By Witness Radio and WoMin teams.

Hundreds of African women activists and climate leaders who attended the week-long Women’s Climate Assembly (WCA), held alongside the African People’s Counter COP (APCC) in Saly, Senegal, have declared to fiercely protect Africa’s natural resources from the rampant exploitation by countries in the Global North.

The Pan-African radical space ignited a powerful collective movement, uniting Africans most deeply affected by rampant resource extraction and ecological destruction, forging a path toward true environmental justice and liberation for Africa’s people.

The WCA highlighted African women’s central role in defending the continent’s natural resources, which countries in the Global North have long exploited. Activists and leaders called for urgent action to protect Africa’s wealth, including minerals like cobalt and lithium, oil, and vast tracts of forested land, which have fueled global industries while devastating local environments.

Activist Ndieme Ndong from Senegal spoke ardently about this exploitation: “All the wealth is coming from Africa. Gold, phosphate, oil, cobalt – everything is coming from Africa. But foreign powers bribe our leaders and rob us of our resources. If we look at all the wealth in Europe, all the wealth they are using in the factories and plants in Europe, everything comes from Africa.”

Held alongside the African People’s Counter COP, this annual assembly set a powerful precedent for future collaborations and united efforts toward a more just and sustainable future for Africa and the world. The activists noted that women have often been sidelined in climate advocacy despite the devastating effects Africa and the rest of the world are facing.

“The 2024 Women’s Climate Assembly has demonstrated that when women unite, they can be a powerful force for change. African women are determined to ensure that their demands and impactful organizing in the fight against the climate crisis are both heard and seen.” The activists mentioned in a statement released shortly after the event.

The assembly also served as a powerful platform for African women to demand gender-responsive climate policies. Africa continues to bear the brunt of climate change’s worst consequences as harmful development models driven by Global North companies, such as cobalt and lithium mining fuel conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, oil pollution in the Niger Delta, forest and land grabs for monoculture farming in Cameroon and Uganda among others, and polluted water sources have intensified the call for environmental change. These destructive practices are driving African women, who are disproportionately affected, to lead the resistance.

“In my village in Côte d’Ivoire, if we want to get outside our community, we need a gate pass to explain why we are going out. When we are in our village, you cannot move your goods freely. There are guards, uniformed men, always in yellow, who monitor movements on behalf of the palm oil company. Many women have been arrested and put in prison by these wicked multinationals just because they are picking fruits of the palm for themselves. This is OUR land. We had to do something. We had to fight for the liberation of these women. So, as women, we organized.” – Josiane Boyo, from Cote d’Ivoire, revealed.

Ahead of COP29 in Azerbaijan this November, the WCA and APCC emphasized the critical need to include African women’s voices in global climate negotiations. African women are leading the push for sustainable solutions, demanding the right to say “NO” to harmful extractive and development projects, reparations for environmental damage, and advocating for an end to the climate debt that has burdened their communities.

Over 120 women activists and leaders from across Africa met from October 7th to 11th under the theme “African Women Rise to Defend their Lands, Oceans, and Forests. ” The assembly emphasized the power of women’s leadership in confronting Africa’s most pressing environmental challenges.

The assembly was organized by a steering group of women’s movements, grassroots networks, and a few NGOs working in solidarity with women in resistance, and 200 women from across West, Central, East, and Southern Africa were gathered last year. The delegates, representing 70 communities and organizations from 17 countries, are at the forefront of resistance against large development projects that extract and exploit Africa’s natural resource wealth at the expense of people and the planet.

By Witness Radio team.

Africa’s path to recovery from the scars of destructive development projects will take decades. These projects, often presented as “development initiatives,” have caused untold suffering, including deaths, homelessness, infertility among women, food insecurity, flooding, and the relentless pollution of lands that were once flourishing homelands. This fallout is catastrophic for the environment and the people who depend on it.

In a radio program at Witness Radio, which was part of the Women’s Climate Assembly (WCA) 2024, women activists from across Africa, representing western and central African regions, revealed the dark reality behind projects disguised as “development,” which genuinely devastates their communities, lands, and the environment.

