Climate change is no longer a looming threat for West Africa. It is already reshaping lives and landscapes through rising seas, disappearing forests, prolonged droughts, devastating floods, biodiversity loss, pollution, food insecurity and the displacement of communities that have contributed least to the crisis.
Yet while these impacts cut across national borders, responses have largely remained fragmented. Across the West African region, grassroots organizations, environmental defenders, youth groups, women, farmers, fisherfolk and Indigenous communities continue to resist environmental destruction, often in isolation despite confronting the same extractive economic model.
Recognizing the need for a stronger collective response, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, convened climate justice advocates, civil society organizations, academics and community representatives from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo in Abuja for the second West Africa Climate Justice Movement Convening under the theme: “Building Solidarity for Climate Justice in West Africa.”
The gathering was more than another climate conference. It marked the birth of a regional movement determined to challenge the structural causes of climate injustice while advancing an alternative vision rooted in ecological integrity, human rights, Indigenous knowledge, community leadership and African sovereignty.
Throughout the conference, participants questioned dominant narratives around climate action, rejected market-driven “solutions” that commodify nature, and reaffirmed that Africa’s development cannot be built on the same extractive systems responsible for today’s ecological crisis.
The meeting ended with a collective commitment to establish a permanent West African Climate Justice Movement to strengthen regional solidarity, coordinate advocacy and amplify the voices of frontline communities in regional and global climate processes.
West Africa on the frontline, why solidarity matters
Welcoming participants, HOMEF Executive Director, Nnimmo Bassey said the convening responded to a long-standing gap in regional organizing. While climate justice movements exist across Africa, he noted that West Africa has not always been adequately represented within continental spaces, despite facing many of the same environmental and social challenges.
“Our theme, Building Solidarity for Climate Justice in West Africa, speaks directly to why we are here,” Bassey said. “Solidarity is the lifeblood of any movement. It is what enables us to share pain, share hope, share ideas and share responsibility. Without solidarity, movements become fragmented. We work in isolation, compete unnecessarily and ultimately weaken ourselves. With solidarity, however, we discover our collective strength.”
According to Bassey, stronger regional cooperation is essential because climate impacts do not respect national borders. Communities across West Africa are confronting similar threats, from coastal erosion and rising sea levels to flooding, desertification, pollution and destructive extractive industries.
“Solidarity nurtures resilience,” he said. “It creates mutual support, encourages shared learning, strengthens our capacity to respond to crises and allows us to develop alternatives rooted in our diverse experiences.”
Bassey warned that climate change is already transforming lives across the region. Along the Atlantic coast, entire communities are steadily disappearing as sea levels rise and coastal erosion intensifies. Recalling visits to communities in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, he described conversations with elders who now point into the sea to show where villages and family homes once stood.
“This is not folklore. It is the reality of climate change interacting with a fragile delta that is naturally subsiding.”
He cautioned that scientific projections show a one-metre rise in sea level could inundate vast stretches of West Africa’s coastline, threatening communities, infrastructure, livelihoods and fragile ecosystems.
He also criticized unsustainable urban development that destroys wetlands and blocks natural floodplains, redirecting floodwaters into poorer neighbourhoods while exposing already vulnerable communities to greater risks.
Bassey challenged the growing tendency to describe climate-induced migration as adaptation. People forced to abandon ancestral homes because of flooding, drought, desertification or rising seas, he argued, are not adapting, they are fighting for survival.
“Given the choice, they would rather remain in their communities.”
He called for stronger recognition and protection for people displaced by climate impacts, noting that existing international frameworks still fail to adequately address climate-induced displacement.
Rejecting false climate solutions
While acknowledging the urgent need for climate action, Bassey warned against approaches that deepen injustice instead of addressing its root causes.
He criticized geoengineering, carbon capture technologies, carbon markets, carbon offsets and poorly governed conservation projects that allow major emitters to continue polluting while shifting the burden of emissions reductions onto African communities.
