Kenyan Activist Calls on West to Pay for Climate Change Damage
Activist Elizabeth Wathuti from Kenia talks to the media at the Garzweiler open-cast coal mine near Luetzerath, western Germany, Sunday Oct. 16, 2022. 
A Kenyan climate change activist, Elizabeth Wathuti, concerned about climate change issues, has been traveling across Europe for three weeks, during which she met with European people of high standing, visited climate-affected areas and participated in climate actions.Elizabeth Wathuti, a Kenyan climate justice activist, has called on the Global West, which she alleges is the world’s largest polluter, to pay for the catastrophic effects of climate change in the Horn of Africa.The activist pointed out that the upcoming United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27), which will be held in Egypt from November 6 to 18, should focus on the losses and damages.“It is time to step up global solidarity to help those suffering. I am encouraged by President William Ruto’s recent commitment to making loss and damage finance a priority to push for at COP27. I hope leaders are feeling the strong urgency for this issue as they go into negotiations next week,” Wathuti told The Nation in an exclusive interview.Earlier, Wathuti wrote an open letter to the “COP27 chairs” about the need for immediate action, which was signed by over 120,000 people. In her letter, the activist urged leaders to act immediately and to ”get frontline communities the help they need by delivering loss and damage finance.”Wathuti called on the countries of the Global North to provide funds to tackle the damage the Global South, the least responsible for the climate crisis, bears.She used her own country Kenya as an example, where four consecutive bad rainy seasons have resulted in food and water insecurity, and thus famine. In addition to people suffering, animals are dying and ecosystems are being destroyed, she said.The activist also traveled throughout Europe, meeting people of high standing from Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the European Union (EU), as well as speaking to 30,000 people at a climate march in Brussels on October 23.Wathuti also attended the 2021 COP26 conference and delivered a speech at the opening ceremony.She is not alone in her outrage over climate injustice. Earlier this month, Sudanese-British Magnate Mo Ibrahim accused the West of hypocrisy, as the European countries obstruct the attempts of African nations, the least accountable for carbon emissions, to develop their own gas and oil reserves, which he claimed are needed to save Africans from poverty. Ibrahim reminded that Africa’s contribution to carbon in the air is about 3% and at the same time, Africans, 600 million of whom have no electricity, are critically in need of energy.The magnate’s estimations are backed up by UN data showing that Africa accounts for only two or three percent of global emissions, but is the world’s most vulnerable region from the standpoint of climate change. 
AfricaSudanese-British Magnate Ibrahim Blasts West’s Hypocrisy Over Green Agenda, Use of African Resources4 October, 12:26 GMT
