The African Activists for Climate Justice (AACJ)

The Consortium

To contribute to an African movement for Climate Justice, the AACJ consortium has assembled partners and networks with broad constituencies and a diversity of tools, capacities, tactics and strategies to align and strengthen existing movements, organizations and initiatives advancing the (environmental) rights of women, youth and local communities. Each consortium partner has presence and influence across Africa, with relevant and complementary expertise and experience:

1. Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA)
PACJA brings together over 1000 African organizations from 48 countries. PACJA has been at the forefront of advancing climate justice in Africa for over 10 years, using evidence-based advocacy to shape and improve policies and laws on natural resource management, and supporting local communities to develop climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.

2. Natural Justice (NJ)
NJ works with 24 partners in 10 countries in Africa and uses legal empowerment, research, litigation and advocacy to stand with indigenous and local communities as they defend themselves and their ecosystems against environmental impacts caused by climate change and harmful extractive and infrastructure developments.

3. The African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET)
FEMNET is a pan-African feminist network that brings together 800 members in 43 countries in Africa. It is strategically positioned as a convener and dialogue facilitator, enabling women and girls to claim, affirm and use their collective power to end all forms of exclusion, oppression, exploitation and injustices against them. FEMNET advocates for the implementation of commitments made by African governments to advance gender equality and realization of women’s rights. Climate justice and natural resource governance are among FEMNET’s key thematic focus areas.

4. OXFAM NOVIB
Oxfam Novib has 65 years of advocacy and campaign experience. Working in alliance with local allies and people’s movements, it has advocated, and supported numerous actions and initiatives for climate accountability, funding for systemic climate solutions and support for communities least able to adapt. More recently it has built thought leadership on navigating restricted or changing civic space. Oxfam Novib is part of the Oxfam Confederation which works in 35 countries on the African continent.

5. African Youth Commission (AYC)
AYC is an implementing partner, playing a key role in bringing more young people on board to raise awareness on climate change and influence national governments to implement climate-related projects in a transparent manner that benefits young people. The network also sees a vital role for youth in Africa to contribute to the development of practical solutions and efforts to enhance the livelihoods of vulnerable communities. The AYC has 228 members in 46 countries on the African continent.

Target Countries

The AACJ programme will be implemented in eight African countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Mozambique, Senegal, Somalia and South Africa.
The selection of countries was based on a combination of criteria, including climate vulnerability. The consortium aimed for a combination of countries to allow for synergies, mutual learning, peer pressure among governments and knock-on effects, while contributing to a genuine African voice.

The selection of countries was based on:

• Opportunities for movement building. In all AACJ countries our local partners have identified opportunities for inclusive movement building including the potential for strong partnership programmes and networks with relevant expertise and experience and availability of structures for movement building (such as existing movements, academies, climate change clubs, natural justice dialogues and youth platforms). Work in these countries will focus on supporting movements for climate justice to become more effective and inclusive, with youth, women and local and indigenous communities in leadership positions. The AACJ consortium has also taken into account geographical and linguistic balance, for representativeness and to facilitate multiplier effects between Anglophone, Francophone and Portuguese-speaking countries.

• Needs for capacity strengthening and mutual learning. In all eight countries local partners identified capacity gaps of CSOs and movements, for example to address shrinking space for CSOs, respond to conflicts and increased violence against human rights defenders, and engage with traditionally side-lined people. Consortium partners will leverage their shared expertise and experience to support local organizations to build strong, effective and inclusive movements for change.

• Climate change vulnerability: Somalia, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Mozambique are among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, with women, youth and indigenous communities on the frontline (see also Figure 1). Our programme aims to work with and mobilize communities with intersecting vulnerabilities, including internally displaced people (IDPs). In countries including Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Burkina Faso, desertification, heat waves and floods are destroying the ecosystems on which the economies and cultures of nomadic pastoralist peoples are based. Pressure on natural resources is contributing to intercommunal conflicts over access to, and sharing of, remaining resources, such as fertile land and water. COVID-19 has further increased these communities’ vulnerability and stress.

