natural disasters sectors.
The president of the institution, Jim Yong Kim, said, via statement, that the continent, specially the Sub-Saharan Africa region, is very vulnerable to climate change, which cause a wide range of problems, from child malnourishment to malaria outbreaks, prolonged droughts and surge in food prices.
“This plan identifies concrete steps that African governments can take to ensure that their countries will not lose hard-won gains in economic growth and poverty reduction”, said Kim. According to the bank, Africa needs investments of USD 5 billion to USD 10 billion per year to mitigate the effects of global warming of 2°C.
According to the plan proposed by the institution, some USD 5.7 billion is expected to come from the International Development Association (IDA), an arm of the World Bank Group that supports the poorest countries; USD 2 billion from other organizations in the development community; USD 3.5 billion from the private sector; and USD 700 million from sources from the aided countries. With the USD 2 billion needed to close the budget coming from other sources still to be named.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
