African Indigenous Peoples are being seriously affected by the climate crisis. Africa Climate Week (4th– 8th September) and the continent’s first Climate Summit (4th – 6th) offer a chance for action, but serious doubts have emerged about exactly who is controlling the agenda, and whether the decisions taken will favor Africa’s Indigenous Peoples, who are the most impacted and most in need of support.
Climate change is a major issue everywhere, but for Indigenous Peoples, many of whom depend on the local environments for their livelihood, the stakes are even higher.In many African countries the issue is critical. In Burkina Faso, for example, where approximately 90% of the population makes its living through subsistence agriculture and livestock, rising temperatures will place a huge burden on those already on the margins of sustainability. Indigenous Peoples and women are particularly at risk. In the more arid northern regions of this land-locked country, where the Peul and Tuareg peoples live, water scarcity has been magnified by the severe drought of 2022, and even a slight rise in temperature could be mortal; while in the south, flooding has wreaked havoc with crops and drinking water supply, even in the capital, Ouagadougou. Subsistence agriculture and livestock are crucial for the country’s Indigenous Peoples, and rising temperatures will no doubt lead to more displacement, poverty, and migration to already overburdened cities.
The major question is how to tackle the problem at a national and regional level. Given the context of violence, the recent military Coups D’état of 2022, and other in the region (Mali, Niger and now Gabón), in Burkina Faso it’s not really feasible to expect the national government to take the lead, says Saoudata Wallet, an indigenous Tuareg woman and Secretary General of the Burkina Faso and Mali Tin Hinane Association. In her country, she adds, it is really up to the people, particularly women’s organizations, to keep up the pressure, but even here, the regional violence, which also includes attacks by Islamic extremists, has affected people’s ability to mobilize.
One opportunity to make the concerns of indigenous peoples heard, is Africa Climate Week (ACW), which will take place from the 4th to the 8th of September in Nairobi, Kenya, in parallel with the first Africa Climate Summit (ACS)which will also take place in that city between September 4th and 6th. The Summit is co-hosted by The Kenyan government and the African Union, and as of mid-August, 15 African Heads of State and government had confirmed their participation. The events are part of the run up to the 28thUN Climate Change Conference (COP 28), to be held between the 30th of November and the 12th of December in Dubai, capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and will provide regional contributions to the first Global Stocktake, seen as fundamental in fulfilling the Paris Agreement goals.
Although Wallet agrees most international conferences are forums for declarations rather than actions, she is convinced the presence of women and Indigenous Peoples is crucial for both the Africa Climate Summit and the parallel climate week events. “We have to be there to demand that our voices be heard”, she says, while recognizing that actually getting to the conferences can be a problem given the difficulties some experience in obtaining visas and financing in order to travel. And as she points out, it’s a long way from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, to Nairobi. So walking is evidently not an option.
As with other international proceedings, the presence and, most importantly the input, of Indigenous Peoples will be crucial to both the success of these events and to that of the COP 28 itself. For Indigenous Peoples, says Wallet, resilience to climate change is rooted in their traditional knowledge and ability to adapt to environmental change based on their in-depth knowledge of the land. However, she adds, a serious obstacle is that Indigenous and women’s voices are generally downplayed, if not ignored entirely. Many Indigenous Peoples in Africa are not even recognized as such by the countries in which they live, in many cases being seen as dividing rather than unifying recently formed States, some even being classified as ‘foreigners’ in their own lands. Women also face major difficulties in the region, says Wallet, due to the violence that has been plaguing the Sahel region, and for anyone with an independent voice, the possibility of a backlash is very difficult to face.
Another major fear is that rather than being simply a space for posturing, or in the best of cases actually helping African countries’ vulnerable populations to adapt and survive, the host Kenyan government is looking at the upcoming events as a possibility for investments and boosting the continent’s ‘green economy’. According to Kenya’s environment and climate change cabinet secretary Soipan Tuya, the plan is to “end the ‘blame game’ between developed and developing countries, and to unlock the investments Africa needs to tap into its potential and resources to support global decarbonisation efforts.” All of which raises doubts about who is really going to control the discussions and recommendations.
A particular concern is the involvement of U.S. consulting giant McKinsey. An open letter signed by more than 400 African civil society groups has accused the firm of having unduly influenced the summit by “pushing a pro-West agenda and interests at the expense of Africa”, claiming that the summit’s agenda promotes “concepts and false solutions [that] are led by Western interests while being marketed as African priorities”. This, rather than prioritizing the needs of African populations, such as strengthening resilience in the face of rising temperatures, and find finding ways to help poorer countries deal with financial losses and damages due to the climate crisis or even dealing with the issue of fossil fuel phase out.
According to Augustine Bantar Njamnshi, of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance “We had a lot of hope this summit would put African priorities at the heart of climate negotiations, notably adaptation finance. It should have been a summit by Africans for Africans. Instead, it looks like a trade conference on carbon credits.”
However, says Wallet, if allies and organizations such as Land is Life help the voices of women to be heard at the Summit, and their opinions regarding solutions to Climate Change taken into account, then perhaps this will be an achievement for the continent’s Indigenous women.
For Land is Life, the survival of Indigenous Peoples in Africa, or in other parts of the world, cannot be left to investments in the so called green economy that mainly benefit international companies and their local allies, or to decisions taken on their behalf by officials who know little of their lives or the conditions in which they live. Indigenous Peoples and others at risk from the Climate Change are not an obstacle to ‘development’, but a fundamental part of the solution to a Climate Crisis that affects everyone. In fact, addressing the challenges presented by global Climate Change will be impossible without the meaningful participation of Indigenous Peoples. At the Africa Climate Summit, as well as COP 28, Indigenous Peoples should be engaged as partners and have a voice in all decisions related to climate change finance, mitigation and adaptation.
