African Union Council Revisits Climate-Security Mandate

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council returns to the climate-security file on 11 November, convening its 1378th meeting under the title Climate, Peace and Security in Africa: Emerging Challenges, Institutional Responses and Future Priorities. The session, timed to the opening of COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, and the first day of the World Leaders’ Summit under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will centre on the state of the Common African Position on Climate Change, Peace and Security (CAP-CPS). That document’s finalisation has become a test of how faithfully the AU follows the consultative process it set for itself.

That accountability question is the most pointed one hanging over the meeting. In its February 2026 communiqué, the Council welcomed progress on the CAP-CPS and called for validation by national experts from all Member States ahead of Council endorsement, consistent with the five-step roadmap adopted at the November 2025 Member States validation workshop in Nairobi. That workshop had concluded without adopting the draft, producing the roadmap instead. Rather than undertaking further consultations, however, the document was subsequently circulated to Member States through digital communication, with inputs invited. Whether the consultative, nationally driven process envisaged by the Council and the roadmap has actually been pursued is now an open question for the body that mandated it.

The procedural record is long. The PSC’s engagement with the climate-security nexus dates to its 585th session in March 2016, when it first decided to hold annual deliberations on the subject. This year alone, tomorrow’s session will be the third dedicated thematic engagement, following the 1331st open session on 19 February on the climate, peace and security nexus and the 1344th session on 4 May on climate change impacts in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin. The CAP-CPS itself traces to a chain of decisions: the PSC’s 774th session in May 2018 requested a study on the nexus; the 1051st session in November 2021 and the AU Assembly’s 35th Ordinary Session in February 2022 called for a climate-security risk assessment and a common African position. The resulting Africa Continental Climate Security Risk Assessment, conducted by the AU Commission with Adelphi, and the Chairperson’s report on the nexus were considered at the PSC’s 1184th session in November 2023, which asked for their consolidation into a comprehensive document. A draft followed, refined at a three-day consultation in Nairobi from 27 to 29 August 2024, after which the PSC at its 1240th session in October 2024 underscored that the CAP should be data-driven and informed by Member States and African institutions.

Substantive scrutiny may prove equally demanding. Council members are expected to consider an updated draft reflecting Member State comments, and some may question its basic rationale, its treatment of sovereignty and ownership, and its institutional design. A central concern is that the draft combines diverse issues, spanning climate policy writ large as well as broad climate impacts, rather than focusing on how AU peace and security frameworks, processes and peace initiatives across the conflict policy continuum from prevention to Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development take account of climate change. This conflation, though not deliberate, raises risks of securitising climate action and blurring responsibilities for climate policy. Unlike earlier AU common positions, the draft does not separate a common position for international advocacy, useful for African demands on climate finance, technology transfer, loss and damage, equity and common but differentiated responsibilities, from a coordination mechanism for climate, peace and security at continental and national levels. It instead reads as an operational framework guiding national policy on security, land, migration and development.

Meanwhile, critics within the process may also note that the draft promises complementarity with an already crowded institutional landscape, including National Adaptation Plans, NDCs, the AU Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy, Agenda 2063, the Great Green Wall Initiative, the African Governance and Peace and Security Architectures and the PCRD Policy, without demonstrating what a common position adds, or whether the real constraint lies in implementation, financing, capacity or political will. Its proposed new architecture, including integrated early warning, joint risk assessments, continental monitoring, data-sharing platforms, an AU-led Climate Security and Diplomacy Training Academy and new financing instruments, invites questions about duplication with the existing Africa Multi-Hazard Early Warning System. The draft’s reliance on partnerships with donors, International Financial Institutions, the UN and the private sector may prompt questions on policy coherence, conditionalities, data control and policy autonomy on migration, border control and critical minerals.

Tomorrow’s session opens with remarks by Antonin Benjamin Biéké, Côte d’Ivoire’s Special Envoy to the AU and PSC Chairperson for November, followed by statements from the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, the Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment, Member States, the RECs/RMs and the UN Office to the African Union. The expected outcome is a communiqué reaffirming climate change as a risk multiplier rather than a cause of conflict, welcoming progress on the CAP-CPS while reiterating Member State ownership, inclusive national consultations and data-driven analysis, and pressing for scaled-up, grant-based climate finance with enhanced access for fragile and conflict-affected countries, alongside keeping climate-peace and security considerations within Africa’s climate policy processes through CAHOSCC, the G20 and COP31. Whether the Council presses for a return to the roadmap’s consultative steps, or accepts the digital-input route as sufficient validation, is the question its communiqué will have to answer.