An Interview with Alaska Institute for Justice

In October 2018, CJRF co-sponsored a historic gathering: the First Peoples’ Convening on Climate-Forced Displacement with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) and the Alaska Institute for Justice. Held in Girdwood, Alaska, the three-day conference brought together more than 60 community leaders and advocates from around the world to address how climate change is forcing indigenous communities off their land.

At the end of the gathering, CJRF Director Heather McGray sat down with Alaska Institute for Justice’s (AIJ) Executive Director Robin Bronen, Research Director Denise Pollock, Research Assistant Adelaine Ahmasuk, and Government Relations Specialist Kate Glover, to hear their reflections on the conference. The conference was linked to an on-going program by AIJ to support Alaska Native coast villages that are considering whether and how to relocate.

Pictured here Adelaine Ahmasuk (AIJ), Cecilia Smith (Kingikmiut Dancers and Singers of Anchorage), and Denise Pollock (AIJ). Picture courtesy of AIJ.

CJRF: What do you love about the communities you partner with and the work you do?

Denise Pollock: My family comes from Shishmaref, Alaska. I work directly with the 15 Alaska Native communities that AIJ partners with, Shishmaref being one of them. We provide resources for communities to monitor and document erosion, flooding, storms, and permafrost thaw long-term. This data provides the foundation to create a relocation governance framework, which indicates the threshold at which communities must protect in place and/or relocate, that is centered in human rights and tribal self-determination.

Adelaine Ahmasuk: I come from Nome, Alaska. I love my co-workers and the fact that we are very strong and powerful women. That was something I looked for [in a job]. Also, we work directly with the communities. For me, it’s important to give them their own voice in tribal sovereignty and decision-making.

Kate Glover: I love that we work at the intersection of climate change and human rights. We help communities help themselves and protect the lifestyle that is so important to who they are.

Robin Bronen: Human rights have to be at the forefront of how we respond to the climate crisis, and the laws and policies that have oppressed people cannot be what guides us into the future. We are in the middle of a transformation, and there’s all this hope about what we can create with this intersection of human rights and communities and justice.

CJRF: Can you briefly introduce the event we just concluded? What was it, why did it happen, and why did it matter? 

Robin Bronen: We just participated in the first convening on climate-forced displacement with communities from Alaska, the South Pacific, Bangladesh, Louisiana, and Washington State. One of the most important things I heard was that it’s really important for communities not to feel alone. There is solidarity and tremendous strength and courage in responding to the crisis of what is happening in regard to our climate. Now there is a collective of people working together to envision the future they want as the climate continues to change.

CJRF: What you will take back to your work at AIJ after this convening?  

Kate Glover: A major component is looking at the laws and policies to identify the barriers that prevent communities from getting the funding and resources they need. Then, helping communities make changes that will help them better access the resources that they need.

CJRF: Share one fun thing from this week, or one interesting story you heard.

Denise Pollock: It was a real honor for my Iñupiaq dance group, the Kingikmiut Dancers and Singers of Anchorage, to be able to share our Iñupiaq dances with everyone. Whenever we introduce dancing with our communities it really brings people to life. There’s a sense of healing when our dances and our songs are shared that really helps to bring everyone together. There are many reasons to feel sadness or trauma in light of relocation, but we always need to counterbalance that with the things that help release our stress and our grief and give us the energy to move forward.

Adelaine Ahmasuk: The cultural sharing of the traditional knowledge between the South Pacific, Louisiana, Bangladesh and Alaska: I was amazed to see everybody’s responses, and every time you told a story somebody from a different culture or location was so intrigued by what we do and where we come from. For me that was really interesting to share who we are and listen to who people are also.

Robin Bronen: Gratitude. I feel so much gratitude that this [the conference] happened. The gratitude of people being so willing to share their wisdom and knowledge and stories to create one story. There was so much love that was present, and honoring of each other and each other’s journey.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

An Interview wtih IMPACT Kenya and Samburu Women Trust: On Coalition Building

In June 2018, IMPACT Finance and Administration Officer Elizabeth Silakan, Program Officer John Tingoi and Samburu Women Trust Director Jane Meriwas shared their thoughts on collaboration and movement building for land management and land rights.

Click here for more information about this CJRF-funded grant.

Photo Courtesy of IMPACT Kenya

CJRF: What is your organization’s mission?

