An African Climate Caravan, which is available at country and continental level, has been underway since September 26, 2022. “On the eve of COP27, explains to franceinfo Afrique Sena Alouka who coordinates this initiative with the support of the NGO Oxfamit is a question of mobilizing the citizens who suffer the consequences of global warming, of emphasizing the solutions and of being able to influence the decision-makers”. The objective being that the political leaders support in particular the proposals of the African Group at the COP, which will be held from 6 to 18 November in Egypt, on “topics that interest us: loss and damage, adaptation and finance”.
The citizens’ movement brings together around a hundred organizations from African civil society. These last, specifies a press release, “call on rich countries – historically responsible for climate change – to do their fair share to help the continent tackle the escalating climate crises that (the) strike”. They also ask “to African governments to better support peasant agro-ecological transition and better protect the rights of peasants”.
“It’s not a caravan that crosses all African countries”, recalls Sena Alouka. The initiative is thus available in National Caravans (which can be followed here) whose activities take place until October 9, 2022 in 27 countries on the continent. They thus offer “Dozens of actions aimed at raising awareness, mobilizing and challenging civil society as well as local authorities and national representatives (and) regional”.
These caravans go to meet the populations to “listen to them“. “We record what they tell us and pass it on to national decision-makers, says Sena Alouka. Yesterday (September 29, 2022), I was in a small village called Toutou (in the south-west of Togo, near the town of Kpalimé) where people were talking to us about the issues of transhumance, the fact that the land is no longer fertile and that they didn’t know what to do. These populations do not know what ‘loss and damage’. They just want the state to be able to guarantee them that when they invest in agriculture, they don’t end up in poverty at the end of the year. There is an emergency and people are facing unacceptable situations,” insists Sena Alouka, executive director of the NGO Young Volunteers for the Environment.
The other component of the initiative is a Continental caravan which will set up in Senegal, during Sustainable Mobility and Climate Week (October 3 to 7), and in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the pre-COP (preparatory meeting of African Ministers of the Environment which starts on October 3). “Next week, concludes Sena Alouka, we will be in Dakar and Kinshasa, and then we will continue until the COP”. A delegation of caravaneers will thus be present in Sharm El-Sheikh.