UNEP urges Africa to invest in green energy to spur growth

The UN environmental agency on Wednesday called on African governments to invest in green energy to help develop their economies.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner told African ministers of environment, policy-makers, international financial and environmental experts in Nairobi that a transition to green economy will address poverty, hunger, disease and ecological crises across Sub-Saharan Africa.

"Building on a strong endowment of natural resource and skills, Africa is poised to become the frontline of a transition to more inclusive green economies," Steiner told over 200 delegates who are meeting in Nairobi.

The UNEP chief called for regional and international partnerships to accelerate the implementation of green growth plans and priorities.

Steiner said "different minds-sets and lifestyles, low carbon strategies, sustainable resource management, increased financing, and appropriate policies and frameworks can help African transition to a green economy".

He said governments should build consensus on how to turn challenges on sustainable development and climate change into opportunities for green growth and improved livelihoods for all.

The two-day forum is jointly organized by Kenya, Denmark and UNEP under the umbrella of the Global Green Growth Forum (3GF) which convenes governments, businesses, investors and international organizations to act together for inclusive green growth.

The meeting will work to identify the barriers to Africa's sustainable development and the ways to turn them into opportunities for green growth and improved livelihoods.

It's focusing on new financing models for green growth, sustainable urbanization and sustainable lifestyles.

Denmark foreign minister Martin Lidegaard said the forum is also expected to stimulate discussion on reliable and sustainable supply in energy for Africa, achieving sustainable industrialization through the circular economy and funneling modern technology into the continent.

"We need to unlock the African and global potential for green growth. To do so, all actors must work closer together and be ' powerful doers'. Together we can create a common green growth pathway by facilitating concrete action-oriented partnership solutions," Lidegaard said.

GF-Africa is the first of a series of regional conferences that 3GF is organising in Africa, Asia and Latin America throughout 2015.

By engaging high-level partners from all regions of the world, and from both public and private spheres, 3GF seeks to demonstrate that green solutions, scalable to the global level and spurring economic growth, are at hand.

Steiner said several events this year - the Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa, the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda, and the climate change meeting in Paris at the end of the year - will set the development agenda for decades to come.

He said the 3GF provides a timely opportunity for African stakeholders to define their priorities to feed into these important processes.

"We are seeing the continent take advantage of the many green economy opportunities at its fingertips. Building on a strong endowment of natural resource and skills, Africa is poised to become the frontline of a global transition to more-inclusive green economies," he added. Endi