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African climate activists have expressed their displeasure over the new Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) launched at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, as well as other propositions considered to be false solutions to the climate crisis.
Recall that on November 8, the ACMI was launched at COP27. The ACMI has a 13-member steering committee of African leaders, CEOs, and carbon credit experts, who believe the initiative will support the growth of carbon credits production, create jobs and protect biodiversity in Africa, according to a press release the group issued.
The initiative is also said to be targeting over 1.5 billion credits annually in Africa by 2050, leveraging over $120 billion and supporting over 110 million jobs.
The Africa carbon markets initiative is also part of the agenda for Nigeria at COP27, according to the Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdullahi.
However, activists have called it “a further distraction from the real solution to climate change.”
Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, said: “This initiative is a disincentive to progress in cutting down on emissions. Carbon trade is simply business at the expense of the planet. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry backed by Global North governments have found willing partners in African leaders who have shockingly decided to close their ears to the cries of their people carrying the biggest burdens of the climate crisis”
Akinbode Oluwafemi, Executive Director of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) said: “It is disheartening that at a time when the crucial discussion is about voluntarily cutting down on emissions African leaders are again embracing a false solution that licences and encourages pollution to continue.”
Ndivile Mokohena, Gender CC, South Africa said: “As African leaders drift in every wrong direction at the whim of the fossil fuel industry and their enablers, people on the continent continue to suffer. Leaving the fossils in the ground is the faultless path that the world continues to ignore. This carbon market initiative is disappointing.”
Kwami Kpondzo, Friends of the Earth Togo said: “It would seem African leaders are determined not to learn from their mistakes of the past. For a fictional initiative that keeps Africa locked in the fossil fuels trap to be conceived as at a time that Africa is on the grip of climate crisis is totally inconceivable and unacceptable.”
On Wednesday, activists held a protest in the Blue Zone of COP27 demanding an end to the pursuit of false solutions. These false solutions include the concepts of carbon markets upon which the ACMI is based; the geoengineering solutions like cloud seeding, REDD+, among others.
Speaking about the “Together against false solutions” protest held on Wednesday, Aderonke Ige of CAPPA, said: “That was important because we have been talking about it. Each time there is an opportunity to bring forward a solution to the climate crisis that we have, who do you find there? You find governments of the global north and the same corporations that have caused us this loss and damage. It is a saying that you can’t have a criminal prescribing penalty to the crime that he has committed. We can’t be prescribing solutions and those who caused the injustices are the people we find in the room! What will they come up with? Of course, you will have false solutions – things that benefit them. So you will have things like geo-engineering, REDD, net-zero, carbon capture, and so on.
“They are tricks. What we have done is to go further and subject some of these so-called solutions to scientific analysis, and we have realised that they are totally false.”
This story was produced as part of the 2022 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
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