Children of the world, let me share a story with you.

It is said by our ancestors that a long time ago, at the beginning of the third millennium, three brothers named Fuel ran the world. The rays of the sun were no longer good for our globe; the heat was becoming unbearable, and the planet started to burn. Mama Tierra was constantly crying, and her pain was mistaken for rage. Nevertheless, in most parts of her body, her children could still run freely. Their hearts still beat in sync with every step they took on the land: a reminder that their mother was kind, giving, and forgiving.

And yet, the world was so different that our elders struggled to find the words to describe it. The hearts of most humans were consumed by ideas that a few tyrants from long before had imposed as the norm. They had exchanged dancing for labor—labor that neither resonated with their calling nor brought them joy, labor that only sought to claim possession of artifacts in an ongoing cycle of use and refuse. They had forgotten the name of their mother and why she gave them their very breath. And suddenly, there were whispers of the end of life. Mama Earth was running tired and could not breathe because the three Fuel brothers were suffocating her lungs.

The younger you were, the more grief you felt.
There was pain, pain, pain, pain with a capital P.
P—A—I—N
¡Ay qué dolor!
Pain for what was, what could be, and what was no longer possible.

The whispers became facts, and the nations of the world could no longer turn their backs on the outcries of the land. Mama Tierra was still merciful, and she sustained the web of life. Meanwhile, the children would smile among themselves—they could sense that they were different, and yet the same. Some of their ancestors had built the very net in which the world was trapped, but this new generation became the hope of a world that had stopped dancing in order to labor. The children felt betrayed, but more decisive than any generation of their ancestors. The voices from what used to be called the “Global South” grew louder than ever. They wanted a world of fairness stretching from the mountains of Bolivia to the peaks of Pakistan. They knew they could make it, but they did not know how. They were aware of their collective power, but they did not know how to embrace it, for the world had taught them to think as a single unit and not as part of a whole.

H—O—P—E—L—E—S—S
Hopeless—they took the word and removed the last four letters to regain “hope.” And suddenly, they turned back to Mama Tierra. They listened to her heartbeat and her calming voice when she told them,

“Wherever you go, I’ll hold you, my children. I gave you life and you’re part of my life. You are ancestral water and life. Your veins are a reflection of mine. Your heartbeat is a reflection of mine, too. You are nature as much as everything I ever made and hold. You were, have been, are, and will be my water and my air. If you breathe, I do too. Work together. Embrace your nature. You are one.”

From the grasslands of Juba to the coast of Capurganá, children from every biome raised their voices in protection of their lands. Eventually, their seniors did too, and saved life so that you and I, y todos los demás, can continue to feed from the love Mama Tierra provides, una y otra vez.

After my heart broke, I stopped going to the lake. 

Lake is a misleading word. I live near the coast of Lake Michigan, which along with the rest of the Great Lakes forms an inland sea containing more than a fifth of the world’s freshwater. 

During lockdown, my partner ferried me up and down Lake Shore Drive to the hospital and back, over and over again. Along our route, police barricades blocked off the public beaches, because no one yet knew what was safe. I heard that people went to the beach anyway, but I didn’t. I wasn’t well enough. Instead I went to the riverbank. The stretch of the Chicago River near my home is lined with trees. I don’t know if you know this, but trees pass electrical impulses through their roots, which scientists sometimes liken to the neural pathways of the brain. But I prefer to think of them as akin to the heart’s cardiac conduction system. My own cardiac conduction system is faulty. During that time I went to the river and imagined the trees’ earthborn electricity would somehow calm the stormy signals misfiring inside my heart.

Summer passed this way. And then fall. And then winter. And then finally, one frigid February day, I returned to the lake with my dog. As I unleashed her and she streaked across the sand—this little gray-blue blur against an infinite gray-blue blur of sky and sea—I realized the beach was unrecognizable to me. The fence demarcating the dog beach was buried in the sand, and the water had receded, like a pair of giant fingers had reached into a bath and pulled the plug. At the same time, that doesn’t totally make sense, because I know that farther south of where I lived, and farther north, the lake was encroaching on basements and building foundations. The logic of erosion and flooding simultaneously doesn’t make sense: a misfiring, perhaps, in my neural pathways.

