The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) launched the KEEP THE PROMISE CAMPAIGN action towards COP28.  COP 28 dubbed as COP of accountability will be held in Emirates from November 30 Nov – 12 Dec 2023, at Expo City Dubai.

The campaign was launched after another successful one dubbed the Climate Justice Torch campaign ran last year three months before COP 27. This Campaign was run physically in 13 countries and was run virtually in the rest of the countries where PACJA is present.

For the very first time parties will take stock of their progress on the Paris Agreement. The GST will help align efforts on climate action, including putting measures in place to bridge the gaps in progress.

This multi-country KEEP THE PROMISE campaign is led by young people from Africa. It seeks to ride on five key issues to build the strategic thrust for our influence and advance its campaign goals. It envisions calling the global north to honour its commitments. It calls also African countries to demonstrate leadership in accountability through implementing locally led actions, above reproach and with the leadership of and causing direct impacts to those at the front line of the climate crisis.

 The KEEP THE PROMISE Campaign action will focus on five key issues which are global stock take, Just Transition, corporate Climate atrocities, Climate financing gap and global goal adaptation.

On Global Stock Take, the campaign sees the Global Stock Take process as an opportunity for much more structured dialogue in advancing greater accountability for climate action by all stakeholders across all cadres. The campaign envisions an approach to the stock take that is sufficiently broad to encompass actions that enhance accountability for climate action that are not necessarily envisaged under the UNFCCC mechanism.

On Just Transition, it was observed that the just transition continues to push for greater exploration and extraction of transitional minerals as well as justify a host of investments in the African continent whose contribution to sustainable economies and societies remains suspicious.

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With the much-needed climate funding remaining largely in the hands of few global institutions and its trickledown to countries and communities at the frontline of climate crisis highly in question, these extractive actions continue to compound accountability challenges in climate response.

 The campaign seeks to call leaders to embrace an approach that promotes the just transition in the context of Africa

As far as Corporate climate atrocities, the role of the corporation is not underestimated.  Africa has been facing climate atrocities committed by both national and multi-national corporations that expose communities at the frontline to greater vulnerabilities and impacts of climate change. Well-crafted messages and demands will be shared and sent to those concerned by climate atrocities so that their programming considers this and hence abides by their accountability.

For many years, the Climate financing gap has been highlighted as the biggest challenge to African countries to be able to adapt to the change of climate and its induced impacts. Every day of inaction, the climate crisis continues to compound and so do the resources required for climate response while global efforts in scaling access to funds from public sources are not commensurate to growing needs and vulnerabilities as developed countries continue to abdicate their responsibilities and push these to global private sector actors. KEEP THE PROMISE campaign will look at this gap and echo the same call to rich countries to honour the commitment to Climate finance.

This campaign also aims to remind the global North that adaptation is key and that there should not be a diversion from climate adaptation. The Global Goal on Adaptation as one of the key issues to be addressed by the campaign will emphasise that e funding ambitions must converge and with greater accountability on developed countries in accessing much-needed funding for adaptation.