PRB

Day 1 Highlights

Session: A Round Table on Climate Finance and Human Mobility

10:30–11:30 a.m.

Takeaways:

• The Africa Climate Summit is the opportunity for a call to expand the historic Kampala Ministerial Declaration on Migration, Environment, and Climate Change from the 15 member states who signed on to it in July 2022 to reach across the continent in acknowledgement of the deep intersections between climate, fragility, and mobility.
• This session was a call to action for development partners to work with the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration on these linkages.

Session: African Women and Girls Leading Climate Action

12:30–1:30 p.m.

Youth Panel:

• Fatou Jeng (moderator), youth advisory group to UN Secretary General on Climate Change, the Gambia
  • “There is opportunity to improve the integration of sexual and reproductive health in climate action, but not if our policies only see us as vulnerable.”
• Vanessa Nakate, UNICEF goodwill ambassador, Uganda:
  • “As we discuss gender transformative climate action, we need to see women and girls as advocates, lawyers, journalists—it has to start with us and how we see ourselves.”
• Ineza Umuhoza Grace, founder, The Green Protector, Rwanda:
  • “Women and girls are not just vulnerable, we are leaders. When women and girls are included in climate action, they have a chance to shine.”
• Laurel Kivuyo, Tanzanian Climate youth activist:
  • “How can we sustain young leaders? Make sure we can replicate them. Make a conscious commitment on education, training, knowledge transfer, from up to down.”

Speakers:

• Omar Abdi, UNICEF Assistant Secretary General:
  • “It’s impossible to ignore that the climate crisis is a girl’s rights crisis.”
• Samira Bawumia, Second Lady of Ghana:
  • “Empowering women and girls means advancing climate action, breaking down barriers to access to resources, to land, credit, decision-making power.”
• Honorable Harriette Chiggai, Office of the President of Kenya, Women’s Rights Advisor (event host):
  • “There is no climate financing without data—data is never complete if it is not gender-disaggregated.”
  • Climate change and sexual and reproductive health are increasingly understood as interlinked, but data remain very scarce—call for more and better data on this linkage.
  • Climate change is known to impact the unpaid care work carried out by women and girls.
  • “Gender data must be the bedrock of climate action.”
  • Call to make better use of existing data, which too often sits unused. Opportunity to harness other types of data—geospatial data, satellite data, mobile phone and social media data, financial transaction data.

Session: Investing in South-Led Science and Innovation for a Just and Equitable Climate Finance Framework

1:30–2:30 p.m.

• Kate Hampton, CEO, CIFF:
  • The ACS is an opportunity for rethinking how the global multilateral financial system works. Having a whole-of-Africa conversation will change how people perceive investment in Africa.

Session: Building Climate-Resilient Health Systems—Unlocking Financing for Health Adaptation

3:30–4:30 p.m.

Session featured two female Ministers of Health (Malawi, Liberia)

• Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, Minister of Health, Malawi:
  • Ministers of Health will leave the summit with ample political will to engage on climate policy with their governments and show how when climate disasters happen in their countries, people end up in the health system and so they must be implicated from the beginning.

Session: Resilient Sustainable Urbanization Through Integrated Disaster Risk Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation

4:30–5:30 p.m.

• Rohey Malick Lowe, mayor of Banjul, the Gambia:
  • Local government is really the province of women, who are unsung heroes in this domain. COVID-19 brought more attention to the importance of local government and mayors, but they need to be recognized as important stakeholders even outside of times of crisis.