Lomé Declaration – Forum : “Strengthening the resilience…”

We, Participants in the Lomé Forum on June 10 and 11, 2021, representing the Member States of WAEMU ; the focal points of the Green Climate Fund of WAEMU Member States; the WAEMU Commission, the Council of the Territorial Communities (CCT-WAEMU) and the Presidents of National Associations of Local Authorities (ALAs) members of the Council of the Territorial Communities (CCT) of WAEMU; the local authorities adhering to the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoM SSA) and their partners; the regional development banks; and the international cooperation partners.

Aware of the urgency and the need to increase the ambition of the Paris Agreement in order to limit the increase in global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century compared to the pre-industrial era, and thus avoid increasing the frequency of extreme climatic events and their disastrous effects on our cities and territories;

Convinced of the importance of examining the conditions to be fulfilled in order to promote the amplification of climate investment within the local and regional governments of the WAEMU area and of structuring the cooperation between the local authorities within the framework of the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions for the achievement of the Paris Agreement;

Stressing that the issues of mitigation and adaptation must be jointly addressed by the national and territorial levels in order to ensure the coherence and continuity of climate action at the different levels of governance;

Taking into account that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a reduction in the budgets of local authorities in the WAEMU area of around 30 to 50%, which has the consequence of further limiting the action capacities of said local authorities in the face of vulnerabilities linked to climatic threats and obstacles to improving the environment and living conditions of the populations;

Recalling that in these circumstances, climate action can only be effective at the territorial level if it becomes everyone’s business, requiring in particular the awareness, participation and contribution of all the actors mobilized around the leaders and elected officials of the local and regional governments;

Considering that the work of the Lomé Forum is intended to be a contribution by local authorities in the WAEMU space to the main events on the climate agenda, namely the Africa Climate Week scheduled for August 2021 in Kampala, Uganda; the Climate Chance conference scheduled for September 2021 in Dakar, Senegal; and the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change scheduled for Glasgow, Scotland, UK, in November 2021 (COP 26);

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