Amani Africa Briefing to the Peace and Security Council
Amani Africa Briefing to the Peace and Security CouncilDate | 17 SEPTEMBER, 2025
Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) for September 2025, Ambassador Professor Miguel Bembe,
Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Ambassador Bankole Adeoye,
Excellencies, distinguished members of the Peace and Security Council, dear friends,
A very good morning to you all.
It is an honour for me to address you today, representing Amani Africa Media and Research Services (Amani Africa), an organisation that is dedicated to the advancement of peace and security through research and analysis, supporting the noble mandate of this august house, our Union’s standing peace and security decision-making body.
Chairperson, Commissioner Adeoye, Excellencies, members of the PSC, dear friends
Today’s meeting is convened ahead of four major global policy meetings: the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (UNGA), COP30, the AU-EU Summit and the G20 Summit, with the last two being held on African soil. We therefore note with appreciation the strategic significance of the timing of this meeting for crafting the position of Africa that will be communicated in these meetings and wish to commend the Chairperson and this house for the timely session.
In view of the foregoing, my intervention will focus on three points on the climate, peace and security nexus.
The first relates to the imperative of anchoring the climate, peace and security agenda in and addressing it as part of the broader climate change policy process, focusing on justice and development rather than in isolation from and outside of it.
The second point that I will make relates to the need to give particular attention to mobility as a lever in the climate, peace and security nexus.
The last and third aspect of my briefing concerns how to take forward the climate, peace and security agenda in peace and security policy making in particular.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen
It is now beyond dispute that climate change is the most pressing present and existential threat facing humanity. Apart from the compelling scientific evidence the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has built and presented, this present and existential threat that climate poses has become incontrovertible by the frequency and ferocity of climate change-induced extreme weather events we are all witnessing.
Yet, as much as it poses a present and existential threat to all of humanity, climate change does not affect all equally. Due to weak socio-economic conditions and historical marginalisation, climate change carries much more devastating consequences in Africa, as in other similarly positioned parts of the world.
This is evident from the droughts in Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa, cyclones in South Eastern Africa, floods in central, west and north east Africa, depletion of water sources in the Lake Chad basin, sea level rise in coastal West Africa, which are wreaking havoc.
Lives are cut short. Entire villages are washed away. Livelihoods on which communities depend for their existence are lost. Infrastructure is destroyed. The resultant loss and damage is taking away a significant portion of the GDPs of relatively weak economies, with estimates reaching as much as 11 per cent for some countries.
The weak level of socio-economic development and the resultant existence of conditions of vulnerability not only manifest a context in which the capacity to cope and recover is very weak. But they also make the impacts of climate change highlighted above more devastating.
The unjustness of the situation is borne out by the fact that Africa is the least responsible for the global greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, despite bearing the brunt of some of the most severe impacts of climate change.
It is these fundamental conditions that render climate change to be first and foremost and essentially a development and justice issue. Thus, as important and necessary as it is, the focus on climate, peace and security is supplementary to and not a substitute for the core climate change policy process with its focus on justice and development.
The AU and this Council are accordingly right in anchoring the climate, peace and security agenda in the broader climate change policy process. Simultaneously, the merit of the climate, peace and security agenda is not only to ensure that peace and security policy making takes full account of the impact of climate change on conflicts, but also to ensure that the peace and security impact of climate change is given systematic due consideration in climate change policy processes writ large.
It is therefore clear that the peace and security implications of climate change cannot and should not be dealt with on its own and in isolation from the essential and wider justice and development focus of climate change policy processes. Within this context, the policy issues deserving of the most serious consideration are the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, climate financing for adaptation and loss and damage responsive to the needs of the most affected and vulnerable, the trade impacts of individual climate response measures and just energy transition and sharing of know-how and technology.
On financing, while pressing for scaling up of the funds for both adaptation and loss and damage in particular, the AU and this Council need to put particular emphasis on the necessity of those most responsible honouring existing financing commitments.
Fragile states receive only USD 2.1 per person annually, while non-fragile states receive USD 161.7. These numbers reflect a global financial system that rewards stability and punishes vulnerability. The African Union’s (AU) March 2024 report rightly called for prioritising fragile and conflict-affected states in funding access. But financial mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) remain out of reach for many.
On trade and development implications of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the Joint Namibia-Amani Africa High-level Panel of Experts Report noted by way of example that ‘the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)…is projected to cost the continent at least US$25 billion annually.’ As others set similar measures, this would have serious consequences on the export trade of African countries.
In view of the foregoing and as part of AU’s position in the upcoming COP31 being held in Brazil and the G20 summit to be held in South Africa, as well as the EU-AU summit expected to be held in Angola, the following are the key actions this Council may adopt:
a) To underscore the imperative for upholding the principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) as a cornerstone of collective action for addressing the impacts of climate change, including its peace and security implications.
b) To call for timely, climate-focused and faithful implementation of both the commitment to mobilise climate finance to the scale of $ 300 billion per year by 2035 adopted at COP29 and the earlier goal of mobilising USD 100 billion per year through 2025 to address the financing needs of developing countries.
c) From the perspective of responsiveness to the needs of Africa, attention should be given to the nature and source of climate finance. For climate finance to meet the pressing needs of addressing the challenges that climate change pose along with the development needs of Africa, the PSC may thus emphasise that the AU call on COP30 and G20 summit to ensure that the source of financing is grant based and concessional rather than one that accentuates the debt burden distress that is cripling the economies of many countries in Africa.