• Emerging markets: South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Senegal are resourcerich emerging economies where rapid growth has been accompanied by severe environmental degradation. Their challenge will be to support economic growth trajectories – key to fighting poverty – while curtailing environmental damage and GHG emissions and ensuing respect for human rights. Movements in these countries that are challenging their governments to align industrial policies with climate commitments can learn from each other, co-strategize, join forces when engaging with the African Union (AU) and push for policy frameworks with potential knock-on effects across the African continent.

• Influence in (sub-)regional/global policy platforms: Governments of South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal, leveraging their economic and/or political power, can lead efforts to improve Africa’s influence in negotiations at regional and international levels and champion for effective and meaningful participation of women, youth and local communities in shaping policy frameworks. For example, in South Africa, CSOs will influence SADC22 through the SADC Parliamentary Forum and the Pan-African Parliament to ensure that voices of CSOs and local communities are heard at global level. Ethiopia has been showcasing strong regional, continental and international leadership for African-led climate change initiatives. Implementing the programme in Ethiopia, the AACJ consortium can also take advantage of proximity to the African Union (AU), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)and its Climate Policy Centre (CPC).

• Overlap with the Dutch Ministry’s focus countries to enhance opportunities for collaboration and shared strategizing between the AACJ consortium, embassies and the Dutch Ministry to advance climate justice in AACJ countries, and leveraging this progress for positive changes on the African continent.

Pathway 1: Strengthening Movements

Outcome 1: Strong, inclusive and connected climate movements in Africa.

Our aim is to help build a broad-based African movement that is aligned thematically and geographically, which brings together existing movements and struggles. Such a movement will create spaces for and harness the momentum of groups including youth, women, local communities and the more recent types of ‘leaderless movements’, and will integrate multiple sections of society – in order to rally around critical issues regarding climate justice. This requires two distinct efforts.

First, we will help strengthen organizations of traditionally side-lined groups – women, youth and local communities – contributing to an inclusive, bottom-up movement for climate justice. We will sensitize climate-affected communities on their rights and mobilize them to join existing organizations and movements or establish new ones, and ensure their interests are put front and centre. We will build on existing structures such as Environmental Justice Fora in Kenya and Climate Change Clubs in Senegal.

We will ensure that the most-affected groups are at the forefront of the movement, shaping its direction. We will promote leadership roles for women, youth and indigenous communities, for example through summer schools and activist labs which deepen their knowledge on climate justice and strengthen their negotiating capacities. We will facilitate their access to political processes at local and national level.
The consortium takes an intersectional approach to movement building, which means that planned activities will take into account intersecting vulnerabilities. The main groups that we will work with – women, youth and local and indigenous communities – may also belong to multiple other disadvantaged groups (e.g. IDPs, people with disabilities), worsening their experiences of oppression and leading to different interests and needs.
We will support frontline activists and through our regional networks and partnerships support activists in emerging movements to reach out to and mobilize climate-affected groups, facilitate connections between people and develop effective strategies that advance climate justice. We will create spaces – virtual and physical, in communities, provincially, nationally, regionally and globally – for people to come together to learn, coordinate, collaborate and innovate. Second, we will connect these movements with existing networks, advocacy organizations, research organizations, think tanks and universities to contribute to broad-based alliances for climate justice. We will seek opportunities to rally together with national and regional campaigns and advocacy organizations such as Greenpeace Africa, the International Land Coalition, the Climate Action Network, Earthlife Africa, the Decoalonize campaign in Kenya and the Oceans Not Oil campaign in South Africa. We will break silos between feminist, environmental and human rights organizations and facilitate linkages with global climate change movements. We will help map existing networks and alliances, facilitating cooperation and coordination and encouraging joint engagement in discussions, advocacy and campaigns.

Pathway 2: Developing and Sharing African Narratives

Outcome 2: African climate justice narratives have been developed and spread

The AACJ consortium believes that clear and compelling narratives play a crucial to increase the engagement of youth, women and local and indigenous communities in the debate and policy processes on climate justice. Taking people’s lived experience as a starting point, these narratives will play a key role in raising awareness, unveiling prejudices and stereotypes, debunking lies and rebalancing relations of power.

