10 Jahre nach Paris: Können die Klima-COPs für Afrika liefern? (EN)

Summary

Background

The sad reality of climate change negotiations is that, since the Paris Agreement, the prevailing annual COP process has not been fit for the urgent purpose of slowing climate change. If the current pace of negotiation had been applied to the 1987 Montreal Treaty on Ozone depletion, New Zealand and Australia would now be uninhabitable, while Europe and Africa would be using 50+ sunscreen in winter. The urgency is even more stark for Africa, which disproportionately bears the impacts of climate change, to which they have contributed very little. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, many African countries are already losing up to 5% of their GDP annually to climate-related impacts, a burden that is projected to worsen significantly as climate risks intensify over time.¹ For instance, the 2022 flooding event in Nigeria was estimated to have caused total direct economic damages of up to USD 9.12 billion – equivalent to roughly 2% of the country’s GDP² - and resulted in the deaths of more than 660 people, alongside the displacement of over 1.4 million others and widespread destruction of homes, farmlands and infrastructure.³ It follows from ‘once in a century’ floods in 2012 which had their own devastating impacts. The situation has been even more severe in the Horn of Africa, where recurrent droughts have devastated livelihoods and economies. In Somalia, for instance, the 2016-2017 drought resulted in estimated economic losses of about USD 1.7 billion (nearly 37% of the country’s GDP), affecting agriculture, livestock and water resources, and pushing millions into food insecurity and displacement.⁴

The confused state of climate COPs, which cannot decide if they are a treaty negotiation or an annual industry convention, results in 50,000 plus attendees in an average year and many more in a popular destination year such as Dubai (81,027, excluding support staff).⁵ Only a fraction of attendees are there for the interminable negotiations, while the rest are there for what is in effect a disorganised annual trade fair built around the campaigns, institutions and businesses working on the many manifestations of the fight against climate change. 

It also cannot be repeated enough that a sizable fraction of attendees are from industry bodies fundamentally interested in slowing action on climate change. Last year Global Witness echoed earlier analysis, finding that there were 1,773 recorded lobbyists for fossil fuel actors in Baku.⁶ Even the UNFCCC has begun to recognise the confusing scale and complexity of the talks for negotiators, acknowledging ‘the increasing number of agenda items and mandated events⁷ during the 2025 Bonn summer meetings, where a key concern for Brazil as the host was to maintain a reasonable level of focus in Belem.

Africa's policymakers should care about this state of affairs because the UNFCCC COPs are now in a seemingly endless loop of identifying the huge sums needed to address carbon impacts, with an assured annual failure to deliver anything even in the ballpark of the identified needs. For example, despite numerous pledges, global climate finance commitments have neither matched the scale of Africa’s urgent needs nor been delivered with the speed required for meaningful impact. 

There have been increasing calls, particularly by developed countries, to expand the contributions of private finance towards meeting developing nations’ climate needs,⁸ which is particularly problematic for Africa, where many nations already face unsustainable debt burdens. While this approach has some positive aspects – bringing efficiency, scalability, innovation and determined focus on returns – private finance may not be patient enough to provide sustained resources for adaptation challenges in African countries, particularly in vulnerable, high-risk communities. This is particularly important as adaptation financing has taken the centre stage ahead of COP30 as Africa’s major negotiation item.

Even though we are writing at the start of the annual negotiations, it seems safe to bet that Belem will worsen the problem of unfulfilled promises. There may be some – hopefully significant – support for an innovative Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) championed by Brazil and Indonesia, but this will likely contribute to the serious bandwidth problem for developed nations facing budget challenges in meeting their climate finance commitments.

Regarding progress for Africa, the evidence of the ongoing dysfunction and dangerous underperformance of the endless COP process is very easy to access. When comparing the communique for the recently concluded Africa Climate Summit (ACS2), one can discern a sharpened focus and language. However, core issues, such as the calls for substantive and urgent boosts in climate and adaptation finance, have remained largely unchanged and unaddressed by the international community since the inaugural summit two years prior. 

It is noteworthy that loss & damage funding – a historic commitment secured at Egypt’s COP27 to help compensate Global South countries for the cost they face in adapting to a world heated by emissions from the Global North – is no longer emphasised, in seeming recognition that the issue is too marginalised to even be tabled effectively this year. It featured prominently neither in positions from African negotiators and nations during the Bonn Climate meetings, nor at the African Climate Summit in Ethiopia. For an initiative which was vaunted as an advancement of the needle of climate justice and responsibility assignment, the lack of progress is a disappointing feature of COP inertia, particularly for African countries who are expected to be key beneficiaries.

