Frazer Potani, AfricaNews reporter in Lilongwe, Malawi
He was supposed to host African leaders from all corners of the continent after an African Union (AU) Summit that was to take place in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe was rescheduled to his country's capital also AU Headquarters, Addis Ababa after Lilongwe declared that she was not ready to host Sudanese President Omar al- Bashir wanted by the International Criminal Court on alleged war crimes.
However, this one of the sons of Africa, the late 57-year-old Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who bailed out his country from the dilapidated ruins of civil war by transforming it into one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies vanished from public eye in June this year, and some Western officials had claimed he had liver cancer.
But in mid-July this year the government’s chief spokesman, Bereket Simon, refuted the reports that Meles was seriously ill.
“His health condition is very good and stable,” said Bereket adding that the prime minister was just “taking some rest.”
Nevertheless, the Ethiopian authorities in August this year disclosed that Zenawi died in a hospital “abroad.”
A European Commission spokesman even told reporters that it was in Brussels — after getting a secondary infection. His failing health had been a matter of secrecy for months.
Meles rose to the position of Ethiopia’s prime minister from as far as a former rebel leader who had dropped out of a medical school in the 1970s to fight Ethiopia’s former Communist government, and was lauded for his shrewdness and intelligence.
He was even known to be a voracious reader, able to digest mountains of figures quickly and able to recite Shakespeare at length.
Meles Zenawi was born on May 8, 1955, and grew up in the northern town of Adwa before moving to the capital, Addis Ababa, on a scholarship.
He is the third African leader to die this year after Malawi’s economist turned politician Bingu wa Mutharika and Ghana’s John Atta Mills.
Meles is survived by his wife, Azeb Mesfin, a Member of Parliament, with whom he had three children.
“The death of Mr. Meles Zenawi is a very big blow not only to Africa but the world as a whole. His death comes at a very crucial time whereby in Malawi we also lost our own leader late president Bingu wa Mutharika while in Ghana their president John Atta Mills,” said Malawi’s Vice President Khumbo Kachali who represented President Joyce Banda at Meles Zenawi’s funeral in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, while others remember Meles as part of the “new generation” of pro-democracy African leaders, a man who revived his country’s economy, ignited public infrastructure investment and branched into competitive businesses like flower farming for his country, as well as tried to help broker peace between Sudan and the newly independent state of South Sudan on one hand, while stifling dissent by cracking down on journalists and political rivals on the other, he will also be remembered for representing Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP)’s voice at a climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
During the Copenhagen conference Meles campaigned with full force for ACP countries to obtain compensation for the damage already caused by global warming and support to adapt to what threatens to their future.
“If needs be, we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent. We will use our numbers to delegitimize any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position,” charged late Meles Zenawi then.
The Copenhagen conference had then drew together 170 countries in the Danish capital to negotiate new commitments to reductions in GHGs emissions after 2012, the expiry date for the Kyoto Protocol.
Meles charged at the Western countries taking into account that the poorest countries on the planet including Malawi produce just a mere fraction of GHGs, which are the prime cause of global warming and climate change disturbances that ensue.
It is however, the same poor countries who are already-and who will be at an even greater extent in the future-the main victims, forced to endure more frequent and intense incidences of extreme weather conditions such as droughts, floods, hurricanes, mudslides and rising sea levels.
On the other hand rich developed countries on the globe according to the World Bank are responsible for 64 percent of GHGs emissions since 1850, would only bear 20 percent of the consequences while poor developing countries, which caused just 2 percent of these emissions pay 80 percent of the price.
“The damage caused to the economies of the world’s poor countries will be ten times greater than that inflicted on developed nations,” said UN Economic and Social Affairs Director Rob Vos then.
A study by the United Kingdom (UK) based risk assessment firm Maplecroft also revealed that out of the 28 countries exposed to ‘extreme risk’ of climate change impact on the globe 22 (or about 79 percent) were in sub-Saharan Africa region where Malawi is.
In Copenhagen the poorest countries were therefore, asking for compensation for present and future damage resulting from global warming and assistance in adapting to it.
They states also demanded that the countries responsible for this situation take action to reduce their GHGs emissions.
Estimates vary widely of the sums needed to compensate countries and the most suitable strategies for adaptation to the effects of climate change.
This was hardly surprising given the complexity of the issue and of the calculations required to curb climate change.
