Patrick Kiarie Nyokabi, Kenya
My name is Patrick Kiarie Nyokabi from Kenya. I am an environmentalist, and advocate of climate justice, a passionate climate activist and currently I am the East African region coordinator for an organization known as We Don’t Have Time. The organization is the world’s largest climate review platform that advocates for climate action and justice with its main base of operation being online and through its app. The app is a platform where every individual is given a space to air their views and offer solutions that can help us curb the climate crisis that the world is facing at the moment.
As a champion of climate justice and action, I have been working with the local community to push the agenda of sustainability, conservation of the environment, proper waste management, and pushing the transition from the use of fossil fuels to clean renewable energy. The resources and the platform that We Don’t Have Time has given me, have improved my outreach to the community and the region as a whole which has made a tremendously positive impact in creating awareness and calling for action.
Personally, I have to say that climate change is real and it is here with us, this I can confidently say without fear of contradiction since I have faced its devastating effects firsthand. Where I am from, we heavily rely on agriculture as the main economic activity and for the past few years, we have faced unpredictable weather patterns that have affected the planting and harvesting session. The extreme weather conditions have reduced the farm outputs threatening our food security and increasing inflation levels which lead to financial constraints.
These devastating effects of climate change have affected my day-to-day life in various ways causing unnecessary cutbacks on things that made life comfortable. For example, due to the drought we are facing, most of the water sources have dried up causing us to need water rationing. The extreme weather patterns have reduced the agriculture outputs making the available food staff expensive, leading to forfeiting of some meals. The extreme heat being experienced during the day makes it hard for me to walk around as I did before to create awareness in the local community, which has affected my daily engagements with people since I can’t walk for long under the current conditions.
Climate change is the long-term change of temperatures and weather patterns which could be through natural ways or through human-induced activities. A good example is, previously we knew at this time in our country we were supposed to be experiencing short rains but it is not the case due to human-induced activities such as cutting down trees.
People need to be intentional about taking care of the environment because the fight against the current climate crisis requires collaborative efforts from everyone. People need to be conscious of how they relate with nature which will scale up efforts to combat the effects of climate change.
Having global treaties to combat the climate crisis is one way I believe will help remedy the effects of climate change. This is because if we have a global treaty on fossil fuels, for instance, all countries in the world are regulated by that treaty, thus emissions that come from the use of fossil fuels will be phased out.
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