As a matter of urgency governments and climate-minded stakeholders have been challenged to honour the promises they made during the previous climate change Conferences.
Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance in collaboration with Abantu For Development and Keep Your Promise Campaign made this clarion call at a media engagement held in Accra.
The media engagement also was aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of climate response measures by securing greater leadership of the Ghana Government to effectively position itself to hold the global North accountable for its promises.
In 2015, the Paris Agreement (in Article 7.1) established the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) to “enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change.
According to the organization, CoP27 saw significant progress on adaptation, with governments agreeing on the way to move forward on the GGA, which is expected to conclude at CoP28 and inform the first Global Stocktake, improving resilience amongst the most vulnerable.
In addition, COP28 is the deadline for parties to agree on financial arrangements for loss and damage. The COP27 Presidency issued the draft text on November 19, 2022, proposing the establishment of a loss and damage finance facility with the specifics to be worked out and completed in COP 28.
Available information indicates that the media engagement was to use members of the Inky fraternity to educate Ghanaian citizenry on the core issues for COP 28, for greater citizens’ participation in the call for climate justice.
News Ghana per the media engagement has gathered that the event was used to build the capacity of the media to engage state institutions on government position on expected negotiations at COP 28, building greater leadership at the COP and to advocate for gender-responsive outcomes.
The event is also expected to empower the media to enhance advocacy and movement building by civil society, women’s rights organizations, and individuals to drive campaign actions on climate justice.
The Sustainability Manager of Abantu For Development, Ms. Hamida Harrison in her delivery said climate change has emerged as the most complex environmental phenomenon bringing unprecedented negative impacts across societies and ecosystems.
She said, “Let us all articulate a collective agenda towards ensuring that Africa is well positioned with the requisite and adequate resources to effectively address climate change impacts.”
Dr. Peter Dery, Director, Environment of the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) for his part said the world was suffering from the negative impacts of climate change because of how the environment was abused for 30 years.
He therefore said there was a need to put adaptation interventions including mitigating measures in place to minimize the negative impact of climate change.
Global leaders from the United States of America and Europe according to him, were more concerned about putting mitigation measures in place rather than adaptation initiatives.
When it comes to the negotiations at COP 28, he said, Africa as a bloc will insist on adaptation initiatives being put in place to forestall the negative impacts of climate change on African countries.