But at another AU meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia representatives claimed that the annual figure required from rich developed countries as redress for Africa would be around 45 billion Euros.
The estimate did not differ greatly from that of the UN, which declared that an annual 33.5 billion Euros would be needed between then and 2020 for the African continent alone.
On its part the World Bank calculated that 268 billion Euros would be enough to fund adaptation in poor developing countries as a whole up until 2030, the equivalent of just 10 billion Euros annually.
At Copenhagen, the countries of the south focused on asking for support for their agriculture sector, which is particularly weak and vulnerable to climate change (droughts, floods, declining rainfall).
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) already warned that poor developing countries’ total agricultural output production could drop by between 9 and 21 percent due to global warming and climate change.
These countries therefore asked for funding and technical support to adapt their crops to drought (appropriate seeds and new cultivation techniques), develop irrigation, protect themselves from floods and conserve coastal zones thretened by rising sea levels.
On its part the British charitable organization, Oxfam says that major culprits behind global warming fueling climate change on the globe are rich developed countries but those to suffer from their consequences will be the poor in poor developing countries.
The organization says climate change is a recipe for droughts and floods that are often causing food shortages, destroying homes and livelihoods, helping spread of infectious diseases, and damaging economies, fueling poverty.
Late Mutharika said climate change related problems were then already having devastating impacts on the people and Malawi’s economy.
“The most vulnerable groups to climate change in Maalwi are the poor farmers, rural communities, especially women, children, female-headed households, orphans and the elderly and those affected and infected by HIV and AIDS,” he explained then.
Mutharika is dead but his words still live and reflect the reality. Take for example 45-year-old widow Theodorah Makwana and her seven children and six grandchildren (orphaned by HIV and AIDS) from Nyanyala Village in Balaka in southern region of the country are banking on hopes to get the promised food handouts from the Joyce Banda administration to the 1.6 million Malawians in need of food aid.
In fact Theodorah and the 13 people in her family are struggling to get just a single meal daily.
They had prepared their garden in early September in the last agricultural season but their sweat was in vain because all the crops in their garden were scorched by sun before even reaching maturity stage due to a persistent drought that had hit their area resulting from climate change.
To solicit money for purchasing a single meal per day with her children and grandchildren Makwana now are tilling other people’s gardens in their village.
UNDP Resident Representative in Malawi Richard Dictus called for all stakeholders to take drastic measures to curb the adverse effects of climate change.
He warned that if climate change effects would not be controlled they would affect all social-economic development sectors including agriculture which provides the bulk of income for majority Malawians.
On his part one of Malawi’s few prominent environmentalists, Wells Utembe, said since the Kyoto Protocol expires this year a lot of people expected the Copenhagen conference to produce a legally binding climate change treaty.
“Unfortunately, the meeting could only produce a heavily-watered accord. The talks were latest in a series of UN meetings that trace their origins to the 1992 Earth Summit, which aimed at coordinating international action against climate change,” he said.
Utembe also lecturer in Environmental Science at Polytechnic (constituency of University of Malawi) in Blantyre added: “There is now almost universal agreement that significant global warming and climate change is being caused by emissions of Green House Gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide.”
Over 20 years ago, the United Nations (UN) set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to analyze and report on scientific findings and further, at the Earth Summit, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed.
“The signatories agreed to prevent ‘dangerous’ warming from GHGs and set voluntary targets for reducing emissions,” said Utembe.
As a follow up to UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997 by many countries except some big GHGs emitters such as the United States (US). The primary goal of the Copenhagen gathering was extending, or enhancing the commitments implemented by the Kyoto Protocol.
At Copenhagen industrialized countries which emit most of the green house gases demanded that developing countries such as Malawi should accept binding emission targets.
“But developing countries refused these emission limits since the climate change problem is not of their making. Developing countries, in turn demanded that industrialized countries should accept much tighter limits than those that were being considered,” said Utembe adding,“Industrialized countries refused such caps.”
After failing to agree, leaders of US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa formulated the Copenhagen Accord.
“The Copenhagen Accord has no legal status, lacks specific targets and cannot be a base for any future UN treaty,” said Utembe then.
He was supposed to host African leaders from all corners of the continent after an African Union (AU) Summit that was to take place in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe was rescheduled to his country's capital also AU Headquarters, Addis Ababa after Lilongwe declared that she was not ready to host Sudanese President Omar al- Bashir wanted by the International Criminal Court on alleged war crimes.
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