Malawi urges action for climate-vulnerable nations ahead of COP 28

With the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 28, less than a week away, Malawi’s Foreign Affairs Minister Nancy Tembo is looking ahead at the global meeting and hopes more will be done to help least developed countries like hers face the climate crisis. To do so, Tembo would like to see the loss and damage fund materialize, as well as a debt-for-nature system and an easier-to-navigate carbon market. But as tensions continue to rise in the Middle East, Tembo is also hoping discussions will stay focused on the issues affecting the global south. Like elsewhere, Malawi has already been affected by geopolitics and external events in recent years — just as the country’s economy was starting to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia invaded Ukraine and disrupted the global supply chain, and Malawi’s GDP dropped by almost one percentage point. Then in February, Cyclone Freddy ravaged the country. “It's like everything is ganging up against us,” Tembo told Devex at the Reykjavík Global Forum. “I wish we could wish [wars] away and parties could just talk to each other,” she said. Cyclone Freddy killed hundreds and displaced over 650,000 people in the country, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency, and the country is still struggling to recover. It also impacted Malawi’s agricultural sector, which accounts for about 30% of the country’s GPD and 80% of its national export earnings. The economy had already been heavily affected by the war in Ukraine, as its agricultural sector depends on fertilizer imports — one commodity impacted by the conflict. As such, the cyclone was another big blow for the already struggling country. “Families in the southern part of Malawi [are] still food insecure,” said Tembo. One way of supporting countries like Malawi better at the climate conference, she added, will be the materialization of the long-awaited loss and damage fund, a financial mechanism to mitigate climate emergencies established during COP 27 but still lacking in implementation. For Tembo, establishing such a fund will benefit everyone, not only the countries receiving the funds. “If we do not address issues of climate change in [least developed countries], it has a negative impact on everybody in the world,” she said, explaining that she sees climate change as a driver of migration from Malawi with repercussions elsewhere. She is also appealing for help to get a better understanding and more clarity on the carbon market, a trading system in which carbon credits are sold and bought for companies or individuals to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. “It's a new phenomenon, and we do not have the technical know-how,” she said. “As we discuss the carbon markets, there is an anticipation that countries can benefit from it. But if you do not have the know-how, and you are not able to negotiate, you could be taken advantage of.” As such, Tembo is hoping COP 28 will be an opportunity to get some technical understanding on how to negotiate carbon credits to benefit from the market. Since the market’s creation, there have been concerns related to the double-counting of greenhouse gas emission reductions, human rights abuses, and greenwashing, according to the U.N. Development Programme. Malawi is also pushing for debt relief through a debt-for-nature system. “If we're willing to do adaptation instead of repaying debt, we could get forgiveness and channel these resources towards … landscape restoration, or build in adaptation and resilience,” she said. “That's something that countries from the south are beginning to agitate for.”