PowerClimateAction Campaign calls for Ambitious Commitment from Nations on People-Centered Climate Action

NY, 22 April 2021-- As we celebrate Earth Day around the world, an ambitious campaign to catalyze higher climate action via dramatically stepped-up capacity, public participation, and empowerment is launching today, led by a growing coalition of organizations.

Together, we call for nations to take ambitious climate action empowered through a transformational UNFCCC Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) agenda. We believe that people have the right-to-know, the right-to-act and the ability to influence climate decision-making. In this light, AbibiNsroma Foundation believes that adverse effects of climate change are universal but more severe in Africa. Ghana is no exception with drought and flooding affecting citizens. The most affected are farmers: because the change in rainfall patterns is reducing crop yield and in some cases destroying farms, hence loss of livelihoods.

AbibiNsroma Foundation will mobilize and raise local communities’ awareness on the impacts of ECA-supported projects and mobilize them to resist and push for the JET agenda.

All governments would benefit from collaborating and implementing the robust education, informed public engagement, and cross-sectoral training programmes for climate-related issues that ACE calls for and was reiterated in Article 12 of the Paris Agreement. However, despite countries having agreed that a worldwide response to the climate crisis is only possible with the contribution of an informed and fully involved society, the work of ACE has largely remained fragmented, underresouced, and underused.

“As part of the original UN Climate Framework,” remarked Frank Niepold, United States National Co-Focal Point on ACE to the UNFCCC, “ACE provides a great agenda, but it needs to be brought into this moment through shared tools, strategies and initiatives. It is by working together across communities and expertise to gather insights, wisdom, and skills, that societal transformation becomes possible.”

PowerClimateAction is a multi-partner campaign coordinated by Citizens Climate International (CCI), Global Council for Science and the Environment (GCSE), Climate Generation: A Will Steger Legacy, Climate Outreach , and Connect4Climate - World Bank Group, among others. We aim to bridge a fundamental gulf between the goal of the landmark Paris Agreement and the realities of the current climate response level across the world through Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE). The campaign will highlight the importance of leveraging a whole-of-society approach, including a strong focus on the intersection of climate and social justice, and the critical nature of providing a clear structure to measure tangible and collective progress.

Creating durable and sustainable climate policies requires broad-based support, collaboration, and adaptive governance for climate measures that raise communities’ capacity to face climate change. Active and direct citizen participation in the design and deployment of climate solutions should be the standard. Public empowerment makes a just climate transformation cheaper, smarter, and more effective.

“Rapid and scalable climate action requires a transformational approach. COVID-19 has been a wake up call to rethink how we emerge and rebuild as a much more resilient society. We can innovate faster and broader in ways that effectively benefit communities if we create spaces for all peoples to collaborate on designing just climate responses,” said Isatis Cintron, CCI’s Regional Coordinator for Latin America.

We are stronger together. When people and communities most impacted are part of decision-making, and can lead on how to move forward and heal our communities, our states, our countries and our planet, everyone does better. We can innovate faster and broader in ways that effectively benefit everybody if we create spaces and conditions for all sectors of society to collaborate and engage in designing climate responses. WIth awareness efforts from PowerClimateAction, we can mainstream climate empowerment to garner the political and social will for just climate action needed across the national policies and the UNFCCC.

We all must #DriveAmbition, join us .