KUMASI, Ghana (PAMACC News) - A new report has found that the complex risks arising from climate change, fragility and conflict can contribute to the emergence and growth of terrorist groups, like Boko Haram and ISIL.
The new report: “Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime in a Warming World”, by Berlin-based think tank, Adelphi, found that climate change multiplies and interacts with existing threats, risks and pressures, like resource scarcity, population growth and urbanization.
Report author, Lukas Rüttinger, said these factors together could lead to fragility and violent conflict in which these groups can thrive.
“Already vulnerable areas could get pulled into a vicious cycle, leading to the rise of terrorist groups who will find it easier to operate, with consequences for us all,” Rüttinger said.
Terrorist groups are increasingly using natural resources – such as water – as a weapon of war, controlling access to it, further compounding and exacerbating resource scarcities. The scarcer resources become, the more power is given to those who control them, especially in regions where people are particularly reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods.
For example, around Lake Chad, climate change contributes to resource scarcities that increase local competition for land and water. This competition in turn often fuels social tensions and even violent conflict.
At the same time, this resource scarcity erodes the livelihoods of many people, aggravates poverty and unemployment, and leads to population displacement. Terrorist groups such as Boko Haram gain power in this fragile environment.
As climate change affects food security and the availability of water, and land, affected people will become more vulnerable not only to negative climate impacts but also to recruitment by terrorist groups offering alternative livelihoods and economic incentives.
Sometimes, terrorist groups try to fill the gap left by the state by providing basic services to build support among the local population. As climate impacts worsen, some states will increasingly struggle to provide services and maintain their legitimacy.
The report comes as famine, drought and war threaten millions in the region around Lake Chad, in Africa. On March 31, the UN Security
Council passed a resolution on the Lake Chad region – home to Boko Haram – outlining their concern about the interplay of factors leading to the crisis there and calling for better collaboration amongst UN armed to deal with the situation.
The resolution, which also calls for the UNSG to issue a report on the crisis, came after UNSC ambassadors visited the region recently.
The report echoes the UN’s findings. It finds that dealing with climate change, boosting development and strengthening governments will reduce the threat of terrorism.
It also says climate action, development, counter terrorism strategies and peace building should be tackled together holistically – rather than in isolation which they are often are at present and which risks making each of the factors worse.
Other recommendations include improving the rule of law and strengthening local institutions to help reduce the risk that climate change presents to the rise and growth of terrorist groups, as well as being a core component of adaptation and peace building writ large.
People who are vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist groups are often reliant on agriculture for their livelihoods, so development efforts should focus on ensuring those livelihoods are sustainable in a changing climate.
Lastly, cities are often the pressure valve when climate, conflict and fragility occur – building resilient cities will therefore minimize the chances of tensions spilling over.
“A broader perspective will help to better address the root causes of the rise and growth of non-state armed groups,” Rüttinger said.
KAMPALA, Uganda (PAMACC News) - African Parliamentarians challenged to push for a climate change legislative agenda African parliament through the Pan African Parliamentarian Network has been urged to initiate and influence a continental legislative agenda that will push climate change policies in their different countries.
African civil society organizations, Ugandan government representatives and other development stakeholders meeting at a regional consultative forum on Post Marrakech and the implementation of the Paris.
Agreement April 19-21 in Kampala, Uganda were unanimous that the role of African parliamentarians in driving an African agenda for climate change was capital.
Hon Chebet Malkut, UNFCCC focal point and head of climate change department in the ministry of Environment and water in Uganda pointed out that putting in place the appropriate policies and institutional framework to drive Africa’s climate change agenda was cardinal.
This challenge he said falls squarely on the shoulders of African legislators who need to partner with civil society organizations led by PACJA for assured results.
“I believe a cross fertilization of ideas between African parliamentarians and civil society organizations will ease this task and this forum set the stage for such a project,” Chebet said.
The coordinator of PACJA-Uganda, Florence Kasule for her part lauded the interest and participation of a significant number of parliamentarians from Uganda in the forum, an indication of their interest in the climate fight.
“This a clear indication of the increasing engagement of legislators to drive through policies that will improve the fight against climate change,” she said.
Civil society experts hammered on the need to build alliances that will improve the momentum behind the climate change drive in Africa.
