#savecongorainforest

Vanessa Nakate is an environmental activist from Uganda. She studies Business administration and is member of Youth for Our Planet movement in Uganda. She founded Youth for Future Africa. And she started a struggle for Congo rainforest few weeks ago. Vanessa accepted to share her story with us by answering our questions.

YFOP: Vanessa Nakate, when did you start fighting for Congo rainforest?

First of all, I’d like to thank you for the opportunity and the help to amplify my voice. I have 23 years old on 15 November. I started fighting for Congo rainforest on 14th October 2019.

YFOP: What was the trigger? Why did you decide to make things change?

A club invited me to give my presentation about climate change and how it was affecting the lives of the people in our continent (Africa). They then asked me various questions and one of the questions was: why the people talked about all the other forests in the world but never talk about African forests. They gave the example of the Amazone and how everyone is talking about it and how African forests have not being talked about and yet undergoing destruction. So, I told them that if African forest are not being talked about it is because Africans are not saying anything about it. So, this trigged me to start the fight to save the Congo rainforest. I carried out a lot of research and read about it, and though known that it was the second nice and large forest in the world with a various biodiversity. This trigged me to start struggle for it.

YFOP: What actions have you taken?

My actions have been to whole in strikes. I have been having a daily strikes 14 October and it has been gone through to satisfied days now in narrow and because of that strike, an awareness has been created where are partly about the destruction in the forest in Africa.

YFOP: Are other young people engaged in the struggle?

Yes, we have young people who have been actually engaged in the struggle. We are some of Uganda, from Europe; different people have joined. In fact that the Friday 15 November, we are about over one thousand young people plus some outdoors joined in the street to save Congo rainforest.

YFOP: What difficulties do you encounter?

The main difficulties that I face is getting media attention for the forest. It has been quite hard. Most of the awareness that I’ve created has been on social media that is Twitter and Facebook but getting it to the big media like BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), it has been quite hard. But the struggle continues.

The other thing is we really have few people who talked about it. Even those in Congo themselves, few are really talking about it. So we just need a stronger push, more people to collectively demand for actions, we need people to capture every moment of the rainforest and how it is being destroyed. Those are the main difficulties in creating a worldwide awareness for the Congo rainforest.

YFOP: Youth is mobilising worldwide, in all continents. What do you think about youth-led climate movement?

I think that the youth have been better outdoors in this movement and they have been able to create awareness and demand for actions something that many outdoors thought to do. I believe that with this youth-led climate movement, we will be able to get the change that we need, we will be able to get the climate action that we need in various countries, we will be able to secure a better future for all. And I believe that this movement is mainly led by the youth because they are fighting for their future and most of the outdoors travellers, they lead their youth lives. And we are trying to secure a healthy environment for us tomorrow. So, I believe that the youth-led climate movement is going to be successful in demand for climate actions in the various countries.

YFOP: What are the main challenges in your point of view?

We have very stubborn leaders some who do not want to take climate action, some have declared climate emergency but they are taking long to implement the actions. In Africa, most of countries are under the Parish Agreement but we are not seen any African leaders coming out to declare climate emergency and taking climate actions. In fact, it is not about development than the planet. Most of the leaders care more about the profits instead of the planet. They may get show benefit now but we’re going to suffer the row later. Though are the main challenges.

YFOP: Greta inspired you in your activism engagement. What do you think about her?

Greta is amazing. She is a true leader and she knows what she is doing. That is great to inspire very many people and give them the courage to demand for climate action.

YFOP: What message do you send to government leaders in Uganda?

My message to government leaders in Uganda is that I personally I’m scared for the future. I am scared that a time will come when I won’t have access to food, when I won’t have access to water, or a time will come when someone will be dying because of drowning in flood, or someone will be dying because of starvation due to the drought. So, my message is that: they need to secure a future for us because a steady and healthy environment is a right for every human being. It’s our right and it’s granted by the Constitution. Then, we can hold them accountable for an unhealthy environment. Therefore they need to take climate action and save us from the rest of the climate crisis.

YFOP: Your last word?

I send all kind of appreciations to all the youth climate leaders all other the world, and I thank them for all their amazing work there are doing to assure a better future for all the people. Then I send one to the youth in Africa and all the citizen in Africa to join and be united because if Africa is to survive the climate crisis, it would have to unite and together demand for climate action from the government leaders. We need unity in the climate movement if we want to achieve any good result.

YFOP: Thank you Vanessa.

  Jean Damase ROAMBA