A few weeks after I’d gone back to the lake, there was this massive storm, one of those ones that meteorologists call a “once-in-a-generation” storm. The river and the lake both began to overflow. Our sewage was threatening to seep into our drinking water, which is why the city of Chicago reversed the flow of its river a century ago. Now it’s only a matter of time until that once-in-a-generation storm recurs and the water can’t be tamed.

When summer arrived again, I made my way back to the lake once more, hoping that there would be a return to normal. But nothing can really return to normal ever again. In my bathing suit, you can see the scar on my chest and the defibrillator poking out from underneath my skin. And as for the beach, I don’t even really know what it looks like anymore.

The story I’m going to tell you guys is about a lady called Amina. I met Amina when I was working in one of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps here in Somalia. 

Amina was a strong woman, full of courage and determination. She lived in a small village in Somalia with her five children and husband. They lived a happy life, with Amina taking care of the children and her husband working in the fields to grow crops. However, all of this changed when drought hit their village. Amina’s crops withered away, and she lost every single one. One by one. She was scared that her children would die due to starvation. She could not bear to see the pain in their eyes, so she decided to move away from the village as soon as possible. 

Amina was heavily pregnant, but she did not let that stop her. She walked four miles with her five children until they reached a village. However, they were still in dire need of help. The villagers took pity on them and helped Amina give birth to her sixth child. The villages provided the family with food and water. Amina was extremely grateful for the help. She knew, however, that she could not stay there forever, so she decided to take her children to the capital city of Somalia, Mogadishu, hoping to find better opportunities there. Amina boarded a minibus with her six children and rode until they arrived at an IDP camp. 

The camp leader welcomed them and gave them shelter to stay in. Amina was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people living in the camp, but she knew that this was the only option left for them. They could not go back to their village or they would die of starvation. They had to stay in this overcrowded camp—that was their last resort.

For the first few weeks, Amina and her children struggled to adapt to the new environment. They missed their home in the village and longed to go back. However, with time, they learned to adjust and make the best of their situation. Amina started doing laundry for other families to make a living and earn a sort of income for the children.

You might be wondering where the father is. It’s very common for women in my country to bear all the responsibilities, especially during droughts. When I go to the IDP camps, it’s mostly the mothers and children. They are the most affected ones, and they are the ones who bear all the pain and all the responsibility, whether it’s man-made or conflict or even natural disaster. 

Amina continues to hope that the drought will end soon and that she and her family can go back to their village. However, for the time being, the IDP camp is their new home. 

That is the story of Amina.

When I was young, I grew up with my grandfather, who really was my best friend. He used to take care of trees in his compound. We used to see him argue so passionately that we needed trees, and we could feel the difference between our land and that of our neighbors, who did not have any trees.

When we lost him in 2006, when I was six years old, things changed in our family. My grandfather’s children didn’t see the need to take care of the trees, and some neighbors felt that their freedom to do whatever they wanted was finally here. Things changed, and within just a few years, all the natural trees were destroyed. The land was empty. That’s when we started to really understand how important they had been.

Growing up, I didn’t really understand the concepts of “environment” and “conservation” until I completed high school and was able to read about sustainable development goals. That’s when I started to identify my own little things I could do to contribute to climate action. That’s when I started relating the challenges that we face in our own communities to global climate change.

Our pastoral communities have existed for a long time in harmony with biodiversity, and now they’re on the receiving end of so much injustice. It’s crazy how those injustices come not only from those contributing the most to climate change, but also from local governments. I’ve realized that the community itself is always willing to do whatever it takes, but because of ongoing challenges and a lack of political will, the community gets left behind. The community is left to do the work, but then they do not get to enjoy the results of their efforts.

As I look at climate change and all the issues around it, I keep asking myself the same question: how is it possible that the most intelligent creature to ever walk the planet is destroying its only home?

How is it possible that the most intelligent creature to ever walk the planet is destroying its only home?

Thank you.

My story is one of movement, of activity and reactivity. 

I think that, like many good stories, it starts from the history of my family and my roots. My family is originally from Sichuan, China. They would move to Tucson, Arizona before I was born: one of the driest deserts in the United States. The home of the Grand Canyon, under the hot, hot sun—that is where I was born.

