LEAD Africa, supported by the Royal Danish Embassy and COP 15, has just released a new report “Leading the way: A role for regional institutions” around African leadership on climate change that can be downloaded at our website:
Executive Summary
Leadership is critical to addressing the challenges and opportunities posed by climate change. The onset of climate impacts combined with new policy frameworks and funding mechanisms require the building of institutional and human capacity, the strengthening of governance and provision of an enabling environment for climate action. This is especially true for Africa, because of its unique vulnerability to climate impacts, its low resilience and its climate-dependent economic sectors. Whilst Africa is ‘clearly in peril, climate change also provides a unique opportunity to forge a new more sustainable and socially equitable developmental pathway. But this will need strong and visionary leadership, and particularly African leadership as opposed to our historic reliance on external agencies and bi-lateral partners to set the development agenda.
In recognition of this, LEAD Africa and ENDA Energy have begun to look at leadership on climate issues in Africa as part of our wider environment and development agenda. We are especially concerned with looking at the regional and sub-regional levels, as climatic responses by their very nature are trans-national and highly complex. Although this level of leadership in Africa has also historically been the weakest, we believe it can become a critical leverage point for leadership on climate issues in particular.
The potential of African institutions to provide leadership on climate issues, their unique responsibilities and their ability to act as climate response catalysts was the subject of a recent workshop on ‘African Leadership on Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for Regional Institutions”, held in Tunis in January 2009.
This paper is based on the discussions at the workshop and aims to highlight to a wider audience the urgent need for African Leadership on Climate Change, particularly at the regional level. It begins with an overview of the current situation vis a vis leadership on climate issues in Africa, then highlights opportunities to show leadership on climate issues, before finally summarizing recommendations from the workshop on how regional institutions can become climate leaders.
For further information around LEAD Africa activities around African leadership and climate change, please see our website (www.leadinafrica.org).
Best Regards
Masse LO
LEAD Africa Coordinator
Tel: 00221 33 889 3430
54, Rue Carnot
BP 3370
Dakar Senegal
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