Elizabeth Silakan: IMPACT envisions an inclusive society where the rights of indigenous peoples are recognized and respected.

Jane Meriwas: Samburu Women Trust is a women-led organization that amplifies the voices of women, mostly pastoralist and hunter-gatherers, to influence policy that targets women.

CJRF: What does the CJRF funding enable you to do?

John Tingoi: This funding enables organizations to work in a coalition and to help pastoralist communities in Northern Kenya to build resilience towards climate change and empower them to work for themselves.

Elizabeth Silakan: The grant will build the capacity of the CSOs [civil society organizations] that are working in Northern Kenya to influence policies on climate change.

Jane Meriwas: The grant will amplify women’s voices around climate change resilience, issues on participation, and issues on the Community Land Act.

CJRF: What is unique about your project?

Jane Meriwas: It brings together different organizations working with indigenous communities in Northern Kenya, a place which has mostly been forgotten. We can bring our expertise and knowledge, and also traditional mechanisms, [to address] issues of climate change.   

Elizabeth Silakan: This project is unique in the way that it will bring expertise of all the small groups that have been working in Northern Kenya. We will have a better outcome because the expertise and strategies of different individual CSOs will be put together.

Photo Courtesy of IMPACT Kenya

CJRF: What does success look like for this project?

Jane Meriwas: Success has two dimensions. Success means that you are able to implement effectively and get all the outcomes. Success can also mean failure: that you are not able to effectively implement the project in the way you initially indicated, but that this can also be a learning platform where we can share knowledge about what’s really worked and what’s not worked.

John Tingoi: I think success here means: what can the community take forward after implementation and after the funding? What are the learning points as a result of implementing this project?

CJRF: What is your organization really excited about right now?

John Tingoi: The approach we are using is community-driven and the target is the community. Within IMPACT we have asked: why are we doing advocacy? Because it is in the interest of the community. What is important is that the project strengthens the community capacity and raises their voices.

Jane Meriwas: When you talk about climate change and resilience, indigenous people have been the custodians of that knowledge and they have solutions toward climate change. Yet, the money has mostly been given to other organizations that then subgrant to indigenous people. I am excited [that] for the first-time, money for climate change is being given to indigenous people to manage themselves. Also, I am more excited that we are bringing expertise on issues of women and the voices of women in developing policy and in the implementation of this grant.

CJRF: What does climate justice mean to your organization?

Elizabeth Silakan: Climate justice means measures are put in place so that the challenges of climate change can be mitigated.

John Tingoi: I think climate justice means being fair to the environment and acknowledging and accepting restrictions around you so that you can divine your own mitigation mechanisms for coping.

Photo Courtesy of IMPACT Kenya

CJRF: What do you love about the location where you’ll do this work?

Jane Meriwas: What I love about the location is that it’s not something new. It is somewhere that I have been working. The environment is not new. It is something that we will be able to maneuver around to develop key strategies. The environment is friendly.  

John Tingoi: We are used to this environment. We have been working for many years within these communities. The most interesting thing is that initially it was a community that was left out in terms of development and in terms of government policies. Now we can see a change.

 Interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

Radio clubs help climate-hit Bangladeshi communities avoid child marriage

Fishermen talking about natural disasters with a local radio programme in Bangladesh (Photo: COAST)

Community radio clubs in Bangladesh aim to help locals adapt to the damaging effects of climate change by dissuading families from marrying their daughters off before they turn 18 years old.

The two issues – adapting to climate change and child marriage – may seem unrelated, to each other and to community radio. But this is one of a number of projects around the world making the case that unexpected activities may prove most effective in addressing the worst knock-on effects of changing weather patterns.

In the Bay of Bengal, the number of girls marrying at as young as 12 years old is increasing as cyclones, floods and other destructive weather events become more frequent, exacerbating poverty, according to the Coastal Association for Social Transformation Trust (Coast), which created the radio clubs.

The aim of the clubs is to raise awareness, both about young girls’ rights, reproductive health, domestic violence and other issues around child marriage, and about ways to adapt to and prepare for climate change effects in the region. Coast now has around 40 radio clubs, and has expanded to involve housewives, fishermen and farmers. It has around 500,000 listeners.

