AGN Chair outlines Africa’s strategic climate roadmap at CAHOSCC meeting ahead of COP31

In a major presentation to the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC), the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), Nana Dr. Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, outlined Africa’s strategic priorities for upcoming climate negotiations, key outcomes from COP30 and recent Bonn climate sessions (SBs64), and a unified multi-year roadmap spanning COP31 through COP33.

 

Dr. Amoah warned that global climate action is facing unprecedented political and environmental pressures. Rising nationalism, conservatism, and climate denial are increasingly weakening multilateral cooperation. At the same time, geopolitical tensions and the global energy crisis have renewed international reliance on fossil fuels, slowing the transition to clean energy.

 

Across Africa, extreme weather driven by Super El Niño conditions is intensifying droughts, floods, food insecurity, displacement, and energy shortages. Africa continues to bear disproportionate human, economic, and non-economic impacts from climate-related loss and damage.

 

Despite these mounting crises, the AGN Chair noted global commitments to the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement are weakening. Current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) leave the world on an estimated warming trajectory of 2.7°C.

 

Furthermore, international climate finance is contracting when developing countries require it most: the Global Environment Facility (GEF) replenishment dropped by approximately 38% compared to previous cycles, and a 50% reduction in pledges from a developed country to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) created a major financing shortfall.

 

Unpacking COP30 Outcomes and Bonn Progress

 

Reviewing progress from COP30 and the SBs64 negotiations in Bonn, Dr. Amoah highlighted key thematic areas shaping Africa’s bargaining positions:

 

Just Transitions Mechanism: Building on COP30's agreement to set up a mechanism for international cooperation, technical assistance, capacity-building, and knowledge-sharing, the AGN is prioritizing its operationalisation. The goal is to establish clear governance, modalities, and work programmes heading toward an operational launch at COP32, while safeguarding national development space and nationally determined transitions.

 

Climate Change and Trade: Following the launch of the COP30 trade dialogue, Africa aims to address unilateral climate measures and protect its industrialisation, trade opportunities, and economic development from arbitrary discrimination or disguised trade restrictions.

 

Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA): While COP30 adopted the Belém Adaptation Indicators, negotiations on the GGA stalled during SBs64 in Bonn. The AGN is pushing to develop methodologies and guidance that keep adaptation visible as a vital priority and inform collective progress.

 

Climate Finance: The AGN is leveraging the two-year work programme established at COP30 to enforce developed countries' financial obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. The group is demanding concrete steps to improve access to predictable public finance, advancing the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) and adaptation commitments to secure a major climate-finance outcome at COP32.

 

Adaptation Fund and Second Global Stocktake (GST-2): Priorities include resolving outstanding issues in the Adaptation Fund’s transition to serve the Paris Agreement—protecting its direct-access model—and ensuring an inclusive, Party-driven launch for GST-2 with balanced coverage across mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and means of implementation.

 

Strategic Continuity: A Three-Year Horizon from COP31 to COP33

 

Looking ahead, Dr. Amoah stressed the necessity of treating COP31, COP32, and COP33 as a single, connected political cycle. COP31 will focus on securing progress across the wider UNFCCC agenda—including adaptation, finance, just transitions, loss and damage, transparency, and mitigation—while launching GST-2.

 

The strategy includes dedicated support for Ethiopia’s COP31 Presidency to translate negotiation outcomes into concrete implementation, strengthen African priorities, and build political convergence for formal decisions at COP32.

 

By establishing COP31 as a foundation and COP32 as a milestone for consolidation, the AGN aims to maintain a coherent strategy through COP33. This multi-year framework is designed to strengthen Africa’s agency in multilateral climate negotiations and align global climate action directly with the continent's imperatives for sustainable development, energy access, adaptation, industrialisation, and economic transformation.

By Kofi Adu Domfeh  

Ghana close to issuing forest carbon credits under J-REDD+ programme – Minister

Ghana has announced it is close to issuing forest carbon credits under its ambitious J-REDD+ programme, as ministers and senior officials gathered in London with COP30 and COP31 leaders to accelerate action on forests ahead of the 2030 deadline to halt and reverse forest loss.

