Posted on October, 19, 2021 at 08:54 am
The consultative dialogue moderated today by Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), at the Sarova Stanley Hotel in Nairobi brought together civil society groups to influence Kenya’s position and the broader African continent towards the COP 26 meeting on climate change.
Speaking at the event while providing the foundation of COP 26 expectations, Africa Group of Negotiators Experts Support (AGNES) Team Leader, Dr. George Wamukoya, noted that COP 26 will be highly political because decisions will be influenced largely by ministers.
“COP 26 will be critical because of the involvement of the heads of states and governments who will give directions to their ministers at the beginning of the convention,” he said, adding that the witnessing of this parallel process will influence the messaging in Glasgow.
One of the agendas, according to Dr. Wamukoya, will be the tackling of technical issues by the ministers through the employment of political messaging tools.
Further, he insisted that priority will be given to the most outstanding rule book agenda items since climate change is no longer a technical issue but also a political one.
“The United Nations (UN) will have to play a critical role through lobbying just like it did in fast-tracking the Paris Agreement that only took a year to complete,” he emphasized, alluding to the 5 years it took to move into implementation in 2015 for the Kyoto Protocol to come into effect.
Dr. Wamukoya said the five years were intended to give time for preparation of the procedures, legalities, and instruments used to help operationalize the Paris Agreement that was ratified quickly and effected in 2016.
He cautioned that it would be very difficult to target issues with no common denominator as different parties support different time frames.
“Issues to be finalized at the COP26 require a common time frame which is important in communicating to Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to achieve a common ambition,” he said, urging the civil societies to support a time frame depending on the needs of Africa.
He mentioned Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, a successor of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) from the Kyoto Protocol, as a heavy agenda because parties did not get the key market mechanisms to push through the agenda.
He further noted the key instruments in the article that identify cooperative approaches and enhance transparency levels while implementing a programme pushed by Bolivia against commoditizing climate change.
“The provisions here do not envisage shared proceeds which are the contentious issues and problematic areas Africa is pushing,” he said.
Unfortunately, in article 6.4 according to Dr. Wamukoya, Africa did not benefit and should be critically looked at when the probable decision could be agreed on at the ministerial level.
Dr. Wamukoya advised against putting up a framework at COP 26 that developing countries would be disadvantaged by once again with regard to the other land-based resources that have a competitive advantage under the question of science and ambition.
“Adaptation, Mitigation, Resilience, loss and damage, special needs and circumstances should be considered as a high priority issue with a strong report for African countries,” he added, stressing on the need for these questions to be operationalized and looked upon on an insurance aspect.
He noted that negotiations on adaptations were poor and mitigation core benefits needed to strengthen implementation.
In the preamble agenda containing human rights and gender, Dr. Wamukoya insisted that a framework already exists but needs to be domesticated around Kenya and Africa.
“Civil societies must align their message with a lot of authority and start defining a basis for the funds needed,” he advised, encouraging grassroots evidence from natural disasters and its damages to be showcased as case studies to the world as quantification and a credible story.
He further noted that Article 6 is hyped because it is the only provision that brings on board and tries to liberate climate funding.
“I urge for negotiated incentives in unlocking the private sector participation in the climate change discussion,” he said.
The gender focal point and agriculture were considered important processes to be understood in the negotiations at the COP26 to affect the best policies for Africa and specifically Kenya.
Source: KBC