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CAPPA Pushes For Loss And Damage Fund For African Communities At COP28

…Presents Documentary On Climate Change Impact

By Obiabin Onukwugha

The push for Climate Justice took a different tone at the ongoing Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai, as the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) presented a documentary on the impact of climate change on frontline communities in Africa.

CAPPA is a Pan-African organisation that is passionately devoted to working with African communities to build partnerships with them towards taking collective social action towards the promotion and defence of the rights of peoples.

This documentary, which was presented on Tuesday, exposed the impact of mining and oil extraction in communities, thereby reinforcing the call for a Loss and Damage mechanism that will address the plight of local communities across Africa.

Titled “Climate Change: Africa’s Cooked and Sinking Communities”, the documentary highlighted the threats and devastation that climate change has brought to the people using Taita Taveta County, Kenya; Kambele, Cameroun; and Ayetoro, Ondo state, Nigeria as setting.

The documentary opened in Kenya’s Taita Taveta County, where drought has altered the livelihoods of people in the community, who were once known for agriculture and animal husbandry.

According to the documentary, the predominant agrarian community has been transformed by climate change into arid terrain where farmers are compelled to adapt by becoming emergency miners, thus further exacerbating climate-related challenges.

Gideon Ndambuki, a resident in Taveta, said, “This land which you are seeing here was used for farming for all of our lives. But things have changed. We used to plant cassava here, we used to plant sweet potatoes here, we used to plant green grams here.

“For the last three years, we haven’t gotten anything from this land. We have been waiting for rain for all this time, and it has not rained. So, this land now is no longer productive, this land is no longer suitable for agriculture due to changes in the climate.”

In Kambele, residents battled landslides, incredible heat, and irregular weather patterns as a result of indiscriminate gold mining.

The documentary revealed that close to 150 persons have reportedly died from landslides and open pits dug by gold miners, besides the varying degrees of health problems residents battle daily.

Kulu Florin, a native of Ngaland Le Trois, said the mining-induced changes in the weather patterns were causing hardship to the community.

“We are in October. Since I was born, we have always known the month of October to be the rainy season.

“The sun hardly came out, but now we are experiencing climate change. I am wondering if this continues till December or even January, are we going to live in the swamps?

“Aside from that, we used to experience flu during the dry season, but since the Chinese arrived with their toxic chemicals, we no longer know when the flu starts or when it ends,” Florin said.

For Ayetoro community in Ondo State, South-South Nigeria, it is the sad story of a city sinking because of ocean surges.

This, according to the locals, became aggravated immediately after oil extraction facilities were installed close to its shoreline.

The Oba of Ayetoro, Oba Ojagbohunmi Oluwanmbe asserted that the ocean surges started in the 1980s after oil exploration began in the community.

“It used to be a normal cycle of the sea, to take a few portions of land away, and after six months, it would add that same portion or even more; that was normal.

“But, in the latter part of 1980, our people noticed that the rate at which it was taking the soil was higher than the rate at which it was returning it.”

Commenting, CAPPA’s Executive Director, Akinbode Okuwafemi, stated that the plight of the communities and several others across the continent reinforced the need for sustainable climate finance for the continent.

He said the West owed Africa and the global south climate debt and it was the time to start paying.

“These sad stories make it imperative for COP28 to come up with a predictable, democratic, and sustainable mechanism for operationalizing Loss and Damage that will address the impact of climate change in frontline communities across Africa,” Oluwafemi stated.

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