Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
By Helen Gloege ’23
Staff Writer
Vanessa Nakate is a 24-year-old Ugandan climate justice activist. Nakate began her climate activism in Dec. 2018 due to concerns around the unusually high temperatures in Uganda. She began protesting on her own outside the gates of the Parliament of Uganda in Jan. 2019 to call for the protection of the Congo rainforest, which is facing immense deforestation. Nakate founded the Youth for Future Africa, now called the Rise Up Movement, which aims to tell African climate activists’ stories. Nakate has also been working on the installation of solar panels and institutional stoves in schools to reduce the amount of firewood the schools are using. She has been a part of various climate change forums, including the COP25 and the World Economic Forum in Davos. Most recently, Nakate was in Milan for the Youth4Climate summit, which featured 400 climate activists sending their recommendations for climate change action to the COP26. At this summit, Nakate spoke of the impact of climate change on the African continent, expressing frustration around the lack of the funding that world leaders promised to nations particularly threatened by climate change to deal with the climate crisis.