Attendees of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) Plenary 2017. In the front row includes recently indicted defendants Gazi Kodzo (first from left with fist on chest) and Omali Yeshitela (third from left with red beret) / credit: The Burning Spear
Activists on the left, as well as radical U.S.-based organizations, came out yesterday against the indictments of three members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), one former party member, and three Russian nationals for allegedly attempting to sow discord in the United States by working with Russia.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday, April 18, that a federal grand jury returned a “superseding indictment” charging the four people with:
…working on behalf of the Russian government and in conjunction with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to conduct a multi-year foreign malign influence campaign in the United States. Among other conduct, the superseding indictment alleges that the Russian defendants recruited, funded and directed U.S. political groups to act as unregistered illegal agents of the Russian government and sow discord and spread pro-Russian propaganda; the indicted intelligence officers, in particular, participated in covertly funding and directing candidates for local office within the United States.
The four charged include:
Omali Yeshitela, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who serves as the chairman and founder of the APSP;
Penny Joanne Hess, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who is chairperson of the African People’s Solidarity Committee;
Jesse Nevel, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who is chair of the APSP’s Uhuru Solidarity Movement; and
Augustus C. Romain Jr., aka Gazi Kodzo, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Atlanta, who once served as secretary-general of the APSP and is a founder of the Black Hammer Organization in Georgia.
Repressing Africans in Struggle
Hess and Nevel are white solidarity members. Nevertheless, that an African organization was targeted has raised concerns.
Anti-imperialist African organization Black Alliance for Peace yesterday issued a statement pointing to the U.S. government’s history of repressing the African liberation struggle:
Not since the Palmer Raids of the early 20th century, nor since the indictment of W.E.B DuBois in 1951, or the confiscation of Paul Robeson’s U.S. passport during the anti-communist “McCarthyist” era, has there been such a hysterical response to African people asserting their rights and freedom of speech in the United States. This renewed attack against anti-imperialist Africans, framed within the absurd notion of “Russian influence,” comes as capitalism decays and U.S. global hegemony loses its hold on the world. The attacks on the APSP and the Uhuru Movement are part of a historical tendency to align African political activists with U.S. “adversary” states to marginalize African internationalism (including solidarity with Cuba and Palestine, for example) and to suppress Black radicalism.
It is also an assault on the efforts of Africans organizing against the violence and murders suffered at the hands of the U.S. state. Indeed, Africans do not need Russia to tell them they are suffering the brunt of violence in the heart of the U.S. empire!
Wayne State University professor Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly noted her forthcoming book, Black Scare/Red Scare, points to the APSP raid of July 2022 to draw the connection between U.S. domestic anti-communist purges of the past and repression of activists today.
“It is no coincidence that an African socialist organization is being targeted,” she tweeted.
US charges 4 Americans, 3 Russians in election discord case
I start the epilogue of Black Scare/Red Scare with this case to discuss the resonances of those scares today. It is no coincidence that an African socialist organization is being targeted. https://t.co/SnVgP94m3N
The DOJ attempted to connect the charged activists with a Russian conspiracy to interfere in U.S. elections, beginning with the 2016 election of Trump.
“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights—freedoms Russia denies its own citizens—to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division.
However, much evidence exists to show the United States interferes the most in other countries’ elections and democratic processes. Aside from invading 201 countries since the end of World War II, the United States deployed 64 covert operations to subvert governments around the world between 1947 and 1989, according to political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke. Meanwhile, political scientist Dov Levin’s work found the United States interfered in 81 elections between 1946 and 2000.
Attacking Activists
The APSP had been preparing for this moment since late December, when they received “strong indications” of indictments coming down in early 2023 after the FBI had raided the party’s properties in July 2022, as Toward Freedom had reported. Then the APSP announced last month that Regions Bank, a financial institution in the U.S. South, had closed the party’s accounts and withdrawn lines of credit. The APSP referred to that move as “U.S. economic sanctions” on Black community projects.
Freedom Road Socialist Organization also issued a statement that referred to more recent history of repression.
