Not voiceless, but unheard – meet the youth activists who went to COP26 on the Rainbow Warrior

When it comes to climate change, those with the most to lose often have to fight the hardest to be heard. On the eve of COP26, we spoke to activists from some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries about the struggles they’ve faced to get to the UK, and their determination to make it count.

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Four young activists are sitting in Greenpeace UK’s warehouse in London, bundled up with tea and blankets. They’ve never met before, but they’re already friends.

Edwin, Maria, Farzana and Jakapita are part of the global climate strike movement’s MAPA group – representing the world’s “Most Affected People and Areas”. Hailing from Uganda, Mexico, Namibia and Bangladesh, their homes are thousands of miles apart – but they’re all living on the front lines of the climate crisis.

On Monday, they will sail up the River Clyde towards the COP26 conference centre in Glasgow, to bring their powerful message to world leaders. They just have time to tell their stories before they get fitted for warm clothes to wear on the Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior. 

Navigating borders, Covid-19 rule and vaccinations – to meet old friends, for the first time

Maria Reyes from Mexico.
Fridays For Future climate activist © Marie Jacquemin / Greenpeace

It’s incredible that they even made it here at all, given the forces conspiring to exclude them. 

One of their group – Bernard Kato Ewekia, from Tuvalu – hasn’t even arrived yet. He may be somewhere between Australia and Milan. They feel for their friend, whom they call by his nickname, Kato. 

Despite their clear familiarity with each other, honed through two years of online collaboration, this is the first time these four young people from different areas of the world have ever been able to meet in person. 

Each has a different story about their journey. They all had to tangle with visa denial and delays, and inability to access Covid vaccines acceptable to the UK government.

“Even if it’s the first time we’ve met, there's something that's connecting us... It's powerful for us coming from the most affected regions. Because we live it.”
Maria Reyes, 19, from Mexico Tweet this

Edwin Moses Namakanga from Uganda.
Fridays For Future climate activist. © Marie Jacquemin / Greenpeace

Edwin Moses Namakanga, 27, from Uganda told of being bounced around European embassies and vaccination centres in Kampala, often waiting hours and hours. Luckily, his patience paid off, even in the face of overzealous security guards.

Official invitations to COP26 or a UNICEF workshop in Sweden were no guarantee of visas. A vaccination is needed to travel and strongly encouraged to attend COP26. Some needed a visa to get a vaccination – tricky, especially at their age, coming from countries where older people are still being prioritised.

Maria Reyes, 19, from Puebla City, Mexico, says, “There was a point where they were saying, okay, if you’re vaccinated, but only with these vaccines from the Global North. And even with those vaccines, it was only if you received them in specific countries. They were saying that the Astra Zeneca that they give in Argentina is not the same, that it’s not as valuable as the one that you give in the UK.”

“Like so many activists across the world, I was inspired by Vanessa Nakate and Greta Thunberg. I saw that there was a need to fight and conserve mother nature; that what they were fighting was really happening in the world”
Edwin Moses Namakanga, 27, from Uganda Tweet this

The group got to know each other online, joining dozens of youth climate activists from the most climate-vulnerable parts of the world in the MAPA group chat.

“It was just a Telegram chat to get to know each other,” Maria says. “But it has become something huge. People started to feel like, yes, I feel what you feel. I know what you mean. I live that as well. That resonated and we connected. And even if it’s the first time – oh, I’m gonna cry! – Even if it’s the first time we’ve met, there’s something that’s connecting us… It’s powerful for us coming from the most affected regions. Because we live it.”

Farzana Faruk Jhumu, 22, from Dhaka, Bangladesh, started the process of applying for her visas and vaccines in July. She faced extreme barriers to get to a UNICEF workshop ahead of COP26. 

“I applied for the Sweden visa. After one day they just rejected my visa, saying that I’m a student, I’m young, I’m unmarried, I have no child. That’s it. That’s the reason. They said you can’t come to Sweden, what if you stay in Sweden? I showed that I would then fly to the UK, because of course they still needed that.

“Friends connected with UNICEF contacted us and UNICEF Bangladesh helped me a lot. I got the visa in the afternoon the day before I needed to fly. At the last moment.”