 

Ghana’s flagship Jurisdictional Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (J-REDD+) framework transitions traditional REDD+ projects into large-scale, national carbon credit programs. By focusing on entire ecological zones and linking climate finance directly to sustainable agriculture and livelihoods, it aims to protect forests while directly benefiting rural communities

 

Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Yusif Sulemana, called for a trusted international framework for jurisdictional forest carbon credits, highlighting the programme's potential to scale investment into high-quality forest and land-use mitigation activities that deliver climate benefits while improving livelihoods.

 

The event dubbed “From Glasgow to Addis Ababa: FCLP and COP Presidencies Building Momentum on Forests from COP30 to COP31,” focused on maintaining forests as a priority through the next phase of international climate cooperation, from COP30 in Brazil through COP31 in Türkiye.

 

Ministers from Nigeria, Indonesia, and Ghana, shared a range of national initiatives and priorities, including recent commitments related to the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment, sustainable bioeconomy initiatives, and high-integrity forest carbon credits. 

 

Nigeria’s Environment Minister, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, highlighted the Nigerian government’s work across a range of forest initiatives including the Great Green Wall and the implementation of a National Clean Cooking Policy and re-affirmed Nigeria’s support for the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment. 

 

Minister of Forestry of Indonesia, Raja Juli Antoni, underlined the importance of protecting tropical peatlands and mangroves through the establishment of international centres for cooperation. He noted that mangroves are of the most effective nature-based solutions available, delivering climate mitigation and sustainable livelihoods. Indonesia is home to 3.4 million hectares of mangroves – roughly 23 per cent of the world’s mangrove ecosystems. 

 

The event also featured new commitments on land tenure rights from Peru and Brazil and a major forest finance pledge from Norway, underscoring growing momentum behind forest protection, sustainable land use and climate action ahead of COP30 in Brazil and COP31 in Türkiye.

 

The gathering underscored the growing importance of forests across the international climate agenda, bringing together representatives from multiple COP cycles to discuss how political leadership, finance, and implementation can help deliver the goal of halting and reversing forest loss by 2030.

 

"The ‘From Glasgow to Addis Ababa’ moment is key to sustaining the shift from ambition to implementation on forests. It allows us to advance the Roadmap to Halt and Reverse Deforestation and Forest Degradation by 2030, keeping political momentum alive and ensuring forests stay at the heart of climate action at the scale and speed required," said COP30 President, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago.

 

COP31 President, Murat Kurum, Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change of Türkiye, also said “the COP31 Action Agenda is designed to strengthen partnerships, advance practical solutions, support implementation efforts, and create a lasting legacy.

 

“To this end, we have identified ten priority themes under the COP31 Action Agenda. These themes were not selected merely as areas of discussion; rather, they reflect the most pressing global challenges, the implementation needs of Parties, and the areas where COP31 can generate tangible and enduring impact”.

 

 

Africa must align climate diplomacy with its industrial ambitions — AGN Chair

Chair of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN), Nana Dr. Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, has called for alignment between climate diplomacy and Africa’s industrial ambitions, while reinforcing institutional coordination in advancing the continent’s climate narrative.

 

He noted that global climate diplomacy has fundamentally shifted beyond emissions targets and long term ambition, becoming increasingly intertwined with geopolitics, energy security, industrial competition, critical minerals and finance.

 

“These global shifts are reshaping Africa’s development options faster than our institutions are adapting,” he said. “At the same time, decisions taken outside the UNFCCC framework, in trade, industrial policy and finance, are increasingly determining what is feasible within it. If our climate diplomacy is not aligned with our energy needs and industrial ambitions, we risk locking ourselves into pathways that reproduce dependency rather than transformation.”

 

At the just concluded 39^th Ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nana Dr. Amoah had several engagements with cooperating partners, particularly the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC), and emphasised the need for Africa to continue negotiating under a common position, and also strategically align climate diplomacy with its overall development agenda. 

 

The AGN Chair stressed that energy sovereignty, industrial policy and access to finance must be placed at the centre of Africa’s climate strategy, and urged stronger coordination among African institutions to address fragmentation between mandates and implementation.

