Growing up in the most forested region of Kenya, environmental activist Elizabeth Wathuti says she saw the immediate challenge of climate change around her. “It compelled something within myself to do something about climate change,’’ she said during the “Climate Resiliency in Action” panel at the TIME100 Summit Africa in Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Friday.
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00:00 It is my pleasure to be leading this conversation on climate resiliency and action,
00:05 and to have two incredible members of the Time 100 community.
00:10 Elizabeth was named to the Time 100 Next List in 2022, and Eugenia in 2023.
00:17 You are looking here at the future of climate leadership in Africa,
00:22 and so I'm thrilled to be able to lead this conversation.
00:26 Eugenia, starting with you, you became Africa's first chief heat officer a few years ago.
00:33 Why should every city and every African city have a chief heat officer,
00:39 and what does a chief heat officer do?
00:41 Thank you very much, Sam.
00:43 So, as we all know, climate change is a major challenge that the world faces today,
00:51 and heat is one of the major and growing climate risks that the world faces.
00:59 And different from the risk of floods and mudslides and other climate-related hazards,
01:09 heat cuts across different sectors and different boundaries,
01:14 and there is very little space really available to hide away from the heat and rising temperatures.
01:21 According to the IPCC, the report shows that within the next few years,
01:26 Africa will experience extreme temperatures and low rainfall,
01:32 and this is what we're seeing across the board.
01:35 And so my role as the chief heat officer has been to support the city of Freetown
01:40 to identify solutions, build and implement plans that will help to reduce the level of heat exposure
01:47 that residents in Freetown are exposed to,
01:51 whilst also working on long-term plans and goals to help mitigate the risk of extreme heat and climate change.
01:58 Are there a few key lessons from your work in Freetown that you think could benefit everyone here in this audience?
02:03 A lot of lessons.
02:05 I was appointed two years ago, and within the time frame, we have done a lot of work.
02:13 This year in January, we conducted a force heat mapping assessment in partnership with NOAA,
02:21 and the result shows that communities across Freetown are warming up very fastly,
02:28 and the levels of air pollution also is very high.
02:33 And we've worked with women who are most disadvantaged,
02:38 disproportionately affected by climate change and extreme heat, to build sustainable infrastructure
02:45 to help protect women from extreme heat.
02:48 We've done a lot of work also in communities,
02:52 specifically in vulnerable communities such as slum, to help them to adapt to rising temperatures,
03:00 because most of those communities have very little land space even to do nature-based solutions or to plant trees.
03:09 So we have worked to provide solutions to help cool down in the temperature,
03:15 and we're about to launch our heat action plan for the city.
03:18 So those are amazing opportunities and experiences that other cities can leverage on in addressing heat and climate change.
03:27 Elizabeth, you recently told my colleagues at TIME, "Africa's greatest resource is its young people."
03:34 Two amazing examples of that resource on this stage today.
03:38 I wonder if you could tell people a little bit about your story, what brought you to the climate fight,
03:43 and what has your experience been?
03:45 Yeah, allow me to first thank TIME for creating this space for us to speak about this very important issue
03:52 around climate resilience in action.
03:55 Because as a young person from Africa, I have seen how much the story and the narrative of Africa has been shaped for a long period of time,
04:03 and it's mostly leaned on the challenges that Africa faces in terms of the climate crisis, which is true, which is a reality.
04:11 But most often, we have left out the stories of resilience,
04:15 the stories of what our people at the grassroots levels are doing to address the climate crisis,
04:20 the different initiatives and solutions that are being led on the ground,
04:24 and part of the work that I do revolves around working with young people across the continent.
04:30 And I must mention it's very timely because we just had the Africa Climate Summit that was happening in Nairobi,
04:37 and this was around creating and shaping that narrative of the African continent as a solution provider to the climate crisis.
04:46 Within that summit, we had the largest gathering of young people across the continent,
04:51 and that was the African Youth Climate Assembly, which together with other young people, we led the coordination,
04:56 and we had over 800 young people bringing their innovations, their solutions, and ideas that they are leading on the ground.
