1. A common African climate reparations position for COP32
The road to COP32 must be used to build political alignment and collective power across African governments, negotiators, movements, communities, researchers and civil society. We call for a sustained African-led process to develop a common African climate reparations position, connecting the African Union Decade of Reparations, the Africa Climate Summits and the UNFCCC process. COP32 in Addis Ababa must provide a political space for advancing this agenda, not merely another technocratic forum in which Africa's voice is silenced.
2. Climate reparations to be recognised as a matter of justice and accountability
Climate reparations must be recognised within African and global climate policy as a question of responsibility, not voluntary charity. Recent international and regional legal developments - such as the Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice and the advisory proceedings before the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights - alongside the African Union Decade of Reparations (2026-2036), strengthens this agenda. We call on African governments and international institutions to move climate reparations from the margins of climate discourse into concrete policy and political commitments.
3. Reparative finance that does not deepen debt or dependency and inequality
Those who have contributed disproportionately to climate harm must take responsibility for its repair. Reparative finance must be provided primarily through grants, not loans, and at a scale that reflects the true cost of the harms and losses and experienced, recognising that existing climate finance commitments and support have been grossly inadequate.
Reparative finance must be grounded in the responsibility of states, rather than dependent on private finance and market-based approaches designed to generate financial returns. It must be adequate, predictable and gender-responsive, with direct access for affected communities and women-led organisations, and meaningful decision-making power over its allocation and use.
Reparative finance must not create new debt, deepen dependency or reproduce existing inequalities, nor impose conditions that undermine the self-determination of affected countries and communities. The Loss and Damage Fund must therefore be strengthened in its scale, governance and accessibility.
At the same time, reparative finance must extend beyond existing climate finance mechanisms to transform the structural financial inequalities that produce and deepen climate vulnerability, rather than reproducing them.
4. Debt justice and tax sovereignty as pillars of climate reparations
African countries should not be forced to borrow their way through climate harms generated disproportionately elsewhere. Debt justice, including meaningful debt cancellation and restructuring debt architecture where necessary, and reform of international financial institutions must form part of the reparative agenda. Strengthening tax sovereignty and international tax justice is equally essential to enable African countries to mobilise and retain the resources needed for their own development and ecological futures. We demand a fair and transformative global trade system that ends the rules and practices that extract wealth from Africa, protects the livelihoods of our peoples, and puts people and planet before corporate profit.
5. An end to colonial extraction in the guise of green transition
The transition to a low-carbon economy must not reproduce the extractive patterns of the past. Critical minerals, renewable energy projects, carbon markets and conservation initiatives must not become new forms of dispossession, land appropriation or resource extraction from African communities. A just transition must uphold territorial sovereignty, human rights, ecological integrity and community decision-making, as well as confronting the colonial continuities embedded in today's global economy.
6. Ecological repair alongside repair for people
Climate reparations must address harm to ecosystems, biodiversity and territories, alongside the loss of cultural heritage, sacred places, ancestral connections and community knowledge. Repair must address the gendered impacts of these losses, including increased unpaid care work and unequal access to land, resources and livelihoods. These harms cannot be fully captured through monetary valuation. Reparative action must support ecosystem restoration, community stewardship, biodiversity protection and Indigenous and local knowledge systems, while ensuring that mechanisms for financing nature do not reproduce commodification or dispossession.
7. Gender justice must be integral to climate reparations
Climate harms are not gender neutral, and neither can climate reparations be. Colonialism, patriarchy and extractive economic systems have created structural inequalities in access to land, resources, livelihoods and decision-making, with distinct impacts on women and girls, particularly those from historically marginalised communities. Climate reparations must address these inequalities, including sexual and gender-based violence and other forms of gendered harm exacerbated by climate crisis and displacement, ensuring access to redress, protection and repair for survivors. Reparative approaches must also recognise unpaid and under-recognised care and community labour, strengthen access to land and resources, and support women-led and feminist solutions.
8. Reparations centred on those living with climate harm
Reparations cannot be designed for communities without their meaningful participation and decision-making power. African and Afro-descendant communities, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, gender-diverse people and youth must be recognised as rights-holders, knowledge-holders and political actors. Particular attention must be paid to those historically excluded from decisions over land, resources, finance and development. Reparative frameworks must be grounded in lived realities, advance gender justice and uphold free, prior and informed consent, territorial rights and community-defined priorities. Affected communities must have the resources and power to define harms, determine appropriate forms of repair and oversee implementation.
We affirm that those who have contributed most to climate harm must be held accountable for repair and that those living with climate harm must have the power to define and shape repair.
A common Pan-African position must respect distinct histories, knowledge systems and priorities across the continent and diaspora, with the resources and political space necessary for communities to exercise that power.
As signatories, we commit to strengthening movement coordination, advancing community-led and gender-responsive approaches, and ensuring that women, young people, Indigenous Peoples and historically marginalised communities have meaningful power in shaping the climate reparations agenda. We will carry this work through COP32 and beyond, holding those responsible to account and advancing the structural changes required for lasting repair.
We affirm that those who have contributed most to climate harm must be held accountable for repair and that those most affected must have the power to shape reparations.
We invite organisations, movements, communities, researchers, practitioners and individuals to stand with us.
The time for climate reparations is now.
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Signed by organisations, movements, communities, researchers, practitioners and individuals committed to advancing climate reparations agenda in Africa and beyond.