Scope of warming effects, African deforestation unfold on road to Durban
DURBAN, South Africa – As extended climate change talks ended in Durban, South Africa, on Sunday with much unresolved despite agreement to extend the Kyoto Protocol through 2017, a group of young Kenyan delegates who traveled to Durban in an African youth caravan are now returning home, set to shoulder more responsibility for the future themselves.
The Kenyan climate youth activists, also members of the Church World Service-supported Giving Hope initiative for AIDS-orphaned heads households, are determined to be proactive, said CWS East Africa staff member Caroline Thuo.
“Our young people are quite worried. If nothing significant happens to reduce carbon emissions, even the current generation will not have an easy life in their senior years. Their lifestyles will change, life will be more expensive, food production won’t meet demands, and prices of commodities will go up.”
“Climate change is real,” said youth delegate John Kiruma, of Nairobi’s Mathare community. “It’s not just high level talks. It’s affecting communities.”
Thuo, who joined the youth caravan’s delegates at COP17, says its Kenyan delegates plan to inform and marshal their communities to mount ground level climate adaptation actions now, for the sake of current and future generations.
“Our young people are keen to take on something they can wrap their hands, heads, hearts and bodies around — something specific and realistic that’s needed and possible to take on,” she said.
“As Kenyans, one issue they picked up on in Durban is that of deforestation and the critical need to get their home communities to understand the need for reforestation, to do their part for global carbon sequestration, to help restore fertility to their own parched and over-worked farming lands, and to help with water retention,” she said.
“‘Hey, we need to protect our current forests as it bears on our current lifestyles,’ they told me. They also gained a clearer sense of the urgency to create more efficient ways to conserve water,” said Thuo.
Thuo said African youth exposed to the climate conference’s high level debating are asking, “How can we as youth and how can our communities better utilize ways now to stop the destruction of our forests, as is happening in places like Malawi? How can we support the banning of massive lumbering? How can our communities better locally manage their current forest cover?”
Seeing their continent an eye-opener
For those Kenyan youth caravan members who had not visited other African countries, seeing was believing as climate change effects unrolled before them on their Durban-bound bus trip from Kenya through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa.
“Traveling to Durban, the kids got it about the need for climate change adaptation and pushing governments to own up to their responsibility in protecting natural resources such as forests, grasslands and water masses,” said Thuo.
The young climate activists reported that Malawi was one of the worst affected countries they saw on their caravan, along with the effects of deforestation.
“By comparison, when they went through Botswana they could see positive changes,” Thuo said, “and when they entered South Africa, it was a completely different world. Perhaps South Africa has better climate conditions to begin with as compared to Tanzania and Kenya, but our young people could see that South Africa had better farming methods and more forest cover.”
“I now realize that the topic of climate change is a matter at the heart of communities. In talking with communities on the road to Durban, I came to realize that they sure do have coping mechanisms in place. These should be documented and championed by the youth after COP17,” said youth delegate Wendy Maureen.
COP17 delegate Martin Kimani observed, “It would seem that those countries who are more developed and educated [about climate change] are coping much better.”
Kimani said he was returning home with plans to engage his youth collaborative in “enlarging the scope of my group’s work on waste management. This experience has made me increase my knowledge on climate issues at policy level as well as implementation level.” And, yes, the kids are talking like that.
The young Kenyans plan to engage with their communities to help clarify confusions about increasingly unpredictable seasonal changes and knowing when to plant food crops.
“The youth also see the need to document and share with others what is happening in their communities and their successful adaptation solutions,” said Thuo.
As the Kenyan youth delegates rolled home to a country still reeling from the Horn of Africa drought and famine crisis, they contemplated COP17’s final, less than legally binding compromises and to what degree world leaders were kicking the planetary can down the road for the next generation to live with.
“I believe our young people will do everything within their power to not let that to happen,” said Thuo.