05:03 And I think for me, this is one of the greatest, you know, inspirations and the greatest assets and resources the continent has.
05:12 It's not just about the numbers, because of course the numbers are very high in terms of the youth population,
05:17 but it's also in terms of the solutions and the initiatives that these young people are undertaking on the ground to address global environmental challenges.
05:27 And part of the work that I do also is the Green Generation Initiative,
05:31 which is the initiative that I founded to ensure that young people can have an opportunity to love nature,
05:38 to connect to nature, and to also have experiential learning,
05:42 because I believe that it's one thing to tell young people and a child about the climate crisis and about the environment,
05:48 but when you teach them how to address these solutions, when you teach them how to green their schools,
05:54 how to grow their own food, how to clean their own air, they live their whole life with that experience.
05:59 And that was the reason why I began this initiative, and I've been passionate about the environment since I was a child,
06:06 having planted my first tree at the age of seven, and having grown up in the most forested region in Kenya,
06:11 that is in Nyeri County, which is also the birthplace of the first African woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize,
06:17 that's the late Professor Ngari Mathai.
06:19 So you can tell there is a whole journey of inspiration from my surroundings, from people that have been there before me,
06:25 but most importantly, seeing the challenges around me, and being compelled to do something within myself to address these challenges,
06:34 challenges to do with deforestation, the climate crisis,
06:37 but most importantly, being able to do everything within my power and capacity
06:42 to make sure that people and our planet can thrive and survive at the same time.
06:47 This panel is about climate resiliency, but the story that you're telling is also about the resiliency of people.
06:55 What gives you that resiliency, given the host of challenges that the movement and that the planet is up against?
07:02 I think that's a great question, and it's also around how do we sustain the momentum.
07:08 A lot of times when we have the climate conferences,
07:12 we can see a lot of the movements that are coming up of young people addressing challenges, addressing the climate crisis,
07:19 but I think the big question is how do we sustain that momentum?
07:24 How can we make sure that we continue to hold on and build on that resilience that young people have?
07:29 I think for me, one of the most important things is to ensure that we have collaborations, partnerships, and most importantly, diverse voices,
07:38 because when we come together from different parts around the world, with different ideas, with different solutions and initiatives,
07:45 then we build communities, and it's through these communities that we are able to unify our voices and speak as one,
07:52 which means that when we get to these global forums where we can use our voices to talk about the work we do back at home
07:58 and how the work we do back at home can also be impacted when different people around the world don't take action to address the climate crisis,
08:06 I think for me, this has been the most important thing, being able to build those communities, being able to build those movements.
08:12 Every day we talk about systems.
08:14 We talk about how the economic systems, the systems that exist right now that make it challenging for people to live, thrive, and survive,
08:24 and that make it challenging for us to have what we call climate justice.
08:28 These systems can only be changed by movements, and unless we are able to sustain the movements around, build these communities,
08:37 make sure that we have enough resources to sustain these movements, then it's going to be very difficult for us to address the issue of changing the systems.
08:45 I think for me, that is one of the key lessons, and also working around with young people,
08:50 it's being able to make sure that we can support the initiatives that they are doing on the ground directly.
08:56 We can be able to make sure that we are building their capacities in the same way that capacities have been built for well-established organizations,
09:05 for people in high-level positions of power.
09:08 How can we make sure that the same capacities, the same expertise, the same resources can be accessed by young people,
09:14 regardless of whether they are at the grassroots levels, regardless of whether they have access to these platforms,
09:19 but we make sure that we are powering them enough and fueling their energy, fueling their power to keep making a difference
09:26 by supporting what they are trying to do on the ground, because that change and those acts multiplied by all of these millions of young people
09:33 is what is making the real difference in the world, and for them, it's about urgency of the climate crisis,
09:41 and we see the urgency, and how we see the urgency, and how we show that we see the urgency is by taking action ourselves,
09:48 and I think if we can continue to support such voices, bring more of these voices to such platforms to make sure that the world can get to listen to these voices,
09:57 and not just listen to them, but make sure that their ideas, their solutions, their innovations are well implemented,
10:05 and also included in the decision-making platforms everywhere.