Across Africa, he said, forests and community lands are increasingly being converted into carbon assets under offset projects that restrict local livelihoods while allowing major polluters elsewhere to continue emitting greenhouse gases.
“Forests become carbon assets. Communities become obstacles. Nature becomes another commodity to be traded.” For Bassey, carbon markets simply enable historical polluters to continue business as usual. “Carbon markets increasingly allow major polluters to continue polluting while claiming climate responsibility by acquiring forests elsewhere. This is not climate justice.”
He expressed similar concerns over the global energy transition. While describing the shift away from fossil fuels as necessary, Bassey warned that replacing oil extraction with large-scale exploitation of critical minerals without changing systems of exploitation merely reproduces old injustices under a new name. For him, climate justice must place communities, not markets, at the centre of climate action.
“If the transition merely replaces oil with another form of extractivism based on so-called critical minerals, without changing the systems of exploitation that created today’s crisis, then we are simply changing the fuel while keeping the injustice. Climate justice demands more than replacing one source of extraction with another. It demands justice for people, justice for communities, and justice for nature.”
From isolated struggles to a regional movement
Bassey urged participants to move beyond isolated campaigns and build a broad regional movement capable of confronting shared challenges. He called for stronger collaboration among environmental organizations, workers’ unions, women and youth groups, farmers, fisherfolk, faith communities, researchers, artists and Indigenous knowledge holders.
“Environmental justice cannot be left only to environmental organizations. Every struggle connected to justice belongs within this movement.”
He also emphasized political education through climate schools, community dialogues and exchange programs to strengthen collective understanding and action. He further reminded participants that climate justice is not measured by conferences or declarations, but by sustained collective action.
“Climate justice is not an event. It is not a conference. It is not a declaration. It is a daily practice of solidarity.”
The Abuja convening, he said, should therefore be seen not as an end in itself but as the beginning of a stronger regional movement committed to defending communities, ecosystems and the rights of future generations.
Reframing the Climate Crisis and Reclaiming Africa’s Future
If Nnimmo Bassey laid the foundation for a stronger regional movement, the keynote address by renowned Malian climate scientist Prof. Youba Sokona provided its political, intellectual and historical compass.
Speaking on “Climate Justice, Sovereignty, and the Struggle for Africa’s Future,” Sokona challenged participants to move beyond viewing climate change as simply an environmental problem requiring technological solutions. Instead, he argued that it is the outcome of centuries of political, economic and colonial systems that prioritized profit over people and ecological stewardship.
“The climate crisis is not an accident. It is not bad luck. It is not an act of God,” he declared. “It is the pre-known, pre-warned, and deliberately tolerated consequence of a system that chose profit over people, extraction over stewardship, and accumulation over survival.”
According to Sokona, the scientific evidence has been available for decades, but meaningful action has repeatedly been delayed because addressing climate change would require confronting entrenched political and economic interests.
“The causes are concentrated. The responsibilities are differentiated. The solutions are not primarily technical, they are political, ethical and structural.”
Africa is paying for a crisis it did not create
Sokona observed that although West Africa contributes only a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, it bears a disproportionate share of climate impacts. Across the region, prolonged droughts are threatening agriculture, sea-level rise is swallowing coastal communities, floods are destroying infrastructure, desertification is advancing across the Sahel, and food insecurity continues to deepen.
“This is not a future scenario,” he said. “It is the present reality of millions of people in this region, people whose carbon footprint is a fraction of the footprint of those who built the system that is destroying their world.”
Meanwhile, he noted, fossil fuel corporations continue to record enormous profits while governments approve new oil and gas projects and financial institutions package climate pledges alongside fresh investments in hydrocarbons.
“The accountability is zero. The consequences fall elsewhere.”