The rise of these destructive projects has galvanized African women to fight back. They demand alternative development solutions and projects that uplift women, support families, and sustain communities while protecting the environment.

Siya Foyoh, a community activist working with WoME from Kono District in Sierra Leone, shared the horrors her region faces from mining and deforestation. Kono, Sierra Leone’s one of the leading diamond-producing districts, has seen an increase in child deaths due to uncovered mining pits, which flood during the rains. “Every month, we lose one or two children who fall into these pits. This never happened before the mining began,” Foyoh explained.

Beyond the immediate dangers, the chemicals used in mining have led to widespread health crises. “In my district, hepatitis B is rampant because of these chemicals. Our health is suffering greatly,” she added.

But what is more disheartening is the response from government authorities. “When we report these tragedies to the government, we are told the mining companies are too powerful to be challenged,” Foyoh lamented.

Foyoh also pointed to the growing problem of timber logging in Sierra Leone, accelerating deforestation and disrupting rainfall patterns.

“This year, our community saw little and late rainfall, leading to food shortages. Deforestation is driving us toward famine,” she further added.

Another activist, Florence Naakie, from Nigeria’s Lokiaka Centre, highlighted the devastating impact of oil extraction on women and their communities. She revealed that “Countries may be different, but the struggles we face are the same,” recounting stories of coastal erosion in Senegal, deforestation for timber, and the increasingly erratic weather patterns affecting farming communities across Africa.

In Nigeria’s Niger Delta, Oil development operations have ravaged the land and waters, and farmers and fisherfolk are facing an ecological disaster. “Our soil is infertile; even when we use fertilizers, there’s no yield. Fisherwomen report catching fish that smell of crude oil, which we know can cause cancer,” Naakie explained.

She painted a bleak picture of life in the Niger Delta: “We’re being pushed to the brink. People cannot farm or fish, and the pollution has led to widespread infertility and cancer among women. Some of the babies born in these areas are deformed.”

In Nigeria, the oil spill crisis is staggering. The Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor recorded over 1,150 spills in 2023 alone.”Oil pollution has destroyed our environment, caused infertility in young women, and left us battling diseases like cancer,” Naakie added, with emphasis on the devastating impact on women, who bear the brunt of providing for their families in the face of environmental destruction.

“We have many women between the ages of 25 and 30 and above who are now unable to conceive because they have been exposed to a polluted environment. When these women go fishing, they come into contact with crude oil, leading to serious health consequences like cancer. We are seeing rising cases of skin cancer, cleft lips, and deformities in infants born to these women,” Naakie added.

Despite the overwhelming challenges, African women are refusing to back down. They call for projects restoring degraded lands and water sources and for the collective power to stand up to mining companies, governments, and other entities pushing harmful ” development ideas.”

“We will not give up,” vowed the activists. We are fighting for projects that prioritize women, families, and communities. We want a future where we can live dignified lives without fear for our children or our land.”

In-case you missed the live program,

The UN’s new carbon market will have a compulsory mechanism that aims to prevent developers of carbon credit projects from breaching human rights or causing environmental damage with their activities – a first for the UN climate process.

Developers of projects under the UN’s new Article 6.4 carbon crediting system will be required to identify and address potential negative environmental and social impacts as part of a detailed risk assessment under new rules adopted by technical experts in Baku, Azerbaijan, last Thursday.

Developers will also be asked to set out how their activities contribute to sustainable development goals like ending poverty or improving health, alongside their primary objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Maria AlJishi, chair of the Supervisory Body in charge of setting the rules, said in a statement that “these new mandatory safeguards are a significant step towards ensuring that the UN carbon market we are building contributes to sustainable development without harming people or the environment”.

