The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has urged African countries, including Kenya, to utilize their green-economy potential to overcome the many challenges they currently face.
"What we are seeing from across the continent – from Morocco and Mauritania through to Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa – is enormous, significant increases in terms of investment in renewable energy infrastructure," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner told Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview conducted in Nairobi.
"Transition to a green economy is a necessity," he said. "We need to create a concrete vision; we need to start implementing this plan right away."
According to the UN, some 750 million of Africa's nearly one billion people have no access to electricity.
Steiner said Africa should invest in renewable energy to discourage dependence on traditional fossil fuels.
He said that green growth was a new way of understanding how economic development, environmental sustainability and social inclusion – in terms of access to services, employment and livelihoods – have to be brought together.
Africa's current economy is based largely on its ecological assets, one example being tourism, which depends on biodiversity in national parks and on the continent's coastlines.
Danish Ambassador to Kenya Geert Anderson noted that most African households used firewood as a main source of energy, which is harmful to both the people that use it and the planet.
"All over Africa, forests are being depleted because charcoal is the most commonly used energy source for many households, especially in rural areas," he told Anadolu Agency.
"By addressing the energy issue, by trying to use biomass, by using more sustainable energy – like solar and wind – we will be able to address energy issues," Anderson said.
The UNEP chief was in Nairobi to attend the two-day Global Green Growth Forum, which this year was held for the first time on African soil.
Over 200 delegates from around the world – including environment ministers, experts, investors and leaders from the public and private sectors – attended the event.
They discussed the obstacles to Africa's sustainable green-growth development and how to achieve sustainable growth and development through utilizing green-growth potential.
The forum was initiated by the Danish government in 2011.
-Exemplary Kenya-
Steiner, the UNEP chief, said that if Kenya transitions to a green economy it would overcome the many challenges it is currently facing.
"Kenya is a rural-based economy at the moment, so in order to address all traditional livelihoods, we have to make sure that we invest in the rural economy, which involves agriculture, forestry and access to energy," he told Anadolu Agency.
Steiner recalled that, in 2008, Kenya introduced a green-energy policy that completely transformed the East African country's energy infrastructure.
"We are standing here in the capital city of Kenya, a country that now produces 51 percent of its electricity through geothermal power sources," he said.
Steiner noted that in 2013, some 80 percent of Kenya's 44 million people had relied on firewood for cooking and lighting.
"Thanks to geothermal energy, Kenya has been able to provide 350,000 people with access to electricity," said the UN official.
He added that Kenyan Vice-President Isaac Ruto had told him that this number "might triple this year."
"Kenya can look to the next ten years as a period in which it will be able to connect the vast majority of its people to electricity," Steiner asserted.
"Renewable energy has a future," he added.
(Anadolu Agency)
