Climate planning with African cities: how can civil society contribute?

Under the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoM SSA), local authorities are invited to make a voluntarily political commitment to implement climate and energy actions in their communities and agree on a long-term vision to tackle 3 pillars, namely access to energy, climate mitigation and climate adaptation. In order to translate the political commitment into practical measures, CoM SSA signatories commit to produce and implement a Sustainable Energy Access and Climate Action Plan (SEACAP).

CoM SSA also encourages the cities to include non-state actors and civil society organisations (CSOs) in the process of developing their SEACAP. The idea to include CSOs is driven by the spirit that an inclusive approach is a sustainable approach: when society is an active partner, cities are bound to increase popular support for their climate actions.

The organisation ENDA, partner in CoM SSA, led the mobilisation of CSOs, helping them to take a role in terms of community sensibilisation, public mobilisation, technical support on energy-related issues and monitoring progress of the cities’ climate actions.

More specifically, two capacity building workshops were organized (in Lomé in March 2019 and in Dakar in July 2019) with CSO representatives with the following objectives:

• introduce the SEACAP development principles and the existing methodological tools (CoM SSA guidebook, SEACAP template) to encourage the ownership of the process
• assist them in identifying their potential areas of interventions in the SEACAP development process and to formalize their engagement, resulting in each CSO signing up a commitment letter to the CoM SSA
• promote good practices and experience-sharing: each CSO developed a good practice fact sheet to showcase their achievements and lessons learned in their respective context (see links below)

Thereafter, the CSO took part to the different stages of the SEACAP development process in their respective cities and encouraged numerous municipalities to join the CoM SSA.

Check the publications by CSOs on the CoMSSA website:

1. Factsheet: Development of municipal contingency plans for food control (here)
2. Factsheet: Production of Uhal Improved cookstoves (here)
3. Factsheet: Development of an Action for Sustainable Access to Energy and Climate (here)
4. Factsheet: Removal of wild garbage dumps (here)
5. Factsheet: Development of the Boko River shallows (here)
6. Factsheet: Advocacy and resource mobilization (PADIC VIeD) (here)