 

Reflecting on key COP30 outcomes, Nana Dr. Amoah highlighted three priority areas for Africa: the Just Transition Mechanism, the climate–trade dialogue, and climate finance under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement.

 

On the Just Transition Mechanism, he stressed that Africa’s interpretation must go beyond worker protection to encompass national development and shared prosperity.

 

“For Africa, a just transition must mean manufacturing solar panels, batteries and green hydrogen components on the African soil. It must mean local beneficiation of critical minerals, supported by skills development and meaningful technology transfer,” he said, warning that a green transition that leaves Africa confined to exporting raw materials at the bottom of global value chains could not be described as just.

 

On trade, the AGN Chair cautioned that unilateral trade measures, carbon border adjustments and green subsidies were already reshaping global competitiveness, posing risks to African economies.

 

He thus urged the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to offer a platform to aggregate regional markets and address scale constraints, but stressed the need to preserve policy space for green industrial strategies and differentiated transition pathways.

 

Turning to finance, he underscored that the Paris Agreement’s affirmation of developed countries’ responsibility to provide financial resources to developing countries.

 

“In an era of tight fiscal space, climate finance must be adequate, predictable and patient. It must address Africa’s high cost of capital and support debt sustainability,” he said, calling for a shift from “fragmented, project financing towards programmatic, regional investment platforms capable of transforming entire sectors and value chains.”

 

Nana Dr Amoah reaffirmed the readiness of the AGN to ensure that climate diplomacy strengthens Africa’s industrial ambitions and long-term economic transformation.

 

In his efforts to ensure that Africa’s climate narrative is well-coordinated, technically grounded, and politically aligned to translate into real resilience for African communities, Nana Dr. Amoah engaged with several partners including the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), African Union Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC), United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Africa Regional Office, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Green Climate Fund (GCF), the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), Africa Green Industrialisation Initiative, among others.

 

Senior Specialist for Climate Action at IOM, Lisa Lim Ah Ken, reaffirmed the organization’s readiness to continue supporting Africa’s climate agenda through sustained collaboration, technical engagement, and institutional partnership, while UNOAU’s Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the AU and Head of the UN Office to the AU emphasized on the nexus of peace security and climate change. 

 

Meanwhile, UNEP Africa Regional Director, Rose Mwebaza, pledged continued strategic support, particularly focusing on strengthening Africa’s coordination, technical preparedness and political engagement in global climate negotiations.

 

Climate Change: AGN Chair to mobilize strong expertise to project Africa’s interest in global climate negotiations

 The Chair of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN), Dr. Nana Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, has called on African countries to strengthen unity and collective action as global multilateralism continues to weaken.

 

Addressing the first strategic meeting of the AGN under Ghana’s leadership, Dr. Amoah warned that Africa as one of the regions most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change cannot afford the erosion of multilateral cooperation.

 

“With Africa’s well-documented vulnerabilities to climate change, the continent cannot afford to let multilateralism die,” he stated.

 

Dr. Amoah reaffirmed his commitment to mobilizing the broad expertise within the AGN to ensure Africa maintains a strong and coordinated presence in global climate negotiations, despite growing geopolitical and economic pressures.

 

“The strength and success of the AGN lie in our ability to work together, even under difficult circumstances,” he said. “My chairmanship will harness the collective expertise within the AGN family to project Africa’s interests at a time when the spirit of multilateralism is clearly under strain.”

 

The strategic meeting, held virtually, marks the first under Ghana’s chairmanship and focused on preparations for the upcoming African Union Summit scheduled for 11–15 February 2026 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

 

Ahead of in-person engagements leading up to the mid-year UN Climate Conference in June, the meeting was guided by the following objectives:

 

Reviewing outcomes and priority issues from COP30 and their implications for continental policy processes;

 

Consolidating AGN positions and negotiation priorities to inform strategic engagement during the African Union Summit; and

 

Reviewing the AGN Chair’s priority agenda and aligning it with Lead Coordinators and country focal points perspectives.

 

The African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN) is a technical body of the three-tier African negotiating structure that engages in the technical negotiations during the UN Conferences of the Parties (COPs) and the inter-sessional negotiations on Climate Change. It was established in 1995 with the objective of representing the interests of Africa in the international climate change negotiations, with a common and unified voice.

