CCCPA--in cooperation with the African Development Bank (AfDB)--organized a virtual workshop as part of the Geneva Peace Week, titled “Accelerating Climate Finance for Sustaining Peace in Africa: Towards Integrated, Sustainable and Innovative Financing”, on 4 November 2021. 

The workshop discussed the main challenges and opportunities for accelerating and diversifying climate finance in fragile and conflict-affected settings as well as advancing integrated climate finance that leverages the cross-cutting benefits of climate adaptation, peacebuilding and resilience. 

CCCPA’s Director-General and Executive Director of the Aswan Forum, Ambassador Ahmed Abdel-Latif, stated that “the workshop seeks to build on the conclusions of Aswan Forum I & II, and takes place concurrently with the ongoing negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow, where climate finance stands at the center stage.” Ambassador Abdel-Latif also underlined that the African continent receives only 4 percent of global climate finance, and only a small fraction of that is directed to fragile and conflict-affected settings, largely focusing on climate mitigation, despite the strong need for climate adaptation.

The virtual workshop brought together a remarkable group of distinguished speakers from the climate and peacebuilding finance communities, including Ambassador Hussein (Seyni) Nafo, Technical Coordinator of the Africa Adaptation Initiative and Former Chair of the African Group of Negotiators; Ambassador Johanna Lissinger Peitz, Senior Advisor at the Ministry of Environment of Sweden; Mr. Drazen Kucan, Sector Lead/Senior Urban Development and Energy Efficiency Specialist, Green Climate Fund; Mr. Marcus Lenzen, Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief at the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund; Dr. Olufunso Somorin, Regional Principal Officer, AfDB; and Ms. Daniela Chiriac, Senior Consultant at the Climate Policy Initiative. 

The deliberations focused on key challenges that impede the scaling-up of climate finance in Africa, particularly on the adaptation front. It also shed light on the barriers that hinder the design of integrated climate finance mechanisms that support peace building efforts, such as the lack of a common language and organizational culture across the financing actors. 

The speakers put forward a number of suggestions and recommendations to bridge the gap between the climate finance and peacebuilding finance communities. They highlighted the imperative for advancing robust partnerships, leveraging the co-benefits of climate adaptation for resilience and peacebuilding, and devising specific financing mechanisms for fragile and conflict-affected countries. 

The outcome of this discussion will feed into the preparations of Aswan Forum III (to be held in March 2022), which aims to tackle the interface between climate, sustainability and sustaining peace in Africa at a time that is characterized by concurrent crises and cascading risks, and in light of Egypt hosting COP27 next year.

This workshop comes as part of the project on “Enhancing Peace, Security, and Stability in Africa”, funded by the Government of Japan through UNDP.