“The problem is created because of climate change,” said Ferdous Ara Rumee, assistant director at Coast. “Parents feel very [economically] insecure … and they don’t have the knowledge of reproductive health rights and facilities… we are trying to give them some knowledge through the talk shows, magazines, new bulletins.”

Coast started the project in 2015 and received a grant from the Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF) in late 2017 for three additional years of work. The US-based CJRF seeks to help women, youth and indigenous peoples cope with climate change and its effects by supporting local communities in building resilience. It uses a “social justice lens” to find innovative solutions, said Heather McGray, the fund’s director.

For the CJRF, the Coast project addresses the mix of cultural, climactic and economic factors that shape the specific consequences of climate change in coastal Bangladesh. As floods and soil salinisation are pushing families to move to cities, there is the “false sense” that a girl will be safer, and a family’s obligations fulfilled, once she is married, said McGray. But child marriage violates human rights long recognised by Bangladesh and internationally, and has been found to undermine the development of girls and their communities.

“Climate change is an existential threat with the unique power to undermine all of the progress society is making,” said Dena Kimball, executive director of the Kendada Fund, an investor in CJRF. “When we empower young women to play a part in building comprehensive climate solutions, they discover the agency and power to shape their own future and to improve the future for society as a whole.”

While vulnerable groups such as indigenous peoples and women tend to be most affected by changes, they also offer “unique capabilities and insights” – for example in managing natural resources, McGray added.

This is the idea behind another CJRF-backed climate project that may seem counter-intuitive at first glance.

With a grant of $350,000 over two years, Kenya’s Indigenous Movement for Peace Advancement and Conflict Transformation (Impact) is creating a coalition to help pastoralist communities in the country take advantage of a new law that for the first time formally recognises community tenure. By registering their lands, communities gain the power to manage their pasture and herds sustainably. And by doing so in a coalition, different communities can exchange skills and information, prevent conflict, and find new ways to collaborate.

“Indigenous peoples in northern Kenya have for generations been resilient governors and stewards of their land and natural resources in sustainable and long-life ways that are compatible to their food systems, cultures, land use and social organisations,” said Mali Ole Kaunga, director of Impact.

But their lands have in recent years been expropriated for purposes “that the government considers are of higher economic value than pastoralism” – including conservation, tourism, mining, horticulture and clean energy generation, he said. This has weakened community resilience and led to conflicts over natural resources.

The Climate Justice Resilience Fund was created in 2016 by the Oak Foundation and is housed at the New Venture Fund, a public charity registered in the US. The Kendeda Fund became CJRF’s second funding partner in 2017.

It’s now part of a “growing trend in philanthropy that understands people experiencing the most profound impacts of climate change are best positioned to know what they need in order to adapt,” said Anne Henshaw, programme officer at the Oak Foundation and chair of the CJRF review board.

The article originally appeared on Climate Home News, and is the result of a partnership between CJRF and Climate Home.

An Interview with Christian Aid Kenya: On Empowering Women and Youth

In June 2018, Christian Aid Kenya Country Director John Kitui and Program Officer Nicholas Abuya spoke with us about their work to strengthen the participation of women and youth in climate change policy work.

Click here for more information about this CJRF-funded effort.

CJRF: What’s your mission?

John Kitui: Christian Aid’s mission in Kenya is to ensure that people live with dignity. We intend to eradicate poverty. We do that by empowering communities to be in the driver’s seat—to find their own way out of poverty.

CJRF: What does the CJRF funding enable you to do?

Nicholas Abuya: To scale out our pilots in Makueni and Kitui counties in terms of putting in place county climate change fund legislation. This model really benefits [and empowers] vulnerable communities.  Vulnerable communities, particularly in Marsabit and Samburu counties, can meaningfully engage so that their adaptation priorities are addressed by the county and national government.

CJRF: What is unique about your project?

Nicholas Abuya: We are going to work with some of the most marginalized peoples in Kenya. Historically there has been very little investment there either by the government or by the private sector. The project puts these vulnerable communities at the center in terms of influencing decisions that affect their livelihoods.

John Kitui: When you talk about climate governance across the world it is really top-down. This project is bottom-up, making communities at the center. Formalizing that approach of the bottom-up, you are creating community level structures to engage on climate change governance and climate change financing. It can probably provide learning for other countries that are struggling with how you make communities meaningfully engaged.

CJRF: What does success look like for this project?