“Building a strong and united front in the fight against climate change is the way forward,” says PACJA secretary general Mithika Mwenda at the official opening of the regional COP22 consultative workshop.
He highlighted the growing threats to the climate change Paris Paris agreement with continuous shifting global politics and political ecological economy.
“ The implementation of the Paris Agreement faces the biggest threat from the United States after the stunning election of Danald Trump whose campaign platform hinges on the repeal of the Clean Air Act,” Mithika said.
He also criticized his appointment of an anti-climate administrator to the Environment Protection Agency, an indication of future roadblocks to climate change drive, he said.
Other speakers at the forum call on the need for a strong African voice that will influence climate actions on the ground, moving policies to realizable development projects especially in the areas of climate smart agriculture, renewable energy and other adaptable infrastructure.
“ Besides other priorities, climate change infrastructure projects should be at the top and this is the role of our legislators and civil society organizations to drive this agenda,” says Dr Mauwa Shadad.
The participants underscored the remarkable effort of PACJA in the coordination of CSO climate change policy processes and interventions across Africa With focused reflection and coordinated review of the COP 22 Marrakech outcome and Paris Agreement regime.
In some of the recommendations reached at the Kampala forum, the participants noted the continent’s conviction of moving from Commitment to Action with Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) demonstrated by ratifying the Paris Agreement and its consequent entry into force, enhancing the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
They also showed deep concern about the continuous neglecting of adaptation needs of developing countries and inadequate levels of public climate finance, limited access to adaptation finance such demonstrated by the imbalance between financing of mitigation and adaptation within the Green Climate Fund.
Emphasis was also laid on the renewable energy drive considered to be the locomotive to drive Africa’s development pathways.
According to Njamnshi Augustine of PACJA Cameroon, Africa needs to break from the past and build stronger resilience for the fight against climate change to succeed.
By Elias Ntungwe Ngalame
One of the key outcomes of the COP22 in Marrakech was the establishment of a new transparency fund with the injection of some USD50 million by some developed countries, to encourage transparency efforts in the fight against climate change.
African civil society organizations under the aegis of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) to that effect organized an African regional Post COPP22 sensitization workshop in Kampala, Uganda, 19-21 April, 2017 to examine the readiness of African countries and improve on the momentum towards the fund project.
It is also geared at seeking to expand participation, broadening efforts to build partnership with government and other stakeholders, breaking from the past to build stronger and global resilience.
According to Sam Ogallah of PACJA, the sensitization on the cardinality of the GCF was imperative to measure the readiness and highlight the role of civil society organizations in the funding project.
“Civil society organizations have to be accorded the opportunity to be abreast with the operational modalities of the Green Climate Fund to permit them fully participate in the entire project process and also push their governments to make proposals adapted to the realities of their different countries,” Ogallah said.
Participants during one of the sessions examined the goal, objectives, activities and implementation strategies of the Green Climate Fund, the climate finance process at national and international level within the UNFCCC.
Also examined was the outcome and decisions of the just ended 16th Board Meeting of the GCF and the way forward especially for civil society organizations.
According to participants, the GCF was in line with the Paris agreement in COP21. The Paris Agreement implementation they said should go hand in glove with the 2030 Agenda as well as the AU Agenda 2063, “a process which should take the bottom-up approach, be inclusive and transparent.”
It was also noted that the involvement of all stakeholders including government, civil society, development partners, the private sector, youths and women was not only necessary but imperative to drive the agenda to a success.
“It is a partnership of many facets in development in every country,” says Rebecca Muna civil society representative. The participation of the different stakeholders, she says signals the willingness of countries to understand and undertake climate actions that go beyond adaptation and victory for African countries.
Meanwhile the Green Climate Fund (GCF) on Tuesday, April 18, 2017 launched a new web-based guide that provides Partners with detailed information on how to access its resources.
Tagged “GCF 101”, the guide aims to help GCF stakeholders better navigate the many elements of engaging with the Fund. It provides four distinct chapters addressing the different opportunities the Fund provides to help developing countries respond to climate change: These include, Empowering countries; Getting Accredited; Funding projects; and Implementing projects,” the organization stated in its press release.
According to the GCF, each chapter provides a short overview, a simple step-by-step guide explaining how to apply or access the Fund; and a series of frequently asked questions that tease out more information. Through this approach, the guide increases clarity on the Fund’s main processes as well as transparency.