A couple of years after our acclamation to this desert environment, we moved once again, to Houston, Texas, where I call home. Houston sits on the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, a body of water which connects us to the Atlantic Ocean and the rest of the world. When I first moved there, we were immediately greeted by the BP oil spill, and then later again by floods and hurricanes that damaged our neighborhoods, flooded our land, and meant that we were unable to attend school for months on end because of the lack of access to basic roads. I remember kayaking through the river that used to be my driveway to go places and being locked in our homes during a time before the pandemic. 

I think that these experiences have been incredibly radical, because I think that these are experiences that people shouldn’t have to go through. That’s what has encouraged me to work on climate now, so that others maybe don’t have to face similar experiences, so that their stories can be written in different ways. I think, in the future, it would be really amazing to work on something at the intersection of the US and China and connect these two parts of my background, which I think are very integral to who I am as a person, to my story. I would like to help ensure that people, especially in China, can also share their stories, because I know that for many people, this is not the case, even though all of our stories should be heard, especially in developing countries.

Hello everyone, my name is Yebin, and I am haunted by internet granola nazis.

I don’t really know how to tell this story, other than to start with like a “once upon a time” start in third person so that I feel less silly. So here we go:

Once upon a time, there was an online extremism researcher named Yebin. She studied groups online so vile and so “out there” that she never knew how to explain her job to family and friends. Basically, she spent most of her days staring at a computer screen drenched in violent extremist content, the authors stitching and unstitching their hate like some weavers of human horror. Because she spent so much time lurking in extremist ecosystems like some ecologist of hate and bigotries, she gradually became numb to how ludicrous her profession was—that is, until one sunny afternoon Yebin said a bit too much at happy hour and had to confront the horror-stricken face of friends who had “normal jobs.” Something had to change.

A colleague suggested that she go for a run outside to escape work. It was said to help with mental health. Desperate for respite, Yebin Ubered herself to Anacostia National Park. She stepped onto the muddy trail, put on her shoes, and felt determined to fix her brain and let mother earth heal her, goddammit.

But even as she sought to enjoy the damp DC air, her broken brain whirred. She saw the little buds on the tree branches and remembered something that an ecofascist said earlier that week online—something about preserving America’s vast natural beauty and resources for their white descendants, and white descendants only. Her eyes caught the national parks signs peppered all across and wondered what kind of forced displacement made this park, perched on Potomac’s hip, possible for burnt out DC transplants like her. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, blood and soil…?

She grew increasingly frustrated. She had heard beautiful things by beautiful storytellers on connecting with their ancestral spirits in nature. Sinking their toes into the soft earth, letting the breeze weave its fingers through their hair. Something wonderfully grounding, like that. And you know, she may have felt that once too, when she was young and more in tune with nature. But now, Yebin was frantically power-walking through Anacostia while granola nazi ghosts faithfully trailed a few feet behind her.

Thinking back to this experience, Yebin rejected the idea that she was some self-torturing researcher submitting herself to the heroic burden of witnessing environmental decay, racism, and fascism. That just wasn’t her, by any stretch of the imagination — braver, stronger, smarter environmental activists took on that role. But she also couldn’t deny that she was a little bit haunted. The lines between her work and recreational life bled most profoundly when she was in nature. Even as she admired the cherry blossoms and let grass stains develop on her jeans, she could never sit too far away from these granola nazi ghosts, their piercing gazes trained behind her skull.

Nature, she realized, was not neutral ground. Our parks and greens and trees and daffodils are steeped in human suffering that we can’t see. The money we give to plant trees in American parks isn’t devoid of political forces, some of which believe that the parks belong only to white people.

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, blood and soil.

Thank you.

I’m going to talk about a moment from my childhood, when I realized why confronting the climate crisis is important for me. 

I have spent most of my life in the plains of Nepal. I was a nature-loving kid who loved playing with my friends in the open spaces and nearby deep forest. My village house was near the forest, so I used to walk along a path through the trees, and I would see a lot of wild animals. I would hear the howling of wolves, sometimes the screaming of monkeys. Village farmers grew a lot of crops at the edge of the forest, and I used to love exploring the whole area with my friends. 

