Backgrounder: The Africa Climate Summit: greenwashing business as usual, not a milestone for African climate justice
Cape Town, 5 September 2023: Fossil Free South Africa notes very significant concerns surrounding the agenda of the so-called Africa Climate Summit happening in Nairobi this week.
On the positive side, we endorse the ambitions of summit host and Kenyan President Ruto for:
targeted taxes on the aviation and maritime sectors
removal of fossil fuel subsidies worldwide
implementation of a global fossil fuel tax1
use of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAM) “as a tax for targeted mitigation and adaptation efforts”
implementation of a global financial transactions tax
However, the main summit agenda, with its references to “green growth” (often deemed an oxymoron), a “deal room”, and a “spotlight on opportunities”, suggests an excessively business-focused approach.
That’s a problem, because the questions “how can we make money during a climate crisis” and “how do we stop the climate crisis” have very different answers.
The summit agenda says nothing about the most urgent imperative for both mitigation and adaptation – a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels.
The original summit agenda was drafted by McKinsey – a company charged in corruption here in SA – before references to said company were apparently hastily expunged. McKinsey is also named in a climate lawsuit as a key enabler of climate delay. Our own digging quickly revealed that the summit website was registered in California – with details of the registering party concealed.
Only one of the 11 listed summit partners is African – the African Development Bank (ADB). This is an institution which, in defiance of the evidence showing how disastrous climate change will be for Africa, continues to advocate for and finance fossil fuels and so is very much part of the problem, not the solution. (The ADB would be more accurately described as the African Under-development Bank.)
The other lead partners are big philanthropy and European governments. Their leading presence is a significant problem in the absence of strong representation from African civil society. They should not participate at all when civil society is shut out.
Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa has pointed out that of 93 side events, only 35 are led by African organisations.
Rather than being neutral, the summit agenda is dominated by vested interests – the summit CEO is Joseph Ng’ang’a – also co-founder of the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI). “Carbon markets” are all too often abused as get-out-of-jail-free tickets for big polluters – used to dress up deadly continued fossil fuel emissions.
Accusations of “neo-colonialism” directed at the summit agenda may sound like sloganeering – but the summit is providing publicity for companies like the “African Forestry Impact Platform”. This sounds great, but is in fact a Singaporean-Australian company using the term “sustainable forestry” to window-dress destructive industrial timber practices.
A properly representative African climate summit would follow an agenda formed by democratically elected leaders and representatives of civil society, advised by science. The resulting agenda would contain opportunities for socially responsible business.
A responsible and representative summit would also seek to give full voice to the most vulnerable communities suffering the worst and earliest effects of climate change.
We must remember there is only one full democracy in Africa (Mauritius). Kenya is far from being a full democracy. Ruto is a powerful businessman, apparently leveraging his political power to advance his personal business interests and vice versa. Flawed and authoritarian states cannot be trusted to properly represent their citizens at this summit.
We suspected before it began that this summit puts business and powerful interests first, and leaves a representative agenda fighting for recognition at its margins. This has been confirmed by reports from the conference, now underway, that it has “excluded many grassroots communities and organisations who have struggled to get accreditation”.
We support the demands of over 500 African civil society groups for:
A Just Transition away from coal, oil and gas: Embrace cleaner energy alternatives. Phase out fossil fuel related projects.
Renewable energy target: Commit to renewable energy and get behind a much needed global renewable energy target in line with keeping global warming to 1.5C.
Reject neo-colonial extraction: Promote equitable partnerships, avoiding historical exploitation.
Funding for development: Demand rich nations to support the Global South with funding for renewable energy projects.
We urge those who are overly impressed by glossy promises of sustainability, and by wealthy and powerful figureheads making noble sounding promises, to dig deeper, ask harder questions, and judge politicians and business people by their actions, not their promises.
