Africa’s climate change civil societies take position at COP 24

Africa’s leading climate change civil society organizations (CSOs) have issued a joint statement dubbed the “African Position” to the Conference of Parties (COP 24) in Katowice, Poland that they believe will uphold equity, justice and act as anchor to the Paris Agreement implementation.
In a press statement read on their behalf by Mr. Mwenda Mithika, CEO Panfrican Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), the CSOs reiterated that they expected Climate Finance to continue acting as a critical issue of the negotiations in the ongoing COP.
“We expect a clear road map for the fulfillment of Climate Finance of USD 100 billion per year by 2020,” they pointed out adding that the commitment should be driven towards an ambitious Green Climate Fund (GCF) replenishment.
They also asked parties to commit towards discussing a new post 2025 quantified Climate Finance, agree on accounting rules for Climate Finance and show transparency on actual assistance provided.
“Another climate finance area is on the discussion of how Adaptation Fund will serve the Paris Agreement,” they stated calling on parties to agree on maintaining the current balance of the fund’s board membership, operational policies and guidelines for developing countries to access the funds as per the Paris Agreement.
On the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the CSOs asked the parties to agree on a single five year common timeframe for their implementation in order to enhance consistency and comparability.
“Also, this should be linked with the Global stocktaking for periodic review on the implementation of action and support,” they advised.
The CSOs further recommended the 2018 Talanoa facilitative dialogue be allowed to assess the actions of countries against both their historical responsibility and the remaining carbon budget available for 1.5oC.
“The Talanoa Dialogue must also assess the provision of support from donor countries and bear this assessment in mind when assessing the actions of developing countries,” they suggested.
The Talanoa Dialogue averred that leadership from developing countries must benefit from the process and distribute influence in the negotiations in a more representative manner.
The organizations also observed that African countries continued to suffer massive economic losses spiraling into billions of dollars and called for full implementation of the Warsaw International Mechanism that calls for a predictable financing approach for Loss and Damage in Africa.
They emphasized the need to build a long term capacity among developing countries which they pointed out should include capacity to strengthen climate change institutions.
“Further, capacity building should adopt a multi stakeholder approach, including all Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT), setting a side of additional resources and meeting of existing voluntary contributions pledges,” they noted.
On gender, the CSOs underscored the importance of gender considerations in policies that support activities on adaptation, mitigation, finance, technology development and transfer.
“We therefore, call on parties to increase their efforts in ensuring that women are represented in all aspects of the convention process and gender mainstreaming is achieved in all processes and activities of the Convention,” they explained.
By Steve Ingabo