Put a higher price on Africa's nature, says bank chief

• Africa's natural riches 'gain value' in green economy
• Call to revalue nations' GDP to unlock climate financing
• Offset market favours buyers, says development bank head

DUBAI - Africa's vast carbon sinks and deposits of minerals vital to the green economy could be leveraged to raise funding to tackle the devastating impact of climate change on the continent, the head of the African Development Bank (AfDB) said.

African nations need $250 billion annually by 2030 to implement their national climate plans to grow cleanly and adapt to climate change, but only receive about $29.5 billion each year at present, according to the Climate Policy Initiative research group.

AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina said one solution to the shortfall is for African nations to seek unconventional but sustainable funding methods that involve a revaluation of their gross domestic product (GDP) based on their natural capital.

"We are much wealthier than we are now. Africa cannot be nature-rich and cash-poor," Adesina said.

"We have to re-base, revalue the wealth of Africa based on its natural capital. Africa has massive forest land; the Congo Basin provides an environmental good and service in terms of carbon sequestration ... all that must be re-estimated," he told Context in an interview.

Revaluating Africa's GDP based on its rich natural capital would mean governments could use the newfound capital to unlock funding from multilateral banks and financial institutions for energy transition and climate resilience projects, he said.

Natural capital

Economists have argued for decades that putting a price on nature - an idea called natural capital - is one of the best ways to save it.

In Africa, for example, researchers and officials in Gabon have been measuring how much carbon forests remove from the atmosphere so the government can try to collect on that service.

Besides the carbon-storing value of its rich natural ecoystems, Africa has about 30% of global mineral reserves, many of which are critical for green transition.

These include cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, manganese in South Africa, and lithium in Zimbabwe.

But despite having half of Africa's forests and mineral reserves critical to the green energy transition, Adesina said Congo is considered a low-income country.

There is growing consensus among African governments for a more holistic assessment of a nation's economy that goes beyond traditional GDP measures.

Initiatives such as the UN Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) look at a country's economy through a sustainability lens, considering its natural and environmental assets in addition to human and economic capital.

Since last year, several African nations have promoted their carbon sinks and rainforests that help to generate capital from the global carbon offset market, even as controversy about offsetting grows.

At present, Adesina said, the offset trade is unfairly skewed in favour of those buying them.

"It's a biased market because those buying the carbon are the ones determining the price," Adesina said. "Many African countries are trading without sufficient knowledge of these markets in what I call - a carbon grab."

(Reporting by Bukola Adebayo; Editing by Helen Popper)