It adds: “GCF 101 uses non-technical language to make GCF processes easy to understand for non-expert audiences. This approach accords with the GCF mandate to support country ownership of climate finance and recognises the personnel capacity challenges facing many of the targets of GCF support – such as Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and African States.
The body notes that, “like the GCF itself, the ‘101’ is a work in progress,” stressing that the guide will be updated and modified as processes evolve.
KUMASI, Ghana (PAMACC News) - President Trump’s Executive Order on Climate Change will have far reaching impacts on many developing countries, especially on the African continent, which is already bearing the brunt of the negative impacts of climate change.
African Civil Society, under the umbrella of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), says reversing the Obama climate plan is one of the greatest injustices and an onslaught on Mother Earth, especially in the fight against climate change.
The Energy Independence Executive Order, signed by US President, Donald Trump on March 29, 2017, has been hailed by groups in the fossil fuels business, but condemned by environmental campaigners as over a dozen measures enacted by President Obama to curb climate change have been suspended.
“Trump’s Climate Change Executive Order is rolling back the many years of global efforts that yielded the Convention and the Paris Agreement. The global community and other world leaders should resist the temptation of following the footstep of Trump to take the world several steps back in the fight against climate change,” said Mithika Mwenda, PACJA Secretary-General.
For a safer world, countries that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement will urgently need to raise their ambition to increase the level of their greenhouse emission reduction targets communicated to the UNFCCC and keeping the global temperature to below 1.5OC.
The current aggregate level of the communicated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are estimated to lead to the average global temperature increase above 30C by 2030, unless radical emissions reduction targets are urgently adopted by Parties.
The NDC of the United State of America submitted to the UNFCCC on March 31, 2015 commits USA to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 26%–28% below the 2005 level by 2025.
The US effort constitutes a part to the global comity of nations’ efforts to keep the planet safe.
“As one of the major contributors to the greenhouse gas emissions, the US continues to owe a huge ecological debt that can only be paid by the demonstration that it is committed to servicing this climate debt in an equitable, fair and just manner. Such efforts should align with the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibility and Respective Capacity (CBDRC) of the Convention,” said a statement from PACJA.
African Civil Society is worried efforts to improve people’s vulnerability to climate change are being eroded by Trump’s Executive Order.
Currently, impacts of drought and famine in the Horn of Africa have led to deaths of humans and livestock in the region. Farmers in most parts of the Africa are feeling impacts of the changing climate in their agricultural production and productivity.
According to Sam Ogallah, Programme’s Manager at PACJA, Trump's action on climate change is likely to exacerbate the current migrant crisis.
"Climate change impacts are pushing many youth out of developing countries in search of better lives in developed countries. Some of these youth in an attempt to migrate to Europe have lost their lives. Addressing climate change in developing countries can go a long way to solving migrant crisis in Europe and other developed countries,” he said.
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (PAMACC News) - Parliaments in sub-Saharan Africa have established a framework that will see a rapid implementation of climate change policies in their different countries into practical ground actions.
The peoples’ representatives through the Pan African Parliamentarians’ Network on Climate Change, known with French acronym as REPACC say they are now set to bridge policy and actions on the ground that have so far lagged behind in visible climate change projects and infrastructure.
Even with the existence of climate change policies that continue to stay on paper and the creation of institutions that have continued to lay fallow, little or no actions are visible on the ground for most countries in sub-saran Africa, experts say.
“ It is time for action to move climate change challenges in Africa to a new level with adapted infrastructures and skills that will help find lasting solution,” says Cavaye Djibril, House Speaker of the National Assembly in Cameroon.
He said the countries in Africa,most of who submitted their NDCs and signed the Paris Agreement(to quantify climate protection goal) lack the necessary expertise to effect national measures and projects to make climate finance available for the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
African Parliamentarians say they have now got the backing of the Climate Policy and Energy Security Programme of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Germany with the training of the required expertise to formulate , prepare, supervise the implementation of projects to help their different countries adapt to climate impacts.
