ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia

Although Africa is contributing the least to global emissions, the continent is already suffering from the “most adverse impacts” of climate change, a UN expert said on Wednesday.

Chief of Staff of the UN Economic Commission for Africa Aida Opoku-Mensah’s remarks came during a meeting of African environmental, climate and agriculture experts, and policymakers ahead of the Climate Change Action Summit to be hosted by the UN chief on Sept. 23 in New York.

With its motto “Stepping up climate action for a resilient Africa – a race we can and must win”, the meeting, under the auspices of the African Union, is preparing for the global summit.

“[…] the continent contributes under 6% of emissions, with per capita emissions of only 0.8 tons per year, well below the global mean of 5 tons, and far lower than that from other regions such as Europe and Asia,” she said.

“And yet climate change poses an existential threat to the continent,” she said, referring to the cyclones Idai and Keneth that “caused substantial devastation in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe resulting in more than 1,000 deaths, huge infrastructure loss and hundreds of thousands of people needing humanitarian assistance.”

It is the eighth meeting since the Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) became operational in 2011 with financial support from the European Union, Britain, Norway, Nordic Development Fund, Sweden and USAID.

For his part, James Kinyangi, a representative of the African Development Bank, said: “We know that weather and climate related disasters have the potential to cripple record economic growth across Africa.”

The greatest impacts, according to him, were already being felt in the energy, agriculture, health and infrastructure sectors as power supplies were being disrupted, hunger and food insecurity getting worse, new and emerging diseases surfacing and transport and regional trade being interrupted.

The meeting came at the heels of the G7 Summit that saw the leaders of the industrialized world failing to agree on Climate Change and, with the U.S. President Donald Trump continuing to characterize climate change as a hoax.