| Summary/Abstract |
ON 12 DECEMBER 2015, the 195 member states party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) formally adopted the Paris Agreement. This agreement, the culmination of many years of work by thousands of negotiators, scientists, academics, and representatives from civil society, replaces the failed Copenhagen Accord. During the Copenhagen conference in 2009, Lumumba Di-Aping, the then-Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Sudan to the United Nations in New York, and the Chair of the G77+China group, controversially stated that, ‘You cannot ask Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries’.1 The Copenhagen conference witnessed deep splits amongst African delegates. South Africa was part of the coalition that drafted the final text behind closed doors (with Brazil, India, China, and the USA) and Ethiopia publicly supportive of the Accord, while many other African countries agreed with Di-Aping that it produced a disastrous outcome for the continent. This briefing considers African influence at the twenty-first conference of the parties to the UNFCCC (COP21) and asks whether the final deal is a good one from an African perspective.
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