Interview: Kenyan experts urge rich nations to honor climate finance commitments

Kenyan climate change experts have challenged developed countries to meet their commitments to offer climate finance and transfer of low-carbon and eco-friendly technologies to developing countries.

This, the experts say, is expected to help create a global equity in climate justice where all countries have a shared responsibility toward instituting mitigation and adaptation measures against climate change.

"Industrialized countries have been the major pollutants and thus must invest more in cleaning up the world's air, land and water," Stephen Ndegwa, the Executive Director with Nairobi-based Centre for Climate Change Awareness told Xinhua Tuesday.

Ndegwa said that the scale of these programs cannot be uniform between developed countries and poor developing countries. He observed that funding for poor and vulnerable countries has been a major point of contention in previous global meetings on climate change.

"This is the major reason behind the recent creation of the Vulnerable 20 (V20) group in October this year, a lobby group that comprises some of the smallest and poorest countries in the world," he revealed.

According to V20, annual economic losses for poor countries due to climate change are projected to exceed 400 billion U.S. dollars by 2030.

Ndegwa's remarks came as nearly 150 leaders are attending the UN Climate Change summit, also known as the 21st session of Conference of the Parties or COP 21 in Paris, France.

The meeting kicked off amid optimism from African leaders that world leaders meeting for COP21 in Paris would reach a historic legally-binding climate change agreement.

However, Ndegwa said that a lot still needs to be done to bridge the climate change financial and technological mitigation shortfall from developed countries.

This, he said, is a moral obligation for developed countries toward developing countries including Africa, whose state of underdevelopment has been largely attributed to the unbridled exploitation of its natural resources.

The expert hailed China's efforts in using innovative solutions in minimizing the high emission levels from its combined industrial activities, noting that China has done exemplary work in managing pollution in some of its major industrial cities.

Ndgewa said that since developing countries contributed little emission toward global warming, China's contribution through its green initiatives will help the countries avoid the environmental pitfalls that more developed countries have experienced.

"China's commitment to implementing massive environmentally friendly projects and programs in poor and vulnerable countries will make developed countries fund and implement similar initiatives where they are needed most," he added.

"China's commitments toward the establishment of a 3 billion U.S. dollars China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to help other developing countries combat climate change and the proposed launch of the projects for 10 pilot low-carbon industrial parks are good examples worth emulating," said Benjamin Kimani, another climate change expert.

China has also committed to starting more than 100 climate mitigation projects in other developing countries and providing 1,000 training opportunities for tackling climate change next year. Enditem