1 Purpose of the document

The ACT Alliance climate change advocacy framework position paper is designed as a broad outline of the policy areas and approaches that the alliance is working on. It serves as the general vision and guide for ACT Alliance’s climate change advocacy, campaigning, and messaging by providing a political and strategic framing of the thematic areas. It is expected that this document will be used by ACT forums and members in their own advocacy at the national and regional level.

2 Introduction and background

ACT Alliance considers climate change as a threat to the whole creation. As a faith based alliance, we believe that we, as humans, have been given the responsibility to care for creation and it is a task we must shoulder with great seriousness. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that climate change is a present reality and that it is primarily caused by human action.

Other recent evidence of a changing climate includes the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2015, which stated that 2015 marked the warmest global average near-surface oceanic temperature, approximately 1°C above the 1850-1900 average.

Researchers are seeing ongoing rises in mean global sea levels and global climate change observations reveal that changes are happening in ecosystems at a dangerous rate leading to significant biodiversity loss. Further changes in the climate will create more severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts. This is in addition to already prevalent cases of droughts, floods, and the resultant threat to lives and livelihoods across the world.

The Paris Agreement, the related COP21 decisions, and the deliverables of the Lima-Paris Action Agenda are landmarks in international climate policy and set the agenda for climate policy and action for the years to come. The long-term goal, keeping global temperature increase to well below 2°C and the commitment to try to achieve 1.5°C, combined with the long-term goals to achieve climate resilience and to shift trillions of dollars in investments towards resilient and low greenhouse gas emission development pathways sends a clear signal for urgent climate action. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) further call for action towards more sustainable economies and livelihoods, calling for climate action from key sectors that are related to climate change such as food and water.

ACT Alliance members and forums continue to advocate for climate justice, particularly for support for community resilience in developing countries, low greenhouse gas emission development, the respective means of implementation and the full implementation of the Paris Agreement, guided by the principles of equity, human rights and gender justice.