Kenya's leader says climate change is eating away Africa's GDP, calls for talks on global carbon tax

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Climate change is “relentlessly eating away” at Africa’s economic progress and it’s time to have a global conversation about a carbon tax, Kenya’s president declared Tuesday as the first Africa Climate Summit began.

“Those who produce the garbage refuse to pay their bills,” President William Ruto said.

The African continent of more than 1.3 billion people is losing 5% to 15% of its GDP growth every year to the widespread impacts of climate change, according to Ruto. It's a source of deep frustration in the region that contributes by far the least to the global problem.

The summit’s opening speeches included clear calls to reform the global financial structures that have left African nations paying five times more to borrow money than others, worsening the debt crisis for many. Africa has more than 30 of the world’s most indebted countries, Kenya’s cabinet secretary for the environment, Soipan Tuya, said.

The U.S. government’s climate envoy, John Kerry, acknowledged the “acute, unfair debt.” He also said 17 of the world’s 20 countries most impacted by climate change are in Africa — while the world’s 20 richest nations, including his own, produce 80% of the world’s carbon emissions that are driving climate change.

Kenya’s president said Africa’s 54 countries “must go green fast before industrializing and not vice versa, unlike (richer nations) had the luxury to do.” Transforming Africa’s economy on a green trajectory “is the most feasible, just and efficient way to attain a net-zero world by 2050,” he said.

Climate finance is key, speakers said, with richer nations’ promise of $100 billion a year in climate finance to developing countries still unfulfilled. Ruto said the summit declaration will “firmly encourage” everyone to keep their promises.

The United Arab Emirates, which will host the next United Nations climate meeting, announced it plans to invest $4.5 billion in Africa’s “clean energy potential.”

The African continent has 60% of the world’s renewable energy assets, and more than 30% of the minerals key to renewable and low-carbon technologies. One goal of the summit is to transform the narrative around the continent from victim to assertive, wealthy partner.

Africa’s GDP should be revalued for its assets that include the world's second-largest rainforest and biodiversity, said the president of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina.

“Africa cannot be nature-rich and cash-poor,” he said.

But divisions are evident around the issue that was little mentioned in the opening speeches and yet at the heart of the tough conversations ahead: Fossil fuels.

The African Development Bank president said Africa must use its natural gas resources along with renewable energy sources. “Give us space to grow,” he said.

Ruto, however, has criticized the “addiction” to fossil fuels as his country now gets more than 90% of its energy from renewables.

“We don’t have to do what the developed countries did to power their industries. It will be harder to use renewable energy exclusively, but it can be done," said one local summit attendee, Martha Lusweti.

And the U.N. secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, told the summit it’s time to “break our addiction to fossil fuels.”

Some of Africa's biggest economies rely on fossil fuels. South Africa's coal-fired plants are struggling. Parts of Nigeria's coastal waters are slick from oil extraction, and some of Africa's cities have the world's worst air pollution.

Missing from the summit are the leaders of a number of Africa's largest economies including South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Ethiopia, as well as forest-rich Congo.