Theme:
This side event will openly interrogate Africa’s vulnerability to climate change, explore the multiple facets of vulnerability, causes and how best to address them in a just, inclusive and equitable way; ensuring that humanity, livelihoods and ecosystems are safe. It advances the urgent need for adaptive responses, low emissions, and sustainable development that delivers a resilient and prosperous planet for all. It recognizes that climate adaptation requires more than just technical fixes but must importantly drive systemic transformation that is anchored on justice including recognitional, procedural, distributive and restorative justice to advance African-led pathways, knowledge equity and grant-based finance for climate adaptation.
Rationale/Background:
The vulnerability of African societies to climate change is structurally produced and perpetuated. The continent’s climate vulnerability is reproduced by a longstanding system that extracts, exploits, and excludes. It is the cumulative result of colonial legacy, persistent export dependency, and rising sovereign debt with forty-five of Africa’s 54 countries remaining heavily dependent on low value added or raw agricultural and extractive exports. The current rush for strategic minerals in Africa further drives the continent’s dependency and extraction. Instead of the minerals becoming levers for Africa’s prosperity, their supply chain is already captured by multinational corporations that extract and export them in raw form denying local communities’ green jobs and economic prosperity while also exposing them to unchecked environmental pollution, unsafe working conditions, land dispossession, and limited economic benefits.
Financing critical sectors for climate adaptation including agriculture, water infrastructure, ecosystems, health, culture and heritage in Africa continue to suffer under the weight of sovereign debt burden estimated at roughly USD 746 billion. Already, nearly 60% of Africans live in countries that spend more on debt servicing than on health or education. Although Africa requires around USD 70 billion each year for adaptation, only about USD 14 billion is currently provided, with 58% of that financing delivered as loans. This creates an adaptation investment trap, where each climate disaster increases debt burdens, leaving countries less prepared for and unable to withstand future climate shocks. These imbalances also extend to climate knowledge and participation. Around 78% of funding for Africa-focused climate research is channeled to institutions in the Global North, while only 14.5% reaches African institutions.
A Just Transition must fundamentally shift from an overfocus on technical adjustments toward transformation of the systems, finance and knowledge hierarchies that produce risk, inequality and vulnerabilities in the first place.
Objectives:
- Present the Just Transition for Adaptation Framework and Vision for Africa including its four justice dimensions; recognitional, procedural, distributive, and restorative justice as an operational lens for adaptation policy.
- Provide evidence of the failure of the debt-based finance model and make the case for grant-based finance understood as repayment of climate debt rather than aid.
- Present local community evidence of vulnerability and how they struggle to use their limited resources, indigenous and local knowledge to adapt to climate change where international financial support has failed.
- Explore realistic pathways and opportunities for the just transition in Africa to deliver effectively for both adaptation and development while ensuring sustainable prosperity for all.
Target audience:
Civil society organizations and networks, policy makers and negotiators, adaptation finance institutions, Indigenous and community organizations, researchers, and youth.
Organisers:
Power Shift Africa, Robert Bosch Stiftung GmbH (RBS), Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre and Support Humanity Cameroon (SUHUCAM).