WINDHOEK - Members of the Africa Progress Panel recently expressed disappointment at the failure of the Rio+20 summit to deliver meaningful and measurable commitments to combat climate change and its effects across Africa and in other developing regions.

Former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, now the chairman of the Africa Progress Panel, said the lack of commitment to defined and measurable sustainable development goals at the Rio+20 Summit is a profoundly disturbing outcome.

“We have an obligation to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, who bear the brunt of the global ecological crisis - and to future generations to do better,” Annan explained. Other Panel members called for urgent action to help poorer nations and individuals make and meet measurable commitments.

“I strongly agree with my colleague, Mr. Kofi Annan, in calling for a financial transactions tax as an innovative method for mobilising development and climate change finance,” said panel member and former MD of the IMF, Michel Camdessus.

Muhammad Yunus, a member of the Panel and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, drew particular attention to the need for strengthened land-rights protection and global standards for land acquisition.

“In the last decade, speculators have bought up over 134 million hectares of land in Africa - an area larger than the UK, France and Germany combined, threatening the livelihoods and the futures of the poor people who often live on this land,” he said.
The Africa Progress Panel (APP) consists of ten distinguished individuals from the private and public sector, who advocate on global issues of importance for Africa and the world.

The panel’s unique convening power allows it to focus on complex and high-impact issues such as global governance, sustainable economic development, peace and security, food security, financing for development, climate change and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 

However, country’s like Namibia deemed the Rio+20 summit outcome document a success, although with some reservations saying that the document will be meaningless unless its concepts and actions are implemented at the national and local levels.

“The document has given us ideas and can guide interventions for tackling some of the issues [dealt with], each of which are vitally important to Namibia’s future development,” the Ministry of Environment Tourism (MET) said recently.

According to the MET, it is up to Namibia now to go about implementing some of these potential solutions.