By Faridat Salifu
Speakers at the ongoing West Africa Climate Justice Roundtable in Abuja on Tuesday issued urgent calls for binding emissions cuts, climate reparations, protection of coastal livelihoods, and the defense of women’s economic survival across Africa.
Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), slammed global climate negotiations as “hypocritical” and “do-nothing rituals” that have failed to deliver justice for Africa over the past three decades.
“For 30 years, the world has been on a treadmill,” he said. “Real binding emission cuts ended after 2009 now polluters reduce emissions at their own pace.”
He argued that countries most responsible for global warming have not only dodged accountability but are also pushing false solutions like carbon markets and offsets that shift the burden onto poorer nations.
“Even countries that hardly pollute are being told to make bigger cuts than the ones wrecking the planet,” he said.
“It’s completely unjust.”
Dr. Bassey called on African governments to reject symbolic participation at future Conferences of Parties (COPs) and instead demand a return to legally binding emissions targets for industrialised nations.
He said Nigeria’s own climate approach mirrors the global hypocrisy, with continued gas flaring, oil spills, and the absence of cleanup or audits in the Niger Delta.
“If there were climate justice in Nigeria, we would have stopped flaring and cleaned up our oil belt long ago,” he said.
Looking ahead to COP30 in Brazil, Dr. Bassey urged African countries to unite around one demand: the recognition and repayment of climate debt rooted in centuries of exploitation, colonial plunder, and extractive emissions.
“This is not just about climate finance,” he said. “It’s about reparations, about restoring our dignity, and treating African environments and people with respect.”
From the grassroots level, a royal father, Oba Oluwambe Ojagbohunmi of Ayetoro in Ondo State delivered a sobering testimony of a community physically disappearing due to climate-induced sea-level rise and flooding.
“Eighty percent of our island is gone,” he said. “Houses, schools, industries all wiped out.”
He described how the Atlantic Ocean now invades from the south, while inland water from northern rivers pushes from the other side, leaving Ayetoro trapped in a rising, turbulent floodplain.
“Even in August when it shouldn’t rain, we get floods,” he said.
“And it rains for 14 days straight something we’ve never seen before.”
Oba Ojagbohunmi also drew attention to intensified shoreline collapse and marine pollution coinciding with the surge in oil exploration activities around the community.
“Gas flares now light up our skies like torchlights,” he said. “We believe the turbulence worsened when serious oil operations began.”
He called for urgent shoreline protection, restoration of lost infrastructure, and justice for frontline communities being doubly impacted by climate change and oil-related destruction.
“What we’ve lost cannot be quantified,” he said. “We demand justice not just sympathy.”
Also speaking at the roundtable, Dr. Ibrahima Thiam of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung turned the spotlight on climate injustice faced by women, especially in coastal communities across West Africa.
“In places near the sea, erosion is pushing people out, and from the north, desertification is closing in,” he said.
“Communities are being squeezed.”
He explained that women, particularly in countries like Senegal, form the backbone of fish processing economies, which are now collapsing as warming seas force fish stocks farther offshore.
“Women go out and can’t find fish to process — that destroys their livelihoods,” he said.
“It’s a direct threat to survival.”
Dr. Thiam stressed that West African women are among the most affected by climate change, yet are rarely centered in policy responses or adaptation planning.
He welcomed the roundtable as a vital platform for solidarity, shared strategy, and amplification of African realities in the global climate conversation.
“We need our voices to be heard globally,” he said. “We are living through climate injustice and that must change.”
Africa must stop accepting symbolic roles in global climate policy and start demanding accountability, restoration, and a just transition that leaves no community or gender behind.
