African Expectations from Durban Climate Talks

4 December 2011

Mamady Kobele Keita
Climate change team leader
Guinee Ecologie
Guinea

 

Durban 2011 – COP17 started last Monday, bringing together delegates from the parties to the climate convention (UNFCCC) and global and civil society organisations. For us, from Africa, the most vulnerable continent to the adverse impacts of climate change, the expectation is clear: reach an agreement that will help our poor communities to adapt, whilst maintaining their livelihoods through a sustainable climate funding regime. Indeed, none of the commitment were respected by Annex 1 countries in terms of finance or emissions reduction objectives. And even if the world’s global emissions are under control, we have no guarantee that the current impacts, from the historical emissions, will be reduced. Floods, droughts, and sea-level rise will increase. The situation is becoming worse since some countries have announced their intention to no longer support the Kyoto Protocol, the only binding agreement we have in the UNFCCC process. This is really bad news for the developing countries that are not responsible for the increase of GHG and global warming but are suffering from the adverse impacts to their livelihoods and environment.

So my expectation from these Durban talks is, fundamentally, on institutional arrangements for an efficient, sustainable and scaled-up financing system to help developing countries implement their adaptation programs.

To attain this objective, I’m participating in the process as one of the new recruits to CAN’s capacity building fellowship programme for civil society in the global south. My aims are threefold:

1.  to mainly focus on advocacy directed at developing countries delegates;

2.  to campaign against Annex1 countries who are blocking positions;

3. and to share critical information with developing countries delegates to help them to understand the loopholes contained in the negotiations texts.

As a delegate of the African civil society organisations, I will be sharing information I gather from the negotiations with the thousands of African populations who didn’t get opportunities and/or resources to attend this meeting. To communicate this information I will use Climate Action Network (CAN), the Climate and Development Network mailing list, the Guinean Adaptation Group, the Guinean Sustainable Development NGOs Forum, the mailing list of the national Climate Development Mechanism, and my personal blog (kobele.blogspot.com).