Vanessa Nakate

Youth Climate Activist

“You cannot have climate justice without racial justice. It is not justice if it doesn’t include everyone.” These are the words of climate justice advocate Vanessa Nakate. Nakate grew up in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, and started her activism in 2018. Climate change is having drastic impacts around the world today, and that impact is the most devastating in the global south. Nakate wants to change the climate future for the people in her country.

A vocal advocate for diversity in environmental activism, Nakate states that the world must listen to voices from the global south. She criticizes the culture that silences marginalized communities disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. Nakate has experienced this marginalization first-hand. In January of 2020, Nakate participated in a news conference at the World Economic Forum with four white activists, but when a picture of the event was released by the Associated Press, Nakate had been cropped out. She responded on Twitter, “You didn’t just erase a photo. You erased a continent. But I am stronger than ever.” (The Associated Press later apologized both publicly and privately and released the original photograph.)

Nakate refuses to allow voices from the global south to be marginalized. No matter the challenges Nakate has faced, she has continued to persevere in her fight for justice. She is the founder of the Youth for Future Africa and the Rise Up Movement. She argues that if we don’t tell the stories of those affected most by the climate crisis, the solutions to it and environmental justice will remain out of reach. Nakate reminds us that the global south may not be on the front page of the media coverage, but it is on the frontline of the climate crisis.

Adapted from Carrie Booth Walling, Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World (Routledge 2022).