EU: Time to end exploitation of Africa through climate reparations
Heavy floods left most of the Moria replacement refugee camp in Lesbos under water this week. The approximately 13000 inhabitants of the camp, already displaced by a devastating fire last month, are again without shelter. Meanwhile access and aid to migrant camps in Kenya were halted due to Covid-19 infection worries. These camps hold over 700, 000 refugees, some who have been residents for over 20 years, fleeing drought and desertification in the Sahel region. The migrant question, a huge blot on the conscience of Europe, is on the agenda of the EU Council meeting starting in Brussels today.
Unlike the borders created by European colonial powers in Africa, and the neat agenda topics of the EU Council meeting, climate change doesn’t recognise artificial boundaries. We need discussions in the council chamber and plans that address issues as interconnected and take account of Europe’s historical meddling hand.
Top of the Council agenda are Covid-19 and EU-UK relations. The other items up for discussion are climate change and Africa. As we see above, these aren’t pockets of discussion without cause and consequences on one other.
The quadrennial AU-EU summit scheduled to take place earlier this month was scrapped due to the current global pandemic but “issues” and agreements between the two continents are up for review, so Africa made the list of business to do without the presence of the AU at the table.
However, the EU cannot talk about climate change one session and the problems of Africa in another as though they are separate.
Speaking as if this were purely a humanitarian, political and food aid crisis to prevent migration into Europe is shifting the burden of climate change further onto poor or developing communities that did little to cause the impending disaster.
The EU Council has a climate neutrality by 2050 objective and has commissioned a 2030 Climate Target Plan, attempting to commit to 1.5 degree warming. The Council will gauge Europe’s progress towards this commitment in the two-day sitting.
Then the Council will discuss peace and stability in the horn of Africa, piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, and political instability which leads to radicalism and migration in the Sahel region.
Framed differently, these issues boil down to determining how to stop African migration to Europe, and how to curtail activities which threaten European movement and resource extraction on the continent.
Much of the above instability is caused predominantly by extreme drought in the regions of focus. Rapidly expanding desertification around the Sahara and regular droughts through Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti have left approximately 13 million people in need of emergency assistance. A devastating number from 2016, before the recent downturn and lockdowns of Covid-19. The burden and ethics of refugee placement is insurmountably larger within Africa but politically ignored in Europe.
To plan for climate resilience in one session, and a piecemeal aid package for Africa on the other with some condescending lessons in governance will not solve the climate problems we face. Europe has to take responsibility for the past emissions and extractions that have brought us to where we are.
Africa needs reparations, not conditional aid. Repayments of colonial theft and backing of grants for Green New Deal development on the continent will create opportunities rather than dependence.
Many European firms and businesses continue to benefit from the extractive model of cheap labour and resources from Africa, as they have for centuries, and destabilisation in the region is a tactic to maintain big profits. Just as the Belgians used war and torture to extract rubber in the 19th Century, the rush for coltan and cobalt that will fuel much of the industrial green energy transition in the form of batteries and motherboards — and still relies on a system of chaos in the DRC.
The EU needs to address historical and current exploitation in Africa if we are to address climate change and drought and migration. These issues affecting Africa can be solved by the ingenuity of people of the continent, if the EU Council stops passing the buck back down as though the problems are Africa’s alone and inflicted backwards upon Europe.
African networks and organizations are joining together to draft a people-led, crowdsourced Green New Deal for Africa which is aligned to the Paris agreement. This holistic view on development and resilience is a plan by and for Africa. The inequality of development has to be included in both Europe and Africa’s climate deals if we are to attain our shared 1.5 degree warming targets.
Europe has to pay it forward, think bigger and fund such initiatives of hope rather than jails of desperation in modern concentration camps.
It is time for the EU to acknowledge and include in their climate plans a promise to restore the damage it inflicted on Africa.