The unfinished legacy of colonialism
Sokona argued that understanding today’s climate crisis requires confronting Africa’s colonial history. Before colonial rule, many African societies regarded land, forests and rivers as shared trusts linking past, present and future generations. Philosophies such as Ubuntu, Sankofa and the ancient Egyptian principle of Ma’at, he explained, reflected relationships built on stewardship, justice and ecological balance. Colonialism, however, fundamentally altered that relationship.
“Colonialism did not merely extract minerals and labour. It extracted a relationship. Land became property. Forests became timber. Rivers became commercial routes. Communities became labour reserves serving distant economies.”
According to Sokona, today’s climate crisis is inseparable from that history. “The climate crisis is, in part, the ecological bill for colonialism. We did not incur that debt. But we are being asked to pay it.” For him, recognizing historical responsibility is not about victimhood but accountability. The principle of differentiated responsibility under international climate agreements, he argued, reflects historical reality and should remain central to global climate action.
Sokona insisted that climate justice cannot be separated from human rights. The right to a safe climate, he argued, is inseparable from rights to food, water, health, land, livelihoods and development.
“When floods displace communities in the Niger Delta, that is a human rights violation,” he said. When drought destroys the livelihoods of Sahelian farmers, that is a human rights violation.” Likewise, he described the loss of coastal settlements to sea-level rise as violations rooted not in nature alone but in political decisions that allow environmental destruction to continue unchecked. “The perpetrators are not storms. They are the corporations that chose extraction over responsibility, and the governments that enabled them.”
He stressed that climate justice requires enforceable accountability rather than voluntary corporate commitments. He also warned against the rush for critical minerals needed for renewable energy technologies. From cobalt and lithium to nickel and rare earth elements, Africa holds many of the resources driving the global energy transition. Yet, he cautioned, unless governance changes fundamentally, the continent risks repeating the same extractive model that characterized oil, gas and other mineral industries.
“Africa supplies raw materials. Others manufacture the value. Communities host the destruction and receive the displacement. A transition that reproduces colonial extraction is not a just transition. It is a rebranding.”
Energy sovereignty and a shared regional future
While sharply criticizing the current global climate architecture, Sokona also outlined an alternative vision anchored on energy sovereignty. With more than 600 million Africans still lacking reliable electricity despite abundant renewable energy resources, he argued that Africa’s challenge is not resource scarcity but decades of energy systems designed for export rather than domestic development.
“Energy sovereignty is not a luxury for after development. It is the condition for development.”
He called for African governments to retain the policy space needed to invest in renewable energy, strengthen local manufacturing, promote technology transfer and build industries capable of supporting a just transition.
But no country, he warned, can achieve this alone. He urged the emerging West Africa Climate Justice Movement to become more than a network of organizations by developing a shared regional agenda capable of influencing ECOWAS, the African Union and global climate negotiations.
That agenda, he said, should demand binding climate finance, an end to carbon colonialism, stronger community rights, fair mineral governance, technology transfer and meaningful compensation for climate-related loss and damage.
“We are not asking for a seat at the table where others decide our fate. We are building our own table, and inviting the world to sit at it on our terms.”
For Sokona, climate justice is ultimately about restoring fairness between nations, between generations and between humanity and nature.
“Africa does not reject environmental responsibility. Africa has been practicing it for millennia. What Africa rejects is being asked to bear a responsibility that was created by others while being denied the development rights and policy space needed to build the future its people deserve.”
One region, shared challenges, move for united regional movement
The urgency of Prof. Youba Sokona’s keynote was echoed during a joint panel session on “Linking Struggles: Highlighting Regional Climate Justice Initiatives,” moderated by Jaiye Gaskia and Kwami Kpondzo. Representatives from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo presented country reports that revealed a common reality: although political borders divide the region, West Africans are confronting the same climate and ecological crises.
From mining, pollution and deforestation to coastal erosion, flooding, drought and displacement, delegates agreed that climate impacts and extractive industries are undermining livelihoods, biodiversity and community rights across the region.
