How can Africa manage the transboundary climate risks it faces?

This policy brief highlights five significant transboundary climate risks in Africa that urgently need consideration for management. Transboundary climate risks have the potential to set back economic development gains, jeopardise trade and food security and impact infrastructure investments in Africa. 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.