PACJA: Pandemic Recovery Must Not Delay Climate Action

Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic must integrate and address the climate crisis, say Dr Mithika Mwenda, Executive Director of PACJA, speaking at the inaugural symposium of the Nairobi Summer School on Climate Justice (NSS-CJ).

More than 500 climate justice activists and defenders from government, academia, civil society, and community movements scholars, are attending the NSS-CJ physically at the Kenyatta University in Nairobi and remotely from around the world.

It is the first gathering of the kind in Africa and aims to ignite a deeper conversation about what climate justice truly means and build bridges across nations and generations to enhance climate justice advocacy and ignite action to avoid the worst scenarios of climate change.

Lectures and discussions are highlighting how COVID-19 and the climate crisis conspire to wreak communities across Africa, and the best and just ways to address such a conjoined crisis.

Africa is one of the regions that are most vulnerable to climate change.

“Every day, millions of Africans are waking up to failed crops, dying livestock, flooded homes,” said Mwenda. “Millions are forced into displacement, to deal with disease outbreaks and vanishing livelihoods. In every single part of the continent, extreme changes in climatic variables such as temperature and precipitation have become both frequent and more intense.”

Across Africa, these conditions have been worsened by the crippling effect of COVID-19 restrictions in communities.

“The COVID-19 pandemic did not only pose a major public health challenge, but it also rocked the world of small farmers, substance pastoralists, fisherfolk and micro-business owners already grappling with the impacts of climate change,” says Dr Mwenda.

“Together, the two crises have compounded the vulnerabilities that have exposed millions on the continent to even the most minimal disruption.

“As we work to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic; and as we plan to gather in Glasgow in two months for COP 26, the lesson is glaring: we cannot address one crisis without the other.

“Worse, we cannot use the need to urgently recover from the negative impacts of COVID-19 as an excuse to further delay climate action.”

“That is why, in the past year, we have been advocating pandemic recovery plans and strategies that integrate and address the climate crisis. It is the only way they can be sustainable and successful in strengthening community resilience against ongoing and future shocks.”

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