Explore how international cooperation at Climate Action Week is paving the way for effective climate action and what South Africa's role is in this global dialogue.
Image: Siphiwe Sibeko/ Independent Newspapers
At a time when the impacts of the climate crisis are already being felt worldwide, we keep returning to one question: What makes collective action possible?
This week, multiple role players in the climate discourse descended on London for Climate Action Week (LCAW) an open and inclusive platform for action and one of the world’s largest independent climate events, it brings together more than 75,000 people across more than 1,000 events.
LCAW is a notable event in the climate calendar where climate action happens between COPs, where the UN Global Climate Action Agenda comes alive in cities and communities, and where the international climate community gathers to build the cooperation for progress and action.
It is precisely at this intersection that South Africa and Africa are at London Climate Action Week alongside partners, movements, community organizations, funders, and networks from the Global South.
Our participation is about contributing to conversations about the power of collaboration.
We will, with good intent, engage people and institutions that have been building the foundations of emerging international ecosystem at the intersection of climate policy, action, and finance — an agenda that is gaining momentum as the understanding that there will be no action without finance.
Our goal is to shift the financing conversation from funding isolated projects to investing in "Ecosystems of Change", where foundational institutional capacity building is recognized as the ultimate catalyst for long-term climate resilience.
Our three takeaways from London will be (1) adaptation finance, (2) investment in energy and (3) cooperation and country platforms.
We know and have empirical evidence that international funders favour mitigation and hard infrastructure. We want to formulate a specific, costed "ask" for donors at London Climate Action Week that proves the value of funding governance, modelling, and planning.
As global North donors often prioritize mitigation, closing the massive adaptation finance gap remains a challenge. If a major philanthropic donor at London Climate Action Week wants to make a systemic impact on South Africa's climate resilience, we are clear on what is needed.
Scaling Finance through the Just Adaptation and Resilience Investment Plan (J-ARIP): The PCC is developing the Just Adaptation and Resilience Investment Plan (JARIP) to consolidate adaptation financing needs into a formal pipeline. However, moving a project from a "community need" to a "bankable business case" requires expensive pre-feasibility studies and engineering designs that municipalities cannot afford.
Building the resilience of grid infrastructure is often overlooked within just energy transition planning.
We require additional funding to safeguard South Africa’s Just Energy Transition by embedding climate resilience into the country’s critical grid expansion planning.
By co-developing a "Climate-Resilient Grid Expansion Framework" and engaging key stakeholders, the PCC seeks to generate evidence-based recommendations that integrate adaptation measures into financing, procurement, and spatial planning, ensuring that the massive infrastructure build-out required for decarbonization remains operational and financially viable in a changing climate.
In London, we want to position South Africa as an investable environment and a peer leader on the continent without a big brother, know-it-all attitude.
The ICCN African Regional Hub, currently facilitated by South Africa, is not a prescriptive centre of instruction, but more of a peer learning and peer review platform.
We recognise that climate councils across the continent face a shared set of structural challenges: securing legal independence without political isolation, and operationalizing ambitious mandates with limited resources.
Through this Hub, we are creating a 'horizontal' platform to exchange the practical realities of establishment including issues such as advising on the drafting legislation to negotiating donor contracts, so that we can all build stronger, more durable institutions together, as well as amplify collective positions on regional and global issues affecting our domestic climate governance landscapes.
In the same context country platforms have emerged as one of the most promising approaches for mobilizing investment in clean energy, industry, and infrastructure," and to allow a broad range of stakeholders to draw on proven approaches and adapt them to their own national contexts.
South Africa also supported the launch the New Country Platform Knowledge Portal which provides practical tools, guidance, and lessons from existing platforms to mobilize investment at scale.
We are once again a pacesetter as this portal draws on the experience of established platforms, including the Brazil Climate and Ecological Transformation Investment Platform, and the South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia Just Energy Transition Partnership, incorporating insights from governments, financial institutions will serve as an important resource for countries looking to design country platforms of their own.
In London, we want to position South Africa as an investable environment and a peer leader on the continent without a big brother, know it all attitude.
Blessing Manale, Executive Manager, Consensus Building, Communications and Outreach.
Blessing Manale is the executive manager: consensus building, communications and outreach at the Presidential Climate Commission.
Image: Supplied.
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