Nicholas Omonuk, Ugandan climate actitivist & co-organizer of the Agape Earth Coalition/Photo Credit: Sandra Prufer
This year’s global UN climate change summit, or Conference of Parties (COP29), which started on Monday 11 November 2024) in Azerbaijan, has been dubbed the “finance COP”. Its main goal is to negotiate a new collective goal for climate finance to help developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. In the lead-up to the COP29 in Baku, a delegation of the Agape Earth Coalition, a Pan-African collective of youth climate campaigners, embarked on an European Tour to amplify the call for increased adaptation finance. The delegation visited major capitals, including Paris, London, Berlin and Brussels, to advocate for urgent climate action and to engage with key decision-makers, media and local climate activists. During their tour stop in Bonn, host city of the UN Climate Secretariat (UNFCCC), AfricaNewsAnalysis‘ correspondent, Sandra Prüfer, interviewed Nicholas Omonuk, a 24-year old climate activist from Uganda.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sandra Prufer/AfricaNewsAnalysis: You’re currently in Bonn with two fellow Ugandans and a climate activist from Botswana on the road to the COP29 in Baku. How are you involved with the climate movement and what is the purpose of this tour?
I’m a member of the Agape Earth Coalition and a grass-roots organiser working with different climate groups, including Fridays for Future, the Global Youth Biodiversity Network, End Fossil Occupy Uganda, and Extinction Rebellion. I’m travelling through Europe with activists from other parts of Africa. Unfortunately, some were denied visas and not able to come. We were also meant to have delegates from Cameroon, Nigeria, and Egypt with us. The reason for this tour is two-fold: to share our struggles with the rest of the world and to build capacity within communities in Europe by sharing our knowledge and stories. Our focus is on adaptation finance, because there is an urgent need amongst our communities to adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis and to build resilience. Climate change is not going to go away. It’s happening and becoming a reality everywhere, but it’s affecting people economically and socially in different ways. We met with politicians who will attend the upcoming COP, and with students at universities. Our aim is to build international collaboration, not only with European policy-makers, but also with the wider public, NGOs and other stakeholders. We had a workshop today in Bonn with students and local activists. Tomorrow, there’s a local rally with Fridays for Future calling on governments to make polluters pay. The whole climate finance issue will be a big topic at the COP in Azerbaijan.
Sandra Prufer/AfricaNewsAnalysis: You say adaptation should be financed by grants not loans. Where should the money come from and how should it be distributed?
Two years ago, we celebrated the establishment of the “Lost and Damage” fund. But how is this fund going to be filled and implemented? Wealthy nations have pledged so far just $702 million to the fund, which is designed to help poorer nations hit hardest by climate disasters. These pledges are not enough. The annual cost of climate damages in developing countries is estimated to be upwards of $400 billion per year. African Environment Ministers will call in Baku for a new climate finance target of $1.3 trillion annually (to replace the $100 billion/year target).
But climate finance must also come from the polluters, the corporations that are causing the climate crisis. It’s time to make the fossil fuel industry pay for the damages. Our communities lose a lot, they don’t. (In 2022 alone the oil and gas industry made $USD 4 trillion in pre-tax profits, according to the International Energy Agency.) People not only suffer economically. It’s also affecting their cultural heritage and traditional way of life. Some people are forced to migrate.
Most climate financing funds are directed towards mitigation. It’s not going towards adaptation, not going to Loss & Damage. Corporations and private investors can make profits from mitigation projects and carbon markets. We want to change the narrative by spotlighting the severe impacts of inadequate adaptation finance.
Oil, gas, and coal account for nearly 90% of CO2 emissions. Fossil fuel producers must end oil and gas exploration and pay us back, pay compensation to indigenous communities and countries that are paying the price of the climate crisis, yet contributed the least. Africa contributes just 4 percent of global carbon emissions. We need climate finance for adaptation, for mitigation and a just transition. And this finance has to be equitable and distributed even to the most vulnerable communities. We need justice and accountability. Africa is rich in renewable energy resources, but we don’t have the green technology and necessary climate finance. We don’t want to be left behind.
Sandra Prufer/AfricaNewsAnalysis: How are you and the population in East Africa affected by the climate crisis? There was recently lots of reporting about climate change fuelled floods and hurricanes in the Global North. What are the impacts and extreme weather events in Africa we might not hear about in the western media?
