“Burkina Faso is now one of the six African countries having its long-term low-carbon strategy as required by the Paris agreement,” said Dr. Augustin KABORE, Minister of the Environment, Water and Sanitation on December 16th, 2022, during the validation of the document named ‘2050 vision for low-carbon emission and climate resilient development’.
This national document will help the government of Burkina Faso to plan the decarbonization of its economy in the long term. It provides a path for a gradual revision and strengthening of the objectives of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement. The document covers the macroeconomic impacts of the decarbonizing actions, together with socio-economic benefits such as job creation and potential for gender equality, social inclusion, and poverty reduction.
To establish the strategy, the government adopted a participatory approach including all concerned actors, including key ministries, local authorities, decentralized agencies, civil society and the private sector. The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) provided technical support to the climate and economic modelling and to the evaluation of impacts on Sustainable Development Goals, using its global expertise of long-term decarbonization planning.
The ‘2050 vision’ aims at Burkina Faso’s net emissions equaling zero by 2050. This will be achieved notably by creating a carbon sink in the agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU) sector. In practice, activities in reforestation, afforestation and halting of deforestation within the national territory will compensate for growing climate emissions in other sectors, as they allow for removing between 17 Mt CO2eq and 33.5 Mt CO2eq of CO2 from the atmosphere. At the same time, the forecast emission growth in energy, waste and industry sectors will be reduced through improved practices and technologies, above all a massive shift to renewable energy. Altogether, the implementation of the vision will allow avoiding at least 1 167 mt CO2eq of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The priority actions to achieve the zero net objective with optimal job creation and economic benefits include the wide-spread application of Sustainable Land Management and Climate Smart Agriculture practices and improved livestock production. These practices also support Burkina Faso’s increased capacity to adapt to the negative effects of climate change, such as harvest losses. Burkina Faso’s LT-LEDS is indeed one of the first of its kind to fully integrate climate change impacts into long-term scenarios.
The national validation of the document will be followed by its official adoption by the government in 2023, after which Burkina Faso will submit it to the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).