Jakapita Faith Kandanga, 24 from Namibia, studies communications, hoping to one day use her skills working for environmental organisations. She repeats a similar tale. 

“It was really a hassle getting the UK visa. Maybe as someone who is studying communications, I find it very annoying when people do not communicate properly, especially if their website is whack! Or something is misunderstood. And when you call them, they’re also very rude.”

Maria feels frustrated on behalf of the whole group. “I think just generally, one of the worst things of this COP has been the communication. In addition to the personal experience, we’re carrying the stress of everyone. For example, I didn’t know that Jakapita was arriving yesterday. I didn’t know she got the visa.”

 

Youth in a time of climate change: ‘There is always something we need to protest against. It’s part of our life’

Perhaps unlike their European comrades in the youth climate strike movement (also known as Fridays for Future) – their knowledge about climate change doesn’t come from schoolbooks. It comes from their backyards. And it’s not some future concern – it’s happening right now, and harming people immensely.

Farzana joined Fridays for Future (FFF) in Bangladesh in 2019. She never set out to be an activist. “It was not like we know that we are doing activism. It’s more like there is always something we need to protest against. It’s part of our life.” 

 

“Being a girl in a country where they don't want girls to be on the streets, I don't join a lot of protests, but support them from behind the scenes.”
Farzana Faruk Jhumu, from Bangladesh, 22 Tweet this

Farzana Faruk Jhumu from Bangladesh.
Fridays For Future climate activist. © Marie Jacquemin / Greenpeace

She started working first with coastal communities before connecting activists internationally, where her English skills come in handy. “Being a girl in a country where they don’t want girls to be on the streets, I didn’t join a lot of protests, but support them from behind the scenes. ‘Okay, you need this information. Ok, we’ll connect someone with you.’ I always try to do that – more connecting so that I can do it from my home.”

Bangladesh faces devastating climate change impacts. Cyclones and flooding are yearly events, displacing millions and killing thousands. Because of the flooding, seawater is ruining the soil. 

“There are people who have to walk three hours to get some water for the rest of their day. And this is only for drinking water. They can’t use it for another reason because there is so little water and so many people.” Internal migration in the country to Dhaka surges following disasters. It’s now the most densely populated city in the world.

Edwin also talks of flooding in the parts of the country like on Uganda’s shores of Lake Victoria.

He’s seen climate disasters hitting the East African country in different ways, such as the 2020 Kasese Floods that displaced hundreds, and the prolonged drought in the north of the country which leads to crop failure. The drought has the same effects on Ugandans as cyclones have on people in Bangladesh: water scarcity and migration to meet basic needs.

“In Uganda, agriculture is the backbone. It’s where people get their food and it’s how people are employed. So they experience food scarcity. And you have to travel to buy food from other parts of the country.”

“Like so many activists across the world, I was inspired by Vanessa Nakate and Greta Thunberg. I saw that there was a need to fight and conserve mother nature; that what they were fighting was really happening in the world,” Edwin says.

“Families lose their cattle and agriculture which is often their main source of income and food supply. I have had friends drop out of school just because their parents could not afford it anymore, because they have lost so much property to drought.”
Jakapita Faith Kandanga, 24 from Namibia Tweet this

Jakapita Faith Kandanga from Namibia.
Fridays For Future climate activist. © Marie Jacquemin / Greenpeace

Jakapita also shares her own, similar experience from her home in Namibia, southern Africa. 

“One of the problems that we have is water scarcity, same as everyone here. Because Namibia is a semi-arid country we get little to no rainfall – we suffer from drought a lot. 

“The gap between the rich and poor is very high. Some people have jobs and the other people don’t have jobs at all. They live off farming and agriculture, which is really hard because there’s no rain, there’s no water, which means you can’t grow proper crops. And when you do grow your proper crops, the rain can just stop at any moment and then everything dies. Everything dies and then cattle die as well. 

“Families lose their cattle and agriculture which is often their main source of income and food supply. I have had friends drop out of school just because their parents could not afford it anymore, because they have lost so much property to drought.”

Fridays For Future activists from the global south, at Greenpeace UK in London. © Marie Jacquemin / Greenpeace

Maria lives near a volcano in Puebla City Mexico. She draws a clear line between the global climate crisis and the experiences of people living in her hometown.

