Participants at a Climate Change Adaptation Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, on Tuesday, June 19, 2018 urged the international community to help Africa adapt to climate change.

The three-day conference, taking place on the African continent for the first time, brought together more than 1,000 government officials, scientists, experts and business leaders from around the world to connect, learn and inspire actions for climate change adaptation.

The conference highlighted Africa’s vulnerability to climate change. Participants agreed that the impacts of projected warming in Africa are relatively extreme compared to the historical climate condition under which human and natural system have evolved.

“Africa faces a significant challenge in adapting to climate change with the cost and damages of the climate change impacts rising rapidly with increased warming,” said Tlou Ramaru, Acting Deputy Director-General at the South African Department of Environmental Affairs.

Addressing the challenges posed by climate change will inevitable require adaptation, but the intensity of the needed adaptation measures and the scale of damages will be tightly linked to the achievements or inadequacies of efforts made to curb emission, Ramaru told the delegates.

A technical report released at the conference showed that extreme weather events, including droughts, flood and heat waves are likely to become more frequent and more severe, particularly in Africa.

According to the report, human health will be undermined by the risks associated with extreme weather events and increased incidence of transmittable diseases as well as malnutrition.

Those African populations that are already most vulnerable to climatic variability, such as poor inhabitants of informal settlements, will become even more vulnerable, the report said.

“We are therefore, looking forward to exchanging experiences and knowledge that will help the African continent to adapt to these impacts,” Ramaru said.

He shared the experiences in South Africa where unprecedented extreme weather events have occurred in the past few years due to climatic variability in the country, ranging from severe storms and cyclones to a debilitating drought over large parts of the country.

“The reality became more evident last few months when our government declared the current drought crisis across the country a national disaster,” Ramaru said.

South Africa, he said, has just developed the draft National Climate Change Bill, which is currently published for public consultations.

According to Ramary, the bill would provide for the effective management of inevitable climate change impacts through enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change, with a view to building social, economic and environmental resilience, and an adequate national adaptation response.

The biennial International Climate Change Adaptation Conference, also known as Adaptation Futures, is the world’s premier conference on climate change adaptation, organised by the UN Environment.

A beach hotel resort in Bali with a focus on sustainability has become the first company in Indonesia to take the Climate Neutral Now pledge, to measure greenhouse gas emissions, reduce where possible and offset the rest.

This pledge is one of many being taken across the globe by organisations, companies, events and individuals to curb greenhouse gas emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The hotel’s pledge is part of a general shift towards carbon neutrality and sustainability from the global tourism industry, which is responsible for around 10% of global greenhouse emissions, mainly from travel.

The company has, for example, been able to drastically reduce the amount of waste it sends to landfill and has established industry benchmarks for eliminating waste and promoting recycling in Indonesia, said Ronald Akili, founder of Jakarta-based Potato Head Family, owner and operator of the Katamama Hotel and Potato Head Beach Club.

The company reports that both the hotel and beach club serve local foods responsibly sourced from likeminded farmers and prepared using sustainable methods.

“A climate-neutral mindset is as necessary as impeccable customer service,” said Mr. Akili. “Our mission as a company is to provide good times and do good in the world. Our projects are always done as sustainably as possible because that is what the future needs; we hope to inspire both our local community and our industry peers,” added Mr. Akili.

Climate Neutral Now offsets – cancelled credits each representing a tonne of CO2 reduced or avoided – come from projects vetted and registered under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, everything from clean cookstove projects, to wind power projects that displace the use of fossil fuels, to large industrial projects.

Katamama Hotel and Potato Head Beach club has established renewable energy targets for all new and existing properties, which includes use of efficient lighting and electric appliances and the generation of its own potable water.

On a local level, the Katamama hotel has had a focus on sustainability and supported the traditions of its island home since its inception. It was built using 1.8 million bricks, each hand pressed by local artisans and fired using only biomass – a time-consuming technique typically reserved for Bali’s sacred temples.

The painstaking process both fulfilled the artistic vision of Indonesian architect Andra Matin and the company’s mission to rescue this diminishing handicraft, said Mr. Akili.

“We are delighted to have Katamama and Potato Head Beach Club as signatories of the Climate Neutral Now initiative. Their philosophy aligns with our goals of a climate neutral world that has met the Sustainable Development Goals,” said Niclas Svenningsen, Manager of Global Climate Action at UN Climate Change. “We hope they will inspire others to take action to support local and global solutions to climate change, and help deliver on the goals of Paris Climate Change Agreement and the SDGs.”

How the Tourist Industry Is Increasingly Moving towards Carbon Neutrality and Sustainability

The International Tourism Partnership (ITP), a global organisation linking the world’s most powerful hotel companies, embraced the Paris Agreement objectives and commissioned climate research in 2017. Its ITP carbon report highlights the hotel sector’s carbon reduction goals of 66% by 2030 and 90% by 2050.

Further, 16 New York hotels have joined mayor Bill de Blasio’s NYC Carbon challenge in a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their buildings by 30 percent or more in the next ten years. Similarly, Hilton recently announced it will reduce carbon emissions by 61% in line with the Paris Agreement and approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative.