All Aboard for a Greener Today: A Holistic and Youthful Approach to Climate Change

The last time I used public transport, a bus, I could barely hear my thoughts.

I noted how much you'd need to shout to speak to anyone.

Picking a phone call is not an option. The bus ride on the e-bus was different.

It was silent and we could comfortably have critical conversations around youth on social change, sustainability, and climate change. As someone who appreciates some little silence, this bus ride was wholesome. It was more meaningful when one of the ladies said, 'I am so excited to see that I can travel in dignity.' How powerful is that?!

Climate change and sustainability are the big conversations happening in the world right now and there's little justice being done to disseminate this information.

I say this as a young person who viewed these words and conversations as elitist when I encountered them at face value.

The conversation made more sense through the lens of what young people are trying to protect and why. 'Unbowed' by Wangari Maathai cleared the air for me. Climate change and sustainability are not about the words or the terminology but the actions being taken to safeguard Mother Nature who takes care of us. She takes care of us regardless but she's retaliating.

It may sound like a dependency model but it also speaks to our nature as men to understand our role as intelligent beings. The conversation on wheels was powerful and insightful. It was timely, veritable, and genuine.

I understood the power the young have to bring about the change they see and rattle the status quo through their efforts. It does not go unsaid that all the supporters and well-wishers have played an important role. Despite being green to this conversation, I celebrated the synergies present. I was welcomed to air out my thoughts even if it may have seemed shy of experience in the climate space. My voice was heard so, here's a sign to throw yourself out there.

I weep for the lack of celebration of the hard work and effort of young people

Their stories are not being talked about enough. Our stories are not being told as they should and how much we struggle to restore generation's worth of destruction.

There are several noble initiatives I barely hear about.

It got me questioning a little what the media is doing.

There was much description of the need for green skills and the challenges of capital flight. Not to mention the brain drain Kenya is experiencing due to unemployment and lack of opportunities.

There are many initiatives by the youth to employ themselves and others due to how hard it is to get a job despite the degree.

This speaks to the concern about the preparedness of our education systems to equip future generations with the skills they will need for the shifting job market. Destabilizing social changes are happening in our communities and sustainable practices that acted as shock absorbers to detrimental practices on the environment are fading away. We keep losing what was once tradition and are replacing it with insatiable greed. We can see it in our forests, the change of climate, our wildlife, our bloated sewers, and trash everywhere we go.

Our greed is visible and known to the eye.

The question is, what are we going to do about it? I never thought of it as a right to walk the streets of Nairobi without sharing my path with plastic, discarded paper and what was someone's lunch or snack at some point. Without walking around or looking around and catching an eye sore.

But it is!

Every individual has the right to be in a clean and dignified environment.

There are spaces where you will never see trash because of how neat it is.

It invokes a kind of feeling that it would not be correct to trash in that particular place.

But why is it easier to trash our city? Our roads and ditches?

Perhaps it would be a great step to realizing the dream of eradicating the waste problem around us. As much as funds go a long way to help build infrastructure, how about working with what we can currently access and do the most with it? It is more than decolonizing the funding system. The power and choices lie with the people but true to our discussion, many will think of how they will put food on the table before thinking about climate conservation.

Money is a commodity that comes and goes and Kenya's informal sector is quite big.

Big means, unstructured and harder to sustain a constant income. Failing to understand the importance of the cause, money will only sustain as fuel to the spirit for so long.

It could create a correlation of conservation work as a monetary initiative which should not be the case because it is not sustainable. African solutions to African problems speak to our culture and community efforts.

It may sound simplistic but here lies the solution.

We just have to figure out how to make it possible as the leaders of today.

Nothing but cocoa love,

Sam 🌼