Wanjira Mathai: ‘We’re only at a 1.2C world. Can you imagine how much worse it will get?’
Many politicians including the UK prime minister Rishi Sunak trace their environmental conscience to their children. Wanjira Mathai can trace hers to her mother — Wangari Maathai, the late Kenyan activist who won the Nobel peace prize for her work linking tree-planting, women’s empowerment and the fight for democracy.
“My strongest memories were just how much we had to plant trees. Every celebration we had, we had to plant something. We lived in an estate which had relatively small compounds, but our compound was known because there were trees everywhere. People would say: if you want to know where they live, just follow the trees, you’ll get there. My mother was very conscious of the fact that planting a tree was a celebration.”
The family planted trees to mark birthdays, holidays and good fortune. “If my grandmother was unwell and went to the hospital, when she came back, we would plant a tree. On independence day, we would plant a tree. We were always planting.” As they ran out of space for trees, they planted flowering shrubs instead. Her mother and the fellow members of her Green Belt Movement took pleasure in their activism. “I always remember spending time around very happy people,” says Mathai.
Will it be possible to protect the forest? “We actually have no choice. The Amazon is already a net emitter of carbon. The forests of south-east Asia are already emitting carbon. The Congo forest is the only true carbon sink of all the tropical forests in the world. We have to move fast, because our lives depend on the forest.”
In richer countries, climate action is associated with restraints on energy use, meat-eating and flying. But facing malnutrition and blackouts, many Africans need more protein and energy. “You cannot work on economic prosperity if you don’t have energy,” says Mathai. “That could mean, in some cases, for example in cooking, we have to go through a gas transition. So that people can get access to gas for cooking, even as we build up the energy ladder to electricity for cooking.”
The risk is copying the west’s environmental missteps, locking in decades of future emissions. But Mathai argues that poor countries can start to leapfrog. “We don’t have to grow in the same way that Europe has industrialised, that America has industrialised. Technologies like green hydrogen are coming down the pipeline much faster than we expected. Prosperity can come not only in one way.”
On the spot
Why go to COP? There is a captive audience. It is in many ways the perfect meeting place.
What sacrifices does your work involve? My life is hardly at risk. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to make that trip, I’d rather be home with my two young children.
Your favourite tree? The strangler fig. Mighty and strong. Legend has it their roots go deep into the underground aquifers so that wherever they occur one often finds springs.
Scientists project that increased warming will make parts of sub-Saharan Africa unlivable this century, while agricultural productivity will fall in many areas. This may lead millions of climate migrants to head towards Europe, where governments are already struggling to handle the political implications of immigration.
The idea of mass climate exodus is uncomfortable to those, like Mathai, who are focused on ensuring climate investment flows to African countries. “I think this climate crisis will be best solved in solidarity. It doesn’t make sense to me when it’s ‘them versus us’ or ‘here they come migrating’ . . . Who knows, Henry, maybe it’s the other way around — maybe Africa will be hosting as people migrate south from the north. I think we have to be open to the possibility that this universe will have surprises for us.”
In an essay for The Climate Book, edited by activist Greta Thunberg, Mathai argues that women are often hardest hit by climate change, and resourceful in adapting to it. So does climate action depend on more women in politics? Mathai praises Kenya’s — unimplemented — constitutional provision that men (or women) should not make up more than two-thirds of elective bodies. “But we don’t want to romanticise the [idea] that women will solve the problem. We need a feminist attitude. We need more male feminists who see how women hold up societies, how women are often the custodians of food and fuel in the family.”
Throughout our conversation, Mathai seems less preoccupied by the specifics of policy proposals than by communicating an impetus to act. Perhaps climate change must be felt viscerally before it can be addressed. She cites the European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans, who, during last year’s Glasgow talks, brandished a photo of his one-year-old grandson. “It brings a reality to those negotiations that is not purely intellectual.”
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Henry Mance
