Climate Justice for Africa

Africa speaks up on Climate Change is an appeal to political actors worldwide to care about the threat climate change poses to Africa. Its aim is to create awareness that these political actors must act immediately. Already, droughts, floods, desertification and other effects of climate change are threatening both nature and livelihoods. The appeal also addresses the African public: Only the people can apply the necessary pressure to make the necessary changes.

Africa speaks up on Climate Change describes the problems Africans are already facing, but it doesn't stop there. The signatories pose concrete demands to political leaders of industrial nations, emerging economies and also African countries themselves. They all have to put a stop to further climate change and at the same time find ways to adapt to the existing consequences.

Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel peace prize laureate Wangari Maathai is the author of the appeal Africa speaks up on Climate Change and the patron of the campaign. Her hope is that Africa no longer keeps silent but speaks up in order to challenge climate change and its effects.

• The appeal Africa Speaks up on Climate Change plus information on the film Hotspot Africa is also available as a tri-lingual PDF broschure (English, German, French) (24 pages, 7.5 MB)

The Appeal - Africa speaks up on Climate Change

Africa is the continent that will be hit hardest by climate change. Unpredictable rains and floods, prolonged droughts, subsequent crop failures, and rapid desertification, among others, have in fact already begun to change the face of our continent.

Africa’s poor and vulnerable will be particularly hit by the effects of the rising temperatures - and in some parts of the continent, temperatures have been rising twice as fast as in the rest of the world as i.e. depicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

• read the complete appeal

The film Hotspot Africa

The scientists in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) state without a doubt that no continent will be hit harder by climate change than Africa. Their prediction: rising temperatures and a rise in extreme weather anomalies. Farmer and environmentalist Mulualem Birhane and his neighbours found out long ago what that means for the every day lives of Africans. In Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, almost all farmers rely solely on weather conditions for their harvest. „We used to have a fixed rainy season, but for some years now, it's been unreliable - sometimes, the rainy season doesn't come, sometimes the rain is too heavy or too late," says Mulualem.

Demanding Climate Justice

Interview with Negusu Aklilu, co-ordinator of the Ethiopian Forum for Environment, editor-in-chief of “AKIRMA: a Magazine on Environment and Development“, and one of the primary signatories of the appeal “Africa Speaks up on Climate Change”