Scientific Evidence on Climate Change Clinic in Africa Conference

The wider context for our convening is this. According to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change. Yet, the continent is among the lowest contributors to climate change with just about 3% percent of global greenhouse emissions. To make matters worse, Africa as a continent has a limited capacity to undertake the mitigation and adaptation required to meaningfully respond to climate change. African States highlighted this stark challenge in advisory proceedings concerning the obligations of States in respect of climate change under the law of the sea convention at ITLOS in 2024, and most recently, at the ICJ where the oral hearings concluded mid-December 2024.

While several African States participated in the advisory processes at ITLOS and the ICJ, one of the barriers to effective African State participation in those proceedings was the lack of country-specific scientific knowledge on climate change and its impacts. It is against this backdrop that this conference proposes to examine the role of context specific scientific evidence in advancing efforts towards adaptation and mitigation to better address the challenges of climate change in Africa.

Through this informal expert dialogue, which will take place on the margins of the February 2025 African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, CILPA hopes to facilitate a high level of engagement of African State representatives, environmental scientists and professionals from diverse disciplines in an expert discussion aimed at identifying lessons learned from the recent advisory processes. We offer the participants, some of whom were participants in the processes before the ITLOS and ICJ, the chance to debate pressing climate change issues affecting the African continent, and to consider the best possible outcome from the recent advisory processes at ITLOS and the ICJ with the view to strengthening the intra-Africa and Global South partnerships to address the deleterious impacts of climate change.