‘African leaders must respond to climate change’
MULINDWA GUY
MEETING a young girl in eastern Uganda who was forced to raise her siblings after their parents were killed in floods and landslides pushed Mulindwa Guy into climate activism.
“I couldn’t imagine the unspoken suffering they were going through and the more people I talked to the more I found out that they were not alone,” says Guy, 23, of that encounter a year ago.
“So many people have lost their children, partners or their property.”
When Guy returned home, he started researching the increased landslides, floods and droughts in different parts of Uganda.
“I found out that this was due to climate change, though to my shock these impacts were not only hitting hard on Uganda but Africa as a continent.”
That’s when he started his lone climate strike – he is now on week 20 – and his campaign for the environment “to create massive awareness and wake our leaders up to take sufficient action now because our future depends on it”.
Guy strikes every Friday for Fridays For Future and every Saturday for #Savecongorainforest and #Twotreesaweek.
“It’s very unfortunate that there are literally no reports about the climate and ecological crisis in the media, which has kept the population ignorant and leaders are taking advantage of this not to take action,” says Guy, who is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in human resource management.
The continent contributes the least to global carbon emissions “yet the atrocities associated with climate change have become immense and costly. The greatest problem in Africa right now is the denial that climate change is real and the overwhelming ignorance of the population about climate change.
“There’s no way you can solve a problem that you think doesn’t exist or that you don’t know about. My activism is to create massive awareness about climate change and the magnitude of its impacts across Africa.”
Last September, he started a tree-planting campaign to fight deforestation. “I’m striking to protect what’s left of nature. We have to restore what has been lost.”
He visits schools and teaches students about climate change but says while the voices of African environmental activists are emerging more loudly, national and international media outlets “ignore” them.
“Most of the countries in Africa can’t let activists hold climate strikes in large numbers to create massive awareness. Political leaders easily connect the climate strikes to their political fights, which leads to arrests or (to getting) tear-gassed.”
Guy has lost friends striking for the environment. “They say they can no longer associate with me because I stand on the roadside and hold signs and sometimes talk to the public. They say they are ashamed.”
But he has great responses, “especially from victims of impacts of climate change when I am planting trees with them”.
Uganda’s forest cover has shrunk in the past three decades.
“People are carrying out deforestation on a large scale, polluting land and water with plastic and reclaiming swamps for agribusiness, which has led to increased floods, landslides in some parts of the country and more droughts than ever before in most parts of the country.”
African leaders, he says, have failed to accurately portray the climate and ecological crisis to the population.