Morocco Reaffirms Climate Commitment at One Planet Summit

Morocco is evidencing at the highest level its firm attachment to achieving the global climate agenda. The participation of King Mohammed VI at the One Planet Summit in Paris is a reaffirmation of Morocco’s keen interest in protecting the environment and curbing climate change effects.

The One Planet summit, co-hosted by the United Nations and the World Bank, brings together world leaders in Paris to mark the second anniversary of the climate change plan agreed in the French capital in 2015 and entered into force on November 4, 2016, few days prior to the UN Climate Summit, COP22, in Marrakech.

The French president Emmanuel Macron had decided to hold the summit after Donald Trump announced the US withdrawal from the historic warming pact, which aims to contain the average rise in temperature below the critical 2°C threshold, at a time the planet is always moving towards +3°C compared to the pre-industrial era.

The participation of the sovereign, who is accompanied by Crown Prince Moulay El Hassan, in this global event sends a strong message regarding Morocco’s endeavors to gather support for global climate efforts.

Morocco has been campaigning for a multilateral approach to deal with climate change challenges, while calling for countries of the North to provide the countries of the South, especially the least developed, with urgent financial and technical support to enhance their capacities and enable them to adapt to climate change.

At the national level, Morocco vowed to generate 52% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 in a move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At the continental level, the Kingdom launched the Adaptation of African Agriculture (AAA) initiative, which seeks to restore African ecosystem balance and enable countries of the continent to have access to climate funds. The initiative seeks to mobilize 30 billion dollars.

At COP22, Morocco and the World Bank agreed to launch the “Green Growth Infrastructure Facility for Africa” tasked to spur green economy on the African continent and pull together environment-friendly private and public investments.

On the sidelines of COP22, Morocco hosted the Africa Action Summit. The event, first of its kind, was marked by a landmark speech of King Mohammed VI who stressed that Morocco makes its expertise in renewable energies available to its African partners.

The Africa Action Summit adopted a final statement laying out a forward-looking vision for a common African action to tackle climate change, highlighting that Africa is disproportionately affected by global warming and reaffirming urgent need to make climate action a lever of emergence in order to build an inclusive, sustainable development mode.

King Mohammed VI has in November reiterated commitment to Africa through calling for a “Green Revolution” in the continent. The call was made in a speech at the 10th “World Policy Conference”.

This “Green Revolution” should be based on a large-scale overhaul of technology and production methods suited to the African context and consistent with the requirements of climate change, the King underscored.

Climate remains a landmark feature of Morocco’s commitment to Africa in line with a south-south cooperation approach that focuses on pooling efforts to address common challenges. In fact, countering climate change is a means to safeguard the future of young generations, curb calamities such as migration and displacement and promote agriculture.