Facilitator: Climate Change Network Nigeria
The Africa Conservation Court Hearing is a gathering of diverse rural and urban communities from Nigeria and Africa with some African and non-African stakeholders sitting as Juries to listen to the community court hearing on the progress and challenges of community conservation efforts, resource conservation/management, community state of livelihoods and the impacts of climate change on community conservation and their livelihoods, environment and socio-economic situation.
The concept of Africa Conservation Court Hearing (CCH) is to present the evidence-based and undiluted stories of community conservation in Nigeria from the communes directly and not by a third party. The presenters will be drawn from communities and Local Government Areas that CCN-Nigeria and its Partners work with, namely: Surulere Local Government, Lagos State; Amuwo Odofin Local Government, Lagos state; Asaba Urban Community in Delta State; Port Harcourt Local Government in Rivers State. During the hearing each community comes to present its position orally with photo and/or video of sites in reference, while the juries will note down the extent to which each community has performed, the extent of the challenges and the type of intervention requested to enhance their progress and/or to provide solutions to their challenges. The Juries will also give advice on future steps to take to sustain their progress or steps to overcome their challenges. Community presentation will take 40minutes while the 5-person Jury will use 15minutes, the facilitator (CCN-Nigeria) will use 5minutes for both introduction and its final recap.
The objective of the Africa Conservation Court Hearing (ACCH) Session at the International conference is to promote a bottom-up advocacy (Local-global) in order to gain a top-down (global-local) intervention to the local/community challenges, especially in Africa. Stakeholders from other African countries that will attend the conference will be networked to join the Hearing. This will further enhance experience-sharing of indigenous knowledge while empowering the conference participants with more community conservation skills, livelihoods improvement strategies and knowledge from diverse geographical and social settings.
The ACCH will encourage the communities to do more in up-scaling sustainable conservation and livelihoods, thus promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 (sustainable cities and communities), 13 (climate action) and by extension, Goals 1 (no poverty) and 2 (zero hunger).
Big Issues: Climate change , Big Issues: Public awareness , Solutions: Empowerment , Solutions: Local/Traditional knowledge , Solutions: Public participation
