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2018, a key year for accelerating climate action

2018 is a crucial year for stepping up action against climate change, with several major events : the Global Climate Action Summit in September in California, the Africities Summit in November in Morocco, where African local authorities will meet, and the COP24, which will be held in Poland at the end of the year. The COP24 will notably include the Talanoa Dialogue, which will provide the opportunity to take stock of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the Parties (countries) to the Paris Agreement.

The Climate Chance Summit Africa, a multiplier of non-state climate action

The Climate Chance Summit – Africa of Abidjan will serve to bring together non-state climate actors in Africa at the beginning of summer 2018 and primarily to set up sectoral and operational roadmaps adapted to the context of African territories. The summit will thus serve to establish the specific message of the African continent, to demonstrate its commitment as well as to clarify the specific demands and proposals of the local actors who fight climate change in Africa. The African position will then be advocated within the framework of the aforementioned international events, and will also be featured in the Talanoa Dialogue process.

Summit objectives

• Bring together non-state African actors from all backgrounds, and taking stock of the progress of non-state climate action in Africa.
• Work on sectoral and operational African roadmaps, while establishing a link between climate and development stakes. Provide an important position for adaptation stakes of the continent, offering to provide a link between climate funding and local actors, and involving non-state African actors from all backgrounds.
• Deliver common messages, action priorities, commitments, concrete proposals and recommendations from non-state African actors with respect to climate stakes, to be covered during the various events on the international climate agenda, with a focus on access to funding.

Co-organisers’ editorial

The Climate Chance Summit – Africa is marked by the desire to gather, to work together and to deliver concrete messages. The year 2018 is a crucial moment in the fight against climate change, where the mobilisation of all actors working in the field is necessary to strenghten the efforts and to see results coming through. The Climate Chance Summit – Africa aims to spearhead this mobilisation.

Bearing in mind what is at stake, two specific features characterise this event:

• This first edition of a regional Climate Chance Summit, focused on the African continent, asserts the necessity to combine climate and development, and to work jointly on these two fundamental objectives in order to ensure sustainable development for all. This involves the organisation of specific workshops around African development issues: fundings, urban planning, agriculture and forestry are some of the structuring themes of the summit.
• Secondly, the willingness to include this summit in the framework of the Talanoa Dialogue, which aims to raise the ambition of States parties to the Paris Agreement, involves sharing of experiences, common-work, and action.

The time has come for concrete initiatives. Thus, the Climate Chance Summit – Africa seeks to be operational: its main objective is to structure African sectoral coalitions, developing operational roadmaps. It is the starting point of a long-term effort to strengthen the common work of non-state actors.

We invite you to be actors of this momentum, to raise your voices, to show your actions, and to share solutions in order to make this summit a key event of the 2018 climate agenda. This will help to assert Africa’s place in the international climate community, while proposing suitable solution leading up to COP24.