 

COP30: Africa looks up to tripling adaptation finance by 2030

UN chief António Guterres has called on governments to have the courage to agree a balanced political package that is concrete on funding adaptation, credible on emissions cuts, and bankable on finance. 

 

For the first time, he rallied behind a demand from the world’s poorest countries to triple finance to help them adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas to $120 billion a year by 2030. 

 

Addressing the COP30 Climate Change talks in Belem, Brazil, he noted that communities on the frontlines are watching the UN summit for action.

 

“Counting flooded homes, failed harvests, lost livelihoods and asking ‘how much more must we suffer?’… they have heard enough excuses, they demand results,” he stated.

 

For Mr. Guterres, “tripling adaptation finance by 2030 is essential.” He believes it is also possible and desirable and he hoped developed countries would accept to engage in this objective at COP30 if their concerns on emissions reductions are addressed. 

 

The Africa Day at COP30 was marked under the theme: “Africa at the Forefront of Climate Action: Sustainable Financing for Resilient and Inclusive Green Growth”, reaffirming the continent’s united call for a new era of climate finance that delivers for people, planet, and prosperity.

 

Discussions focused on mobilizing sustainable, equitable, and innovative finance to accelerate Africa’s green industrialization. Leaders highlighted that Africa’s future lies in leveraging its abundant natural resources for value addition and local manufacturing from processing critical minerals to scaling renewable energy solutions.

 

“Africa already stands at the forefront of global climate action, shaping solutions that are both locally grounded and globally relevant”, said Dr. Kevin Kariuki, Vice President for Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth of the African Development Bank Group.

 

For decades, Africa’s climate narrative has been defined by contradiction. The continent hosts 20% of the world’s carbon sinks and contributes less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet receives under 10% of adaptation finance and only 3% of total climate funding, this shortfall carries existential consequences.

 

Developed countries have repeatedly failed to honour their financing commitments, and Africa’s adaptation needs continue to outpace the resources available.

 

The commitment of developed countries to double adaptation finance to at least $40 billion by 2025 already slipping away.

 

The latest estimate of developing countries’ annual climate adaptation needs for 2035 outstrips current funding by at least 12 times, with rich nations providing just $26 billion in 2023, according to the annual UN Adaptation Gap Report. 

 

If current trends continue, developed countries are set to miss the 2025 target that they committed to at COP26 four years ago, UNEP’s report said. 

 

As COP30 entered its final stretch, African Non-State Actors on climate justice, under the umbrella of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, called for “an outcome that protects our societies and economies, strengthens resilience, and advances a fair and development-centred global transition”.

 

The group demanded for more than triple adaptation finance by 2030, with a clear public-finance pathway, and “a fully capitalised fund for responding to Loss and Damage with new, additional, predictable finance, and as a guarantee mobilized from public sources”.

 

Africa CSOs are seeking a fast-track support for resilient agriculture, water and health systems, coastal protection, and community adaptation complimented with early warning systems.

 

“For millions, adaptation is not an abstract goal. It is the difference between rebuilding and being swept away, between replanting and starving, between staying on ancestral lands or losing it forever,” said António Guterres.

 

The UN chief has urged wealthy governments, climate funds and development banks to step up and prevent further tragedies.

 

“It’s about survival, it’s about justice – and for Indigenous peoples, it is also about protecting cultures and homelands that sustain our planet’s vital ecosystems,” he noted.

 

He says it is the responsibility on big emitters to do more while ramping up emissions-cutting efforts.

 

By Kofi Adu Domfeh

COP 30: Climate finance remains Africa’s top priority

African climate negotiators have outlined a unified set of priorities for the major UN climate change conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, highlighting climate finance as top priority.

 

Chair of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN), Dr. Richard Muyungi, says COP30 must deliver “ambitious, balanced, fair and just outcomes across adaptation, mitigation, loss and damage, and climate finance,” emphasizing that negotiations must be anchored in the latest science and the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR–RC).

 

He warned that despite contributing less than 4% of global emissions, Africa faces rapidly intensifying climate impacts and requires outcomes that reflect its “special needs, developmental context, and heightened vulnerability.”