“Now we know 20 companies are responsible for most of the pollution in the atmosphere. Then you understand that those companies are not on the other side of the world, they’re in our countries. They’re literally in front of my house. That was like, oh God, this is not fair. So when the climate movement started in my city in 2019, I went to the first strike in Mexico.”

“Since I was six years old, I have lived with water scarcity. And I never realised that that was part of the climate crisis,” she says. “At the base of the volcano, there’s a lot of water there. So you would not expect that the communities who live there have water scarcity. But they do. The big companies who are there just steal the water. And then when you realise that it’s also a crisis of inequality, because even if you are in the same place, even if the same things are affecting your region, the privilege, the privileges that some people have just make them not as affected as others.”

Stress on the aquifers now means there’s a massive sinkhole near her home, that engulfed two houses and a field of crops. 

Bringing their message to their own leaders – and now, to world leaders at COP26 in Glasgow

The activists have strong messages for their own leaders and world leaders at COP26. 

Farzana has kept a keen eye on British politics. She wants to know what the UK government is going to do in the first COP after Brexit. “I really want to see what their policy is – and what was missing from the European governments, that the UK government can bring.” She also wants to see inter-ministry communications improve in Bangladesh.

Maria is angry that world leaders “mutually validate each other’s empty speeches at climate summits”. She recalls US President Joe Biden’s recent climate summit, and her leader’s contribution:

“What my president did in that climate summit was talk about petroleum in Mexico. They gave him the platform to speak about petroleum at a climate conference! We have a big petroleum company in Mexico, PEMEX, and one of the biggest financiers is the US government. This company is the one that’s responsible for setting the Gulf on fire! So they are validating these speeches, and they’re also funding this destruction.”

The activists from Namibia and Uganda are also worried about their leaders’ enthusiasm for oil drilling – and the backlash when Fridays for Future MAPA activists stand up to them.

“Our president called us hooligans because we were trying to apparently block Namibia's economy from rising”
Jakapita Tweet this

In Namibia, like in many places in the Global South, companies come in offering governments windfall profits and employment for people desperate for jobs, often without any community consultation.

“In my country, people do not understand the risk of oil drilling,” Jakapita says. “I don’t want to say they are not educated enough, but they are being misled. If the oil spills, there will be health consequences. The government will have to spend money on health benefits because of the oil spills.”

Jakapita says that even where funds are promised by companies, “the money doesn’t reach the people it’s supposed to reach”. There’s too little accountability. “The government really uses the money on other things. And then people still sit in the same poverty, same drought, same situation.”

Edwin cautions against exposing the government’s use of funds. “I feel like they are so corrupt that they care about themselves, but they don’t care about the future. And if you speak about it, I would say that you’re not safe.” 

The youth climate activists are a thorn in the side of their government’s plans. Jakapita says they were only trying to show that the government hadn’t done its proper environmental assessments for oil drilling. “But our president called us hooligans because we were trying to apparently block Namibia’s economy from rising, which was not the case!” 

 

“Even though our countries are less responsible, the political leaders are just adding more fuel to the fire”
Maria Tweet this

And in the national newspapers in Namibia, “they are not only painting us as stupid, but it’s also kind of giving the country the image that what we are doing is nonsense. I feel like we are denied a platform to freely defend our futures and to speak.”

With similar scenes happening across the UK media right now, especially in response to Insulate Britain, it’s hard to feel there are huge differences between how Namibia and the UK treats its climate activists.

Whether in a risky situation protesting oil drilling in Africa, or struggling to reach the UK from the Pacific Island countries – it’s clear that these powerful young voices are often the last to be heard. 

But they are certainly not voiceless – they have a lot to say. And they aren’t taking it anymore. The sacrifice is too great.

Maria sums up why they are here. “World leaders need to understand that they cannot have those conversations without us there. And our leaders have to stop living in the past. They still think that petroleum is the future, is the dream. And it’s not – it’s the other way around. It’s what’s drowning us. They really need to understand that. Because even though our countries are less responsible, the political leaders are just adding more fuel to the fire.”

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