Resumed eighteenth session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN)

The resumed eighteenth session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) will take place in Dakar, Senegal from 12 to 16 September 2022 under the theme: "Securing people’s well-being and ensuring environmental sustainability in Africa”.

The session will focus on the need for people-centred recovery with an emphasis on people’s well-being through environmentally friendly actions that create jobs and improve livelihoods. It will review environmental challenges and opportunities in Africa in the post-Covid-19 era and consider other issues related to sustainable development in the continent.

Ministers will discuss how to make the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, the key environmental ministerial forum in the region, stronger and more effective as the region is facing tremendous environmental challenges including climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution. They will also have the opportunity to provide policy guidance for the effective participation of the Africa region in the upcoming key global environmental events, including the twenty-seventh session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27) scheduled to take place from 6 to18 November 2022 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt; and the resumed fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD-COP15) to be held in Montreal, Canada, from 5 to 17 December 2022.

The AMCEN session will provide an opportunity for the delegates to be briefed on the outcomes of the resumed fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2), the status of implementation of the resolutions that were adopted at that session, including the development of an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, with a focus on the organization of Africa’s participation in the intergovernmental negotiating committee as well as key issues for the continent on plastic pollution.

The session will also provide an opportunity for countries to reflect on the outcomes of the fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP15) that took place in Abidjan from 9 to 20 May 2022 and agree on the way forward, including the call for the development of an instrument on land degradation and the need for a group of countries that should represent Africa in these negotiations.

Requests for additional information can be sent to:

Mohamed Atani, Head of Communications and Outreach for Africa at mohamed.atani@un.org

David Ombisi, AMCEN Secretariat at david.ombisi@un.org