THE INDEPENDENT GLOBAL STOCKTAKE WEST AFRICA  REGIONAL HUB PROJECT SET TO BE OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED

Press Release

The West African civil society can contribute to the Global Stocktake (GST) process of the Paris Agreement as non-Party stakeholder through the Independent Global Stocktake. Indeed, as part of global efforts to ensure adequate civil society contribution to the GST, the iGST works through a consortium of regional civil society hubs and four thematic working groups on mitigation, adaptation, finance, and equity to support the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

In West Africa, this is implemented through the iGST West Africa (WA) Regional Hub Project that aims to lead advocacy on climate change ambition and to provide support to the GST process in West Africa especially in ECOWAS region. The iGST WA Regional Hub is being created through a consultative and participatory process as a platform that brings together environment, women, and youth-based organizations, farmers and agricultural organizations, universities and research centres, business and industry organizations, indigenous people’s organizations, trade union organizations, labour organizations, regional climate actors, local governments, and municipal authorities, etc. to contribute to the different components of the GST, especially adaptation. Funded by ClimateWorks Foundation, the iGST WA Regional Hub project is led by WASCAL, with the technical support of CSIR.

Started in April 2022, the project is implemented through a bottom-up approach with a process composed of five main steps including (i) mapping and analysis of the climate civil society stakeholders in West Africa, (ii) co-designing with the stakeholders of the operationalization document of the regional hub, (iii) validation of the operationalization document of the regional hub, (iv) official launch of the regional hub into full operation, and (v) first phase of the full operation of the regional hub. The first step led to a report on the mapping of the regional climate civil society and the assessment of their perceptions and interests in the regional initiative of iGST.

The outcome of the second step is a co-designed operationalization document of the regional hub. To this end, contributions were fetched from the stakeholders in March and April through six (6) in-country workshops in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal, and a single virtual workshop with stakeholders of the remaining nine (9) countries of ECOWAS. These full-day workshops, in addition to helping the stakeholders to understand the iGST’s mandate more clearly, provided them opportunities to make direct and relevant inputs into the operational modalities (including the structure, means of engagement, and a roadmap of activities) of the Hub. The results were collated to produce the complete draft operationalization document of the Hub. This draft is going to be validated on 23rd May 2023 with the support of the stakeholders that attended the in-country workshops and made contribution to the designing of the operationalization document.

After this validation workshop, the next and fourth step is the regional workshop for the official launch of the iGST WA Regional Hub into full operationalization. The event is scheduled to be held on Wednesday 24th May 2023 from 8:30AM to 4:00PM (GMT) in a hybrid format, including in person in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), and online via Zoom.