Climate Week 2, 2025 in Addis Ababa: Driving People-Centered Climate Action.
By Dr. Mokolade Johnson
The lesson from Addis is clear: climate ambition becomes reality when it is established in partnership, culture, and people-centered strategies.
Addis Ababa is fast becoming a hub for climate diplomacy and action, particularly through the UNFCCC Climate Week, which served as a regional platform for advancing global climate goals in ways that are deeply rooted in local realities. The recent CW highlighted the power of public-private partnerships, people-based solutions, amplifying cultural voices and bottom-up policymaking to accelerate the delivery of the Paris Agreement and beyond.
Public-Private Partnerships as Catalysts
One of the strongest messages from CW Addis was the importance of public-private sector collaboration in financing and advancing climate commitments. Success stories showed how investment from the private sector can unlock the potential of national policies, enabling them to scale globally. These partnerships not only mobilize finance but also build trust between governments, businesses, and communities—an essential ingredient for effective climate action.
People-Centered Solutions and SMEs
The Addis Ababa CW spotlighted the transformative role of small and medium-sized enterprises and vocational actors. These people-driven solutions are high-impact, credible, and responsive to the socio-cultural and economic needs of communities. By engaging artisans, local innovators, and small businesses, CW demonstrated that climate action is not abstract—it is deeply embedded in livelihoods. This approach strengthens implementation of the Global Stocktake (GST), Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) by ensuring that solutions reflect local aspirations.
Policy Options and Cultural Leverage
Another highlight was the exploration of short-term policy measures that can accelerate action. Addis CW emphasized that the cultural sector, often overlooked, holds untapped potential for climate advocacy and sustainable practices. When combined with opportunities in energy transition, agriculture, forestry, and carbon markets, culture becomes part of a holistic, bottom-up approach that empowers national authorities to act faster and more inclusively.
Building Collaborative Frameworks
The roundtables and dialogues in Addis Ababa—ranging from NDC Clinics to Implementation Labs—underscored a common theme: climate action thrives when collaboration frameworks are clear and inclusive. By aligning the efforts of governments, private investors, civil society, and cultural actors, CWs help unlock multi-stakeholder responses that are not only scalable but also resilient.
Public-Private Partnerships and Scalable Decarbonization
Key success stories shared during Addis CW emphasized the catalytic role of public-private partnerships in unlocking finance for decarbonization. By channeling investment into renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and resilient infrastructure, these collaborations will enable governments to translate national climate commitments into tangible outcomes. Though participants such as Climate Heritage Network (CHN) through the Decarbonization of the Built-Environment through Heritage (DBTH) initiative advocated that carbon sequetration via culture-based heritage initiatives holds potential, it was not generally discussed in detail by parties and non-parties. Nevertheless, they illustrate that decarbonization is not limited to large-scale energy transitions alone CHN promotes that it is implementable through traditional agricultural ventures, viable carbon crediting, financing, and sustainable localized carbon market strategies replicable across diverse cultural urbanisms.
Looking Ahead to COP30 and The Future
The discussions, complemented and emphasized diverse sessions at Climate week 2, including mandated events, NDC Clinics, and Public-Private dialogues on finance, Implementation Labs on Energy transition and access, Agriculture, Forests, Carbon Markets, decarbonization, COP30 Presidency events on Mutirao and the Action Agenda. With COP30 ahead, the Addis Ababa CWs served as both an echo point and a catalyst. It was agreed that identifying buildable success stories, elevating grassroots solutions, building institutions, empowering universities, and promoting cross-sectoral collaboration, the CWs will shape a climate action agenda that is as local as it is global. The lesson from Addis is clear: climate ambition becomes reality when it is established in partnership, culture, and people-centered strategies.
Dr. Mokolade JOHNSON, Architecture & Urbanism Research Hub-University of Lagos, is the Africa Region lead of the Decarbonizing the Built Environment through Heritage project and a member of the Climate Heritage Network. Dr. Johnson attended Climate Week 2 as a representative of the DBTH project team and the Climate Heritage Network.
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