World Bank Doubles Pledge to Climate Efforts in Africa

(Bloomberg) -- The World Bank will more than double its commitment to climate adaptation and mitigation in Africa over the next five years to $22.5 billion.

“This region is particularly vulnerable to increasing floods, droughts and destructive storms,” World Bank Group Interim President Kristalina Georgieva said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “We have to do more and do it faster, or millions of people could be plunged into poverty” due to the effects of climate change.

Despite contributing 4 percent of the global greenhouse-gas emissions, more than 65 percent of the continent’s population is directly impacted by climate change, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Georgieva is in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, for the One Planet Summit that’s convened by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, French President Emmanuel Macron and Amina Mohammed, deputy secretary-general of the United Nations and a former Nigerian environment minister.

The World Bank and KTDA Power Co., a unit of Kenya Tea Development Agency Ltd. will on Thursday sign an emission-reduction purchase agreement to buy carbon credits from smaller hydropower plants.

To contact the reporter on this story: Adelaide Changole in Nairobi at achangole2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Malingha at dmalingha@bloomberg.net, Rene Vollgraaff, Ana Monteiro

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