The nascent ACS2 response to unfulfilled promises has been to emphasise Africa’s ability to lead the way on the responses needed from the continent and globally. There is an inherently defensible line here, as both authors of this article have experience of the ‘green shoots’ emerging in nature-based projects in Nigeria. Yet Africa also needs to step up its marketing game. ACS2 organisers called for submissions to an Africa Solutions Flagship Report, which at the time of writing seems to still be unpublished.

The trade fair aspect of COPs provides Africa with a valuable opportunity to share ideas and identify opportunities, but it is highly questionable whether COPs are now the right time and place for companies, NGOs, institutions and whole countries to showcase their wares. The attraction of a global forum is obvious, but there are good reasons to consider steering all this marketing towards the growing number of city, thematic and regional gatherings that are often geared much more effectively towards practical action, spurring investment and impacts.

Africa (and all sensible nations) also need to pay attention to the trajectory of COP discussions and break with a focus on the endless annual cycle of line-by-line negotiations over the implementation of what amounts to a non-binding treaty. The effectively unanimous consensus at the heart of the Paris Agreement and all subsequent negotiations succeeded in bringing everyone to the table. However, after a decade, it is painfully obvious that this is not a methodology for tough decisions. Even modest-sized issues such as who hosts the next COP can be held up indefinitely, as evidenced by the current tussle over who will host COP31. The watering down of language and decisions, while at the same time reporting dangerous trends, has become an annual COP ritual. We expect to see the same at the end of November this year. Over the next two years, COP negotiations will move to either Australia and the Pacific or possibly Turkey, and then onwards to Africa. This is a strategic swing in hosting. The opportunities in setting the agenda would be very costly to ignore.

In this regard, among many others, the proposed Pacific Island co-hosts of COP31 share a common grievance with Africa: The costs of any delay in effective action will be felt most keenly by their nations. The opportunity for improved teamwork on advocacy and the highlighting of investment pathways seems clear, but requires collaboration from this year forward.

The 2025 African Climate Summit (ACS2) is emerging as a useful platform for galvanising African countries towards collective resource mobilisation and coordinated action. The second edition of the summit, held in Addis Ababa, demonstrated some ongoing limitations, but also a clear progression and sharper focus: Whereas the Nairobi Declaration was largely aspirational, ACS2 delivered concrete commitments to mobilise finance driven by African countries themselves. Notably, the summit established the African Climate Facility (ACF), with an ambition to raise USD 50 billion annually as catalytic financing to accelerate innovation and scale locally-driven climate solutions. This progress, though limited, was sufficient for us to include among the responses we suggest for Africa on the 10th anniversary of the Paris agreement.

Wherein lies the way forward for African countries?

First of all, assuming there is not a complete break with the COP process, African countries should break with the tradition of last-minute COP organisation and settle the hosting modalities for COP32 early on. It will be a useful warm-up for African Unity to ensure that a solid 18 months of preparation can go into a COP process for 2027, where all involved understand that much of the benefit is derived from the negotiation process that will run throughout the year ahead of the COP finale. Hammering out a position early and advocating for that position over the course of the trajectory from before COP31 through to a COP32 finale may prove to be a tie-breaker for Africa. Assuming Australia ends up hosting COP31 with its Pacific partners, there are a number of climate impact and least developed country (LDC) priorities that these hosts have in common with Africa. A shared, much firmer line on the need for serious escalation of action to stave off a 2.5C world also seems within reach.

The obvious model to consider for COP32 is the co-hosting option, which would help spread the infrastructure and logistic demands of hosting the COP itself and emphasise the sharing of events throughout the year and the benefits of any spinoffs.⁹ African countries need to carefully weigh the cost-benefit of some of the choices made by Brazil and take a pragmatic view of the lessons. The USD 300m-500m price tag for hosting a COP is also a major issue, one which cannot be left to a hopeful pitch between competing countries’ approaches – even though the argument can be made that countries recoup some of their investment through direct and indirect spending by the attendees and any medium term tourism and investment visibility.

