POSITION STATEMENT FOR COP30 BY AFRICA JUST TRANSITION NETWORK (AJTN)   A CALL FOR A JUST TRANSITION AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

POSITION STATEMENT FOR COP30 BY

AFRICA JUST TRANSITION NETWORK (AJTN)

A CALL FOR A JUST TRANSITION AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

Introduction

This COP30 Position Statement builds directly on AJTN’s 2024 (COP29) position. We do not abandon or replace last year’s demands. Instead, we strengthen and expand them with new demands informed by fresh research, lived experience from frontline communities and deepening crises across Africa.

Africa has produced less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions yet faces the harshest effects of climate change. Extreme droughts, devastating floods, intensifying cyclones and rising temperatures continue to destabilize livelihoods, destroy ecosystems, and deepen poverty. Our climate vulnerability is rooted in historical exploitation, extractive global economic structures, and corporate abuses that have enriched a few whiles impoverishing many.

AJTN remains steadfast in its demand for an Afro-centric, people-first climate agenda. We continue to reject fossil fuel expansion, colonial financing models, and false solutions that displace communities while enriching elites. We honour the memory of Ken Saro-Wiwa and all environmental defenders who resist the expansion of fossil fuels at great personal cost.

We also stand for the BELEM Action Mechanism (BAM) and COP30 commitments, which call for urgent action on a just transition away from fossil fuels. AJTN supports Indigenous peoples in protecting their lands, rights, and traditional knowledge as central to the transition.

At COP30, AJTN calls on African negotiators to uphold and advance the demands we placed before them last year and to adopt additional, urgent demands arising from new research and the lived realities of African communities.

Key Demands and Actions for COP30

1. Decolonizing Climate Policy and NDCs

• Redefine Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs): African countries’ NDCs must respond to the demands of their people and not be shaped by external pressures or interests. Developed nations should prioritize their own pledges to reduce emissions while supporting, not dictating, these targets.
• Empower Local Voices in Policy: Including the perspectives of African people at the decision-making table is essential for inclusive climate policies. Community leaders, young people, and civil society organisations that are directly affected by climate change should all contribute to this. Ubuntu values of cooperation and community should be upheld at local, national, and regional levels, and at the COP30 to guarantee that climate policies promote African resilience and are guided by the voices of Africans who are affected, and not the African elite.

2. Ending Fossil Fuel Dependency

• Phase Out Fossil Fuels Completely: Fossil fuels must be systematically phased out, beginning with halting all new fossil fuel projects, including oil, coal, and gas. Dependency on fossil fuels, according to the AJTN, is incompatible with sustainable development and is frequently upheld by vested interests.
• Restore ruined lands and water: Oil, gas and coal corporations must restore the damage that they have done to people’s natural resources and provide reparations for ongoing health care costs.
• End Subsidies and Fossil Fuel Expansion: Current fossil fuel industry subsidies ought to be reallocated to renewable energy initiatives that serve community access to safe, reliable and affordable energy.

3. Advancing Community-Led Renewable Energy

• Support Socially and Community-owned Renewable Projects: A just transition means prioritizing local energy projects that are owned and managed by communities. This will increase energy access and sovereignty, particularly in rural areas, while creating jobs and bolstering local economies.

Community-led renewable energy is a key pillar of the BAM framework, ensuring that transitions benefit local populations rather than external investors

• Develop Africa’s Renewable Energy Value Chain: Investment in renewable energy should include the development of a comprehensive supply chain – such as manufacturing, distribution, and technology – that leverages Africa’s vast solar, wind, and geothermal resources. This also requires technology-sharing partnerships that benefit African countries and people directly and which does not result in destruction of people’s lives and environments.

4. Accessible, Innovative, Reformative and Ethical Climate Financing

• Demand Fair and Non-exploitative Funding:

Developed countries have a historical obligation to provide debt-free climate financing to developing nations. Current financing mechanisms, like loans with interest (even concessional loans), only deepen Africa’s debt. Instead, financing should focus on grants and contributions that align with the urgency of climate adaptation and mitigation. This also requires the removal of donor-driven conditionalities and creditworthiness-based exclusions that routinely block African access to climate finance.

• Operationalize the Loss and Damage Fund (LDF):

African negotiators must demand the financing and implementation of the Loss and Damage Fund to address the economic and environmental costs Africa already faces due to climate change. The fund must be readily accessible and include mechanisms for accountability and transparency. Climate finance systems must not be controlled by Global North–dominated institutions, private investors or donor governments whose interests override Africa’s needs.

• Develop Innovative Funding Channels:

We demand that climate debts are paid proportional to the Fair Share calculations and to ensure climate resilience is developed. Also, that billionaire and Petro-Trans-National Corporate taxes go into climate funds. Processes such as “green bonds” for renewable energy projects and risk-sharing funds to incentivize investment currently place private profit above people, government and the public, who must then pick up the risk of return on profit. Redirecting finance to communities, rather than banks or intermediaries, is essential to ensure funds reach grassroots actors who are leading climate responses.

• Simplify Access to Funding for African Nations:

AJTN urges that funding applications and processes be streamlined to remove bureaucratic barriers. Financing structures should be accessible and manageable for African governments and community organisations, with fewer requirements that typically delay or prevent disbursement. Climate finance must operate as a public good that prioritises people, justice, and community-led climate action.

