Page 26 - Coespu 2018-4

Climate Change, an unmet challenge

By Bernardo SALA

I am flying back from Ivory Coast. I spent almost a month meeting governmental institutions at
national and local level, technical agencies, NGOs and the peasants to assess vulnerabilities to
climate change and contribute
to identify and implement
feasible initiatives to reduce it.
The mission is part of the effort
of the EU to support the world's
most vulnerable countries to
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address climate change .
Most of the interlocutors I met
do not have a clear
understanding of the complex
meaning of climate change, yet
they do have a very clear
perception of its effects.
Throughout the countries, they
are experiencing an increase in
temperature, shift in rain patterns, more intense natural phenomena leading to droughts and
flooding, wild fires and salinization of groundwater. This is extremely problematic for a
developing country already plagued by structural weaknesses (including demographic explosion,
lack of employment, over-exploitation of agricultural land and weak administration). Climate
change intervenes as a factor of further stress to increase vulnerability. It is happening in Ivory
Coast, it is happening everywhere in the world.
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NASA defines climate change as: "a broad range of global phenomena created predominantly
by burning fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomena
include the increased temperature trends described by global warming, but also encompass
changes such as sea level rise; ice mass loss in Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic and mountain
glaciers worldwide; shifts in flower/plant blooming; and extreme weather events”. “Climate
change” is therefore the catch-all term for the shift in worldwide weather phenomena associated
with an increase in global average temperatures and the effects caused by this increase. It's real
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and temperatures have been going up around the world for many decades .

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The EU supports partner countries in different areas related to climate change by providing dedicated climate change assistance as well as by
integrating climate change considerations into the broader development cooperation portfolio in accordance with partner country policies and
strategies. Several financial instruments and aid delivery channels are used for this purpose. They include a number of new facilities and
mechanisms designed to leverage additional funds to complement official development aid (see
https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/sectors/environment/climate‐change‐disaster‐risk‐reduction‐and‐desertification/climate‐change_en).
Specifically, the mission in Ivory Coast is funded by the Intra‐ACP Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (GCCA+), an initiative to support the
African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States efforts to address climate change.
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https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global‐warming/
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Reliable temperature records began in 1850 and our world is now about one degree Celsius hotter than it was in the period between 1850 and
1900 – commonly referred to as the "pre‐industrial" average.

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