Talks should focus on Africa

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP 20) kicked off with an all-fired-up plenary. UNFCCC’s boss Christina Figures captured the mood: “Here in Lima, to aspire to great heights ourselves, we must draw several critical lines of action”.

The most striking part of the plenary was the presentation of the results outlined in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. That science points to human activities as the largest cause of increased greenhouse gases emissions (GHG) is not disputable. And according to the Fifth Assessment Report presented by IPCC Chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the largest percentage of this GHG so far (35 per cent) have emanated from the energy sector. This is a worrying trend in the sense that there is  little investment in energy options to reverse this trajectory. The ever-growing population and expanding economic environments immensely rely on this commodity yet in most cases, it is not clean and sustainable enough.