“We see leaders flying into COP on private jets. But we are drowning in promises.” Uganda’s Climate justice prodigy, Vanessa Nakate at COP26

She is only 24 years old. And yet Uganda’s Vanessa Nakate is already one of the most respected African youth voices and climate justice advocate of her generation.

The fearless climate activist, who holds a degree in business administration was inspired by her own father and Greta Thunberg to start her own climate movement in her native Uganda.

She shone a spotlight on her cause early in 2019 as a lone protester in Kampala. Over time, she was joined by others with similar beliefs. She now heads the Africa-based Rise Up Movement.

In January 2020, along with around 20 other young climate activists, she published a letter to the World Economic Forum calling for an immediate end to the global addiction to energy subsidies.

She was one of five international delegates to be invited to Davos during the forum. It was there that she was cropped out of that infamous photo, ‘for the optics’, in a social media post.

A few months later, she gave a speech at the Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture, in which she highlighted the fact that whilst Africa contributes the least to climate change, it perversely stands to suffer the most.

One of her stated aims is to bring attention to the environmental degradation of the Congo rainforest, the second-biggest in the world – a fact that many don’t know.

She has written to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris demanding an equitable and sustainable future for all of the world’s citizens.

She has now emerged as one of the strongest voices that spoke at the COP26, where she gave used her speech to call out the global political and business elite for sweet-talking climate crisis solutions.

We see business leaders and investors flying into COP on private jets. We see them making fancy speeches. We hear about new pledges and promises. But we are drowning in promises. Commitments will not reduce CO2. Promises will not stop the suffering of the people. Pledges will not stop the planet from warming.

Vanessa Nakate

Below is Vanessa’s speech at COP26 in full:

We are as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently said, on the verge of the abyss. As the IPCC report said, science is now unequivocal. The latest available science tells us that in order to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, we must reduce global CO2 emissions by somewhere between 7% to 11%, this year, and next year, and every year after until we get to zero.

 So what are we doing to pull ourselves back from the abyss? Countries have come to COP26 to make new pledges to reduce their emissions. And lots of companies and banks and investors have descended upon Glasgow to make big climate commitments. And let me say that, of course, the idea that countries companies and investors committing to drastic and immediate action to reduce emissions would be most welcome.

But let us be honest, we have been here before, there have been 25 COPs before this one and every year, leaders come to these climate negotiations with an array of new pledges, commitments and promises. And as each COP comes and goes, emissions continue to rise. This year will be no different, CO2 emissions are forecast to jump in 2021 by the second-biggest annual rise in history.

So I hope you can understand why many of the activists who are here in Glasgow and millions of activists who could not be here, do not see the success that is being applauded within these halls.

I hope that you can appreciate that the 9 million people dying every year from breathing toxic air from fossil fuel-driven air pollution, do not have decades to wait for oil, gas and coal to be phased out.

 I hope you can appreciate that we may be sceptical when the largest delegation here at COP26 Climate Summit does not belong to a country but instead belongs to the fossil fuel industry.

I hope you can appreciate that where I live a two-degree world means that a billion people will be affected by extreme heat stress in a two degrees Celsius world, some places in the global south will regularly reach a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius. At that temperature, the human body cannot cool itself by sweating. At that temperature, even healthy people sitting in the shed will die within six hours.

We see business leaders and investors flying into COP on private jets. We see them making fancy speeches. We hear about new pledges and promises. But we are drowning in promises. Commitments will not reduce CO2. Promises will not stop the suffering of the people. Pledges will not stop the planet from warming. Only immediate and drastic action will pull us back from the abyss.

So we have some who are already starting to call  COP26 a success, but a few days ago, a climate action tracker report showed that COP26 is actually putting us on a pathway for a 2.4 degrees Celsius world.

And this is our problem. We have two pathways. There is the pathway of commitment and hype and promises and fanciful Net Zero targets and happily ever after. And then there is the pathway of the best available science of ever strongest storms and droughts and floods of toxic polluted air, of real people suffering and dying, and these two pathways are diverging.

The truth is that the atmosphere doesn’t care about commitments. It only cares about what we put into it or stop putting into it. Humanity will not be saved by promises.

It’s hard to believe business and finance leaders when they haven’t delivered before. They have not been faithful in their promises. They have not been honest in fulfilling their commitments. They have not been trustworthy in making the pledges or reality.

So I have come here to tell you said we don’t believe you. We don’t believe that banks will suddenly put trillions of dollars on the table for climate action when rich countries have struggled since 2009 to raise $100 billion dollars for the world’s most vulnerable countries.

We don’t believe that promises made by financial companies to end deforestation will actually prevent trees from being cut or burnt down. We simply don’t believe it.

But I am here right now to ask business and finance leaders: show us your faithfulness. Show us your trustworthiness. Show us your honesty.

I am here to say prove us wrong. I’m actually here to beg you to prove us wrong. We desperately need you to prove us wrong. Please prove us wrong. God help us all. If you fail to prove us wrong, God help us.