The risk reduction measures introduced by the so-called “Sustainable Development Tool” represent an attempt to grapple with widespread concerns over the harm caused by some carbon credit projects around the world.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – the previous UN carbon market set up to help richer countries meet their emissions-cutting pledges – was dogged by accusations of social and environmental abuses linked to its registered projects. They included, for example, toxic pollution from a waste-to-energy facility in India, forced relocations due to infrastructure like a hydropower dam in Panama, and villagers in Uganda being denied access to land they used to grow food as a result of a tree-planting project.

The CDM had only a less-rigorous voluntary safeguarding mechanism that was heavily criticised by civil society.

The approval of the new Sustainable Development Tool this week marks the end of a two-year process to agree on the rules, which will work alongside an appeals and grievance procedure rubber-stamped earlier this year.

Kristin Qui, a Supervisory Body member closely involved in developing the tool, told Climate Home it had been “very challenging” to get it right. “Everyone wanted to find the right balance between making sure the tool can be used while at the same time being as stringent as possible,” she added.

Under the new rules, project developers will have to fill out an extensive questionnaire designed to assess the risk their activities could pose in 11 areas, including land and water, human rights, health, gender equality and Indigenous Peoples.

They will have to describe how they are planning to avoid any negative impacts or, if that is not possible, the measures they are taking to reduce them, as well as procedures to monitor their implementation.

External auditors will review the risk assessment, check that local communities have been properly consulted and evaluate the appropriateness of the actions proposed by the developers. The rules will apply to both new projects developed under Article 6.4 and to over a thousand more that are seeking to transfer into the new market from the CDM.

Isa Mulder, a policy expert at Carbon Market Watch (CMW) and a close observer of Article 6 negotiations, said the tool “should go a long way in upholding rights and protecting people and the environment”.

She added there is still room for improvement on certain provisions and said the mechanism will need to be used as intended for it to be effective, but called it “a really good start”.

The Supervisory Body will review and update the safeguarding tool every 18 months, striving to improve it based on feedback from those involved.

In addition to the risk assessment, the mechanism will require project developers to assess the potential impacts of their activities on country efforts to meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the UN in 2015 and due to be met this decade.

Qui said the tool will make project developers reflect more closely on how they can share benefits with local communities.

“It poses the question of how the project is actually going to contribute to sustainable development in addition to simply avoiding harm and encourages a high level of engagement with Indigenous populations from the get-go,” she added.

The approval of the Sustainable Development Tool is seen as an important stepping stone towards achieving the full operationalisation of the Article 6 carbon market at COP29 in November – one of the main priorities for the incoming Azerbaijani presidency of the talks.

CMW’s Mulder said the tool’s adoption was “very significant”, as having a human rights protection package in place was “probably a prerequisite” for many countries to even consider approving other carbon market measures at COP.

After extended and heated discussions stretching into the early morning on Thursday, the Supervisory Body also agreed on guidance for the development of carbon-credit methodologies and carbon removal activities aimed at ensuring that emission reductions claimed by projects are credible.

These key building blocks for the establishment of the Article 6.4 carbon crediting mechanism proved an insurmountable hurdle at the last two annual climate summits where government negotiators rejected previous iterations of the documents.

That prompted the Supervisory Body to take a different route in Baku this week by directly approving those documents as “standards” instead of simply presenting its recommendations for diplomats to fight over at COP.

Jonathan Crook, a policy expert at CMW, interpreted the move as “a risky take-it-or-leave it strategy” to avoid intensive negotiations. “I think this approach aims to ensure the texts won’t be reopened at COP29 for line-by-line edits,” he said.

Climate Home understands that governments will still have the option of rejecting the body’s “standards” wholesale or directing it to make further changes.

Supervisory Body chair AlJishi said in written comments that “the adoption of these standards marks a major step forward in enabling a robust, agile carbon market that can continue to evolve”.

But a fellow member of the body, Olga Gassan-zade, voiced concerns over the process. “Personally I have huge reservations against creating a UN mechanism that can effectively evade the UN governance,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post, “but it didn’t feel like the SBM [Supervisory Body Mechanism] as a whole was willing to risk not adopting the CMA recommendations for a third year in a row.”…PACNEWS/CIMATE HOME.

Source: Post-Courier