Zimbabwe hosts international climate Justice meeting
Dar es Salaam. Stakeholders have called for recognising the role of peasant and working-class women, youths and local indigenous groups across the continent towards climate justice.
This comes as in Africa women, young people, and indigenous peoples are reported to be the most exposed to climate hazards and less able to adapt or recover.
To discuss adaptability strategy and how to sustainably live and conserve the environment a group of African Eco-feminists drawn from across 50 African countries on Tuesday, August 23, met to convey a week-long African Activists for Climate Justice Project (AACJ) strategy development meeting in Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls.
The event was organised by the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), a pan- African, feminist and membership-based network based in Nairobi with over 800 members across 50 African countries.
FEMNET Climate Justice and Gender Advisor Dr Melania Chiponda said Africa is in a deep climate crisis that requires immediate action.
“We have people dying because of climate change and while these cyclones are described as natural disasters, they are not because they are in reality human induced as a result of growth-oriented production processes that put profit ahead of the people and the environment,” she said.
FEMNET aims to build an intersectional, diverse, and robust climate justice movement in Africa which connects gender justice and climate justice movements in the continent and across the globe.
According to the network, they have identified that Groups with the highest stakes – youth, women, and local and indigenous communities – continue to be excluded.
In the AACJ meeting, the FEMNET has invited African feminists and survivors of Cyclone Idai which hit parts of Zimbabwe and neighboring Mozambique, killing hundreds and displacing thousands in 2019.
Other participants are victims of severe flooding and landslides in Durban, South Africa caused by heavy rainfall on 11-13 April 2022 which caused the death of at least 450 people, displacing over 40,000 people and destroying over 12,000 houses.
Others are the residents of the coastal town of Bargyny in Senegal where rising sea levels have already started destroying homes are also part of the meeting.
