Faith Leaders, CSOs Call For Just Climate Action Ahead COP32

AKINSINDE ADEOLA OYINDAMOLA

Faith leaders, faith-based organisations, civil society groups and climate actors from across Africa and beyond have launched a new interfaith campaign demanding urgent, just and rights-centred implementation of existing climate commitments ahead of the 32nd Conference of the Parties (COP32).

Dubbed “Africa Can’t Wait: Interfaith Voices for Just Climate Action”, the campaign was launched in Addis Ababa alongside the Fourteenth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-XIV).

The initiative brings faith communities and their partners together around a common demand: that governments and climate-finance institutions move beyond promises and ensure climate action is equitable, locally led and responsive to communities bearing the greatest impacts of the climate crisis.

Across Africa, communities continue to face droughts, floods, food insecurity, displacement and loss and damage linked to climate change.

At the same time, faith-based actors are already working with communities on adaptation, resilience, renewable energy, clean cooking, ecosystem restoration and nature-based solutions.

According to a press statement released on Monday, Africa Can’t Wait seeks to bridge the widening gap between international climate commitments and action reaching communities by placing the voices, experiences and solutions of African communities at the centre of national, regional and global climate discussions.

The campaign will focus its mobilisation and advocacy on four key areas: climate finance; adaptation, resilience and loss and damage; renewable energy and clean cooking; and restoration and nature-based solutions.

Organisers are calling for climate finance that reaches local communities and supports locally led action rather than being trapped in complex systems that limit access for communities on the frontlines.

The campaign will also promote climate approaches that reflect the realities of African communities while documenting practical solutions already being implemented at local level.

Through evidence, storytelling and community experiences, the initiative will seek to demonstrate what effective climate action looks like on the ground and connect those experiences to policy debates on finance, adaptation, energy and nature.

ACT Alliance General Secretary Rudelmar Bueno DeFaria said faith networks across Africa were already helping communities adapt to climate change, strengthen resilience and implement practical solutions.

However, he said much of this work had not been collectively connected to the broader climate-policy debate.

“Our ambition is to turn the experience of faith actors across Africa into collective evidence for what just implementation looks like,” DeFaria said.

He said the evidence would be used to demand delivery of climate commitments at the scale and urgency required by Africa.

Norwegian Church Aid Advocacy Programme Africa Programme Director, Guro Almas, said many responses to Africa’s climate crisis were already being developed by African communities themselves.

The challenge, she said, was ensuring those solutions received the resources they needed while strengthening the voices of faith leaders, young people and communities.

“Faith communities, civil society and community actors all over Africa are already delivering on locally led adaptation, resilience and climate action,” Almas said.

She stressed the need to move beyond delays and commitments that fail to translate into action capable of protecting lives and livelihoods.

Laudato Si’ Movement Executive Director, Lorna Gold, said climate action should not be viewed only through the lens of emissions and environmental targets.

She said it was fundamentally about protecting life, defending human dignity and caring for the common home.

Gold noted that communities across Africa were already advocating for renewable energy while working to protect land, water and livelihoods.

At the All Africa Conference of Churches, Programme Executive for Ecological Justice, Tinashe Gumbo, said faith actors frequently found themselves among the first responders when climate-related disasters strike.

He pointed to droughts, floods, landslides and other disasters affecting communities, arguing that commitments made by developed countries needed to be matched by concrete implementation.

The campaign, he said, provides an opportunity to strengthen collective advocacy around those commitments.

GreenFaith Africa Regional Programme Manager, Pius Oko, said Africa should not merely be invited to international climate conferences to describe the damage caused by climate change.

He said African communities should also have a meaningful role in shaping decisions about climate finance and solutions.

“The campaign will bring together faith voices and community experiences to ensure African realities and locally led solutions are heard where decisions are made,” he said.

For campaign organisers, the argument is straightforward: African communities should not only be subjects of international climate discussions but active participants in determining the policies, financing and solutions that affect their futures.

The campaign recognises faith actors as leaders, implementers, advocates and trusted community partners.

Organisers say their extensive community reach and credibility can help bridge the gap between global climate discourse and the daily realities of people experiencing climate impacts.

The campaign will deploy collective advocacy, public mobilisation, storytelling, media engagement and evidence generation to strengthen an interfaith climate movement across Africa.

The approach seeks to ensure that climate policy conversations are informed not only by government commitments and international negotiations, but also by evidence from communities already confronting the consequences of a changing climate.

At the centre of the campaign is an ambitious mobilisation to secure one million signatures supporting the just and rights-centred implementation of climate action.

The signature drive will seek to unite faith communities, youth, women, civil society organisations, affected communities and other constituencies behind a shared demand for climate action and accountability.

The organisers are calling on faith communities, civil society, young people, women, policymakers, development partners, businesses and citizens across Africa and beyond to add their voices to the campaign.

The mobilisation and advocacy activities are expected to continue as partners build collective momentum towards COP31 and COP32.

For the campaign organisers, the message is ultimately one of urgency.

Africa is already living with the consequences of climate change while many communities continue to struggle for the resources and political space needed to respond.

Africa Can’t Wait seeks to turn that urgency into a collective demand: climate commitments must move from conference halls and policy documents into tangible action, finance and protection for the communities that need them most.