10:09 Jump in, yeah.
10:09 Yes, so just to add to the conversation, because I think it's really important when we talk about diverse voices,
10:17 I think such a platform like this is an amazing opportunity to get people from different sectors,
10:24 from different backgrounds, and different expertise come to the table and talk about issues, lots of learnings,
10:32 but again, it's also very crucial to ensure that those who are leaving the impact are also brought into the conversation,
10:40 and have a space for their voices to be heard.
10:43 So communities, people living in communities, there are a lot of lessons that you can learn from engaging communities,
10:53 because they are living it in the moment, and so there should always be a space, as she said, for young people, for women,
11:03 and for diverse voices to have a space for their voices to be heard.
11:09 It's really critical and important, because again, in Africa, I think the term "climate change" is really very popular
11:18 than the actual education around what's climate change, how can I adapt, what can I do to help support mitigation.
11:26 Is there a particular example from Freetown where you've seen that dynamic work?
11:31 Yes, so that's why in Freetown, for us, we have been using a bottom-top approach,
11:37 working with communities to co-design and co-create projects and solutions,
11:41 because communities are part of the problems and must be part of the solution.
11:45 One of the work that we are doing, which is a flagship program, is tree planting.
11:50 So because of a tragic crisis that we encountered in 2017, where a million people and over 300,000 people
12:02 lost their lives on their properties in a single day, brought us to the realization that we need to take action.
12:10 And so together with communities, we co-designed the Freetown to TreeTown campaign
12:15 to plant and grow a million trees by the end of the year.
12:19 So it's more about the growth of the trees, the sustainability, being able to create green jobs,
12:29 because you have a lot of youth and a lot of people within the cities that are unemployed.
12:36 So bringing them into being part of the solution, but also in terms of long-term planning.
12:43 Because one thing we know is that resources are scarce, and one of the problems that we have been facing
12:49 and have been talking about time after time is the access to climate finance,
12:54 the access to support adaptation work in cities. This is crucial.
12:59 So we have designed a model that is self-sustainable and a model that reinvested itself.
13:08 So it's working with communities to plant the trees, to grow the trees over time,
13:14 and communities have been given an incentive to plant and grow the trees,
13:19 whilst we also brought technology as part of the solution.
13:25 So we've created a platform which we call map.treetowntrackerapp.com,
13:32 and if you go there, you will see all of the trees that we've planted in Freetown,
13:37 the different areas that we've planted the trees, the age of the trees, the location of the trees,
13:43 the species types, but also the person who is taking care of the trees.
13:49 And so that has given us an opportunity to create transparency and a sustainable monitoring model,
13:58 which gives us an opportunity to now take our trees into the investment platform,
14:02 which is the stage where we are in.
14:04 Because we do know that even though we are leveraging local resources,
14:09 such as nature-based solutions and people, because those are our main natural resources that we have,
14:17 we are also seeking international opportunities.
14:21 We know that there is a space for investment into the carbon market,
14:26 because one of the things that we do know is that trees sequester carbon,
14:30 and so you can get offset for planting trees, which can give you an investment,
14:36 which you can use to reinvest in communities to solve the climate issues and climate vulnerabilities
14:43 that we are faced with. And so that's the journey we've been in.
14:48 Elizabeth, one of the things that we've been talking about today across these conversations
14:53 is the idea of privileging African solutions across the continent.
14:59 You and I were talking backstage about Kenya just having National Tree Day.
15:03 I'd love if you could tell the story of that project, and also, you know,
15:08 what examples exist from Kenya that you think should be replicated in other countries across the continent.
15:16 Yeah, great. I think one of the key things that we saw on Monday, that was on the 13th,
15:23 where we had a public holiday that was declared just for the citizens to plant trees
15:29 by His Excellency the President of Kenya, and we saw how many people came up,
15:34 communities, churches, religious institutions, organizations, everybody had organized something
15:42 for that day for people that did not have an activity to go and plant trees.
