Simple Complexities and Complex Simplicities: Reflections from the People’s Climate Summit

Ruth Mumbi

In September 2023, I attended the People’s Climate Summit at the Nairobi Green Park. This People’s summit was an alternative space co-created by progressive movements across the globe with the objective of enabling a convergence of diverse voices that had deliberately been excluded from the Africa Climate Summit hosted by the Kenyan government and attended by over 15 African heads of state.

Held in September 2023, the inaugural Africa Climate Summit was framed as aiming to address the increasing exposure to climate change and its associated costs, both globally and particularly in Africa. Reality is that it was a closed space created by governments and used by corporations to further unsustainable frameworks that obscure the real issues behind the climate crisis whilst peddling unworkable solutions that seek to move ecological control from public governance to the domain of private interests. It therefore did not come as a surprise to us that some of the ‘solutions’ put forward at this inaugural African Climate Summit, such as those on carbon credits, effectively mean that people from the Global South should do more to help mitigate the effects of climate change as corporations from the Global North continue to pollute at will.

Reflections from the People’s Climate Summit

The People’s Climate Summit was thus a righteous response from below, an alternative space that enabled the movements and communities that are most impacted by climate change to counter the corporate capture of the climate agenda and put forward alternative proposals. As African women, our objective at this people’s summit was to reclaim and center the climate justice agenda from the perspective of Africa and Africans who bear the biggest brunt of climate change. That is why over the course of a few days, our movements raised their fists and voices in unison to demand for the decolonization of Africa’s energy system, just transition from fossil fuels, repayment of climate debt, establishment of a fund to support climate adaptation, and the protection of our commons.

This people’s summit was of particular importance to us because it came at a time when Nairobi, the host city, is proposing a law that will effectively privatize water. While the individuals and corporations behind this proposal are motivated by greed and the immense profit that they are likely to accumulate should their proposal become law, it is clear to us that commodification of water will not only impact water access negatively – especially among vulnerable communities in informal settlements – but also add to existing burdens and layers of oppression faced by women involved in care work and other household duties in our communities.

The first day of the summit featured a People’s Climate March. We joined this march as part of the Nairobi Water Justice Network, a network of grassroots movements and organisations, to voice our concerns and to demand that water should and must remain a public good – not a commodity for profit. On the second day of the convening, I was privileged to moderate a session at the Access to Water tent. Deliberations in this tent were greatly enriched by a diverse representation of grassroots movements and organizers, both young and old, from urban and rural Kenya, from Africa and beyond. These people turned the tent into an organic space where lived experiences, struggles on water justice and the political economy around water were shared, deliberated on and collectively analyzed.

I will briefly outline one segment of our deliberations below.

River Athi

Something that especially stood out for me was a story shared by an elderly woman from the Coalition of Grassroots Human Rights Defenders (CGHRD). Her eyes beaming with passion and inspiration, she narrated to us what it was like growing up in Katani village in Machakos. Reminiscing on poignant childhood memories, she told us of how, as young girls, she and her peers had fetched clean and safe drinking water from River Athi for years. Unlike today, the water was crystal clear then.

“We would fetch water from the river without the prospect of attack(s) by hippos. The hippos were very calm and we coexisted with them peacefully – until urbanization and ‘development’ on steroids started along the river. That was when things changed dramatically. Companies [and factories] mushroomed along the River, draining industrial effluent into it. Urban farming that incorporated the use of pesticides and other chemicals [also] became more common, again draining polluted water in the river. Life soon became a nightmare for communities living downstream; as the [clean] water they previously accessed increasingly became unsafe for consumption. Our simple lives drastically changed for the worse.”

The woman, Benedetta Kasesei, continued, “The hippos soon became as violent as rabid dogs and would attack us anytime we went to fetch water from the river. I suppose that the pollutants in the river took a toll on the hippos’ mental health and their interactions with humans.”

Looking at us straight in the eyes, Benedetta added, “The hippos could be harboring a vendetta on us – on the villagers – not knowing who, specifically, they should blame.” She passionately concluded by urging the people of Nairobi, which is the source of the Athi River, to find more environmentally conscious means of waste disposal, rather than dumping waste in the river – a practice that has in many ways become normalized despite it being detrimental to her well-being and that of other villagers in her area.

“From time to time, there are reports of villagers infected by strange illnesses as a result of drinking water from the river or stepping on sharp objects that people upstream throw into this river. Moreover, hospitals should also cease dumping used syringes, bandages, and other treatment materials in these waters, as they are highly contagious and pose adverse health risks to us and our ecosystem. Time and time again, our naive kids find contraceptives such as used condoms on these riverbanks. Thinking that the condoms are balloons, they sometimes inflate them with air from their own mouths. Imagine the danger this poses to them.”

Simple complexities and complex simplicities

I am sure that most of the presidents and corporate leaders who attended the Africa Climate Summit have settled back into their daily lives, and that some of them may have even forgotten about the deliberations they had in Nairobi. We and our communities, on the other hand, can never have the privilege of forgetting because we experience the effects of climate change every day. In the same way that those who live along the River Athi are affected by hippos that are increasingly unpredictable and aggressive – the people of Nairobi and other regions are today victims of unpredictable weather patterns, urban construction on riparian reserves, polluted waterways and soils, and the toll this takes on human well-being and health.

As the El-Nino rains approach, we are every-other-moment traumatized by thoughts of Nairobi’s drainage system which only exists in name, and the flooding that low-income settlements (which majority of Nairobi’s population calls home) are likely to face over these coming months. Nairobi’s drainage system is reflective of the colonial patterns of economics that have usurped the productive base, everyday pushing the masses to the margins of existence. It is a symptom of what is wrong with a political system that is lorded over by mercenaries – people and corporations whose only allegiance is to profit. These are the very people who are behind the push to privatize our water.

As we find ourselves in the midst of an ongoing ecological crisis, we must remember that our actions today could potentially lead to the extinction of the human race and countless other species in future. We must never conveniently forget to remember that future generations and other species are dependent on the finite resources that we everyday squander, hoard, or pollute.

We must earnestly strive to end this cycle of selfishness. We must educate ourselves and smash the bliss of ignorance. We must live in harmony with nature, our kind and loving mother, who shall surely punish us if we do not take responsibility for all she has blessed us with.

We must struggle for our ecological sovereignty.

We must struggle!

*Ruth Mumbi is a community organizer and a social justice activist who focuses on issues around class and economic oppression within low-income areas in Kenya. She has been a leading voice in discourses around the oppression of marginalized groups living in low-income areas – and is especially vocal on issues around women, youth, conflict, sexuality, gender rights and reproductive justice. Mumbi is also a founding member and convenor of Women Collective Kenya.