Kenyan youth makes passionate appeal at climate change conference

Scientific consensus, for a long time, has consistently confirmed that the world is perpetually, yet alarmingly warming.

In the ears of environmental and climate activists, this has not been a flagrant information but a clarion call to act.

Young people have evidently been leading the way for environmental conservation through tree planting, scientific innovations and calling governments to action against climate change. 

One of them is Elizabeth Wanjiru Wathuti, a Youth Climate Activist who for the last seven years has been actively working towards recovering the climate glory which is being snatched away from us by unchecked pollution and lack of forest cover, among others.

Wathuti, 26, was born in Kiandu village, Tetu Constituency in Nyeri County, Kenya.

Hailing from one of the most forested areas in the country, she got connected to nature during her childhood, planting her first tree at the tender age of seven.

She loved to walk in the footsteps of the renowned Environmental Activist and founder of the Greenbelt Movement, the late Prof. Wangari Maathai, the then member of parliament for Wathuti’s Tetu Constituency.

This put a spark for nature in her heart and she now says “forest is a part of me.”

Consumed with passion for nature, she later pursued a degree in Environmental Studies at the Kenyatta University, equipping her with knowledge for the love of her heart-nature.

Her campus life was characterized by her engagements in a myriad of environmental initiatives, nature-related activities, environmental campaigns and victories, all while increasing awareness of global environmental challenges like climate change.

She founded the Green Generation Initiative whose focus is to nurture the young people and talk them into loving and caring for the nature.

The initiative also spurs the young minds to be environmentally conscious and willing to actively spread the message on environmental conservation.

The initiative has planted many trees through the “Adopt a Tree” campaign, growing in the young people a culture of tree planting and nature conservation.

Among many other awards, she has bagged the 2016 fourth Wangari Maathai Scholarship Award and Green Climate Fund Climate Youth Champion Award 2019.

During this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, United Kingdom, Wathuti made an unequivocal message on Climate Change and how it is ravaging the planet.

Her speech was a wonderful collection of the right words, delivered to earnestly urge everyone to “open up their hearts”, understand and consciously decide on the fate of our planet.

The climate activist started by opening her own heart and appreciating the time she has spent searching for the right words which would fit the occasion, speak to the hearts of the audience, arouse their feelings, awaken their conscience and succeed in beseeching them to make informed decisions on climate change, during the conference.

She held the view that the conversation was a two-way traffic and her story would only move the audience if they opened up their hearts and willingly listened.

“I can urge you to act at the pace and scale necessary, but in the end, your will to act must come from deep within,” Wathuti said.

She, fully understanding that her voice was speaking for the whole of Africa, a continent contributing only 3% of the world’s global emissions yet cleaning up the mess caused by other continents, sought to touch on the breaking points of planet Earth.

She stirred up the minds of the audience by narrowing down to the story of her homeland, Kenya, which has been a backdrop of the many heart-breaking experiences she has been witnessing, all from the fully-packed basket of climate change.

Symbolically acknowledging the comfortable setting of the Conference, she made reference to the awful statistics that over 2 million Kenyans are already moaning from the pains of climate-related starvation.

She must have felt the audience’s state of complacency and decided to disturb it for the sake of the world!

“In this past year, both of our rain seasons have failed and scientists say that it may be another twelve months before the waters return,” she said.

She said that while all this is unfolding, “our rivers are quickly drying up and our harvests are failing. At the same time, our store houses stand, but all empty.”

Sadly, to sum up all this, “our animals and people are dying,” she lamented.

She laid bare the plight of Kenyans, which is a representative image of the ugly situation in the whole of Africa.

Wathuti called to mind a past scenario she witnessed in Kenya, recalling that “I have seen with my own eyes, three young children crying at the side of a dried up river after walking twelve miles with their mother to find water!”

She would repeat her chorus, “please, open up your hearts.”

What should alarm you and I most, however, is that this situation is not locked up in Kenya.

It is loose, ravaging all countries without mercy! Deadly heat waves, coupled with wild fires were witnessed early this year in Algeria.

Uganda and Nigeria have received their share of the calamity through the floods which left some millions of citizens homeless and devastated.

Madagascar is now five years old since it rained last.

These are not indications of the quenching of the climate change thirst, but it’s introduction.

Scientists have warned that more is on it’s way.

By 2025, only four years away, “half of the world’s population will be facing water scarcity.

Twenty five years from now, things will be worse if we all won’t join hands in impeding the calamity,” she added

A whopping 86 million people in the Sub-Saharan Africa will have got misplaced by then, through the painful wounds climate change is inflicting on the earth.

Wathuti implored the audience to join her in a moment of silence for the billions of citizens who have been bearing the heavy yoke of suffering and whose painful stories never go beyond their compounds of residence.

For the sake of the 1.3 billion people in Africa, adding to the number of many others suffering the consequences of pollution and deliberate neglect, she didn’t shy away from constantly urging the delegates to open up their hearts and act.

Reminding all of us that we are the adults of our time, she laid upon our shoulders the responsibility of ensuring access to food and water for the children, who have contributed nothing to the plight of our planet.

This agrees with the words of Barrack Obama, the former president of the United States, in the same event, that the process won’t be easy.

“It will be messy…. But if we work hard enough for long enough, those partial victories add up.”

She told the audience of the role she has personally played in rescuing the planet’s ground cover.

“Inspired by the great Professor Wangari Maathai, I founded the Green Generation Initiative – a tree growing initiative that enhances food security to young Kenyans,” she explained.

So far, the initiative has been the vehicle for the planting and caring of over 30,000 fruit trees to maturity, which have in turn cared for the people by providing thousands of children with nutritious food.

As she says, “When we look after the trees, they look after us.”

However, the life or death of the plant and human life is in the hands of the decisions the world leaders would make during the fourteen-day long Climate Change Conference.

Digging deeper into the hearts of the world leaders and all the people, Wathuti powerfully concluded by imploring them to act because “the children cannot live on words and empty promises.

“They are waiting for you to act. Please open up your hearts and then act,” she said.

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