On September 24, 2010, the FBI raided seven homes of anti-war activists and the office of the Twin Cities Anti-War committee. All told, twenty-three activists were subpoenaed to a Chicago-based grand jury that claimed to be investigating “material support for terrorism.” As time went on, the FBI continued their attack on anti-war and international solidarity activists by targeting important veterans of the movement who worked with the Anti-war 23, including Chicano activist Carlos Montes in Los Angeles and Palestinian organizer Rasmea Odeh in Chicago. A national defense campaign defeated most of these attacks.
Toward Freedom Board Secretary and independent journalist Jacqueline Luqman commented on the danger for all activists who oppose U.S. global hegemony.
“Today it’s the APSP. Tomorrow it could be you and me,” she tweeted. “All you need to do is oppose US imperialist policy in Ukraine and Palmer Raids 2023 will be unleashed to silence you.”
Today it's the APSP. Tomorrow it could be you and me. All you need to do is oppose US imperialist policy in Ukraine and the Palmer Raids 2023 will be unleashed to silence you. #NoCompromiseNoRetreathttps://t.co/E9qb3pQz1F
Eric Agnero joined Toward Freedom‘s board on May 14. He is a journalist and political analyst from the Ivory Coast, specializing in U.S.-Africa affairs. At CNN, he covered the 2010-11 Ivorian post-electoral crisis as a West Africa correspondent. He also has reported for Voice of America in Washington, D.C. Having experience in corporate and state-run media outlets has helped Eric understand the gap they leave behind for ordinary people. Aside from his journalistic experience, Eric has worked as communications director at the African Union. Having first moved to Vermont in 2012, he recently returned after several years working for organizations in Africa. Eric now is involved in community media projects with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, Media Factory, CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, and Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement.
Here’s what he had to tell Toward Freedom about the role of the media and what’s next to cover in Africa.
What got you interested in joining Toward Freedom’s board of directors?
I started by writing about Africa for TF. Then I realized that my stories could miss authenticity as I am far away from the continent, and could no longer navigate accurately the facts and nuances. I thought it would make more sense for me to be in a position where I can foster a better ownership of the generation of stories about the continent by the journalists on the ground.
You started off working in U.S. corporate and state-run media in the 1990s. How did those experiences develop your understanding of how the media influences public opinion?
Working on that side of the media spectrum has given me the advantage of measuring the impact, as the media in question have a well-defined purpose for which they will constantly re-adjust, especially regarding the subsequent inclination or realignment of the target audience.
What are most media outlets missing when it comes to covering Africa?
When it comes to Africa, most media—especially from the Western world—cannot depart themselves from the Judeo-Christian/Caucasian supremacy philosophy. Africa is always treated by the Western world as the poor infant that needs food, clothes and education. And most Western journalists orient their story with that idea of a plagued continent, where there will always be a dictator who maintains their people in poverty. This might be right, but they fail to report that the former colonial powers and the United States groom most dictators. But, most importantly, that the state of the African continent is in large part the result of Western malign influence and the continuing dwelling of the spirit of the 1884-85 Berlin Conference.
What story should Toward Freedom cover that corporate media has ignored?
The corporate media doesn’t cover the stories of those who are fighting to unroot the colonial and imperialist powers from the continent. The stories of successes in alternative economic, political, and social endeavors that are re-writing history and projecting the so-called “dark continent” of Africa into a bright future. Toward Freedom should therefore hear the stories of journalists from Africa who are part of this movement.
Editor’s Note: The following was originally published in Peoples Dispatch.
Amid the ongoing war for the liberation of Western Sahara from Morocco, which is illegally occupying 80% of its territory, the UN Security Council (UNSC) is reportedly scheduled to discuss the conflict for the second time this month on Monday, October 10. Two more sessions are scheduled for October 17 and 27.
The “Council is expected to renew the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), which expires on 31 October,” states the UNSC’s monthly forecast for October.
Known officially as the Sahrawi Democratic Republic (SADR), Western Sahara—a founding and full member-state of the African Union (AU)—is Africa’s last colony. It is listed by the UN among the last countries awaiting complete decolonization.