To that effect, a cooperation agreement was signed in Yaounde on March 27, between the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Pan African Parliamentarians’ Network on Climate Change to help fast-track measures needed to bridge climate policies into action in the different countries, to speed up the emergence of body of knowledge on climate and the relevant legislation and to manifest the role of parliamentarians in African climate change responses in the implementation of the Paris Agreement, globally, regionally and locally.
According to the President of the Permanent Executive Committee of the Pan African Parliamentarian Network on Climate Change (PAPNCC), Cameroonian born, Hon. Awudu Mbaya Cyprian, the backing of the German Konrad Foundation now gives African law makers the claws to better push climate policies to action.
“The Pan African Parliament for Climate Change will hence be better armed for actions that will bring m the much expected solutions to climate change challenges,” Awudu said.
Professor Olivier Ruppel, resident representative and director, climate policy and energy programme of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung said technical expertise, financial support with help in the infrastructure development and international cooperation needed by African countries to implement climate change projects on the ground.
Cameroon created the Cameroon Councils against Climate Change, National Observatory on Climate Change in 2011 aimed at monitoring the effects of climate change on people, agriculture and ecosystems, and guiding work on climate action.
Other policy actions have since followed like the creation of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction under the ministry of territorial administration, becoming a member of COMIFAC and submitting a national REED+ plan in 2013 etc. But these have not succeeded to hold the line of climate disasters in the country, officials noted.
Like in Cameroon, Parliamentarians in the continent believe with the active involvement of law makers and support from their new partner, the necessary actions including relevant legislation will bring a lasting solution to climate change impacts in the country in particular and sub-saharan Africa in general.
EARTH MEANDERS ESSAY By Dr. Glen Barry
PAMACC News - Given long-predicted and self-evident abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse, and resultant perma-war and rise of fascism, despite decades of scientific warnings which went unheeded; will you now listen to science, embrace an ecology ethic, and act to avoid biosphere collapse and the end of being before it is too late?
Essentially every warning from ecological and climate scientists regarding the limits to growth have come to pass. Climate models have been amazingly accurate, if anything under-predicting the magnitude of the climate apocalypse dramatically playing out in Polar Regions and radiating heat globally. Water, farmland, soil, wetlands, oceans, old-growth forests, and the atmosphere are, as forecasted, in precipitous decline.
Whole regions are collapsing ecologically and are on track to being uninhabitable and will have to be abandoned. Yet demands for inequitable consumption placed upon nature by seven billion top predators continue to grow exponentially (as a billion live in opulent splendor, another billion face abject soul-sucking poverty, and a handful enjoy half of Earth’s wealth).
There are few naturally evolved large ecosystems remaining to cut, burn, and otherwise plunder for short-term ill-gotten gains as the biosphere and society bear the unpriced external costs. Those natural ecosystems that remain are under threat as the oil oligarchy consolidates its power in order to access and burn every last drop of oil and chunk of coal, destroying our atmosphere and last natural ecosystems in the process.
The global ecological system – our one shared biosphere that makes Earth habitable – is collapsing and dying as human industrial growth overruns natural ecosystems and the climate.
Resource scarcity resulting from ecosystem loss, albeit delayed through the advent of information technology, nonetheless underlies the surge in uncontrolled mass migration and diminished economic prospects for the formerly affluent Western middle classes. Landscapes ravaged by industrial capitalism in the developing countries in particular are barren wastelands unable to support indigenous and other local self-reliant lifestyles that provided for quality lifestyles for millennium.
As foreseen by this author and others, authoritarian fascism has arisen to exploit both environmental decline and surging inequity between the super-rich and multitudinous have nots. A state of perma-war and institutionalized war murders masked as a clash between cultures are more accurately depicted as a scramble for dwindling resources upon which to base overly consumptive and clearly unsustainable lifestyles for the privileged few for a while.
Fascist demagogues have arisen that spout charlatan alternative facts as they stifle voices of ecological and other truths.
Environmental and climate crises long perceived as distant or affecting others, but not you, are increasingly impacting average people in their daily lives, particularly in the over-developed world. Food and water systems are failing and prices rising, as regular patterns of seasonality are lost. Jobs based upon ravaging natural ecosystems are a thing of the past, as they are exhausted, and are not coming back. Foreigners from hard scrabble over-populated countries will work far harder for much less and increasingly take even domestic high-tech positions excluding locals.
