by NINA LAKHANI
The new Unicef goodwill ambassador would like to see reparations from nations most responsible for climate crisis
Vanessa Nakate knows what it’s like to be Black and overlooked. In January 2020, an Associated Press photographer cropped Nakate from a picture of youth climate activists at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, leaving her friend Greta Thunberg and three other white young women in the shot.
It triggered widespread outrage, rightly so, but Nakate regards that very personal experience as a symbol of how the voices and experiences of Black – and Brown and Indigenous – communities are routinely erased.
“Africa is on the frontlines of the climate crisis but it’s not on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. Every activist who speaks out is telling a story about themselves and their community, but if they are ignored, the world will not know what’s really happening, what solutions are working. The erasure of our voices is literally the erasure of our histories and what people hold dear to their lives,” said Nakate.
Nakate is a 25-year-old, thoughtful, smart and quietly spoken climate activist from Kampala, the capital of Uganda – one of the countries most at risk from climate disasters caused by global heating.
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