By SIMBANI MEDIA
DECEMBER 13, 2011: Eight of Malawi’s youth who were part of
over 145 youths drawn from Africa on the ‘We have faith-act now for climate
justice’ campaign, have returned.
They arrived after clocking over 5,000 kilometers of travel
in safari trucks, confident their involvement was a great part to the Sunday
December 13 signing towards an extension to the Kyoto Protocol, and a positive
move to climate fund, among major great agreements.
Travelling under the umbrella of Malawi’s three main Christian
mother bodies, the Malawi Council of Churches (MCC), Episcopal Conference of
Malawi (ECM) and the Evangelical Association of Malawi (EAM), the team attended
several meetings before engaging in the Conference of Parties (COP 17) summit
which just closed in Durban, South Africa.
Getting to grips with COP jargon, the group first attended
the Conference of Youth (COY 7) summit at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal’s
(UKZN) Howard Collage campus for three days, where they were brought abreast
with climate science, handling COP 17 issues, and many more.
Taliona Matapa, M’theto Lungu and Reverend Francis Juma
represented MCC, whilst Mwiza Mankhamba and Dominic Nyasulu were on the ECM
delegates.
“We are going to move on with this initiative where we wish
to engage more faith youths in climate matters,” said Matapa.
“Now that the climate fund is sure to get the financial
support that African and other poor countries need to redress their climatic
shortfalls from rich countries, it is very important that the youth must move
with the world in making this a reality.”
Leader of the Malawi youths, Lungu said he was hopeful that
faith leaders will be joined in their commitment to push for a theology of
climate change and justice by political, traditional and all other leaders.
“We want an engaged community. It is the poor of the poor
that suffer more. It is disheartening that the church seems to have been
sidelined, particularly its youth, in climate issues for many years. We want to
use our wider church constituency to reach out to all corners of the country
and the world in preaching the theology of climate justice.
“We want to carry out meaningful activities including those
as simple as planting more trees across the country, moving for policies that
will see climate as a subject at primary and secondary school levels.”
Lungu added: “We want top adopt law makers including our
Members of Parliament on climate issues. We want to sensitize more people, and
we want to do this now and not tomorrow. This is the start of a new era that
will see the youth not only get involved in making change in political and
other spheres.”
“We look forward to seeing a youth community that leads
change in this noble cause. We want our voice not only to be held, we want our
efforts to be appreciate and mostly supported – we are crying climate justice
now!” said Lungu, who is Public Relations Officer at MCC.
An environmental activist, Nyasulu on his part said the
caravan was a great experience where a lot was exchanged and learnt, and that
he is optimistic faith youths will work together with all stakeholders to care
for mother earth.
“The climate caravan we were part of may have started
matters. For us, we want to also make a ‘national caravan’ where we can
undertake more activities on climate change and justice. We are discussing of
creating a strong network that will make things move under our faith leaders,”
he said.
Other youths on the campaign but representing other youth
organisations included Dumisani, Emma Kalea, and Heather Maseko.
Youths on the African Climate Change Campaign Caravan
driving from Nairobi to Durban included those from Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia,
Botswana, South Africa, DRC, Rwanda, Nigeria, Cameroun, Uganda and others from
Norway, USA, Canada and Denmark.
http://www.simbanimedia.com/features/309-malawi-cop-17-climate-justice-youth-delegates-return.html
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