15:47 And I think that, you know, just natural call and seeing people go out there,
15:53 seeing people heeding to that call, and this is a call to make sure that the country
15:57 attains a 15 billion tree growing initiative by the year 2032.
16:03 And I think this is a huge opportunity for everybody in terms of how we can create opportunities
16:09 for our communities, for young people, because these 15 billion trees also are being produced,
16:14 you know, by communities, by young people, by institutions, and it's an opportunity to make sure
16:19 that we have this whole perspective of restoration.
16:23 And it's also going beyond just planting trees. It's a call to grow trees.
16:28 And by growing trees, it's making sure that the trees that are being planted can be accounted for
16:33 in terms of their survival rate in the next year, in the next two years,
16:37 and also that we can continue to protect the already existing ecosystems, the forest,
16:43 and the trees around, because I think this is the most important solution that we need
16:47 in terms of addressing the climate crisis, not just planting, but also being able to protect
16:52 what already exists.
16:54 And part of the work that we've been doing, for instance, at the Green Generation Initiative,
16:59 we first started with a campaign that we dubbed Adopt-a-Tree Campaign,
17:03 and we started tapping into the power of institutions, working with children,
17:07 working with schools to make sure that every child in every school would have an opportunity
17:12 to plant and adopt a tree each.
17:14 But again, looking at the holistic approach of it, that environment and climate is not just
17:19 about what we see it as, but it's so much interconnected with all walks of life.
17:24 It's interconnected to health, it's interconnected to food, it's interconnected to transportation,
17:30 it's interconnected to the economy, it's literally interconnected to all the perspectives of life.
17:37 And I think having seen this, we also realized that we needed to begin, you know,
17:42 the EcoSchools project, where we even started picking designated corners in the school compounds
17:47 and began to establish the food forest, where we plant mixed species of fruit trees.
17:53 And the mixed species were to ensure that the children have got nutritious source of, you know,
17:58 meal in and out of seasons.
18:00 And at the same time, this would supplement the school's feeding program.
18:04 And at the same time, it would give the young people and the children that sense of belonging
18:09 and that sense of purpose that they can contribute towards environmental conservation.
18:14 And so, even during the tree planting day, these were some of the things that we were doing
18:19 with a lot of the young people to make sure that even the kind of trees that people are planting
18:24 are trees that have a value.
18:26 For instance, for the farmers, trees that can give them a commercial value,
18:30 because the trees that you can plant, for example, the fruit trees like avocados and macadamias,
18:35 these are the kind of fruit trees that we would give to the farmers, so that at the end of the day,
18:39 it's not just planting, but the saplers can go to the market and they can be able to have something
18:44 that generates income for them.
18:46 Because we also need to have those kind of incentives.
18:48 It's these same communities and people at the grassroots that are most affected and impacted by the climate crisis.
18:55 So, as we encourage them to conserve, as we encourage them to participate in climate conversations,
19:01 we also need to make sure that we are creating programs that enable them to also have that income-generating process,
19:08 because they also need to feed their families, they need to take their children to school.
19:12 All of these perspectives, and I think that then gives them a lot more passion,
19:18 a lot more motivation to keep doing the work that they do.
19:21 And so, these are some of the things that we look to also continue to upscale,
19:25 of course, across the country, across the borders, to make sure that we can have impactful projects
19:31 that enable people to thrive and survive at the same time.
19:34 And I think if we are able to have that holistic approach, understanding that the environment and climate
19:40 is not just for environment and climate organizations,
19:43 it's not just for environment and climate activists or environment and climate leaders,
19:48 it's for all of us, because the air we breathe, the food we eat, everything about our health,
19:54 literally everything about this planet is very much based on how well we treat our ecosystems,
20:00 how well we can be able to thrive and survive, people and our planet,
20:05 how well we can be able to even make our economies grow at the same time as we protect our planet.
20:10 I think that understanding is what has also enabled some of these initiatives to keep growing
20:16 because there's that linkage with literally all the issues that we are trying to address as humanity today.