The AACJ consortium will amplify African voices, encouraging environmental activists, indigenous leaders, women, youth, religious leaders, artists and opinion makers to share their personal experiences and contribution to addressing climate change. We will create safe spaces for traditionally side-lined groups to develop their own narratives which demonstrate their strength, resilience, innovative capacities and contributions to the climate crisis.
We will ensure that these new narratives are shared and spread through climate debates and policy processes, connecting policy makers with people on the frontline of the climate crisis. With will connect activists, movements and communities with popular media (TV talk shows, radio call-ins and other interactive platforms) to enable exchange of ideas and information, foster understanding and increase public awareness on how women, youth and local and indigenous communities are experiencing and coping with climate change.
The role of FEMNET will be indispensable to implementing Pathway 2. Their expertise and experience will play a crucial role in changing the discourse on climate change.

Pathway 3: Strengthening Human Rights Frameworks

Outcome 3: Strengthened human rights frameworks

The sustainable management of natural resources requires communities’ secure rights over their land and natural resources and strong policy frameworks that enable local communities to oppose projects that damage the environment and violate their rights.
We will empower communities to claim and defend their rights by increasing their awareness of their legal rights, both under national law (including customary law) and under international human rights commitments.78 We will support them to access information on nearby projects that might affect them, use legal instruments to oppose these projects and seek remedy when damage has been done. We will support women and youth to defend their rights at household and community level, ensuring they are not excluded from decision-making processes.
Engaging local and indigenous communities in strategic litigation79 on exemplary cases – testing legal frameworks – can help strengthen human rights in legal and policy frameworks and set examples for other communities to claim their rights.

Pathway 4: Strengthening Communities’ Adaptive Capacities

Outcome 4: Communities’ adaptive capacities strengthened

Although local communities, youth and women are impacted disproportionately by climate change, their experience and knowledge on resilience, natural resource management and adaptation strategies also make them part of the solution. Pathway 4 will help us tap a precious pool of good practice and innovative approaches to tackle climate change.
The AACJ programme will – through the networks of the consortium partners – scope, document, spread and help to scale traditional knowledge and community-driven innovations that increase the resilience and adaptive capacities of climate-affected groups. We will prioritize strategies that also address root causes of exclusion and vulnerabilities (e.g. marginalization, patriarchy and discrimination). We will facilitate the piloting of promising climate solutions and capacitate communities to use new approaches. We will support and facilitate (and in some cases provide seed funds to) innovative, potentially ground-breaking climate solutions to serve as evidence in our campaigns and advocacy strategies. We will build confidence of communities to use their own approaches in combination with traditional knowledge on food production, land use and natural resource management.

Pathway 5: Increasing Political Will for Climate Just Policies

Outcome 4: Political will to support climate just policies

To address the weak climate policies and the large gap between climate commitments and their effective implementation the AACJ consortium will empower organizations and movements – in particular those that represent women, youth and indigenous communities – to co-strategize and engage with African policy makers and negotiators, contributing to policy and practice changes that advance climate justice.
NDC and NAP processes are helpful tools for movements and CSOs to monitor public policies on climate change and push for bolder climate action. Other relevant frameworks are the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Africa’s Agenda 2063: The Africa we Want, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)82 and the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan (GAP)83 which aims to advance gender-responsive climate actionand women’s full participation in the UNFCCC process.

In addition, the AACJ consortium will work with the African Climate Legislation Initiative (ACLI) to ensure global policies ratified by governments and those developed at national or sub-national levels are translated into legal frameworks. In consultation with local partners, the AACJ Consortium has identified six thematic areas for national and local policy and practice change to achieve climate justice:

Ultimate Goal and Long-term Impact

The impacts of climate change are not being borne equally or fairly, between rich and poor, women and men, and older and younger generations. The voices of frontline communities who both offer solutions to protect our climate and face the harshest consequences of the immediate impacts of climate change, are excluded from the policy debates shaping their futures. Their voices are often also isolated as opposed to aligned, and lack the capacity to come together in unified front calling for action.

The goal of AACJ programme is to amplify and unite the voices in Africa demanding that women, youth and local and indigenous communities in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia and South Africa can defend and realize their human rights and live a decent and dignified life in a healthy and sustainable environment, within the context of the climate emergency. The long-term impact (strategic objective) of the proposed programme is: