Africa-Press – Namibia. NAMIBIA will this week unlock over 5,700 square kilometres of land in the Karas Region for the potential development of green hydrogen and ammonia assets, expected to double the region’s employment and triple the installed renewable energy generation capacity for the entire country.
This was revealed by President Hage Geingob while speaking at the High Level segment of the Twenty-Six Conference of parties to the United Nations Framework convention on climate change (COP26) in Glasgow, United Kingdom.
He added that Namibia is taking these bold steps in the Karas Region to enhance Namibia’s energy security, decarbonise the country, and assist its regional and global peers to reduce their emissions and build a more resilient economy.
“Along with the world, Namibia is experiencing widespread and devastating impacts on key facets of our civilisation including severe droughts to devastating field fires destroying large tracts of our agricultural land adversely impacting, livelihoods, human health and wellbeing,” Geingob said.
He added that climate change and the worsening ecological crisis obeys no sovereign boundaries and that COP26 is the international community’s last chance to collectively overcome the disconnect between a divided international system and a global calamity that threatens us all. He added that Namibia is taking transformative steps towards honouring this responsibility and aims to adopt a robust Article 6 at COP26.
“This critical step would provide the bedrock of an international carbon market mechanism necessary to drive funds to the places where emissions can be cut most effectively, to mobilise large scale private investment for climate action and to drive crucial innovation. Article 6 cannot wait for another COP,” said Geingob.
He added that Namibia supports the UN Secretary’s General’s push to ‘consign coal to history’ and added that the country will be phasing out of coal in the region by significantly scaling up solar and wind energy to support domestic demand, whilst working with neighbours to responsibly phase out existing coal generation in the Southern African Power Pool and transform our region’s energy map.
“This is the single most important step to keeping the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target alive,” he said.
He added that there is a need to scale up climate finance, stating that the US$100 billion target for climate finance needs to be surpassed as a target, with a clear roadmap on how the committed amounts will be delivered.
“We urge for an increased volume of grants, rather than loans, to make it possible for emerging economies carrying high debt burdens to kickstart transformative projects.”
He concluded that Namibia has amplified its 2015 pledge in the Nationally Determined Contributions, and aspires to reduce its emissions by 91% before the end of this decade. The estimated investment required to achieve this target is approximately US$5.3 billion, 10% of which is unconditional.
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