20:23 Eugenia, a last question for you both.
20:26 Those of us who follow the climate story can easily fall into despair.
20:31 There are so many examples of things that aren't working.
20:34 You both have committed to making this work and improving the planet.
20:38 Where do you find your own personal resiliency?
20:42 I think for me it's just knowing that you just can't sit and wait
20:49 and seeing all of the destructions and loss of life and loss of properties,
20:55 knowing that something can be done about it to change the narratives and to change the situation.
21:02 We just need to and we just have to work together.
21:06 Addressing climate change needs to be an inclusive solution.
21:13 We need people in all levels, in all segments of a society to join hands,
21:21 to work together to ensure that we are addressing the issues and we are making deliberate changes.
21:30 We also definitely need the support of the national government back in cities to deliver on their commitment.
21:40 We also need private sector. We talk about partnerships and collaboration.
21:45 Most of the work that we have been doing has been based on partnership and leveraging opportunities externally.
21:55 I believe that from what we've shared, there is so much synergy,
22:02 there is so much learning and experience across the board,
22:06 from Kigali to Nairobi, South Africa, Ghana and Freetown.
22:12 A lot of lessons that we can draw from and learn from.
22:16 Ensuring that we are empowering communities, we are providing jobs for the young people,
22:23 we are addressing climate issues and vulnerabilities,
22:28 and we are also lending our voices to the conversation which we're doing right now.
22:33 Elizabeth, to round out this conversation, what gives you hope?
22:38 I have a lot of things that I would say give me hope,
22:44 because in the face of challenges, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed.
22:48 It's very easy to be frustrated. It's very easy to want to not carry on.
22:54 But the fact that my passion for the environment is deeply rooted in what surrounds me,
23:02 it's deeply rooted in my surroundings, it's deeply rooted in seeing people happy,
23:07 in seeing people living their lives without the kind of challenges that the world is facing today.
23:15 I think for me, that is one of the reasons why I keep doing what I do.
23:20 Whenever I walk to a place and I see, for example, women have to walk for long distances to look for water,
23:27 my next question is, how can we get this community to have a long-term supply of water, to have them access water?
23:34 And I think that for me is one example of a way in which challenges compel me to take action,
23:41 that when I am frustrated also, I find a way to foil that frustration,
23:46 and it gives me a hunger to want to do something to address those challenges.
23:50 And the second thing that gives me hope is seeing lives changing.
23:55 It's seeing children, for example, in the schools that we work with, happy and doing well in their studies,
24:02 because they have just established a green space that they did not have before we did a project in their school.
24:08 Seeing children excited because they have something nutritious to eat, they can enjoy fruits in their school compounds.
24:15 I think for me, these life-changing stories that are as a result of some of the projects that I'm doing back at home,
24:24 with the communities, with the schools, is one of the reasons why I have hope every day to keep going.
24:29 And just a very practical example of why I even did the Adopt-A-Tree campaign.
24:34 The first time I went to a school, I remember we just had about like 20 seedlings,
24:38 and we could see the energy and the passion in the children.
24:41 They all wanted to have a tree each, and I think that compelled me again to make sure that every time I'm getting into an institution,
24:48 every child has an opportunity to plant and adopt a tree each in their school compound.
24:52 And I think these small stories and these experiences are what gives me hope.
24:56 And the thing that gives me hope is that community, that movement, that family, that community,
25:01 that we've been able to build also as young people, being able to work together, being able to partner,
25:06 to collaborate and share ideas, share challenges, but most importantly, being able to, you know,
25:12 encourage one another and remind one another that we are the ones that are going to change the future of this planet.
25:19 We are the people that are going to make that difference.
25:21 And if we don't, then nobody else will.
25:23 I think for me, these are some of the few things that give me hope and fuel my energy to keep going.
25:28 Well, Eugenia Carbo, Elizabeth Lethouti, you give me hope.
25:32 Thank you very much for this conversation. I really appreciate it.
25:35 So thank you very much for this conversation.
25:38 I really appreciate it.