Our present state of environmental collapse, driven by inequitable over-population and ecosystem loss, fomenting precipitous social and economic decline, was foreseen by ecological scientists. Numerous warnings from a host of ecological visionaries sought to highlight the problems and the course of action required to move towards not only sustainable, but also just and equitable sustainable development.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the preceding work of Malthus, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and others went mainstream as the self-evident need to protect land, air, and water led to bipartisan efforts. The ground-breaking Limits to Growth publications highlighted once again the irrefutable fact that exponential growth can only lead to collapse. The advent of micro-processors has pushed back some limits, as others like the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere have clearly been breached.
It has been two years since I proposed a 10th Planetary Boundary in my peer-reviewed scientific journal article entitled Terrestrial ecosystem loss and biosphere collapse regarding how many natural ecosystems can be lost before the biosphere collapses. Noting how smaller ecosystems, indeed anything from which portions are cut, fragment and fall apart at around 40% loss; I proposed a threshold of 66% natural and semi-natural terrestrial ecosystem retention as being required to avoid biosphere collapse.
Despite my findings being subsequently validated in other studies by scientific luminaries, precisely nothing is being done by world governments and even leading environmental NGOS to begin the process of ending natural ecosystem loss and beginning an age of ecological restoration.
With about 50% of natural ecosystems having been destroyed already there can be no other outcome (after unknown lag times) than biosphere collapse and the end of being.
It is not through lack of effort by others and me that deep ecology has not caught on. Indoctrination into a nationalistic, consumptive worldview is pervasive and all-encompassing. Very few are able to escape the religious, racist, nationalistic, and economic lies forced upon them in youth.
Much of humanity has forgotten that it is possible to live in peace and within the bounds of nature. Social cohesion has dangerously frayed. Poorly educated folks falling from middle class lifestyles, as well as the well-off feasting upon the last ill-gotten fruits of nature, are unable and/or unwilling to grok causal connections between declining natural systems and limited economic prospects, and that such growth can only end in collapse.
Our fatally flawed education system fails to provide the necessary cognitive skills to grasp basic truths –like nothing grows forever, ecosystems make life possible, and water is required for life – upon which our existence depends.
Nothing grows exponentially forever, it is a physically impossible.
To deny Malthus, indigenous wisdom, and all subsequent iterations upon ecological knowledge and intuition found in science is sheer utter madness.
The truth of the matter is that while ecological trends are clear, the breaking point of ecosystems and societies is not known with certainty. There may be sources of ecological resiliency of which we are unaware. And given the drive for self-survival of a species can be found in all genetic code, including the hairless ape with the amazing opposable thumb, it would be incautious, indeed ludicrous, to give up.
But we need to quickly change our ways personally and societally to embrace an ecology ethic. We need to listen to ecological and other scientific experts and dramatically reduce industrial and population growth, as well as inequitable over-consumption, or we are faced with ecological apocalypse and biosphere collapse.
One last time swords must be beaten into plowshares (and restored ecosystems).
It is known with certainty that human prospects depend upon functioning natural ecosystems. And the personal and societal changes required to maintain such systems are known with surety as well.
Simply, pollution of land, air, and water must end or we all needlessly die.
To sustain local ecological patterns and processes globally, old-growth forest logging and industrial scale marine fisheries MUST cease immediately, and massive investments in ecosystem restoration be made. Decentralized renewable energy grids and nega-watts from energy conservation must be embraced with utmost urgency as fossil fuel burning ends. Massive investments in women’s education, birth control, and tax incentives for small families must be made worldwide to slow growth and then reduce human population. Genetic modifications and oil intensive agriculture must end as we return to family farming embracing organic permaculture. And all sources of sacred water must be protected at any cost.
Fascism and the threats posed by both large governments and corporations must be eliminated. A guaranteed minimum income must be established worldwide. Armies must be demobilized and international institutions strengthened to pay the price for our continued existence, while ending systematic war murders. Liberty, justice, and equity for all members of the human and all species’ family must be ensured.
This course of action is based upon scientific truths, and further ignoring of ecological limits is a willful death wish.
Humanity heeds the warnings of its sage elders and embraces such an ecology ethic now in all haste or we face intensified abject human misery prior to biosphere collapse and an imminent end to being. Let’s come together now to make it so.