John Kitui: Supporting the communities to engage in climate justice to understand the implications of climate change on their livelihoods, to understand the responsibility of governments, to understand how they can advocate for and access resources for climate change interventions.

Nicholas Abuya: Attaining community collective action to voice their concerns. And influencing decision-making and policy makers to respond to their needs. And of course, appreciating that these communities have solutions in addressing climate change vulnerabilities and risks, which, if supported, can really bring about change.

CJRF: What is your organization really excited about right now?

John Kitui: We work on things like inclusive markets. We also work on the rights to essential services, some of which are climate change services, like climate change financing. So, working with communities and our partners at the community level to bring all those things to bear. And we are very keen that we can also generate evidence that actually it’s making a difference at the household level with people that are affected by climate change.

Nicholas Abuya: As Christian Aid we are bringing out the community experience when it comes to [global impacts] and what can be done to address their vulnerability. I think being able to bring that to the level of decision-making, even at the national level and also informing our corporate climate change advocacy work, is something to be proud about.

CJRF: What does climate justice mean to your organization?

Nicholas Abuya: People coming to appreciate that there are millions, perhaps billions of people in the world who have been impacted negatively by climate change and this needs to be addressed. [Climate change] is undermining their human rights in terms of access to food, feeding their families, they are even losing their heritage. I think climate justice really is appreciating that it is urgent.

John Kitui: When you talk about climate justice it is also the appreciation that the communities that are actually affected by climate change will not necessarily be the communities whose behavior has led to climate change itself. They are suffering the consequences of the action of other actors elsewhere.

CJRF: What do you love about the location where you’ll do this work?

John Kitui: We love the whole of the northern frontier (Marsabit, Isiolo, Samburu counties) and the resilience of the people that live there. It is an arid and semi-arid land of Kenya. For me, the opportunity to work with communities to start thinking about their own climate change resilience and to be in the driver’s seat and reverse the negative impact of climate change is exciting.

Nicholas Abuya: What I love about Samburu and Marsabit counties in Northern Kenya is that actually this is a representative area of the larger horn of Africa. Whatever we are going to do here, and whatever is going to work, represents our wider community. Therefore, best practices from this place can be scaled out and are applicable in the wider area. Also working with the people who for millennia have coped with climate vulnerability. They have great knowledge about how to cope with it, and therefore, we can learn a lot from them.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and length. Pictures courtesy of Christian Aid Kenya.

Indigenous groups call for attention to climate-forced migration

Indigenous groups met to talk about climate-forced displacement in October (Photo: Brian Adams Photography)

Amid intensive negotiations over global rules for future work on climate change, some communities are calling for attention to the destruction that is already pushing them out of their homes and killing their heritage.

The aim of the Cop24 summit in Katowice, Poland is to agree to complex rules that will govern how countries meet their Paris Agreement pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions and shore up financial aid for poorer countries in the future.

But missing from the annual United Nations climate talks is the question of how to relocate and preserve the communities threatened by rising sea levels, tropical storms and other effects, according to a group of first and indigenous peoples from around the world.

“If worse comes to worst and we have to leave, there should be an instrument that protects the rights of our people who are being forced against their will,” Maina Talia, from the NGO Tuvalu Climate Action Network, said at a Cop24 side event last week. “We do not want to become second citizens in different countries. The question of sovereignty and sovereign rights will be an issue. Can a Tuvaluan be a Tuvaluan in New Zealand?”

A group of first and indigenous peoples’ organisations and communities held a convening on climate-forced displacement in Alaska in October and published a declaration ahead of the Cop24 asking world leaders to take measures to ensure they receive “adequate technical and financial support.” It also called on state governments to come up with “human rights-centred laws, policies and strategies that address the spectrum of risks associated with forcible displacement”.

There is already a public conversation about people who are losing their homes and being driven away because of climate change, but not the way it is “fracturing communities” and “disrupting ways of life”, said Reverend Mary Katherine Morn, chief executive officer and president of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a human rights group.

“The conversation needs to be about more than CO2 emissions or melting ice caps,” Morn said. “We need to humanise the conversation; this is not only about science in the abstract, it’s about the intimate realities of human life.”

In Tuvalu – a South Pacific island nation with a little more than 11,000 people – climate change threatens to break up a strong community-focused culture where people share food and shelter, said Talia. The islands sit just a couple of metres above sea level, and are already coping with the damage from floods.

In Alaska, temperatures are rising faster than elsewhere – by over 3C a year in 2016, Robin Bronen, from the NGO Alaska Institute for Justice, said at the event. This is leading to warmer ocean waters and melting sea ice.

The Paris deal recognises the need for richer countries to help cover the loss and damage caused by climate change and fund projects to help them withstand storms, droughts, heatwaves and other changes.

But it’s harder to quantify the loss that comes with forced relocation, Talia said. “You cannot create a system or mechanism that will measure the loss of someone’s language, the loss of someone’s land, the loss of someone’s culture, identity.”

Many communities hope to stay put as long as possible, including in Tuvalu. Yet if they do decide to move, as three Alaskan communities have done, the problem is that there is no government agency tasked with facilitating the relocation of communities displaced by climate change – in the US or anywhere else in the world, Bronen said. “So they are trying to piece together this governance framework and funding to facilitate a really complicated process.”

The difficulties these groups are already experiencing should shape the global negotiations and conversation about climate change, said Heather McGray, director of the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, which contributed to the Alaska displacement convening.

“If we are to truly address the impacts of climate change head on, we must heed the warnings of those living on the front lines, take their wisdom, and follow their lead,” she said.

The article originally appeared on Climate Home News, and is the result of a partnership between CJRF and Climate Home.

An Interview with Docubox: On How Storytelling Leads to Tangible Change

In June 2018, Docubox Project Manager Emily Wanja, and farmer, community leader, and climate change activist Kisilu Musya, featured in the film Thank You For The Rain, talked to us about inspiring farming communities through filmmaking.

Click here for more information about this CJRF grant.

CJRF: What’s your mission?

Emily Wanja: To create compelling stories, observational documentaries, that are character driven that can cause an impact, and in effect, cause change in societies, especially in East Africa.

CJRF: What does the CJRF funding enable you to do?

Emily Wanja: To empower communities to be more resilient and to engage in activities that will help them in climate change adaptation. These range from tangibles such as dams or irrigation projects, but most importantly, knowledge. The reason that knowledge is so key is because long after we’ve come and gone, we know that they can use [knowledge] to be completely self-sustaining and empower themselves. To us, the climate might change tomorrow, and climate change might get worse with time, but if they know how to adapt to it and to navigate through other economic projects, then they are empowered.  

Kisilu Musya: I feel very comfortable sharing the film with people as a way of sharing my experience. It is a way of making sure every community gets to understand about the climate challenges that communities are facing. It is about making sure information is passed from one corner to another corner of the world.

 CJRF: What is unique about your project?

Emily Wanja: The film cuts across farmers, organizations, governments, and corporations. Through Kisilu, who stars in the film, he has been able to represent grassroots communities all the way to COP21 and more recently in Bonn. The fact that you use a film, which is not conventional for a lot of organizations, that’s already unique. For us as filmmakers, we have also had to realize the film is even more powerful if you work in partnerships with other organizations in the field.

CJRF: What does success look like for this project?

Emily Wanja: If we are able to spread awareness to urban audiences, if we are able to create conversations that are going lead to actual results and tangibles in the government and with other stakeholders and policy makers, for us that is success. This is informed and led by some of the needs that the community members themselves have tabled. We learned early on that you can’t walk in there and assume what people want. They have to tell you and they have to want it themselves. Through the community, if we are able to achieve things such as knowledge and empower them to demand some of these things, that is success. 

Kisilu Musya: One thing that I am looking forward to seeing is change of mindset of both the community and government at all levels. The community must understand the precautions needed in their daily practices. On the side of government, both county and national government should understand and take responsibility for supporting the community.

CJRF: What is your organization really excited about right now?

Emily Wanja: The first projects that we granted are just about to hit the festivals and be released. But more than that, with this film [Thank You For The Rain], we see how you can use a film in collaboration with other organizations or other partners to create and achieve a real impact. It’s not just any other documentary; this is part of us changing lives, changing behaviors, and starting certain discussions and conversations that we haven’t had before on this side of the world.

 CJRF: When you work in your community and talk to people about climate change, how do you get them to listen to what you’re trying to say?

