African Group solicits media cooperation at Lima talks

By PAMACC Team, Lima

 

The African Group of Negotiators at the ongoing Lima climate talks have expressed their willingness to work with the media torwards ensuring a better deal for Africa as 2015 beckons.

Highlighting the imperatives of a constructive engagement of the African media in the ongoing talks, Nagmeldin El Hassan, Chair of the African Group at a meeting with a delegation of the Pan-African Media Alliance for Climate (PAMACC) today called for far-reaching dissemination of the key issues and developments as they relate to Africa at the conference in order to facilitate shared understanding of the negotiations and its impact on the continent of Africa.

"We are happy with the representation of African media in this conference and we sollicit your cooperation in putting the issues in right perspective" Elhassan said. Atayi Babs, West African Regional Coordinator of PAMACC commended the AGN for the meeting and reiterated PAMACC's focal commitment to providing an effective vehicle for knowledge sharing and information dissemination on the African continent and beyond.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference holding in Lima, Peru from 1st to 12th December 2014 represents a critical moment in the international climate change negotiations. African countries, united in the talks as the African Group, intend to use this opportunity to build the multilateral rules-based system through a comprehensive outcome to curb the growing threat posed to the African continent.

"We have a mandate from science, from our people, from the continent of Africa, and from the United Nations itself to push for enhanced global climate action to cut GHG emissions as well as strengthen adaptation; this will be a priority for us," the AGN Chair says.  El Hassan further alluded on the group's priority on the two key objectives of the Lima Conference: raising international climate action in the pre-2020 period, and negotiation of a new agreement coming to effect in 2020.

El Hassan reaffirmed assertions by the African Union Committee of African Heads of State on Climate Change (CAHOSCC) that a fair agreement in Paris for Africa is one that includes all of the pillars of the Durban mandate, not merely mitigation -- i.e. mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, capacity-building and transparency of action and support.