By Witness Radio team.
As the world burns and corporations continue to pillage Africa’s natural resources, hundreds of women from different local communities of West and Central African countries have started their week-long event to discuss holistic actions to put an end to climate injustice.
The Women Climate Assembly (WCA) at Saly in Senegal started this morning and will run from October 7 to 11, 2024. It has drawn over 120 women activists and community leaders from 12 countries across West and Central Africa to address the debilitating climate crisis in Africa.
This year’s assembly is organized under the theme, African women stand together to defend our land, waters, and forests will aim at making bold women-led struggles in fighting dirty extractives and the disguised solutions to climate disasters in Africa and to propose development solutions that center and support women, their families and their communities to enjoy a decent life and livelihoods in a time of a deepening climate crisis.
The meeting is being held at a time when Africa is facing deteriorating climate change, which has caused droughts, wildfires, cyclones, storms, locust flooding, and rising sea levels, among other tragedies. Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, and Kenya have been recorded among the most affected countries since 2000.
According to organizers, local communities are often the most affected by environmental degradation, facing consequences such as loss of biodiversity, displacement, and health issues related to pollution and resource depletion, among others.
Women, frequently the primary caregivers responsible for securing food and water for their families, bear the heaviest burden of climate impacts. Women from Central and West Africa are rising to tackle the urgent climate crisis affecting the African continent as they play a crucial role in sustainable agriculture, driving community leadership, and safeguarding biodiversity.
“We are asking for them to change the system. We cannot live in this climate – everywhere is hot, there is a lot of sickness, and we can no longer survive. Our plants are dying; our animals are dying. Our sea level is rising, creating coastal erosion and destroying our houses. We need to change things and tell them, leave our climate alone!” says Oumou Koulibaly from Senegal, WCA 2023.
The climate crisis has hit the African continent, its ecosystems, and its people hard. The frustrating irony is that Africa is grappling with the most impacts of global warming. Women’s visibility and voices in addressing this cause are too often underrepresented in national and international climate policy discussions.
Abie Freeman from Liberia emphasizes the urgent need for dialogue with polluters regarding their actions’ detrimental effects on communities. “Everywhere you turn, there are problems. You’ll hear about equity after six or seven years, but we are still here. We need to wake up and do something as women! When we sit there, they will talk over us. We need to wake up and do something that will bring justice to us.”
The 2024 WCA marks the third Women’s Climate Assembly since its inception in 2022. At last year’s gathering, participants produced a powerful declaration outlining demands for climate justice, reparations, and sovereignty for Africa based on consultations from over seventy communities across the continent.
They firmly asserted their Right to Say NO to the destruction of their lands, forests, oceans, and rivers by so-called “development” projects that threaten their ways of life and livelihoods. Additionally, they called on polluters to provide meaningful reparations, informed by the impacted communities, for the historical and ongoing climate and ecological debt owed to Africa.
