By Gidraf Wachira, NetHope's Climate Intersections Lead
NetHope participated at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty in November. This year, the 29th (COP29) such gathering, was held in the Caspian Sea-side town of Baku, Azerbaijan. A changing climate in a warming world is the context for all the work of NetHope Member organizations. When we developed our current strategic plan, we based it on the plans of NetHope Members, and that plus generous support from our long-time partner Cisco, enabled us to launch the NetHope Climate Intersections Program, a program that aims to reduce the impact of climate change on people in vulnerable contexts through digital technologies, especially for women, youth, and indigenous people or disenfranchised communities. We achieve this through anticipatory action to increase resiliency with access to early warning systems, upskilling and building climate data and skills of nonprofits and local communities, and promoting climate equity to amplify and integrate community voices, experiences, and needs.
COP29 saw the first ever Digitalization Day of any COP and this underpins the role of digital solutions in upscaling climate action in mitigation but also in climate adaptation and resilience. Digitalization Day, as it was called, convened by ITU and chaired by its Secretary General, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, opened on November 16 with a high-level panel framing the importance of these technologies in the climate toolkit, and Lance Pierce also discussed NetHope’s work there with an equally impressive lineup of speakers from governments, NetHope corporate partners, NetHope Members and others. NetHope is a proud partner of the Green Digital Action lead by ITU. Our CEO, Lance Pierce was invited to speak at a High-level event convened by the UN Secretary-General on delivering Early Warnings for All and addressing extreme heat, with the event aimed at taking stock of the implementation of EW4ALL and the global response to call to action on extreme heat, with participation of leaders from developed and developing countries, financiers, private sector and CSO representatives. Offering remarks alongside the Secretary General, the heads of UN agencies, and presidents and prime ministers from a variety of countries, Pierce discussed the need to support putting early warnings for all out via the full spectrum of available media channels, in addition to digital, and reminded all assembled that we also can’t forget the 2.6 billion around the world who still need access to the internet as part of the challenge.
Also, as part of our endeavor to collaborate in implementing digital solutions in climate action, NetHope also participated in the High-level meeting and launch of Declaration on Green Digital Action. At NetHope, we believe digital solutions can accelerate our preparedness, response and resilience of communities through our work in the Climate Intersections Program, case in point, we are implementing a community connectivity and resilience project with the generous giving of the Internet Society Foundation where we are collaborating with local Community Based Organizations in Tana River, Kenya to build their capacity with Community Early Warning Systems (CEWS) as well as providing resilient internet connection so the CBOs are able to receive early warnings and be able to disseminate them and work with their communities on their preparedness.
At NetHope, we believe Climate Adaptation needs to be community led and owned. COP29 was an important moment for climate adaptation. One key outcome is the provision for the establishment of a support program for the implementation of National Adaptation Plans for the Least Developed Countries, which will build capacity in developing and implementing their NAPs. It was nice to see some of NetHope Members whose programmatic activities are mostly around climate adaptation bring their voice to the need for a just, inclusive climate action especially in adaptation with the push for more global climate financing to be focused on adaptation. In this regard, I strongly believe there needs to be more community voices with lived climate experience at COP30 and other COPs in future, so that even as counties and parties negotiate, they are guided by the urgency of communities who do not have time to wait for another COP for their interests to be heard and acted upon. The climate crisis is unfortunately striping communities of their dignity but we believe, using digital solutions, we can collect and amplify these communities’ voices as evidenced by the extent of the climate crisis and as a tool for action nationally, regionally and globally. In the sidelines of COP28 in Dubai last year, NetHope announced a partnership with our Member Ushahidi, to collect and amplify the voices of 1000 voices. We embarked on the project throughout this year and we have so far collected the voices of more that 1,700 community members in Yumbe District in Uganda and the findings are quite telling of the negative effects of climate change for refugee and host communities. We will publish the findings in the coming weeks and we hope to scale this work to amplify more voices, especially those vulnerable communities, women, children and youth.
In addition to the high-level panels, our small delegation fanned out to engage with the NetHope Member organizations, more than half of which were in attendance, as well as many of our corporate partners, both new and long-time. We provided expert content on multiple panels across the event focused on bringing our perspective to boost or amplify the work of Member organizations, as well as our own teams.
COP29 limped across the finish line with a last minute (as seems to frequently happen) and universally unsatisfactory deal on finance, but the NetHope team returned home with a renewed sense of finding new allies and collaborators across our community and elsewhere, and we found new and enthusiastic audiences for our work on Climate Intersections.
About The Climate Intersections Program
NetHope launched its first climate program, with the generous support of Cisco. Our mission is to leverage the reach of the NetHope community via digital, data and partnerships to help more people thrive in the face of climate change. NetHope humanitarian and conservation NGO Members and their ecosystems, thematic programs, local and marginalized communities and NetHope tech partners are the core of Climate Intersections program. We believe that collective action is the way to fight this climate crisis. Sharing resources and finding digital solutions together is not something new for NetHope Members.
The Climate Intersections program enables NetHope Humanitarian and Conservation Members to:
Fosters collaboration with NetHope partners to find digital solutions by:
For more information on the Climate Intersections program and the Climate Intersections Working Group, contact NetHope and refer to "Climate Intersections".