I come from Pallisa, a region in Eastern Uganda, from an agro-pastoral herders tribe. Growing up as a boy child, I had to look after my father’s livestock together with my brothers. As time passed, we faced a lot of challenges to access water, had to work long hours, walk long distances to get water and pasture for our livestock. At some point we realised that many animals were no longer healthy and it became increasingly difficult to look after them in Pallisa, so my dad sold most of his livestock. Looking for an alternative income to feed the family, he bought chicken and started selling eggs. This is how my dad adapted and was making money to take me to school. I thought about it when I was a student at Kyambogo University in Kampala and joined the climate movement in 2021, following another severe drought in my native community that dried out crops and left livestock with no grass to graze.
At the university, I learned about climate change and realised how this is interconnected with my own experience and that I could bring in a different perspective. Most students at this university come from the big cities, not from rural areas like me. So my purpose is also to give a voice to the people from my village, to those not able to come here and to study at a higher university. This is actually what keeps me pushing, because I want to talk about them.
We also have areas in Uganda where people have faced landslides and other climate change fuelled disasters. Recently, we witnessed torrential rains and severe flooding in West and Central Africa. Over 1,000 people lost their lives and millions of people were affected. We had a severe drought scenario in Southern Africa where hunger-stricken people were actually forced to eat elephants in a way of surviving, because there was no other access to food. All this is happening on the African continent at the same time as a result of the climate crisis, fuelling social injustice and displacement. The issue of Loss & Damage also means the loss of our ancestral land and cultural heritage. We bring our own experiences and insights to Europe. We saw pictures of the recent flood in Spain that killed over 100 people (in the meantime the death toll has risen to over 200), houses and streets being destroyed. It even derailed a train. So this is now also becoming a reality in Europe. That’s why we must stand together and fight the system that is causing this climate breakdown.
Sandra Prufer/AfricaNewsAnalysis: Countries agreed last year at COP28 in Dubai to transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030. Meanwhile, there is a controversial fossil fuel expansion project under way in Uganda, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project (EACOP). Why are you opposing this project?
This project would be one of the longest oil pipelines in the world, running about 1,400 kilometres from West Uganda to the port in Tanga in Tanzania. (See #StopEACOP campaign) It has two sub projects to extract oil in the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields in north-western Uganda near Lake Alberta. These oil fields lie underneath farmland, lakes and the Murchison Falls National Park. What’s been happening is that a lot of communities have been denied access to their land and not been fairly compensated. This pipeline and oil exploration project, led by the French company TotalEnergies, has already displaced and devastated the livelihoods of thousands of people. It’s expected to displace more than 100,000 people. You see, this is not only about protecting one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, but also about the many livelihoods and our native culture that are being lost from this land. Over 10,000 people have already been displaced without proper consent. And all this oil is going to be extracted to be taken to Europe and elsewhere to produce over 34 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, which is going to generate more global warming and climate chaos in the Global South. Instead of investing in renewable energy projects that are going to benefit local communities, Big Oil projects like this are going to destroy the livelihoods and futures of many people. That’s why I am campaigning against the EACOP project. I want my country to have access to sustainable technologies that are going to create green jobs, not stranded assets. We’re fighting for our people and our freedom of speech. Ugandan activists are being oppressed just for talking about this project.
Sandra Prufer/AfricaNewsAnalysis: In addition to trying to make your voices heard, what are your expectations for the upcoming climate talks in Baku under the presidency of an authoritarian petrostate?
I think it’s important for African youth to have a seat at the global table. We cannot access all the negotiation rooms (as NGO observers) and most of our countries have a very low bargaining power. We don’t expect a lot from this COP. But shifts can happen from all party levels, from the G7 or other countries. As a young person, I will utilise this space wherever I can to be on a panel, access side events and do interviews to talk about these issues on a global scale. We wouldn’t have a Loss and Damage Fund, if it wasn’t for the young voices to speak up, campaigning in the Blue Zone (the formal conference and negotiation space managed by UNFCCC) to put pressure on world leaders to put loss and damage on the agenda. This COP29 won’t be the last COP. Right now our focus is on the new quantified goal on climate finance, which still has many loopholes. A lot of things are very unclear, and might be postponed and pushed to the COP30 in Brazil next year.