Kisilu Musya: Communicating in my home area is very easy. It is all about the basic needs and relating these needs to climate change, so they pay attention and understand the issues and what they need to do to secure their rights. I normally base my argument on pointing at climate change as a challenge to human rights.

 CJRF: What does climate justice mean to your organization?

Emily Wanja: We want to empower the communities to do this for themselves. It’s a right, not a favor, that the government is doing them. Climate change is just as important as health or as when the government comes in and builds them a school. At the end of this project we want to say this community is now making demands of their county leadership and they are saying they want leaders to say what they are going to do about climate change. Different people suffer from different problems. For Kisilu, climate change is a real problem and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be on the agenda of the county and their leadership. 

CJRF: What do you love about the location where you’ll do this work?

Emily Wanja: I love the people. The people inspire me, especially the women. They have a genuine quest for solutions and information that is just so honest. 

Interviews have been edited for clarity and length. All pictures courtesy of Docubox.

Building Climate Justice at the Global Climate Action Summit

Starting September 8, thousands of businesses, officials, funders and activists from around the globe converged on San Francisco for an intensive week of activities focused on climate change. Hundreds of climate workshops, protests, films, exhibits, concerts and meetings took place across the city alongside the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS), hosted by Governor Jerry Brown to push for strong implementation of the Paris Agreement. CJRF was there! Highlights from the week include:

CJRF convenes funders to discuss collaboration: Together with Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, CJRF hosted two events on the margins of GCAS to explore climate justice as an emerging field of practice in philanthropy. Our September 11 dinner, “From Learning to Action: Philanthropy Building Momentum on Climate Justice,” gathered funders from 13 organizations to discuss funding for climate justice. The intersectionality of climate justice with other funding priorities, such as gender and land rights, emerged as a key theme. The partners also held “Pathways to Climate Justice: A Funders Roundtable” on September 12, which brought together funders, non-profits, academics, and others, representing 41 different organizations. Attendees discussed opportunities to collaborate in support of rights-based, community-driven activities to address climate change. Steps identified to support collaborative efforts include: clarifying the definition of “climate justice,” defining what success in climate justice looks like, mapping out assets and activities across the field, and building a set of shared stories or narratives.   

From Left to Right: Mary Robinson, Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice; Heather McGray, CJRF; Anne Henshaw, Oak Foundation; and Constance Okollet, Osukuru United Women's Network

Activists’ climate justice summit highlights “people’s solutions”:  The Solidarity to Solutions  Week of Action was organized by the It Takes Roots alliance, comprised of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Climate Justice Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network, and Right to the City. They led about 30,000 “Rise for Climate” marchers in San Francisco demanding climate justice on Sept. 8, and convened a week full of activities for activists, funders, and others. CJRF Director Heather McGray attended the “People’s Orientation” to the week led by It Takes Roots, the CHORUS Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Ceres Trust, EDGE Funders Alliance, Libra Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation.

African and African-American women activists share climate stories and experiences: Along with the NAACP, CJRF hosted the “Pan-African and African Diaspora Gender Justice Dialogue on Climate Change” as part of the Building Resilience Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow event on September 11. The session explored the intersection of race, gender, and climate change in the US, Guyana, and Kenya, and highlighted opportunities for common ground and shared action on climate justice between African women and women of African descent. Panelists included Agnes Leina, Il’laramatak Community Concerns; Kari Fulton, Near Buzzard Point Resilience Action Center; Iris Crawford, NAACP; and Winnie Asiti, African Youth Initiative on Climate Change. Denise Fairchild, President of the Emerald Cities Collaborative, moderated the session.

From Left to Right: Denise Fairchild, Agnes Leina, Kari Fulton, Iris Crawford, Winnie Asiti, and Jacqui Patterson

CJRF grantee partners take the main stage: Various sessions in San Francisco highlighted the work of CJRF partners. Agnes Leina of Il’larmatak Community Concerns and Violet Shivutse from the Huairou Commission spoke at the Summit’s main resilience session, “Prepared for the Future We Create: Designing, Building, and Financing Resilient Communities.” They described the central role that women play in adaptation and resilience at the grassroots level. Agnes also served as a keynote speaker at the high-level roundtable entitled “Changing the Climate Conversation: Enabling Women’s Participation to Advance Climate Justice.” Co-convened by Mary Robinson Foundation, the State of California, and the UN Climate secretariat, the roundtable will feed into the “Talanoa Dialogue” climate talks under way within the United Nations. Meanwhile, Ole Kaunga Mali of IMPACT Kenya spoke at “Investing in Energy Access as a Critical Climate Solution” to urge clean energy investors to gather input and insight from community members before starting projects. The Center for International Environmental Law co-hosted several sessions on plastic pollution, litigation against big oil, and climate risks for investors. Clare Shakya of IIED spoke at a panel on “Building Energy System Climate Resilience,” and the Earth Journalism Network sponsored journalists from 21 countries to attend training seminars in San Francisco and cover GCAS-related events.  