 

The negotiators called for a clear alignment between financing flows and the ambition reflected in countries’ next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 3.0).

 

Key demands include concrete steps to operationalise US$1.3 trillion annually by 2030 and the US$300 billion climate finance goal.

 

This year’s global climate summit kicked off in the Amazonian city of Belém in Brazil, amid a warning from United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, that the world is not doing enough to combat the crisis, and strategic compromises over the elements of the official agenda of the summit.

 

At the opening plenary, the UN climate chief said the world is not moving fast enough to confront the climate crisis but was quick to note that global cooperation had at least prevented “an impossible future” of runaway heating.

 

“We have so much more work to do. We must move much, much faster; both in reducing emissions and in strengthening resilience,” he told delegates.

 

Stiell credited the Paris Agreement, adopted 10 years ago, with bending the curve of projected global heating from as high as 5°C to below 3°C, saying “it is still perilous, but it proves that climate cooperation works”.

 

He said success now depends on two interlinked pillars: stronger, more credible national climate plans, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs); and the financing to make them possible.

 

“Plans without finance cannot reach their full potential,” he said.

 

Finance is the great accelerator

 

Stiell pointed to the Baku to Belém Roadmap, a new initiative that seeks to increase global climate finance from about US$300 billion a year to US$1.3 trillion by 2035, describing it as a shared investment in “stability and prosperity” and noting that countries acting fastest on clean energy would reap the greatest economic benefits.

 

“Every dollar invested in climate solutions brings multiple dividends; jobs, cleaner air, better health, resilient supply chains, and stronger energy and food security,” he said.

 

Supporters hailed the roadmap as an ambitious but necessary step to close the gap between climate pledges and real-world funding.

 

Brazil, hosting COP30 under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, described the roadmap as “a blueprint for collective resolve.” The Brazilian delegation urged negotiators to focus on fairness and delivery rather than rhetoric.

 

 “The science is clear, the moral imperative undeniable. What remains is the resolve,” they said.

 

Mohamed Adow, founder and director, Power Shift Africa, said: “COP30 must deliver the priorities for Africa and the wider developing world which are clear: we need a fair deal that delivers finance for adaptation in vulnerable countries and supports a just transition to renewable energy.

 

“These are not acts of charity, but investments in a stable, liveable planet. We need to see the sharing of clean energy technology by the global north with the global south, and we need to see more national climate plans published by all countries, laying out how we’re going to accelerate the momentum towards a safe and prosperous planet for us all.”

 

Over the next two weeks, the COP30 Presidency is understood to be positioning the summit as a political reckoning that will test whether the Paris Agreement, the crown jewel of international climate diplomacy, can still deliver results at scale.

 

Growing fatigue in climate process

 

Since 2015, global emissions have plateaued but not fallen fast enough. The 1.5°C target, the threshold scientists warn the world must stay below to avoid catastrophic consequences, is slipping out of reach.

 

The Belém conference comes amid growing fatigue and distrust in the global climate process, particularly over financing and equity. The Baku to Belém Roadmap aims to restore faith by setting a long-term financing goal, but key questions remain unanswered: who pays, how much, and under what terms.

 

Omar Elmawi, Convenor of the Africa Movement of Movements, noted: “We cannot keep sailing blindly into a climate apocalypse while pretending everything is merry. COP30 must be the turning point, where words become action, and promises become justice. Over eight billion people globally are looking at Belém to be the moment we will all look back to and celebrate and not one we curse.”

 

For Africa, COP30 is a moment of reckoning. The continent contributes less than 4 per cent of global emissions but bears the heaviest costs of climate change, from droughts and cyclones to collapsing agricultural yields and energy insecurity.

 

African negotiators have consistently argued that without predictable, affordable finance, developing nations cannot deliver on their commitments. The Baku to Belém Roadmap could be transformative if implemented fairly, ensuring that new funds reach life-saving adaptation projects in vulnerable communities, not just emissions reductions in middle-income economies.

 

African countries are also demanding a rebalancing of the climate finance equation to include more grants, fewer debt-driven instruments, and direct access for local governments and institutions.

 

The hope is that the roadmap will address long-standing inequalities that have left Africa sidelined when it comes to green investment.