Addressing climate change will require all of society to adopt transition pathways to reduce emissions to net zero across the world. More than 100 countries and the European Union, as well as over 1,500 companies with combined revenues of over $11.4 trillion, have already made pledges to achieve net zero emissions in the next few decades. While much work has been done to design such transition pathways for developed countries, there is still a need to understand what transition pathways could look like for developing countries.
This need is particularly urgent for Africa. The continent's expected growth projects that it will experience a steady increase in energy demand across all sectors in the coming decades. Delivering a just transition requires transition pathways to be developed for Africa that take into account both decarbonisation and Africa's specific growth and development needs that are compounded by the continent’s vulnerability to climate change.
This event will bring together government leaders, policymakers, finance professionals, leading corporates, and civil society to discuss the what net zero means for Africa – the objectives and motivations driving net zero targets in the African context, what the transition pathways may look like, the role of carbon offsets and other decarbonization strategies, and criteria to measure the integrity of commitments, and how public and private organisations can collaborate to help achieving them.
This event is co-organised by CDC Group, the UK government's development finance institution, and the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC), a multilateral partnership convened by the World Bank to advance the carbon pricing agenda. CDC Group invests to address the most urgent developmental needs in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Under its new Climate Change Strategy, CDC aims to achieve net zero emissions across its investment portfolio by 2050. CPLC is launching a new taskforce on achieving net zero, one of whose objectives is enhance the understanding of pathways and strategies to achieve such goals and targets.