Its former colonizer, Spain, ceded the country to Morocco at the persuasion of the Unite in 1976, despite the fact that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had dismissed Morocco’s territorial claims. The position supporting the Sahrawi peoples’ right to self-determination has since been upheld by the UN, the AU, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR).
MINURSO was established by the UNSC in April 1991 to facilitate the realization of this right by organizing a referendum. In August that year, a ceasefire was secured between the Polisario Front (PF), recognized by the UN as the international representative of the people of Sahrawi, and Morocco.
However, with the backing of the United States and France, Morocco has been able to subvert the organization of this referendum till date. On November 13, 2020, the ceasefire fell apart after 29 years. That day, Moroccan troops crossed the occupied territory into the UN-patrolled buffer zone in the southeastern town of Guerguerat to remove unarmed Sahrawi demonstrators blockading an illegal road that Morocco had built through the territory to Mauritania
“Morocco’s armed incursion was a flagrant violation of the terms of the ceasefire that was declared under UN auspices in 1991,” Kamal Fadel, SADR’s representative to Australia and the Pacific, told Peoples Dispatch. “The Sahrawi army had to react in self-defense and to protect the Sahrawi civilians that were attacked by the Moroccan army.”
Hugh Lovatt and Jacob Mundy, in their policy brief to the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) published in May 2021, observed that “Self-determination for the Sahrawi people appears more remote than when MINURSO was first launched in 1991.” ” With its mandate renewed well over 40 times, the UN “has little to show” for three decades of MINURSO, they said.
“With no power and no support from the UNSC,” MINURSO became “hostage to the Moroccan authorities,” unable even “to report on the human rights situation in the territory, unlike any other UN peace-keeping mission,” Fadel noted.
“We wasted 30 years waiting for MINURSO to deliver the promised referendum. MINURSO’s failure seriously damages the UN’s credibility and encourages authoritarian regimes to defy the international community,” he argued.
While reiterating that “we still believe in a peaceful, just and durable solution under the auspices of the UN,” Fadel maintained that “the UN has to work hard to repair its badly damaged reputation in Western Sahara.”
The position of the UN Secretary General’s former Personal Envoy for Western Sahara was left vacant for more than two years after the resignation of Horst Köhler in May 2019. It was only in October 2021 that Staffan de Mistura was appointed to the post. Mistura, who will be briefing the UNSC member states in the sessions scheduled this month to discuss Western Sahara, is yet to pay a visit to the territory in question. His plan to visit Western Sahara earlier this year was canceled without any reasons stated.
“We hope Mr. Mistura will be able to visit the occupied areas of Western Sahara soon and meet with the Saharawi people freely. It is odd that he has not yet set foot in the territory he is supposed to deal with,” remarked Fadel. Mistura has already met with Foreign Ministers of Morocco and Spain, European officials, and U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken.
U.S. and European Powers Facilitated Moroccan Occupation of Western Sahara
Western Sahara was colonized by Spain in the early 1880s. Faced with an armed rebellion by the Polisario Front (PF) from 1973, the Spanish government of fascist dictator Francisco Franco agreed in 1974 to hold a referendum. It was an obligation on Spain to fulfill the Sahrawi right to self-determination, in line with the UN’s 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries.
The neighboring former French colonies of Morocco and Mauritania, eyeing Sahrawi’s mineral wealth and a vast coastline, had already laid claim over the territory since their independence. With about $20 million-worth of weapons supplied by the United States, Morocco began preparation for an armed invasion. Informing the then Spanish Foreign Minister Pedro Cortina about this impending attack in a meeting on October 4, 1975, U.S. State Secretary Henry Kissinger had nudged him to negotiate an agreement with Morocco.
“We are ready to do so.. However, it is important to maintain the form of a referendum on self-determination… Self-determination does not mean independence, although that is one of the options included to give it credibility, but what the people of the area will be called on to do is to show their preference either for Morocco or for Mauritania,” Cortina had responded.
“The problem is the people won’t know what Morocco is, or what Mauritania is,” said Kissinger, with his characteristic cynicism. Cortina corrected him, saying, “Unfortunately, they have learned well from experience what those countries are and they know what all the possibilities are.”
