By Yemi Olakitan
The African Group of Negotiators, civil society organisations, and other non-state actors have requested that the African Union (AU) hold an African Peoples’ Summit on Climate Action to review the value of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process to Africa after 20 years.
African Civil Society believes that such a summit’s objectives should include creating indigenous strategies for combating climate change’s effects, making announcements to compel major polluters to take responsibility for their emissions and the impact of their pollution on African communities, and adopting a regional master plan for accelerating climate action. African Civil Society met in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, at the invitation of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), from February 15 to 16, 2023.
In the PACJA multi stakeholder reflections on COP27 outcomes and consultations on the stakes, challenges, and opportunities of the 28th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UNFCCC later this year in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, more than 100 stakeholders representing civil society, indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), faith movements, academia, youth, and women’s movements took part.
Lessons from COP27 were to be drawn from the consultations, which were held in conjunction with the 36th Summit of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union, and strategies were to be developed to ensure that COP28 outcomes are ambitious and on par with Africa’s pressing needs and aspirations.
Similar to how earlier thoughts and analyses that began in Kigali, Rwanda, and several other initiatives dispersed across the continent, the dialogues drew on them.
The supporters claim that these initiatives have made an effort to foster the confidence and ambition necessary to solve the worsening climate disaster, which has imperilled the livelihoods of millions of Africans and placed them in dangerously unjust yet avoidable misery.
The campaigners recommended the formation of a task force of African negotiators and advocates to develop African inputs into the recently created facility for the financing of loss and damage and provide technical support to AGN re while urging the African Union to recognise the urgency of the climate crisis in Africa and put the plight of millions losing their livelihoods and lives above personal, national, and international political and economic considerations.
They said that the task force’s objective should include evaluating current climate finance institutions and recommending tactics for an Africa-led reform effort to make climate financing relevant to Africa’s particular needs.
The meeting also encouraged the AU, the UN, and other organisations to join the African civil society in opposing Sultan al-selection Jaber’s as the designate president of COP28. Sultan al-Jaber is the head of the enormous oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
They claimed that reducing fossil fuel production and consumption to solve the climate catastrophe is directly at odds with al-commercial Jaber’s interests, adding that it is difficult to see al-Jaber presiding over objective, scientifically supported negotiations for the benefit of the most vulnerable.
Also, they urged African Heads of State to increase their contributions to the global conversation on climate change.
“Steps to strengthen the effectiveness of African negotiations should include: increasing the numerical, technical, and resource capacities of national negotiation teams, shielding negotiators from political and economic pressures, enhancing the role of young negotiators to ensure continuity, and increasing funding for climate research and analyses to support negotiation positions,” according to the African Union.
Also, they asked the AUC to enhance the continent’s capacity for conducting climate research in order to offer the evidence-base needed for the formulation of positions and policies at the national, regional, and international levels.
They suggested, as a result, that we strengthen and make the most of the Climate Research for Development (CR4D), which brings together national research and academic institutions, advocacy groups, think tanks, and other practitioners.
According to the campaigners, “Such a Council should seek to foster technical advancement and climate research through an African Climate Research Fund, among other things.”
