Kenyan youth activist Erica Njuguna: “Gen Z are uniquely impacted by climate crisis”

Erica Njuguna is a 22-year-old Kenyan youth climate justice activist, who is fighting for a fossil-free, debt-free and just future. She is the global coordinator for ANGRY (The Alliance of Non-governmental Radical Youth) and started her climate activism in 2017 after a severe drought led to water rationing across Kenya, including in Nairobi.

Here, Erica talks to Amnesty International about joining the Fridays for Future movement, what it’s like to take to take to the streets in protest and why climate reparations are vital.

Can you tell us what inspired your activism?

I became a climate justice organizer after I experienced firsthand the impacts of the climate crisis. In 2017, there was a huge drought that led to a lot of water shortages and water rationing, including in Nairobi. Life was unliveable at the time.

How did you get involved with the Fridays for Futures movement?

I joined the Fridays for Future Movement when I was still in high school.

It was at a time when a lot of young people were waking up to the climate crisis. We organized protests in Kenya, calling for governments to act. We went to COP (the annual global climate change conference) with the Fridays for Future movement, calling for more climate finance to Global South countries, more mitigation, the phasing out the fossil fuel industry and massive investment in renewable energy.

How has your activism evolved?

More recently, I’ve been taking part in the Gen Z protests that have swept across Kenya. They started because of the social economic conditions that result from Kenya having a huge debt burden. The cost of living in Nairobi is unbearable and a lot of products are being taxed.

The government has underfunded healthcare, education and other basic services that people need to survive to be able to meet the demands to service their debt. As a result, life is unbearable, unliveable, and that has pushed a lot of young people to take action, to go to the streets and call for debt cancellation and a change of government.

Why is it so important for Gen Z to participate in protests, particularly at this moment?

It is very important for young people to organize protests to call for debt cancellation and for climate justice, because we are being uniquely impacted. Young people are already facing a huge jobs crisis. They’re not employed. At the same time, education is being commodified and they cannot access it. The effects of this and the underfunding of social services is what is leading young people to protest and call for the government to be accountable, and actually, for regime change.

It’s important to also build political awareness amongst young people, so that they understand the root cause of what led us here. We have not reached a point yet where we have acknowledged the underlying capitalist and neocolonial imperialist systems of oppression that have led us to this reality. That political education is a gap that is missing in the Gen Z movements.

Life is unbearable, unliveable, and that has pushed a lot of young people to take action, to go to the streets and call for debt cancellation and a change of government.

Kenyan youth activist Erica Njuguna

How does it feel when you go out on the streets to protest?

It can be really scary! Recently, we were just across the road from the GPO (General Post Office in downtown Nairobi). Everybody was chanting ‘we want debt cancellation’ and (President) ‘Ruto must go’.

And then the police were really brutal, really violent. I was standing there when the police threw a teargas canister and it just exploded. Everybody started running away. But I was cornered, in a place where the teargas was just going off.

I could not breathe. I was suffocating. People were trying to help me move towards a place where we could get fresh air. But there was no way we were running. Our vision was blurred. We could not really see anything. And for a moment, I thought I was going to die because of the teargas. But that was nothing compared to the police actually firing bullets at us.

A lot of young people, of course, tried to invade Parliament, and I was there at the frontlines. The police used water hoses on young people. The liquid was pink and itchy when it touched your skin.

It was really scary. I think a lot of people left that place with a lot of PTSD. One thing I realized is that a lot of the people who were the most daring were those most impacted by this economic shock. They were the young people from the slums because they had nothing to lose. They already have no jobs. They cannot afford healthcare. Education is really expensive. A change needs to happen!

What role does colonialism and reparations play in the current state of the world?

That is a very heavy question: the role of colonialism and what reparations would do.

Global South countries have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions, yet we are the most affected by the climate crisis. Global North countries are doing two things – they are continuing to invest in the fossil fuel industry through fossil fuel subsidies, and they are not creating policies that leads to the phasing out of fossil fuels. In turn, that is putting fuel on the fire and further exacerbating the climate crisis.

Also, carbon markets are displacing Indigenous Peoples out of their own lands. They are basically tickets for Global North countries and corporates to continue polluting while avoiding what they need to do, which is to phase out their own emissions.

Those in the Global South need more money for adaptation from countries causing the climate crisis. The Global North owes us climate reparations. We need trillions of dollars to support Global South countries to build liveable environments. But that money is not reaching us, and most of it is being given in a debt form. That is neocolonialism in itself, right?

Why is humanity important in these times and why must humanity win?

You would think the importance of humanity would be common knowledge, but with the rise of authoritarianism and far-right rhetoric, it’s really not.

A lot of inhumanity towards immigrants, people on the frontlines of the climate crisis, queer people and other minority groups, is becoming very, very, very normalized.

The richest 1% are controlling the media and the narrative. They do not want us to focus on the fact that the world’s wealth is concentrated amongst very few people. We have trillionaires at a time when many billions of people are facing hunger and severe climate impacts. Humanity must win, we must stand together because we should not tolerate very greedy people, the 1%, having all of our resources at the expense of the majority.

Finally, could you briefly tell us about the work you do with Amnesty International and why it’s important for young people to work with organizations like that?

Amnesty already has a very huge platform. It’s also using that platform to make other struggles that are happening across the globe, and what young people are doing, visible. And that is what I appreciate about Amnesty.

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