It’s not just Greta Thunberg: why are we ignoring the developing world’s inspiring activists?

(The Guardian, 5 Oct 2019) Young people in the global south have been tackling the climate crisis for years. They should be celebrated too.

Ridhima Pandey was just nine years old in 2017 when she filed a lawsuit against the Indian government for failing to take action against climate change. Pandey’s fierce, astounding passion for the environment is not accidental. Her mother is a forestry guard and her father an environmental activist; and the whole family was displaced by the Uttarakhand floods of 2013, which claimed hundreds of lives.

In Kenya Kaluki Paul Mutuku has been actively involved in conservation since college, where he was a member of an environmental awareness club, and has been a member of the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change since 2015. Raised in rural Kenya by a single mother, Mutuku’s vigorous activism, like Pandey’s, was inspired by the direct challenges his family (and wider community) faced from the effects of climate change: “Growing up, I witnessed mothers cover kilometres to fetch water,” he says.

For years, young people across the world have been campaigning to draw attention to the crisis our planet faces, and to tackle it. Yet it seems the media is only interested in one young climate activist.

Without doubt, the remarkable Greta Thunberg is a superstar. In just one year, she has gone from being an unknown teenager, living in the comfort of a middle-class home in Sweden, to being one of the most recognised faces on the planet. She is fearless, earnest, passionate about the planet and determined.

But so are her peers. Born in a wealthy country, to parents who can afford to accommodate their daughter’s convictions, and in a culture where children are encouraged to speak up, Thunberg has intersecting privileges. She is aware of this and regularly mentions her fellow youth activists in her speeches, to remind journalists that there are others working alongside her.

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The Guardian, 5 Oct 2019: It’s not just Greta Thunberg: why are we ignoring the developing world’s inspiring activists?