PACJA launch campaign to mount pressure on world leaders to honour climate finance pledges
The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) yesterday launched a campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo aimed at exerting pressure on world leaders to increase funding that would support efforts in protecting one of the world’s largest carbon sinks.
The campaign named Climate Justice Torch (CJT) was initiated to mobilize local communities including the youth, women’s movements, fishers, farmers, and NGOs at the national level for climate justice and raise African voices towards a common position.
“As climate justice campaigners, we have come from every part of the continent to call upon the global leaders meeting here for a pre-COP 27 to consider supporting not just the DR Congo, but all countries with remaining tropical forests such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea among others,” said Dr Mithika Mwenda, PACJA Executive Director.
The Republic of Congo is currently among leading countries remaining as a carbon sink country in regards to the vast forest cover.
Drothée Lisenga, Representative of Indigenous community said that forests in the DR Congo are massively being destroyed.
“We are losing our super market, we are losing our natural resources, we are losing the fish, we are losing all the animals, we are losing the rivers drying up. Today we decree our struggles as usual and say Stop climate change because it affects us. We want climate justice and we also want climate finance. When the forest leaves, we must also have the benefits of the causes, because it is our wealth,” she said.
Berthilde Gitira, member of environmental civil society and women’s coalition for the environment and sustainable development said Congo, like the rest of Africa is experiencing global warming.
“We feel it. Today we have come to claim our climate justice. Our country is the second lung of the world and all this gas emission, when released in industrialized countries, are sequestered in our forests and as a reward, we have nothing. We are the poorest in the world and we cannot afford this situation. As today the DRC organizes the PRE COP27, we call the [Government] authorities through the Ministry of the Environment to carry out this advocacy so that the DRC can benefit from this outcome (finance) from climate change,” she said.
The DR Congo is seeing massive losses of the forest at an estimate rate of about 17,000 hectares per year.
Maintaining the services provided by the natural resources ecosystems (forests, savannahs, hydrological basins) is essential to ensure future development, limit the impacts of climate change and provide opportunities for adaptation to the most vulnerable strata, including women and young people of all socio-cultural categories of urban and rural centres.
Despite the commitments made by the countries, the actors have difficulty in applying the decisions, whereas this essentially contributes to amplifying the impacts of change on the environment and the populations.
During COP 26, the DRC committed to modifying the rate of emissions, which used to be 18%, to 21% which is reflected in the revised National Determined Contribution in 2021.
The continent prepares to host the 27th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in November in Egypt.
