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

Pedro_P

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Young people in the global south have been tackling the climate crisis for years. They should be celebrated too.

Kenyan 2004 Nobel peace prize winner and environmentalist Wangari Maathai. Photograph: Antony Njuguna/Reuters
▼ Ridhima Pandey was just nine years old in 2017 when she filed  a lawsuitagainst 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 Mutukuhas 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 Thunbergis 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.
People such as the teenager Aditya Mukarji, who in March 2018 began a war against plastic straws. Within just five months, he had already helped replace more than 500,000 plastic straws at restaurants and hotels in New Delhi. “People listen more to children bringing up environmental concerns,” he says.
Last year Nina Gualinga, an indigenous activist from the Ecuadorian Amazon since the age of eight, won the (▪ ▪ ▪)

► Please, continue reading this article here: Source

Rhett_Bassard

Here's why some are ignoring Greta Thunberg...

4:53


Me? I don't like her musical style...


1:43

Pedro_P

Rhett_Bassard 6-10-2019 12:28 AM
Here's why some are ignoring Greta Thunberg...

4:53

There is certainly a racist whiff in only seeing Ecological and Environmental Activism from the photogenic perspective, from the advertising marketing perspective. When the real thing is, that Activism already existed long before and done by and from third world countries.
On the other hand, today, the ecological and environmental discourse is the new leitmotif of the Left. Gone are the concepts of Class Struggle and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Today, the Left camouflages under the ecological and environmental, all those failed models that only generate misery, loss of civil and economic freedoms, and end up ruining countries.

dilwale

Greta Thenberg Quotes,

"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet
I am the lucky ones"