Global Afro-Descendants Refuse to be Sidelined at the 2026 UNFCCC Bonn Climate Change Conference
Fossil Fuels held in Santa Marta, Colombia in April 2026. Such recognition is absent during global climate
negotiations that serve as the mid-point between COP30 and COP31.
(Photo credit: Fuzieh Jallow, Terra40)
Bonn, Germany – The June Intersessionals (SB64) at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) lay the groundwork for COP31, but Afro-Descendant participants continue to face exclusion. To achieve more durable, legitimate climate governance, the Global Afro-Descendant Climate Justice Collaborative is hosting the Afro-Descendant Trans-Atlantic Strategy Convening (AD-TASC) concurrent to official climate negotiations.
Afro-Descendant participants report revoked visa sponsorship and unprecedented obstacles to secure participant badges for entry into official UNFCCC spaces. Cheryl Kwapong of The Chisholm Legacy Project (TCLP) and co-steward of the convening says, “an inside outside strategy is imperative to the overall calls for vital adaptation and climate finance plans, including calls for reparations and a just transition that actually include us in the decision-making process.” She continues, “we are consistently excluded from decision-making processes, while simultaneously bearing the brunt of the harm those systems produce.”
Anticipating ongoing contentions, TCLP and Generation Green are hosting the AD-TASC. The counter-convening will host Afro-Descendants, whether they were invited to SB64 or
not, to participate in a hybrid intensive with political education, relationship building opportunities, and political alignment sessions.
Destiny Hodges, founder and executive director of Generation Green, says, “for many of us traveling to Bonn to advocate for reparations and the liberation of our communities, Germany (and the rest of Europe) is a site of intergenerational violence and trauma. We refuse to be their case study, colonial subject, or slave, and the Afro-Descendant Trans-Atlantic Strategy Convening is an opportunity to stand on that.”
About the Afro-Descendant Trans-Atlantic Strategy Convening (AD-TASC)
The Strategy Convening in Bonn, Germany will address the urgent need for sustained political coordination, narrative alignment, and institutional infrastructure among Black liberation-oriented initiatives operating across Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and North America. This hybrid convening will move Afro-Descendant environmental engagement to strategic, transatlantic coordination grounded in a 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year plan for concentrated efforts both alongside official forums and beyond.
About the Global Afro-Descendant Climate Justice Collaborative (GADCJC)
GADCJC advances liberation across the Global African diaspora with the goal to build, deepen, and broaden participation through a recognized Afro-Descendent Constituency, racial analysis and action within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
About The Chisholm Legacy Project (TCLP)
TCLP is a Black Liberation and Just Transition organization that serves as a vehicle to connect Black communities on the frontlines of climate justice with resources to traverse the path from vision to strategy to action plan to implementation to transformation.
About Generation Green
Generation Green is the founding home of the Environmental Liberation Movement and a global ecosystem of Black climate/environmental organizers and membership organizations. Through popular education, training, activations and convenings, Generation Green prepares activists and organizers from around the African Diaspora to develop strategies that combat global racial capitalism in Black environments.
Keywords #Afrodescendants #UN #UNFCCC #racism #colonialism #climatechange #SB64