Activists hold protests in Nairobi, call for climate financing

Activists in Nairobi joined their global counterparts in holding peaceful protests on Saturday to call for climate financing and action against loss and damage caused by climate change.

The placard-waving activists who comprised the Youth and members of various NGOs matched along various city streets to call for action.

While carrying banners, they chanted ‘Loss and damage Finance Now’ and ‘COP27 The AfricanCOP’ as they matched from Nyayo Stadium to Catholic University of East Africa.

Among the organizations that took part in the protest include Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Fridays For Future, Laudato Si Movement, 350 Africa and others.

According to PACJA, about 100 people died and thousands displaced by floods while close to 3.5 million became victims of extreme weather in year 2021.

“It is unimaginable that communities can lose livelihoods due to the climate crisis and yet, governments are so incapacitated to intervene,” PACJA executive director Mithika Mwenda said.

He said that the disastrous climate situation being witnessed is the result of centuries of unsustainable exploitation of resources, particularly by the global north with little regard to emission control.

According to UNEP, while Africa has contributed negligibly to the changing climate, with just about two to three percent of global emissions, it stands out disproportionately as the most vulnerable region in the world.

“Droughts, famine, locust invations and floods are the drastic effects of the climate crisis that we, as the most affected face while contributing the least,” Fazeela Mubarak, a climate activist said.

A joint statement by the Fridays For Future and Laudato Si Movement called for climate reparations, saying that “not as charity, but as a transformative justice process in which political power will return to the people,” he added.