Mozambique needs to spend $35.8bn on climate change mitigation measures by 2030, representing 30% of GDP, according to Paulo Correa, leader of the program on climate and development at the World Bank. That is the level of investment needed until 2030 to achieve climate resilience of human, physical and natural capita. (Zitamar 30 Mar)
It is an impossible sum. The cost in the seven years up to 2030 would be $5.1bn per year. Aid to Mozambique for the past five years has averaged just over $2bn per year. So all aid to Mozambique in the next seven years would pay less than half these costs. Mozambique’s GDP is about $16bn per year.
And gas cannot pay for this. The Ministry of Finance in 2018 estimated total government revenue from gas to be $35bn to $64bn but that significant revenue would only be earned starting 8 years after the first gas is produced. With first gas now delayed to 2027 at the earliest, that would be 2035. So there will be no gas money to protect against the climate emergency. And with damage continuing to grow, all of the gas money will be needed to defend against the rising temperatures caused by the continued use of gas and other fossil fuels.
Beria says it needs $450 mn just to combat erosion caused by cyclones, according to city Councillor for Construction and Urbanization, Augusto Manhoca. (Noticias 29 Mar)
“Mozambique needs to build robust infrastructure that can withstand climate change,” the World Bank senior specialist in natural resources management, Franka Braun, said in Beira on 24 March. But how?
Correction: Cyclone Freddy was the fourth of a new type of climate change cyclone, following Cyclone Gombe on 12 February 2021; Cyclone Idai, 13 March 2019, one of the worst cyclones to hit Africa; and Cyclone Delfina, New Year’s eve 31 December 2002. Until these four, this pattern had never happened before, where a cyclone makes landfall on Mozambique, goes inland and turns around and goes back into the Mozambique Channel picking up more energy and water, and hits Mozambique a second time. (revised pdf of Bulletin 624 on https://bit.ly/Moz-624c)
