Africa–European Union Climate Change Partnership

Abstract The need to heighten climate action momentum is a key outcome of the Climate Action Summit organized by the United Nations (UN) in September, 2019. The same concern reverberated in most of the presentations and discussions at the twenty-fifth Conference of Parties (COP 25) – the annual climate summit under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This chapter seeks to investigate the relevance of the call for more climate action in terms of what further climate priorities and strategies are required in the context of the existing climate change partnership between Africa and the European Union (EU). It relies on liberal institutionalism as its theoretical framework and data from a range of purposely selected secondary sources as reference points. Beyond arguing the case for more climate action to further strengthening the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES), particularly in the area of environmental partnership, this chapter emphasizes the need to align the required further climate action with the mitigation goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN transformative initiatives on the global climate action. It concludes with an insight into some policy recommendations, including the need for a dedicated and regional-based approach in tackling Africa’s climate change beyond the conventional worldwide UNFCCC (United Nations Convention on Climate Change) framework that has failed to deliver tangible results for some time past.