5. Rejecting False Solutions

• End Carbon trading: Wealthy countries are able to offset their emissions rather than cut them by trading carbon credits. Restoring damaged natural ‘sinks’ is urgently needed but ‘nature-based solutions’ for carbon ‘removals’ cannot compensate for continued fossil fuel emissions. Carbon markets result in “carbon colonialism” by enabling corporate land grabs in underdeveloped countries.
• End false technology fixes: Likewise, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and various ‘clean coal’ technologies have failed at great cost to reduce GHG emissions and frequently hurt local communities. Green hydrogen is now added to the list of failed energy technology fixes. Proposals for geo-engineering fixes such as solar radiation management or industrial carbon removals are both speculative and dangerous.
• Stop Land Grabs for Carbon Projects: Projects that displace communities, such as those managed by companies like Blue Carbon in Tanzania and Zimbabwe, violate land rights and disrupt local livelihoods. Protecting land rights and stopping the continued exploitation of African resources for false climate solutions should be top priorities for African negotiators at COP29.
• Enforce Stronger Regulations Against “Greenwashing”: Financial commitments should be scrutinized to prevent corporations and nations from greenwashing their contributions. To guarantee that all monies are actually allocated toward significant climate action, transparency procedures must be in place.

6. Reparations and Accountability for Historical Emissions

• Hold Polluters Responsible: Developed countries, whose industrial activities are largely responsible for today’s climate crisis, should be accountable for reparations that address Africa’s climate vulnerabilities. This includes support for adaptation projects and reparations for communities that have suffered environmental degradation and displacement.
• Stop New Climate Debt Traps: Funding should not exacerbate Africa’s debt. Rather, wealthy nations should honour their financial commitments, without the use of loans or interest-bearing arrangements. The existing pledge to ‘mobilise’ $100 billion a year has not been honoured; it relies heavily on private funding and debt funding and is entirely inadequate to the need for a global just transition. Climate finance needs to be in the order of $5 trillion a year in public finance.

7. Promoting Technology Transfer and Just Job Creation

• Facilitate Equitable Technology Transfer: Africa’s renewable energy development requires access to clean energy technologies. We demand of African negotiators to demand the promotion of technology-sharing arrangements that build African expertise and ensure that Africans benefit from green technologies and are not harmed by them, as with the extractive modality presently in place in Africa.
• Invest in Just Workforce Development: The transition to renewable energy will create significant ‘green’ job opportunities especially for the youth. These opportunities must be JUST and benefit the workers. African negotiators at COP30 should prioritize training and resources for African workers in the RE energy sectors, supporting long-term employment and sustainable economic growth.

8. Ensure Financial Autonomy for African Nations

• Strengthen African Leadership in Climate Fund Allocation: African people should have greater decision-making authority in climate finance allocation. This would ensure that funding is directed toward initiatives that reflect Africa’s true needs rather than the interests of donor countries. A financial system led by Africans would facilitate a more impactful, efficient, and culturally relevant use of climate funds.
• Promote Regional and Continental Funding Solutions: AJTN supports the creation of Africa-led funding bodies that pool resources from African countries and diaspora contributions. This could reduce dependency on Western funding and foster greater financial autonomy within Africa.

9. Stop Foreign-Driven Coal Expansion and Hold External Actors Accountable

Despite global pledges to end coal, coal expansion is accelerating in Africa, enabled largely by Chinese financing, engineering, and ownership. AJTN research shows:

• China holds equity in 37.5% of active African coal plants.
• China finances 77% of coal plants through loans, insurance, and guarantees.
• Chinese firms built 43.75% of the existing coal infrastructure.

These investments cause displacement, cultural destruction, pollution, water contamination, health crises, and violence against activists.

We Demand

• A total ban on new coal projects, including “captive coal” loopholes exploited by foreign financiers.
• Mandatory disclosure of all foreign-backed energy deals, including Chinese state-owned bank financing.
• Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for all communities affected by foreign projects.
• Accountability mechanisms for Chinese, European, U.S., Gulf, and other foreign corporations whose actions violate African land rights and environmental laws.
• Stronger regional coordination to resist cross-border coal expansion and to track foreign-backed extractive projects.

10. Democratise Energy Governance and Strengthen Community Power

A justice-driven transition must centre communities as co-creators, not passive recipients.

We Demand:

• Democratic governance of energy systems, including community seats in national transition bodies.
• Support for community trusts, cooperatives and savings associations to self-finance renewable energy.
• Protection and recognition of Indigenous knowledge and bio-cultural protocols in energy decision-making. AJTN fully supports Indigenous peoples in asserting their land rights, knowledge systems, and governance in energy and climate transitions
• A rights-based, community-powered transition that foregrounds dignity, equity, and historical redress.

Conclusion

The AJTN’s COP30 position reaffirms every demand we issued at COP29 and strengthens them with new, urgent calls arising from escalating coal expansion, deepening climate injustice, and broken global financing systems.

Africa needs a people-led transition, not a foreign-designed one.

Africa needs energy sovereignty, not extractive dependency.

Africa needs climate finance rooted in dignity, not debt.

The world cannot achieve climate justice without justice for Africa.

Our message to COP30 is clear:

No more coal. No more displacement. No more extractive financing.
A just transition must be community-driven, African-led, and centred on justice.