In a subsequent meeting on October 9, Cortina confronted Kissinger about U.S. support for an imminent Moroccan invasion of Sahrawi, then known as Spanish Sahara. He was told that if Spain failed to reach an agreement with Morocco, “it’s not an American concern.” In effect, Kissinger had told Cortina that if Moroccan forces invaded Spanish Sahara using American weapons, the United States would not intervene to stop it.
“We have no particular view about the future of the Spanish Sahara,” Kissinger elaborated on the U.S. position. “I told you privately that… the future of Spanish Sahara doesn’t seem particularly great. I feel the same way about Guinea-Bissau, or Upper Volta. The world can survive without a Spanish Sahara; it won’t be among the countries making a great contribution. There was a period in my life when I didn’t know where the Spanish Sahara was, and I was as happy as I am today.”
“Before phosphates were discovered,” Cortina exclaimed. He was referring to the large deposits found in the territory. Phosphates are the main mineral needed to make fertilizers, of which Morocco went on to become one of the world’s largest producers.
On securing guarantees on access to phosphate and fishing rights, the Spanish government – which had by then also realized that it would not be able to install a puppet Sahrawi elite under Spanish control in power after independence – signed the Madrid Accords. With this treaty, signed on November 14, 1975, only days before the death of Franco who had already slipped into coma, Spain ceded its colony to Morocco and Mauritania.
‘No Tie of Territorial Sovereignty’: ICJ
The UN does not recognize this treaty, which had disregarded the advisory opinion given by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The advisory opinion was given on the request of the UN General Assembly only a month before, on October 16, 1975. The ICJ, which had also been approached by Morocco, stated that “the materials and information presented.. do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco or the Mauritanian entity.”
However, the United States and its Western allies calculated that an independent Western Sahara under the rule of PF, supported by Algeria which was perceived as inclined toward the Soviet Union, would be against their Cold War interests. And so, the aspirations of the Sahrawi people to realize their internationally recognized right to self-determination, which was pitied as ‘unfortunate’ by the Spanish foreign minister at the time, was trampled over for imperial interests.
By the start of 1976, Moroccan forces occupied the western coastal region of Sahrawi, while Mauritanian forces took over the eastern interior region, forcing 40% of the Sahrawi population to flee to Algeria, where they continue to reside in refugee camps in the border town of Tindouf.
Guerrillas of the PF fought back, quickly regaining the eastern territory from Mauritania, which made peace with SADR and withdrew all its claims by 1979. However, “[b]acked by France and the United States, and financed by Saudi Arabia, Morocco’s armed forces eventually countered Polisario by building a heavily mined and patrolled 2,700-kilometer berm,” Lovatt and Mundy recount in their policy brief to ECFR.
Constructed with the help of U.S. companies Northrop and Westinghouse, the berm is the second longest wall in the world, reinforced with the world’s longest minefield consisting of about seven million landmines. It is among the largest military infrastructures on earth.
Although the Moroccan forces managed to bring about a stalemate by the 1980s with the completion of the construction of the berm, PF’s forces continued to antagonize their positions along the wall. By the time the ceasefire was agreed upon in 1991 following the establishment of MINURSO with a mandate to conduct a referendum, over a thousand enforced disappearances had been reported from the territory under Moroccan occupation. Yet, the protests were unrelenting.
In the meantime, SADR’s cause was gaining increasing support. In 1980, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) recognized the PF as the international representative of Western Sahara. In 1984, after SADR was welcomed as a member of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor to the African Union (AU), Morocco quit the organization in protest.
Three years later, Morocco applied for membership of the European Communities, which later evolved into the European Union (EU). However, not considered a European country, Morocco’s application was turned down. It was only in 2017 that Morocco joined the AU, to which it was admitted without recognition of any territorial rights over SADR, which is a founding and full member-state of the AU.
In this context of the increasing isolation it faced in the 1990s over its occupation of SADR – except for the backing of the United States, France and Spain – Morocco agreed to hold a referendum, and eventually signed the Houston Agreement with the PF in 1997. This remains till date the only agreement signed between the two. Voter lists were then prepared by MINURSO, and SADR seemed to be on the verge of holding the long-due referendum to realize its decolonization in accordance with the UN Declaration of 1960.
