Transcript

VANESSA NAKATE

Well, thank you. There’s been quite a number of challenges from when I started activism. In my country it’s not very easy to organise very, very big strikes and get to do strikes with students and different people because it’s hard to get permits, especially when you don’t have any big organisation to help you with that. So that was one of the challenges that I faced in my activism. And the other thing I really remember, of course, activism comes with so much negativity from different people, online, in person. Yeah, those are also challenges that I may not be facing by myself alone, but also other activists face those very challenges. And maybe to talk about the challenges that some of the activists that I work with have really faced – we’ve had some of them getting arrested, and that is really challenging for them and also for us because it kind of makes our activism a very hard thing to do, because you’re always in worry about what could happen next.

And the other challenge has been really talking to people because many times when we would do community reach out to speak to people here in Uganda, you get questions like: what am I going to gain from this? How much are you going to pay me? If you’re telling me to stop doing this, are you going to feed my family? So there are those challenges of people saying they’re not able to do activism because of various reasons, which is understandable because of the circumstances that some of them are in. And also many people would say, why aren’t you fighting to end poverty, to eradicate poverty? So those were some of the challenges that I faced as an activist.

But what I can say is that if I’m fighting for climate justice then it means that I’m fighting to eradicate poverty as well, as I have seen and we’ve seen how climate change keeps people in poverty trapped, and when they lose everything, they lose their homes, their crops, they’re left with nothing. When I fight for climate justice, I know I’m fighting for gender equality for all, to achieve zero hunger. So, it’s all about people understanding the intersection of all these things. And I guess that is like, the current challenge I have, but not just me but probably other activists as well, to help people understand the intersection of all these things.

VANESSA NAKATE

I will just start by saying that when you find yourself in a burning house, you do everything you can to run out of that house. So, it’s kind of disturbing for the young people to see that the planet is warming, and all the leaders are doing is to fuel, to continue fuelling the crisis and even make it burn more. So, I think for me it just really brings a disturbing in my heart to see that homes are being washed away, to see that crops are being destroyed, to see that people are struggling to have access to clean water and biodiversity getting destroyed because of the actions of our governments, the actions of the leaders.

So, I am personally worried about the kind of future that, you know, we are going into. However much people are fighting for the future, I think it’s important for people to also understand that the present of very many people is catastrophic, it’s dangerous, it’s scary. So, if I have a present that is scary right now, what do you expect me to think about the future?

So, I think that’s what really pushes young people to demand for justice because they’re already seeing a present that is very unpleasant, and you cannot convince them that the future is pleasant or beautiful. And yet it’s what they are walking into. We don’t walk from destruction to maybe peace just like that, when nothing is done about it. So, if we are seeing destruction, then we are going to do everything we can to get something that is much better, to get a future that is healthy, a future that is sustainable, a future that is equitable for all of us.