Academic discourses on the climate crisis are great, but local resilience-building actions, adaptation and mitigation should be the priority. The time to engage local action gears – resolutely – was yesterday. The next best time to act – decisively – is now.
Civil society organisations spoke for the voiceless victims of climate change during the Nairobi Africa Climate Summit. They also spoke of the urgency of locally-led actions, away from climate science, theorising, abstractions, obstructions and stalemates.
In a civil society letter addressed to President William Ruto, more than 100 organisations and climate change movements asked African leaders to avoid "false solutions such as carbon markets, which encourage wealthy countries to continue polluting" so long as they compensate victims of their recklessness.
“What has been created in the formal summit is a space for the corporations to present themselves as the solutions while marginalising the people affected by climate change,” said Teresa Anderson, the global lead on climate justice at the charity ActionAid.
Civil society demands include establishing an African-led expert group to reshape the summit's agenda, focus on renewable energy, promote transparent dialogue between citizens and policymakers and secure sufficient climate funding.
About a decade after the Paris Agreement, countries have formulated climate change policies, laws, regulations and structures for mitigation and adaptation. But adaptation gaps are still widening because of the high cost of mitigative actions.
Later this year, again, countries will be discussing actions towards achieving the collective and global climate change goals as agreed in Paris. The Paris Accord was adopted by 196 parties during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) on December 12, 2015.
There is too much emphasis on what should be done. State parties are preoccupied with international and regional conferences. They come one after the other. Always in touristic places with exclusive ambience, away from communities vulnerable to climate change.
Do you know there are ‘island villages’ in Kenya due to floods-generated gullies? Without roads and bridges, villagers have to endure several kilometres of detours to get to their homes.
A visitor from The Netherlands walked across some of the gullies in Karachuonyo in May. But rather than see a devastated and degraded landscape, she saw a potential attraction that could be marketed to nature tourists.
Children, the elderly and women suffer the most because they are far removed from ‘civilisation’. This is happening in spite of endless promises of immediate action. Meanwhile, the devastation continues, and will get worse now that meteorologists are predicting El Niño, weeks from now.
Locally, the only active and financed angle to climate change is capacity-building workshops and risk and vulnerability assessments. Fat cats discussing ‘risks’ and ‘vulnerabilities’ are largely out of touch with the devastating effects of climate change.
Not much, if any, targeted local actions are visible, especially among vulnerable communities. The climate crisis remains a subject of contention – the fad for demanding global accountability, without local reciprocity. Climate action ranks lowly in the hierarchy of priorities.
Climate change solutions, like local, regional or global battles, require different levels of preparedness, responses and strategies. The effects of climate change must be localised, humanised and solutionised. The three are key to accountability at different levels.
Glasgow Climate Pact of 2021 committed to doubling adaptation funding. But turning commitments into concrete plans and actions are far from realised. The December COP28 in the United Arab Emirates will address the same issues in Expo City, against the backdrop of touristic ambience and the classy architecture of the desert resort.
The Paris Accord sought to keep global average temperature rise this century as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Always easier said than done.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has a global membership of 197 parties. It's the parent treaty of the Paris Agreement and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
These treaties are generously quoted in the declaration of the Nairobi Africa Climate Summit. A united ‘African voice’ on the urgency of climate action is great, but this should translate into concrete and measurable local actions across African villages.