However, more concerned about the stability of the Moroccan monarchy—whose throne had passed from King Hassan II after his death in 1999 to his son Mohammed VI—the United States and France nudged the new King to renege on the Houston agreement, Lovatt and Mundy recount.
The United States’ facade of neutrality on the Sahrawi issue and support for the UN Declaration on decolonization—even while antagonizing the Sahrawi liberation struggle all these decades—was officially removed on December 10, 2020.
The White House, under Donald Trump’s presidency, announced that day that “the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory.” Arguing that “an independent Sahrawi State is not a realistic option for resolving the conflict” the United States declared that autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is “the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute.”
EU and UK Are Invested in Morocco’s Occupation of Western Sahara
This decision of Spain was quickly welcomed by the EU. Its Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell’s spokesperson remarked that stronger bilateral relations between any of its member-states and Morocco “can only be beneficial for the implementation of the Euro-Moroccan partnership.”
94% of the fisheries caught by the European fleets from 2014-18 under this “partnership” with Morocco was from Sahrawi waters. When the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in 2018 that the fisheries agreement with Morocco cannot extend to Sahrawi waters over which Morocco had no sovereignty, the EU simply renegotiated the agreement specifying the inclusion of Sahrawi territory.
A total of 124,000 tonnes of fishery, worth EUR 447 million, was extracted by Europe from Sahrawi waters in 2019, and another 140,500 tonnes, valued EUR 412 million, in 2020. Ruling on Polisario’s challenge to this continuation of European fishing under a new agreement, the General Court of the European Union annulled the same in September 2021.
The European Commission appealed this decision of the court in December 2021. In March 2022, the European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans, and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkervicius reiterated in a response to a question in the EU parliament that “the Commission confirms its commitment to the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement.”
Fadel said that the “EU fishing fleets are still finding ways to continue the illegal fishing in the Sahrawi waters with the complicity of the occupying power.”
The United Kingdom High Court of Justice (UKHCJ) had also upheld CJEU’s reasoning in 2019 while ruling in favor of the Western Sahara Campaign UK (WSCUK). The court ruled that the WSCUK “has been completely successful in its litigation” that the preferential treatment given by UK’s Revenue and Customs Service to goods coming from Western Sahara under the EU’s agreement with Morocco went against the international law. The court also concluded the same about the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ granting quotas to British vessels fishing in Sahrawi waters.
On October 5, 2022, the High Court held the first hearing of the WSCUK’s case against the Department for International Trade and the Treasury over the UK-Morocco Association Agreement (UKMAA), which was signed in October 2019 post-Brexit.
Three of the five permanent seats with veto power in the UNSC are held by the United States, UK and France, all of which have worked against the Sahrawi liberation struggle. Under the watch of the UNSC, “self-determination and decolonization were replaced with a peace process that has given Morocco veto power over how the Sahrawi people fulfill their internationally recognized rights,” observed Lovatt and Mundy.
“We can only ask the UNSC to stop its pretense about human rights and democracy; to stop its hypocrisy,” Hamza Lakhal, a dissident Arabic poet from Laayoune, the largest city in occupied territory, told Peoples Dispatch. “They will move NATO for Ukraine because they hate Russia, but occupation of Western Sahara against all international laws and resolutions is okay because the occupying power here is a friend.”
‘A Collective Shame’
Morocco’s ‘friendship’ with the West has not necessarily won support for its occupation from fellow African countries. Its attempt to get Kenya’s new President William Ruto to withdraw the country’s decade-long support to the Sahrawi cause and endorse Moroccan claims of sovereignty over the occupied territory back-fired last month, embarrassing both Ruto and Morocco’s foreign ministry.
In a judgment on the same day, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights reiterated that “both the UN and the AU recognize the situation of SADR as one of occupation and consider its territory as one of those territories whose decolonization process is not yet fully complete.”
Stating that “although Morocco has always laid claim on the territory it occupies, its assertion has never been accepted by the international community,” the court reiterated the ICJ’s 1975 advisory opinion.
