Madrid - Environment, Forestry, and Fisheries Minister Barbara Creecy has urged countries not to "abandon their quest to promote ambition in their search for compromises into climate change".
Creecy was addressing journalists on the last day of the closing session of United Nations (UN) COP25 meeting in Madrid, Spain, on Saturday.
Creecy, who was also chairing the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), said adaptation finance remains crucial for Africa’s people in the face of deteriorating living conditions as a result of extreme weather phenomena associated with climate change.
"Scientific reports presented during the course of this conference strongly indicate that worse is yet to come," she said.
“The African continent remains convinced that all three global goals in the Paris Agreement must be advanced with equal determination. Across Africa, research is indicating that countries are already spending between two and nine percent, on average, of their GDP on adaptation measures,” she said.
Floods, drought, advancing desertification, and storms took their devastating toll on communities; resources that should be going to meeting social and economic needs were diverted to emergency response.
“We urgently require new, predictable, and adequate financing for adaptation beyond voluntary donor assistance. Without adequate means of finance, developing countries face almost insurmountable barriers to participating in the war on climate change. It is important that the search for solutions to this continues," Creecy said.