About APF

Background

The 12th APF meeting held in Rome on 10 June 2009 accepted the offer of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to host a Special Session of the APF devoted to Climate Change. This APF decision is consistent with fulfilling the Forum’s objective of catalyzing actions, stimulating international discourse and mobilizing partnership support for Africa’s development agenda and priorities. In this regard, the Special Session will reinforce the awareness, understanding, measures and actions on African interests and expectations on climate change as promoted by the APF, particularly at its successive 8th, , 10th, 11th and 12th meetings in Berlin, Tokyo, Addis Ababa and respectively.

The Special APF session will also contribute to implementing African Union Summit Decisions on climate change and serve to complement the outcomes of related African regional processes including the May 2009 AMCEN special session on Climate Change held in Nairobi, as another step towards defining African common position on Climate Change. Overall, the forthcoming session reflects the weight and importance attached to Climate Change issues within Africa’s development agenda by both Africa and its development partners.

Core Objectives

To build a coalition around Africa’s key concerns and expectations on climate change in order to ensure that these are adequately addressed in a new climate change agreement expected to be reached at the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP-15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 7 to 18 December 2009.