How can Africa manage the transboundary climate risks it faces?

This policy brief, produced for AMCEN 2023, highlights five significant transboundary climate risks in Africa that urgently need consideration for management.

1. (TCR 1) Trade: imports and food security
2. (TCR 2) Finance: foreign direct investment and infrastructure investments
3. (TCR 3) Biophysical: water and energy security nexus
4. (TCR 4) People-centred: transhumance
5. (TCR 5) Geopolitical: security challenges in cross-border livelihoods

This policy brief, produced for the nineteenth ordinary session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) in August 2023, highlights five significant transboundary climate risks in Africa – biophysical, financial, trade, people-centred and geopolitical – that urgently need consideration for management. The authors draw on real examples from countries across Africa to show how transboundary climate risks, and the ways in which they are handled, create significant impacts for other countries. The brief also provides some practical recommendations for how African regional economic communities and their Member States can work together to manage these risks, in keeping with existing climate policy frameworks and objectives.