Kenyan activists are calling for the deliberate inclusion of youth, women and marginalized groups in climate action activities.
The Kenyan Youth, Women and Marginalised Communities, a consortium of various organisations fighting to end Climate Change, said many times, they are an afterthought in conversations regarding climate action.
After a three-day dialogue workshop in Nairobi at the Young Women Christian Association (YWCA), they discussed how to address the critical problem.
Reading the press statement, Isaac Oindo, the Gender Climate and Inclusion Programmes Officer at the YWCA said they were deeply concerned about the segregation.
He said it is regrettable that little commitment is made to finance Climate Action and the available finance instruments still remain inaccessible.
“We are concerned by the increasing challenges in accessibility, quality, predictability and non-responsiveness of various climate finance instruments like Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund and Green Environment Facility to the needs of the youth, women and marginalised communities,” he said.
While they welcome the establishment of facilities, he said the consistent omission of the youth, women and marginalised communities’ responsive actions from such teams is a big concern.
Brenda Bulinya, Gender and Climate Change activist from Kisumu County said that the impacts of climate change are worsening every day yet critical action is not being taken.
“In Kisumu County, the River Nyando and Lake Victoria’s backflow of water are all as a result of Climate Change and it results in flooding, death and diseases so action should be urgent and prioritized,” she said.
Zainab Adan, a climate change advocate from Mombasa County said it is regrettable that there is an insufficient commitment from global political leaders and slow progress in climate negotiations.
“The commitment is especially little on climate finance, adaptation and loss and damage agenda. Although Africa produces the least carbon emissions globally, we are the most impacted,” she said.
She said Africa can only do so much in terms of what needs to be done, especially on funds to fight climate change.
Oindo said financial facilities must provide new and additional finance that is more inclusive in the future.
“Parties must provide new and additional short and long-term finance that is based on science, needs of people in developing countries and balance between mitigation and adaptation,” he said.
He said the immediate step should be to fix the broken commitment of delivering the inadequate 100 billion dollars in public finance by 2020.