Describing Sahrawis’ right to self determination as “inalienable, non-negotiable, and not subject to statutory limitations,” Algeria’s Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, in his address to UNGA on September 27, called on the UN “to assume their legal responsibilities towards the Sahrawi people.”
The UN-promised “organization of a free and fair referendum in order to enable these courageous people… to decide on their political future cannot forever be taken hostage by the intransigence of an occupying state, which has failed several times with regards to its international obligations,” he said.
Namibian President Hage Geingob said in his address to the UNGA that the “lack of progress in implementing UN resolutions to resolve the question of Western Sahara should be something we must all have a collective shame for.”
Women in the Rhino Refugee Camp in Urua, Uganda. Developing countries have been relying on developed countries’ financing to help them adapt to and mitigate climate-change effects / credit: Ninno JackJr on Unsplash
With its climate pact and a climate law, the European Union is often viewed as progressive when it comes to dealing with the climate crisis. But positions that both EU countries and the EU bloc have taken in the run-up to the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), the largest annual climate-change conference, paint a different picture.
At a workshop held in June, the EU proposed an end to discussions on long-term climate finance. The workshop was part of Sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies, a set of meetings under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
“The [work] program was to come to an end in 2020, not the agenda item of long-term finance,” said Zaheer Fakir, one of the lead coordinators for the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN). Fakir, of South Africa, co-facilitated the workshop. “But developed countries in the EU and the U.S. are reluctant to continue these discussions,” he added.
The work program on long-term finance was first launched at COP17 in 2011. As part of the program, parties decided on a host of actions, such as the sessions and convening biannually to continue dialogues on climate finance until 2020.
At the workshop, many developing countries—African ones in particular—opposed the EU proposal as a violation of the Paris Agreement’s principles of equity. Representatives from the small African country of Gabon stressed the need to continue discussions on long-term finance given how the goal of mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 remains unmet.
Climate finance is considered a key tool to help developing countries adapt to a changing climate by developing coastal defense mechanisms or drought-resistant crops. This funding also helps countries take action to mitigate the effects, such as by scaling up the renewable energy sector. And as Toward Freedom previously reported, developed countries are falling short in fulfilling their financial obligations and sometimes are adding to the debt burdens of developing countries.
Fakir said these discussions on long-term finance are the “only real, substantial financial discussions under the Convention [UNFCCC].” He also added the work program was one of a kind because it included a variety of stakeholders, like parties to UNFCCC and development banks.
“Discussions on long-term finance cannot be shut down as long as developing countries are required to implement climate actions to achieve Paris Agreement goals,” said Meena Raman, a Malaysia-based legal advisor and senior researcher at the Third World Network (TWN), a nonprofit international research and advocacy organization focusing on Global North-South affairs.
Discussions on long-term climate finance are set to be held during COP26. Meanwhile, the EU, the COP26 presidency and the UNFCCC have not responded to questions.
African Group of Negotiators Lead Coordinators Strategy meeting, African Roadmap for Climate Action, held in March 2020 in Libreville, Gabon. African countries have rejected the EU’s proposal to end discussions on long-term climate financing.
A Showdown Over Net-Zero Terms
In the first week of October, a dispute broke out at the 30th meeting of the board members of the Green Climate Fund (GCF). GCF was established in 2010 as a financing vehicle that would help developing countries address climate-change needs.
The re-accreditation of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) to the GCF fell through because GCF board member Lars Roth required the DBSA accept net-zero targets, according to TWN’s account of the meeting. Roth is affiliated with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Green Climate Fund board member Lars Roth, who the Third World Network reports was trying to prevent an African bank’s re-accreditation by demanding more stringent climate terms. Roth said the group simply ran out of time to re-accredit the bank.
“Institutions like DBSA are key to the southern African region in terms of implementing their NDCs [nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement],” Fakir said.
However, TWN reported Roth tried to impose conditions on GCF members like a long-term net-zero target by the year 2050, an intermediate net-zero target for 2030, as well as shifts in overall investment and loan policies away from fossil fuels.
Board members from developing countries objected to these conditions.
