Heads of state and political representatives pose for a group photo during the official opening of the African Climate Summit on September 4, 2023 in Nairobi. KHALIL SENOSI / AP
It was only supposed to be an information meeting on the draft final declaration of the first African climate summit on Monday September 4th in Nairobi. Unfortunately, the text prepared by Kenya and the African Union Secretariat was heavily criticized by environment ministers who met behind closed doors in the evening, while the heads of state who must adopt the declaration arrived in the Kenyan capital a little earlier. The declaration must set out the common position of the 54 African countries in the climate negotiations, the next stage of which will take place in Dubai in December during the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP28).
While the summit was intended to demonstrate the continent’s unity in the fight against climate change, Monday’s meeting turned into a series of grievances that revealed significant disagreements. Around ten countries took the floor, starting with the Comoros, which holds the rotating presidency of the African Union. “We asked that the role of the oceans and the blue economy be mentioned in the text,” lamented Houmed Msadié, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment.
Botswana complained that the issue of climate change adaptation, which is “the central issue” for the survival of millions of Africans, was not being made clearer. And Egypt demanded that the goal of doubling international funding for adaptation be included in the text. South Africa’s Environment Minister Barbara Creecy said her country would not support “calls for a new global tax system to finance large-scale climate action.” Nigeria also expressed reservations about this.
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But it was the Republic of Congo’s environment minister, Arlette Soudan-Nonault, who had the harshest words against a vaguely worded text that does not concretely define the continent’s contribution and expectations to polluting countries. In particular, it highlights the lack of any reference to the ecosystem services of the Congo Basin forests. “It is a text that commits the continent to COP28 and far beyond. “We cannot accept a statement in which certain passages present the situation in such a shocking way for Africans,” she lamented. Zambia, which chairs the group of African negotiators, decided in a manner familiar to COP regulars: “There is no consensus. »
At the podium, Kenya’s Environment Minister Soipan Tuya and African Union Agriculture Commissioner Josefa Sacko accepted the bronca and assured that the text would be revised to reflect governments’ expectations. The lack of transparency in which the statement was written appears to have opened the door to all sorts of speculation. A first draft was presented at the meeting of environment ministers in Addis Ababa in mid-August so that it could be changed.
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“There cannot be two African positions”
Anyone could send their suggestions to the African Union Secretariat. But the discussions stopped there and the ministers belatedly found a final version in Nairobi that fell short of their expectations and was even very far from the positions previously adopted. “There cannot be two African positions, the one drawn up in Nairobi and that of our negotiating group,” warns the Ethiopian minister. Some, speaking on condition of anonymity, question the role of the McKinsey firm, which President William Ruto turned to to organize the summit.
A demonstration for action on climate change in Nairobi on September 4, 2023 during the African Climate Summit. BRIAN INGANGA / AP
A reproach that several hundred civil society organizations did not shy away from in an open letter to the Kenyan president on the eve of the summit. They were concerned about the consultancy’s influence and criticized it for putting “pro-Western interests at the expense of Africa” on the agenda.
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These organizations, which demonstrated in Nairobi on Monday, believe that the positive green growth narrative promoted by William Ruto does not give enough space to the issue of access to electricity, from which 600 million people are still deprived, and adaptation acknowledges vulnerable populations. “Africa must not accept false solutions. The continent is ravaged by climate change and the carbon markets that the summit seeks to promote will not serve climate justice,” warns Augustine Njamnshi of the Pan-African Alliance for Climate Justice (Pacja).
Either way, Kenya has less than twenty-four hours to prove that Africa can speak with one voice.