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Kenyan Environmentalists, scholar, civil society groups, farmers and community representatives have started a two week journey using a bus to South Africa as they seek support for climate justice at the forthcoming negotiation in Durban.
The activists are collecting signatures from various countries to petition African leaders to work together in support of an international climate change treaty that is responsive to the continent’s realities and the reality of science.
The 15 day pan-African road-show, dubbed ‘Trans-African Caravan of Hope’, will traverse 10 African countries lobbying for a common African agenda on climate change and climate justice ahead of the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) – Conference of Parties (COP)17 that will be taking place in Durban, South Africa later this month.
“We are targeting two million signatures from the African people in a petition to be presented to African presidents,” said Mithika Mwenda, of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), the organization behind the caravan.
The alliance is a continental coalition of civil society organisations in Africa, which promotes and advocates for climate-friendly and equity-based development.
So far, one million signatures have already been collected as the caravan now heads toward the South African region.
“Most of the existing positions and measures to protect Africa from the worsening climate conditions were crafted by experts from the developed world; hence, they have failed to bear fruit in Africa. But this time around, we need pro-African and just responses to climate change,” said Mwenda. “This is why we are targeting African presidents and African negotiators,” he added.
The ultimate aim of the road-show is to tell the African story about challenges of climate change on the continent, while at the same time making known the demand of Africa among its inhabitants and the rest of the world ahead of the Durban negotiation table.
According to the program, the African climate change story will be told through thematic songs, climate hearing sessions across countries, the media, and video shows.
The campaigners will go through Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana and finally to Durban, South Africa.
“Experience is the best teacher. And it has taught us that only African Solutions can largely solve African problems. And that is the position we should support, if at all we have to make any meaningful impact,” said Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
From 28th November to the 9th of December this year, the global community will converge in Durban for yet another round of negotiations to hammer a deal to stabilise climate system and assure vulnerable communities of a promising future.
However, most of the African civil society movements are approaching the 17th round of climate negotiations with increased skepticism towards the commitment of industrialised countries to genuinely address the growing impacts of climate change.
“Though ambitions for Durban to deliver an agreement responsive to poor and vulnerable peoples in the world are extremely low, the COP17 presents an opportunity for Africa to ‘tell the African story’ and convince the ‘stubborn’ industrliased countries that addressing climate change impacts is not a choice, but an urgent necessity,” said Mwenda.
He observed that most of the agreements under the famous Kyoto Protocol have not worked for Africa because either the concerned parties failed to play their role as expected, or because some of the ideas were not practical, especially on the African continent.
“A good example is the Clean Development Mechanism, which was a noble plan for the industrialised countries to buy carbon credits from developing countries. But maybe because it was not African driven, it has failed to take off in on the continent as expected. Most of the people participating in such carbon offsetting projects are still marred in a cloud of confusion, not even knowing how to calculate the amount of carbon they have sunk,” said Mwenda.
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