Kenya’s leader says climate change is eating away Africa’s GDP, calls for global carbon tax

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Climate change is “relentlessly eating away” at Africa's economic progress and it's time to have a global conversation about a carbon tax on polluters, Kenya's president declared Tuesday as the first Africa Climate Summit got underway.

“Those who produce the garbage refuse to pay their bills,” President William Ruto said.

The rapidly growing African continent of more than 1.3 billion people is losing 5% to 15% of its GDP growth every year to the widespread impacts of climate change, according to Ruto.

It's a source of deep frustration in the resource-rich region that contributes by far the least to global warming.

The summit's opening speeches included clear calls to reform the global financial structures that have left African nations paying about five times more to borrow money than others, worsening the debt crisis for many.

Africa has more than 30 of the world's most indebted countries, Kenya's cabinet secretary for the environment, Soipan Tuya, said.

The U.S. government's climate envoy, John Kerry, acknowledged the “acute, unfair debt.”

He also said 17 of the world's 20 countries most impacted by climate change are in Africa — while the world's 20 richest nations, including his own, produce 80% of the world's carbon emissions that are driving climate change.

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