Roth told this reporter the main reason DBSA was not re-accredited is the GCF board wasted time on “procedural discussions.” The bank’s re-accreditation was the final item on the meeting’s agenda. “We ran out of time to iron out remaining differences,” Roth said.
But Roth wanted the DBSA re-accreditation to be postponed irrespective of the substance of the discussions, said AGN advisor Richard Sherman. He added Roth’s was a deliberate move to put pressure on the DBSA to make a public statement regarding net zero and fossil-fuel investments.
Sherman also added the GCF board’s policy for accreditation and re-accreditation does not include any provisions “beyond an expectation that the portfolio of the entity would evolve and it does not provide any guidance on how to measure such a shift.” In essence, the provisions do not require net-zero commitments and fossil-fuel phaseouts.
The GCF did not respond to whether net-zero commitments are necessary for accreditation purposes.
This issue also shines light on the heart of the problem. That developing countries are expected to show greater ambition on climate action, while not being provided with the support to execute.
Article 2 of the Paris Agreement speaks of “equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances.” This means each country is required to take action aligned with its historical responsibilities and current capabilities. The entire African continent has contributed only 3 percent to cumulative emissions since the Industrial Revolution, as opposed to the EU, which has contributed 22 percent.
The proposal to not re-accredit DBSA could be considered discrimination and therefore not in line with the Paris Agreement. The other issue is banks like DBSA that finance projects in developing countries are core to both their general infrastructure needs as well as a just transition away from fossil fuels.
“One of the key achievements of developing countries in the GCF process was having direct access modality,” Fakir explained. Here, “direct access modality” refers to the possibility of national and regional institutions (institutions other than the UN and World Bank) to be accredited to the GCF to act as vehicles to finance climate-related projects across developing countries. DBSA is one such institution. Therefore, the decision to not re-accredit the bank will impact a pipeline of projects across southern Africa.
“How will these countries transition [into clean-energy economies]?” Fakir asked.
Morocco’s Noor Midelt solar power project, which Germany primarily funded / NS Energy
Lack of Finance Becomes a Barrier In Africa
All of the above detailed issues played out in the context of grave climate-driven disasters across Africa and increasing adaptation costs, which would require more GCF financing than ever before.
A new paper points to how climate finance from developed countries is heavily skewed towards mitigation despite Africa’s climate adaptation costs totalling around $7 to 15 (USD) billion per year and rising. Yet, the paper states that finance targeting mitigation was almost double that for adaptation.
The paper also highlights only 46 percent of financial commitments toward climate-adaptation measures are distributed. “If you want to have an impact on the ground, funding has to reach the communities on the ground,” said Georgia Savvidou, a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the paper’s lead author.
The fund flows also are not in line with the Paris Agreement, which states countries should balance climate finance between mitigation and adaptation. Early this year even the UNSG stated 50 percent of climate finance should be towards adaptation.
“Around 60 percent of GCF financing, if not more, is directed towards mitigation,” Fakir noted. This despite GCF’s mandate to invest 50 percent of its resources to mitigation and 50 percent to adaptation. And even within such allocation, the fund is mandated to invest at least half of its adaptation resources in the most climate vulnerable countries like African states and least developed countries.
The paper also points to how the disproportionate mitigation financing is linked to European funding sources. In northern Africa, where 83 percent of finance commitments were directed to mitigation, around 65 percent of such funding originated from European donors, which includes two banks and the countries of France and Germany.
The authors suggest self-interest drives such financing:
“One mega-project in Morocco financed primarily by Germany accounts for 26 percent of the region’s total mitigation finance: The Noor Midelt Solar Power Project is one of the world’s largest solar projects to combine hybrid concentrated solar power and photovoltaic solar. Morocco’s proximity to Europe means it could potentially export significant amounts of renewable power northwards, and in doing so help Europe to achieve its climate neutrality targets.”
To de-link donor interest in bilateral climate funding, the authors suggest direct access modalities like Adaptation Fund and GCF as one option. “These funds are better at reaching the most vulnerable countries,” Savvidou said. But, as laid out above, the integrity of GCF processes remains in question.
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
