Project reference: ADAF0008e

The Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN) is an alliance of African Member States. The AGN represents the region in the international climate change negotiations with a common and unified voice. The AGN often faces significant barriers to effective participation in the climate change negotiations. This is in part due to a lack of strategic and technical assistance on complex negotiating issues that is tailored to the interests and priorities of Africa. As a result, it is important to enhance the ability of African countries to constructively contribute and influence the UNFCCC process, in the interest of ensuring fair and equitable climate change agreements that support Africa’s interests.

This project aimed to provide the AGN with the research needed in order to take stock of the AGN’s performance in the Paris Agreement, and therefore to identify areas of improvement for the AGN in achieving its stated objectives in the UNFCCC.  Through this project two technical papers were produced, (i.) “An Assessment of the Paris outcome in relation to the African Group Envisaged Outcomes” (forthcoming), and (ii) “Global Adaptation Goal under the Paris Agreement-Putting Ideas into Action”.

The purpose of the assessment paper is to provide a stocktake of progress to date and a basis for assessment of the successes achieved and challenges faced in Paris. The paper assesses the performance of the African Group in the negotiations leading to the Paris Agreement through a look at the substantive provisions of the Agreement in relation to the envisaged outcomes of the Group.

The second technical paper elaborates on the operationalisation of the global goal on adaptation. Since Durban in 2011 at COP17 when the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) was adopted, the African Group has consistently advocated for adaptation issues to be central to the 2015 agreement. It is largely as a result of the AGN that adaptation components of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions were agreed to in Lima, Peru at COP20. More critically, the African Group has advanced the need to include a global adaptation goal in the 2015 agreement. A number of questions have arisen in terms of how to take forward the adaptation goal, in particular how it will be operationalised. To this end, CDKN’s support has enabled improved understanding of the required actions, as well as the amount of technical work and political will to achieve such parity, and subsequently, how to mould the way forward.

Project Funding: £18,000

Project Timeframe: Feb-Oct 2016

Project Suppliers: Xolisa Ngwadla, Samah El-Bakri

Project Output: Research Report Global adaptation goals paper

Picture: Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security via Flickr