d) Related to the issue of financing is the loss and damage fund that was adopted at COP27. As a continent where the increasing frequency and ferocity of climate is resulting in increasing loss and damage, this Council also needs to call for measures to be adopted at COP30 and G20 summit for both the capitalisation at expanded scale and operationalization of the loss and damage fund as well as the inclusion of debt pause clauses in agreements on financing for development when countries experience climate disasters.
e) To advance ease of access for the countries most in need, including particularly fragile and conflict-affected countries. Simplified access procedures, as emphasised during the most recent Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (Ffd4) held in Sevilla, Spain, from 30 June to 3 July 2025 – Compromiso de Sevilla, and de-risking access of African countries to climate finance are critical to unlocking investments in early warning systems, climate-smart agriculture, flood defences and renewable energy.
f) On the trade impacts of unilateral ‘climate response’ measures such as CBAMs, the PSC may underscore the importance of respect for the implementation of Article 3(5) of the UNFCCC and the call in COP28 related to the avoidance of unilateral trade measures based on climate or environment.
Adaptation initiatives should also focus on fostering support for building resilience for the most vulnerable regions of the continent in key social and economic sectors such as agriculture and rural economy, and promoting regional cooperation to build the capacity of vulnerable populations, as well as embedding climate considerations into peacebuilding and development strategies.
Excellencies, dear friends
Coming to the second point of mobility, apart from those consequences noted earlier, mobility has increasingly become a major issue in climate, peace and security. As the high-level side event on climate, mobility and peace and security held on 9 September during the 2nd Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) highlighted, the movement of people, including when it is a product of climate change and conflict, is an opportunity to be harnessed for coping with the impacts of climate and building resilience.
As the chief of staff of the IOM pointed out at that high-level event and the research work, Amani Africa is carrying out with IOM, reveals, traditions of seasonal mobility in Africa by various communities and emerging contemporary experience on the continent to govern mobility including those induced by climate change show that, if managed well and facilitated as part of anticipatory action, mobility becomes instrumental for climate action. IGAD’s Transhumance Protocol has facilitated safe cross-border pastoral movements, mitigating disputes over resources. Kenya’s forecast-based financing enabled communities to take anticipatory action before floods, protecting lives and assets. Senegal successfully relocated communities from high-risk coastal zones through inclusive and dignified planned relocation initiatives. Ethiopia has integrated mobility mapping and early warning into national climate and peace strategies. These cases demonstrate that anticipatory governance, resource planning, and early relocation measures undertaken with participation of affected communities can reduce risks and foster cooperation.
This necessitates a change in policy imagination of shifting away from treating mobility as a threat and towards the consideration of mobility as an opportunity in the climate, peace and security agenda. Properly managed, mobility is not only a coping mechanism and contributes to peacebuilding but also serves as an adaptation strategy that can strengthen communities’ capacity to withstand climate shocks. In view of the foregoing, the PSC may consider the following:
- The convening of a session dedicated to mobility, climate and peace and security for ensuring that climate-induced and related mobility is turned into an opportunity for managing the impacts of climate rather than becoming an accelerator of conflict risks.
- The Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) should integrate mobility indicators to anticipate displacement, in order to prevent conflict and facilitate planned mobility.
- Ratification and operationalisation of key agreements, such as the AU Free Movement Protocol and IGAD’s Transhumance Protocol, are essential to harness mobility as an instrument for addressing challenges relating to the climate, peace and security nexus.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen
Finally, on taking the climate peace and security agenda specifically forward in peace and security policy making specifically, we note that while the relationship between climate and peace and security is at very best correlational rather than causational, our work established that there is a two-way correlation between climate and peace and security. On the one hand, climate change operates as a threat multiplier but only in specific contexts of governance and security fragility or in countries in conflict or crisis. On the other hand, conflict, by destroying existing coping mechanisms and hugely constraining investment in and mobilisation of effective responses to climate disasters, can undermine climate action and thereby turn climate disasters into catastrophes, as the case of Derna in Libya illustrates.
In this context, the first of the issues that deserves the attention of today’s session is strengthening early warning systems as a strategic climate, peace and security measure for anticipating how climate variability interacts with fragility and conflict drivers. Here, there is a need for ensuring that climate indicators such as rainfall anomalies, drought cycles, sea level rise, shrinking of water, pasture and other resources on which communities depend for their livelihoods and migration flows are systematically incorporated. Without this, early warning remains reactive rather than predictive. Relatedly, there is a need for enhancing and leveraging early warning capacity through investment in climate data collection, satellite monitoring and localised reporting networks that can capture the lived realities of vulnerable communities as well as close coordination and coherence between climate early warning systems and conflict early warning systems.
Advancing this agenda also requires, in addition to enhancing collection and quality of data and anticipatory action, the creation of platforms for knowledge and experience sharing.
The other and last aspect of this final point is the need to follow up on this Council’s decision from its 1114th session that called for the inclusion of discussions on climate and security in the agenda of the meetings of the AU Assembly Committee of African Heads of States and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC). This is a prerequisite for ensuring that the security dimension of climate change is fully factored in policy initiatives across the mitigation, adaptation, financing, loss and damage and transition streams of the COP processes.
- As such, the action that takes forward PSC 1114th session decision will be for this Council to task the AU Commission to take steps for ensuring the full integration of the climate, peace and security nexus in CAHOSCC as a necessary condition for addressing the peace and security implications of climate across all the work streams of the COP processes.
With the foregoing and while looking forward to having further exchanges during the interactive segment, I now wish to thank you all for your kind attention and yield the floor back to the Chairperson!