Agnes Leina speaking at the Global Climate Action Summit. 14 September 2018

Indigenous Peoples Build Momentum for Global Clean Energy Coalition: CJRF co-sponsored an information session on the new Right Energy Partnership With Indigenous Peoples. The partnership, led by the Indigenous Peoples’ Major Group on the SDGs, aims to ensure that clean energy projects respect the rights of indigenous peoples, and that indigenous peoples benefit from the renewable energy revolution. 

The GCAS was promoted as a launchpad for deeper worldwide commitments to put the world on track to prevent dangerous climate change and realize the historic Paris Agreement. It aimed to push national governments, from the ground up, to ratchet up the ambition of their climate action at climate talks in December. The GCAS program, webcast, and a links to affiliated events, can be found here.

An Interview with Il’laramatak Community Concerns: On Addressing Human Rights

In June 2018, Il’laramatak Community Concerns Founder and Executive Director Agnes Leina and Program Manager Isaac Tobiko spoke with us about their aims to help women and girls in Kajiado County, Kenya be more resilient to climate change.

Click here for more information about the Il’laramatak Community Concerns project grant.

CJRF: What’s your mission?

Agnes Leina: To respond to human rights concerns for pastoralist communities, especially women and girls. 

CJRF: What does the CJRF funding enable you to do?

Agnes Leina: This project is going to build the capacity of climate change stakeholders in Kajiado, integrate the issues of climate change into County Integrated Development Plans, and do community dialogue forums so that the community is aware of climate change and what it has done to them. We have done this in the past, and through community dialogues the issues come from them and they own the activities. 

CJRF: What is unique about your project?

Agnes Leina: There is one county that has a policy on climate change in the whole country, which tells you we are behind as a country on issues of climate change. We think we will be the second county to have a policy on climate change. That’s very unique. Also, the fact that we would like women to participate. Usually women are the ones who are affected most by climate change, yet they are the ones who contributed nothing to it and they are not there in the decision making.

CJRF: What does success look like for this project?

Agnes Leina: Community dialogue is very important to us, especially for women. At the end of the project, women and men in the whole county will have climate smart activities: farms or small gardens that are actually climate sensitive. Another success is a whole policy that is gender sensitive and will guide the whole county on climate change activities. The county will actually budget for activities that are climate smart.

CJRF: What is your organization really excited about right now?

Agnes Leina: In the last two days, we have placed a policy on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) to the county, which will be discussed at the next county assembly. We are very excited that [the policy] will be passed. Because that [policy] will be passed, we are excited and looking forward to policy on climate change being passed.

CJRF: What does climate justice mean to your organization?

Agnes Leina: We have lots of extractive industries in Kenya. Climate justice means ‘what is the compensation that people are given to acquire the land in which the projects were done.’ To me, that is a rights-based approach toward climate change. In most cases, there is no compensation, no access to justice, no environmental impact assessment done. All that is a violation of the human rights of the people we are working with.

Isaac Tobiko: This project really gives the people voice so they can articulate the things that are affecting them. They can be heard at the county and the national level so that injustices that are happening can be addressed.

CJRF: What do you love about the location where you’ll do this work?

Isaac Tobiko: If you look at the communities that we will be working in, they have been at the forefront (especially the women and girls) facing climate change challenges. Our communities listen to us because they believe that what we tell them is going to have an impact on their lives. On this journey, we are going to work with them so that we have smart initiatives to stop the effects of climate change.

Agnes Leina: We have the political good will from the county. Our governor is very supportive and aware of climate change. We will be the second county that will have a climate policy in place. It is where we have worked, where we are known, where we have [succeeded] in the past, and where we have had good reception because it is where we come from.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and length. Photos provided by ICC.