The COP31 Action Agenda provides an opportunity to reinforce Africa’s adaptation priorities across food security, resilient health systems, resilient cities, oceans, and ecosystems. For Africa, these themes must move beyond declarations and dialogue towards delivery on the ground, complementing NAPs, the GGA, and negotiated work on agriculture and food security, rather than creating parallel processes or additional reporting burdens.
COP31 should support climate-resilient food and health systems, resilient and greener African cities through stronger infrastructure and planning, updated building standards, early-warning and climate information systems, and the restoration and protection of urban ecosystems such as wetlands, forests and green spaces. This requires accessible and predictable finance, technology transfer and capacity-building that enable African countries and cities to move from climate-resilient planning on paper to implementation on the ground.
Oceans and seas should similarly move from dialogue towards implementation
Africa’s coastal and marine ecosystems and communities face growing risks from sea-level rise, ocean acidification, pollution, and ecosystem degradation. COP31 should build on the Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue by strengthening institutional capacity and delivering accessible climate finance and technology transfer for coastal and marine adaptation, including the protection and restoration of marine ecosystems and integration of Indigenous and local knowledge. Greater coherence across relevant climate, biodiversity, and regional ocean processes should support implementation while avoiding duplication.
The political test for COP31 will be delivery, African countries and communities do not need another layer of ambitions, declarations and initiatives without the means to implement them. Action Agenda initiatives should demonstrate when and how commitments will be deliveredon the ground, mobilising additional resources and translating existing commitments into country-led implementation and tangible resilience benefits for frontline communities.
Zero waste
According to the Global Waste Management Outlook 2024, municipal solid waste generation alone, excluding industrial waste, exceeded 2.1 billion tonnes in 2023 and is projected to reach 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050.[1] When you add industrial waste, construction debris, agricultural waste, and other streams, total global waste reaches an estimated 28 billion tonnes annually. The report further states that the global direct cost of waste management was an estimated US$252 billion in 2020, and this figure does not capture the wider costs associated with pollution, poor health, and climate change resulting from poor waste disposal. Drastic action is necessary to reduce global waste generation and advance circularity.
While waste reduction and circularity have largely been framed as ways to reduce emissions from extraction of virgin materials and end-of-life treatment of products, they also have important adaptation dimensions. Food waste from pre-harvest and post-harvest practices results in food insecurity, income losses for farm families, malnutrition and other health impacts associated with lost aesthetic value of the environment due to open decomposition of organic agricultural waste. Moreover, circular economy practices, including energy recovery, reuse, recycling and upcycling, provide viable complementary adaptive livelihood alternatives for farming communities who are adversely impacted by climate change. Achieving a zero-waste economy also requires behavioural and institutional changes across society and the economy.
Africa expects COP 31 presidency to:
- Frame zero waste and circularity as beneficial for adaptation: Recognising waste generation from agriculture due to inadequate pre-harvest and post-harvest practices is important to drive investments into agricultural and food systems, including value addition technologies, cooling, modern harvesting, storage and transportation.
- Center adaptive livelihood benefits of zero waste and circularity: Achieving zero waste can create new livelihood opportunities by recovering value from waste through cottage industries, composting, waste collection, recycling and upcycling. These activities can supplement traditional livelihoods that are increasingly affected by climate change.
- Connecting zero waste and health: Poor waste disposal results in sanitary lapses, destroys the aesthetic value of the environment, and results in prevalence of infectious diseases such as cholera and dysentery. Poorly disposed solid waste also provides breeding grounds for vectors such as mosquitoes that spread malaria. Therefore, addressing waste builds community resilience and the ability to thrive amidst climate change.