Hello! For our new subscribers, Green Rising aims to deliver concise and useful reporting on the continent’s green economy ahead of the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi. We start high-level, then get into the nitty-gritty.

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⏳ Today’s reading time: 4 mins

1. 🚁 Heli view: How Africa leads on climate

Some history can be helpful to understand Africa’s global climate leadership.

The evolution of the continent's modern green economy started in Nairobi with the 1972 creation of UNEP. The first African to lead the UN’s environment programme was Mostafa Kamal Tolba (see above) three years later.

Why it matters: At the time, Africa claimed the global mantle of the emerging environmental movement with support from others in the Global South:

• Mexico City, New Delhi and Cairo scrapped their applications to support a sub-Saharan location

• Countries in the Global North had preferred Geneva but folded

The future: In the decade that followed, disease and food insecurity were rarely attributed to global factors. But that changed at the turn of the century.