COP Returns to Africa

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, A New Chapter for African Artefacts?. Buy the issue here.

The event will see ministers and officials from prominent UN and multilateral agencies coming together with over 1,000 delegates from 42 African countries. Since 1995, COPs have been the primary avenue for negotiations surrounding climate change and the climate crisis. So crucial have the conferences been that, ten years after their inception, they gave birth to the 2015 Paris Agreement. The Agreement—which strives for the herculean task of substantially reducing the emission of greenhouse gases to keep global warming ‘well below 2° C’, with the lofty preference of 1.5 degrees Celsius—is the first binding agreement that commits all nations to taking concrete steps to address climate change.