Rethinking Climate Solutions With Activist Vanessa Nakate

Vanessa Nakate: “Stunned. Worry. Sadness. Fear. Anger. Bewilderment. Frustration. Disgust. These are some of the emotions expressed by scientists about the climate crisis on the Is This How You Feel? Website. As I watched the videos, listened to the podcasts, and read the blogs, social media posts, and newspaper articles, these emotions and more arose in me too. And I had so many questions! Why wasn’t climate change being more widely taught in our schools and universities? Why weren’t we listening to the scientists? Why wasn’t our Government acting? Why wasn’t the international community working together more? What were all our leaders doing? Were we fooling ourselves in not taking this issue seriously?”

VN: “More than 50 million girls in the region are missing out on receiving an upper secondary school education (equivalent to the last two years of high school in the US or the sixth form in the UK). If they had the chance, how many of these young women could be teachers, lawyers, doctors, NGO staffers, members of parliament, or climate scientists?”

VN: “Decades of research has found that girls who graduate from high school are healthier, have more economic opportunities, and, crucially in Project Drawdown’s calculation, bear fewer children over the course of their lives. They’re also more likely to make sure that their kids, including their daughters, are educated too. I explained why this is the case in an op-ed I wrote for Wired UK in January 2021.”

VN: “One young woman fighting the stunting of girls’ potential is the Zambian Natasha Mwansa. Natasha became an advocate for preventing child marriages and teen pregnancies and supporting reproductive and mental health for adolescents when she was only twelve years old. Natasha is passionate about the need for girls to speak out: ‘Girls have to demand a space for their voices to be heard,’ she says. ‘Therefore, we urge African governments to support and uplift girls, and make a firm decision to end child marriage.’”

VN: “Social media is an amazing tool for organizing, sharing information, and for encouraging solidarity among climate activists around the world. But social media has also been a magnet for bullying, shaming, disinformation, and even for inciting violence. What’s more, research by Amnesty International, among others, has found that women, and especially women of color, receive much more harassment and abuse on social media than men. Black women, according to the research, were 84 percent more likely to be mentioned in ‘abusive or problematic’ tweets than white women.”

VN: “Although the vicious cycle of climate change and violence toward women and girls is a dire problem in the Global South, it’s not uncommon in the Global North either. The disruptions, job losses, illness, stress, and enforced togetherness brought about by the Covid pandemic have increased the instances of gender-based violence. UN Women calls this the ‘shadow pandemic.’”

VN: “For the climate movement, it’s important for women of all ages to step into leadership positions at local, national, and international levels. In January 2021, when I watched American poet Amanda Gorman reading her work at the inauguration for US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, I imagined millions of girls around the world picturing themselves speaking someday at a state occasion. I want millions of girls and women to believe they can be anything they want to be, and that they can change the world. If they don’t, like a team with half its players sitting out the game, we’ll all lose. So will the Earth.”

This Collection contains excerpts from Nakate’s 2021 book A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis, available for purchase here.