The second avenue for progression which African nations should take is to lean collectively into a discussion about the nature of climate COPs. There is no reason for African nations to be co-hosting an oversized event at a cost of over USD 300m unless it provides a very substantial ROI for the continent as a whole. Here, Egypt (COP27) serves as a cautionary tale. Although it faced some circumstances beyond its control, COP27 is memorable as a conference that left little lasting agreement or impact. Countries like Nigeria and Kenya were yet to upgrade their own climate game, not to speak of contributing to a united continental push. 

The first step on a path to productivity and manageable hosting is probably a strategic reduction in the size of COPs, in line with a much more goal-oriented negotiating process. This could be associated with retaining the positive aspects of a trade fair – for example hosting an Action Agenda or investment event adjacently timed or mid-year. This will also require sensitive consideration of a sharper focus on what is appropriate on the trade fair aspect of COPs and how to balance the rights and responsibilities of fossil fuel interests (and associated nation states). Interestingly, Nigeria chose ACS2 to recommit to a Beyond Oil agenda and its Net Zero 2060 target, so Africa could also lead interesting engagement on the realities that extractive countries need to confront.

Start early and do not walk alone. It is probably too late for a radical change in direction for COP31, but the next hosts can help immensely in beginning the navigation towards a more functional COP structure by COP32. Inadvertently, Brazil has probably set this process in motion by forcing delegations to think hard about resources and costs ahead of COP30, with a wide range of nations significantly reducing their delegation size and prioritising finite resources.

The ‘mulatto’ principle highlighted by Brazil also has significant applicability, where the magic required for a successful COP32 is an unprecedented degree of cooperation between hosts over a three-year trajectory from 2025-2027. It is no small issue that the likely host nations for COP31 and COP32 share common concerns over increasing the priority given to nature, have overlapping concerns over climate impacts and a common thread of developing economy issues.

Avoiding potholes. The process of an effective COP32 could begin with African nations using COP30's pre-summit meeting in October, the leaders’ gathering on Nov 6th-8th and November’s negotiation fortnight to settle in principle who will host COP32 and how. They could lead by example on decision-making and internally treat ‘consensus’ as something closer to 75% agreement with respectful management of holdout and minority positions. This clarity of process will be both important for purposeful decision-making on COP foundations and a critical signal on the fundamental change that is needed to COP and Paris Agreement decision-making.

A pivotal issue is whether on climate change, where so many dire threats are shared by sub-Saharan and North African nations alike, nations can find rock-solid common ground on the direction they give to COP negotiations in their shared chairing year. There is also a need for countries to be realistic about their domestic situations. For example, Nigeria, Kenya and Angola all have national elections in 2027. If they wish to play a significant role in COP32, they will need to make and communicate some very careful strategic choices on how they maintain effective engagement.

Building on foundational initiatives. Africa should continue to evolve the continental climate summits as a rallying point for pre-COP African coordination. This means translating its declarations into a solid, shared negotiation strategy across the priority items of adaptation finance (scale, predictability, grants), concessional finance, loss & damage operationalisation, and technology transfer. The emphasis here is very much on translating theory – where significant common points already exist – to robust diplomatic action. It also requires regular, disciplined turnout by African leaders over the coming years, along with visible follow-through on the ‘we will do it ourselves’ line from ACS2. 

African charity must begin at home – literally. To shift global risk perception about Africa and build credibility, climate finance mobilised within Africa for locally-developed and locally-led climate solutions must be deployed in the very manner Africans have long advocated: simplified access modalities, blended grant-first windows for high-risk adaptation projects and concessional liquidity lines. Equally, African countries must be deliberate in demonstrating measurable results, proving that this approach can be both impactful and profitable. The message to the world is simple: Do unto yourself what you want others to do unto you. Africa must put its money where its mouth is. To earn respect and confidence from partners in the Global North, the continent must align its words and actions with its investments.

About the author

Dr Akinyemi Akinyugha

Dr. Akinyemi ‘Yemi’ Akinyugha, sustainability & governance expert in nature-positive infrastructure, climate-smart agriculture, forestry, & carbon projects. Advises Ekiti State, Nigeria on green economy & ecological management.

Chris Newsom

Chris Newsom, governance & climate consultant in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Co-authored APRI paper on Nigeria’s Energy Transition & policy coherence. Supports HYPREP oil spill cleanup in Ogoni, Rivers State.