ALL GREEN FOR OUR FUTURE

Action speaks better than words, a statement short, precise and up to the point but most importantly very true to many aspects of our lives. When faced by challenges or rather a crisis, dialogue/ sensitization about a crisis is often the first step towards reverting the crisis and its effects, but what really reverts the crisis is the action that we do against it.
As a student in University, I often wonder what I can do to revert a crisis. I am not influential, so my words will not call for any action. The only thing I can do is ACT and there is no easier crisis to act upon than climate change.

What is climate change?
For those of us that hate details, easiest way to define climate change is; the crisis of the 21st century. Climate change is an effect of the global industrialization that started in the early 1900s. with the world building more and more industries hence more and more greenhouse gases have been emitted into the atmosphere and this has caused global temperatures to rise.
One may wonder, so what if the temperatures rise, how does that affect me? It’s simple with global temperatures rising, the sea levels have risen and it has been predicted that entire cities such as New York could be under water by the turn of the century if nothing is done. But again, how does that affect me in Uganda, the pearl of Africa.

We humans have divided the world into countries and have separated ourselves by borders but mother nature does not know borders. A change at one end of the world affects the entire planet. I can bet that many of us Ugandans have often heard from those in the agricultural sector that the seasons keep changing they are never sure of how much produce they will get out of their farms. Losses have been absorbed by our farmers and this in turn threatens our food security as a nation.
With my short over simplified incite to this crisis, one will wonder isn’t it a little too big for me to handle? Shouldn’t we wait for the politicians to do something about it? Surely, they must know about this crisis. Personally, I think I cannot revert climate change, well at least not alone. But if I can get more and more people to try and help me revert it then, yes together we can.
This reminds me of the words of Mother Theresa, “not all of us can do great things but we can do small things with great love”. We love our countries and we love our planet and therefore we should do our part to protect. I have often heard people that frequently travel say that travelling helps you read more and more pages of the book called earth and makes you admire how small you are in this world. But however, small you may be, you contribute to how we as a planet handle climate change, either negatively or positively.

Climate change is a major crisis. And therefore, needs big solutions with governments sitting so that they may work together to revert it. But with political differences that may not go away anytime soon we shall often see the governments take two steps forward and one step back. After all, just recently, change in administration in the biggest green house gases emitter the united states pulled out of the Paris Accord, thankfully the Biden Administration may reverse this but that’s a story for another day. All in all, this shows us that we can not wait for governments to wake up but we must take matters into our own hands and take action, CLIMATE ACTION.

CLIMATE ACTION.
Personally, I would define, climate action as any acts we do as a person/ a people/ a nation/ a planet to revert climate change. At the beginning, I wrote, “there is no easier crisis to act against than climate change” but we have to do it together. We know that climate change is as a result of increases green house gases in the atmosphere. A big chunk of these green house gases is Carbon dioxide and a little trip down memory lane may tell us that the easiest way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is through photosynthesis.
For photosynthesis to occur we need one major thing, trees. With the increase in population, more and more forests have been cut down for agricultural use, human settlement, timber, wood fuel and many more. The biggest issue is that as we cut these trees down, we do not bother to replace them. For example, when I was in Primary 3 at Greenhill Academy in 2007 a question was often asked. And the answer we always gave was, “Mabira forest is the biggest natural forest in Uganda.” However, 14 years later ask a child the question, “what is the biggest natural forest in Uganda?”, I guarantee you the answer will be different.

What can we do about all this? We can each play our part. If we made sure that every year each Ugandan planted one tree, we would have over 40 million trees planted per year. Hence our climate action campaign. The model peace forum has committed itself to a tree planting campaign starting from 2020 running up to 2030. For this year, we have a target of planting at least 25,000 trees. A small target, but we can not do it alone. We need every one out there to commit and say I am donating, so they can plant for me my tree. If 25000 people do this, we shall have 25000 trees and we would have made the first step in our journey of fighting climate change. As the Model Peace Forum, we commit to tediously work to sensitize the nation about climate action and to do all that is possible to realize our tree planting goals. Enough land has already been secured for the 2021 climate campaign all we need is your help so that we may buy and plant 25,000 trees this year.
The Model Peace Forum, is a non-profit organization founded by Arthur Matovu to create a space for our young generation to fight the crisis its facing. I am Nanyumba Daniel and I am passionate about climate action but I can not do it alone, I can only do my part. I implore every body to reach out to us and volunteer to join our campaign.

I believe that, “A tree for each Ugandan will keep climate change away.”

NANYUMBA DANIEL