Presenting Sierra Leone’s report, Esther Kandeh described decades of intensive diamond mining that have left deep ecological scars while offering no benefit to local communities. Mining, she explained, has continued since the 1930s, leaving abandoned pits that are repeatedly reopened. Many local people now engage in informal mining simply to claim a share of resources from which they have long been excluded.
“Mining activities have affected the lives of local people and have added to the ecological crisis in the country,” she said.
From Ghana, Noble Wadzah highlighted severe flooding and widespread pollution of rivers and food sources caused by indiscriminate mining and other extractive activities.
Representing Togo, Kwami Kpondzo identified drought, flooding and coastal erosion as major threats while highlighting ongoing engagement with fisherfolk and climate-affected communities through awareness campaigns and community training supported by HOMEF.
Nigeria’s representative, Tijah Bolton Akpan, warned that the country’s push for critical minerals as a strategy for economic diversification risks repeating the mistakes of the petroleum industry. He noted that many mining projects continue to ignore human rights, labour rights and the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of host communities.
From Guinea, Sia Anne Marie reported that prolonged dry seasons, declining rainfall, coastal erosion, flooding and widespread deforestation are increasingly threatening agriculture and food production.
She revealed that more than 130,000 people have been affected by changing weather patterns since 2023, while artisanal gold mining continues to expose women and children to severe environmental and health risks. To strengthen resilience, she said HOMEF and partners are promoting agroecology as a sustainable alternative.
Burkina Faso’s Ali Tapsoba linked deforestation and biodiversity loss with insecurity and community displacement, noting that his group is promoting agroecology, campaigning for large-scale tree planting and advocating greater national control of extractive industries. “This conference is a wake-up call. Let us begin to build a large movement that will rebuild our continent and preserve our biodiversity.”
Representing Mali, Issa Gundo described widespread pollution from gold mining and the country’s emerging lithium sector, alongside insecurity affecting local communities, due to political issues in the country. “Africa needs to manage her resources without external influence,” he said, expressing confidence that the Abuja meeting would strengthen grassroots mobilization across the region.
Although the presentations reflected different national contexts, they pointed to a shared conclusion: climate injustice in West Africa is deeply intertwined with extractivism, weak environmental governance, insecure land rights and unequal global economic systems.
From dialogue to collective action
The conference concluded with the adoption of a landmark communiqué formally establishing the West Africa Climate Justice Movement as a permanent, people-centred platform for regional solidarity, coordinated advocacy, research and knowledge sharing.
Participants reaffirmed that while West Africa contributes minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions, it bears a disproportionate burden of climate impacts. They expressed concern over carbon markets, land and forest grabs, geoengineering and poorly governed green transition projects, warning that these often threaten biodiversity, displace communities and undermine genuine climate action.
The communiqué also affirmed that climate justice is inseparable from human rights, including the rights to food, water, health, land, livelihoods, development and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Among the key resolutions adopted were commitments to strengthen regional solidarity, promote rights-based climate governance, reject harmful carbon markets and other false climate solutions, support community-led renewable energy and agroecology, demand adequate climate finance and technology transfer, uphold the polluter pays principle and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), protect environmental defenders, and institutionalize an annual West African tree-planting campaign as a symbol of ecological restoration and collective action.
A new chapter for climate justice in West Africa
The 2nd WACMO convening closed with a shared conviction that climate justice cannot be achieved through isolated national campaigns. It requires a united regional movement capable of challenging extractivism, resisting false climate solutions and advancing development pathways rooted in justice, equity and ecological integrity.
For HOMEF and its partners, the West Africa Climate Justice Movement represents more than a network. It is a long-term effort to connect struggles across borders, strengthen frontline communities and ensure that Africa’s response to the climate crisis is shaped by its own people, knowledge and aspirations.
As Prof. Youba Sokona reminded participants in his closing remarks:“Africa does not ask for exemption. It asks for fairness.”
That demand for fairness, grounded in solidarity, accountability and the rights of communities, now forms the foundation of a growing regional movement determined to reshape the climate justice agenda in West Africa.
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