‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’, PACJA Fraternity vows to scale up climate justice advocacy

The Pan African climate justice alliance fraternity is congregating in Arusha, Tanzania to dissect and create common understanding of its Strategic Plan 2021 and 2030. The meeting brings together the staff, the national platforms and the Board drawn from across Africa.

As an alliance, PACJA is in 51 African countries, supporting 36 national platforms and directly offering support to 16 active and functional national platforms and networks to advocate for the just and fair climate regimes.

Talking about the PACJA journey, Mithika Mwenda laid bare the challenges Africa face as backed by the scientific community and ably captured by the Intergovernmental panel on climate change annual reports, and narrated by the voices from vulnerable communities.

Without doubt, the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has experienced tremendous growth over the years; this growth is characterised by steady and active presence at the country and regional levels coupled with enhanced access to and recognition by governments, inter-governmental and UN agencies in Africa and globally, as well as by counterpart civil society organizations and networks across the world.

The profile of the Alliance has been heightened at continental and global levels, a corollary of which is that the voice of African civil society has a far broader reach than it did when PACJA was started in 2008.

Since inception, PACJA has become the de facto civil society voice in Africa on climate justice. The alliance has been instrumental in shaping the climate change policy spaces at sub-national, National, regional, and Global levels through our national platforms which has also achieved impressive growth throughout the years.  

In light of this growth in strength and credibility, PACJA has taken its influence a notch higher particularly through fostering substantive partnerships with major agencies, organizations and movements that work for complementary goals.

This has given rise to a number of strategic initiatives including the Nairobi summer school on climate justice, ACSEA, South to South platform for youth on climate justice, working group on climate security, Africa Climate Legislation Initiative and recently, PACJA mobilised other partners in developing the African activists on Climate Justice initiative which is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Additionally, PACJA is headed towards entrenching its leadership in Africa on specific themes that are vital to climate and environmental justice, including renewable energy and green economy approaches, just transition with a focus on Africa’s youth, climate-related security and migration, and gender among other issues.

The global dynamic policy architecture emerging from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)among others have stimulated PACJA to continue redefining its focus and approach in order to remain relevant and continue discharging its mandate in the continent.

The changing political and environmental contexts have also made it necessary for the Alliance to come up with innovative approaches in dealing with policy issues and a diversity of stakeholders. These realities were critical in informing the process of development of a new strategic plan 2021-2025 which is the road map which the alliance is using in pursuit of its vision.

The new strategy has informed development of an advocacy plan for PACJA which is geared toward mobilising stakeholders for effective and meaningful engagement with COP 27 processes.

The new strategic plan also came at a time when the organisation was launching the African activists for Climate justice (AACJ) project which necessitated massive recruitment of more staff to the organisation.

Successful implementation of the new strategic plan and this year’s advocacy strategy will be dependent on the how well the secretariat staff, National Platform Coordinators and the members of Board to internalise the content of the new strategic plan and work in harmony to operationalize the same; it is upon this realisation that the PACJA secretariat has organised a strategic retreat for the staff and the Board so as to create an opportunity for the team to deliberate on the strategic plans and the advocacy strategy as well as carryout joint planning for year 2022.

 Purpose of the Retreat

The retreat underpins PACJA’s commitment that translating its strategy into action is by creating and sustaining an enabling cohesive culture.

The purpose of the retreat is to develop common understanding of PACJA’s Framework Strategy 2021-2030 and the Strategic Plan 2021-2025, as well as the Advocacy Strategy 2022 among key stakeholders, namely; the Secretariat Staff, Coordinators of National Platforms, and Members of the Board. Based on this shared understanding, stakeholders will develop organizational, departmental, and project plans for 2022. Stakeholders will also review the internal and external operating context that have a bearing in delivering the strategy and agree on the desired organizational culture, ways of working and team strengthening with the aim of building a Great PACJA Team.

Work is indeed a social activity, which thrives on a well-established team culture in the organization. This premise therefore motivates PACJA to invest in staff and stakeholders’ engagement sessions that aim at growing team spirit, cohesion, mutual support and focus so that they [staff and stakeholders] can effectively deliver on PACJA’s mandate and thrive on individual roles in a fulfilling work environment.

Objectives

The specific objectives of the retreat, which will be attended by PACJA Continental Secretariat Staff, Coordinators of National Platforms and Members of the Board are to:

• Build a Great Team –Get to know each other and get to know PACJA better
• Develop a common understanding of the Framework Strategy 2021-2030, the Strategic Plan 2021-2025, and Advocacy Strategy 2022 with focus on goals and outcomes
• Review of the internal and external operating context and agree on adaptations required for successful implementation of the strategy
• Collectively share, review, and reflections of the annual organizational, departmental/functional and projects performance plans for 2022.
• Strengthen mutual accountability- clarify roles, expectations, and ways of working between Secretariat and National Platforms and Board.
• Agree and live the desired organization culture.

Expected Outcomes

The retreat has been designed with the objective that by the end of the four days, the staff and the board will have:

• Enhanced shared understanding and clarity on the Framework strategy 2021-2030, the Strategic Plan 2021-2025, and Advocacy Strategy 2022 and develop goals and expected outcomes for 2022.
• A shared understanding of organizational, departmental/functional and project performance plans for 2022.
• Continuous improvement plans and initiatives to leverage existing strengths and opportunities as well as address obstacles to strategy implementation.
• A cohesive, energized, and refreshed team to drive the PACJA Strategic Plan and Advocacy Strategy.
• A refined and shared understanding of roles, ways of working and framework for an enabling culture for the Alliance.

From the five-day meeting, it is hoped that the PACJA fraternity will re-engineer, re-energise the climate justice agenda for Africa.