Vanessa Nakate - A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis

A BIGGER PICTURE. Copyright 2021 by Vanessa Nakate. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.

First published 2021 by One Boat an imprint of Pan Macmillan

marinerbooks.com

Names and identifying details of some individuals have been changed in some circumstances to protect confidentiality.

Cover illustration Magdiel Lopez

Cover photography Esther Ruth Mbabazi

Tree image iStock/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-358-65450-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-358-65446-9 (ebook)

e ISBN 978-0-358-65446-9
v1.1021

To the People and the Planet

I couldnt believe what I was seeingor rather, what I wasnt. It was a freezing cold day in January 2020, and I was scrolling through my social media feeds. Id just finished lunch with other climate activists, who like me were in Davos, Switzerland, to urge some of the three thousand business leaders, financiers, politicians, opinion formers, celebrities, and other globetrotters attending the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) to get serious about the climate crisis. Wed held a press conference that morning, before which Id posed for cameras with four other activists, and Id stepped away from the dining area to find out how the media was reporting our message.

Within a minute, I came upon a link to an article that featured one of the photos that had been taken of us. My heart nearly stopped. It was clearly the picture Id been in, since you could make out the edge of my coat on the far left of the frame. But I was nowhere to be seen. Id been cropped out.

I cycled rapidly through my feelings. I was frustrated, angry, and embarrassed. As I looked at the image, it became impossible to ignore that of the five women whod posed for that photo, I was the only one who wasnt from Europe and the only one who was Black. They hadnt just cropped me out, I realized. Theyd cropped out a whole continent.

At the press conference that morning in Davos, Id been the only climate activist from Africa (there were a few others at the WEF itself), and not only had I been cut out of the Associated Presss photo but out of the APs article that reported on our press conference too. Does that mean I have no value as an activist or the people from Africa dont have any value at all? I asked in a ten-minute video I streamed live later that day. I was struck by the cruel irony of the exclusion of the only African from the photo. We dont deserve this, I said. Africa is the least emitter of carbons, but we are the most affected by the climate crisis.

For a year, Id organized climate strikes on the streets of Kampala, the capital and largest city in Uganda, in east-central Africa, where I live, to demand action on the climate emergency. Id attended international climate conferences and been active online, and now Id come to Davos to help more people wake up to the truth that global heating is not an abstraction or a theoretical event awaiting the planet in a few decades.

My message was, and is, straightforward: People in Uganda, in Africa, and across whats called the Global South are losing their homes, their harvests, their incomes, even their lives, and any hopes of a livable future right now.

This situation is not only terrible, its also unjust. Although the African continent has just 15 percent of the worlds population, it is responsible for only between 2 and 3 percent of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.

Nonetheless, Africa will, according to the African Development Bank, bear almost half the costs of adapting to the consequences of climate change, and seven of the ten countries most susceptible to the harshest effects of the climate crisis are in Africa: South Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, Sierra Leone, and the Central African Republic.

Those with the fewest resources and whove contributed the least to the crisis are contending with the gravest consequences: more frequent and more serious flooding, longer droughts, periods of extreme heat, and rising sea levels. Increased food scarcity, forced migration, economic losses, and higher rates of death are also disproportionately affecting people of color, not only across Africa and the rest of the Global South, but in the Global North too.

This is my worlda world where Earths temperature has already risen 1.2C (2.16F) above pre-industrial levels. A planet thats 2C hotter is a death sentence for countries like Uganda. Yet, as you read this, were on course for temperature rises that are much, much more than 2C. That means many more millions of people will be displaced and extreme weather events will strain health and economic systems to the breaking point. At the same time, the worlds oceans are being depleted, biodiversity is collapsing, and species are going extinct at a rate greater than since the time of the dinosaurs.

My video response was seen by tens of thousands of people around the world, including many in Uganda, who shared my outrage and disappointment. Like me, they realized that, quite literally, something was very wrong with this picture. Being cropped out of that photo changed the course of my activism and my life. It reframed my thoughts about race, gender, equity, and climate justice; and it led to the words youre now reading.

In A Bigger Picture, I explain why that photo that moment mattered, and why its crucial that the fight against climate change includes voices like mine. I describe how I first became a climate striker, and my eventual journey to the Alps and what has happened since. I show how what we must call the climate emergency is an immediate, even daily struggle for millions of people, including across Africa, and how the heating of Earths atmosphere is connected to everything: economics, society, politics, and many forms of inequality and injusticeracial, gender, and geographic.

Like many of the young climate activists Ive organized with and been inspired by, I live in a profoundly interconnected world, with instant access to huge amounts of information (and disinformation) and more means of connecting to others than at any time in history. Those of us born at the end of the last century and in the early years of this one have grown up in the shadow of HIV/AIDS, terrorism, financial meltdowns, and huge technological change and disruption. Weve witnessed greater concentrations of wealth and increased disparities of power. Many of us have experienced firsthand how our planets ecosystems are breaking down under climatic stresses unprecedented in human history.

Perhaps more than any other age group, we are questioning the premise of an economic, social, and political model that has led us to a precipice beyond which no economic or governance system will survive. These realities have shaped our recognition that we, those that follow us, will bear the brunt of several centuries of burning fossil fuels and our calamitous failure to leave the remaining carbon in the ground.

A Bigger Picture also showcases the work perspectives of a fresh wave of activists from a new generation. Many of them focus their vision on and from Africa, a continent that has been ignored, silenced, and exploited for too long. We believe that at the center of this effort must be a genuine commitment not only to environmental, racial, and climate justice, but to the empowerment of girls and women, who are facing the crisis most acutely and are at the forefront of efforts to combat it. Without tackling climate change, we wont be able to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, or bring about a resilient and sustainable future. I also share the practical solutions that climate activists are applying to support communities in Uganda and other countries in Africa and around the world.