But that was my village house. Later we moved to the city, far from there, and I was traveling back to my village only during school vacations. But I missed the village very much. Time passed and it had been about a year since I had returned. And when I was finally able to visit, I saw that the village had completely changed. To my shock, most of the trees were not there. The shallow riverbanks where I used to go fishing with my friends had become dangerously steep, because miners had started extracting stones and sand from the river. There were also bulldozers all over, cutting down trees and flattening the land to make it fit for agricultural and residential developments. The village farmland near the forest had been destroyed to make room for housing developments. 

I didn’t know what to do. I was a young child who had been really attached to nature, but the destruction totally devastated me. Something happened to me that day. I started thinking about the future, and I promised myself that, no matter which career path I chose, I would make sure to do something for nature. Nepal is the world’s fourth-most vulnerable country in terms of the impacts of climate change. We have the world’s tallest mountain, Mt. Everest, and many glaciers and lakes, but they are all melting at a tremendous rate, which is alarming.

So, I started my climate activism in my school days, and after I grew up, I started doing a lot of advocacy and activism with young people.  My activism journey started with my involvement with Tunza Eco Generation: I worked with youths and children and formed many different “eco-clubs.” We organized many advocacy events together, and I also went on to draft a policy for local government to strictly minimize illegal mining of sand and stones. I’m fortunate to say that a lot of good things have happened to me in this life. I have even been awarded by UNEP & Samsung for my climate activism. I have been a delegate to COP two times and represented Nepal in various international platforms. 

In Nepal, we have been dealing with a lot of ecological challenges. Deforestation was a big issue for us, but in recent times, we have almost doubled the forest cover in the country. Nepal is also the first country in the world to have doubled the population of wild tigers. We have started taking small actions for conservation.

My journey started with a small boy living near the forest who was highly attached to nature. But the sudden disappearance of the forest disturbed the boy. The boy (me) then thought to himself, “I’ll do something for nature.” And I’m still taking small steps, but humans have done a lot of damage, and we need immediate action. It is important for youths like me to come into climate policymaking conversations, and to help bring youth-friendly sustainable legislature in future.  I hope to continue creating positive impacts for my society—communities not only in Nepal, but all over the whole world.

I loved my childhood. I really loved it. It was more clear and hopeful. In the mornings, I would wake up very early—much earlier than I wake up these days—and run barefoot in the wet grass, and play in the morning mist with my brothers and sisters and friends: we’d pretend that the mist came from a demon underground, smoking a cigarette. And when it rained, we’d go to the red soil, kneel down and smell the petrichor—it smelled so nice. At times, we would hold these puny bugs with grains and go around feeding the birds. It all felt so good. 

Other times, early afternoons mostly, we would run up the hills through clouds of butterflies, or fly our kites among them. It felt so free, and there was joy and happiness and hope for our future. I remember sneaking through our neighbor’s orchard, stealing his ripe mangos and eating them with salt. The old man, called Okemo, would catch us running around, and, funnily enough, he would give us a bucket of mangos to take back home. In the evenings, we would go to the nearest swamp and try to catch mudfish, and leave time for games and mischief. I remember, a number of times, we would throw something at a swarm of bees resting nearby. You know what happens after that! We would go home, take garlic that was fresh from the farm, smear it on the bee-sting wound, and everything turned out OK. 

And suddenly, now we are adults. Most of us have moved to different cities around the world, and we live in these concrete mazes that are close to noisy pubs or car repair shops. In the morning, we are not woken up by birds singing, but by cars rushing to the city center. And the petrichor of the earth has been replaced by the stench of gasoline, smoke, trash. Nowadays, the demons don’t live underground—they live among us. In the evenings, I sit here on my couch and order chicken nuggets and fries, because other foods are a luxury, and vegetables are just, like, medicine. 

Sometimes I go back to the village, and I don’t hear the birds anymore. How many years has it been? Close to twenty now. And the birds are no longer singing in the morning. Sometimes I say that they woke up late, or that they are demonstrating against their low wages. And when I talk to my grandmother, she says that they went off on holiday. The bees that used to sting us are no longer there either—again my grandmother jokes that they have been employed by the sugar factory nearby, the one that replaced the forest where we used to play hide and seek. There’s a network mast, a massive one, red and white, sitting on the swamp where we used to catch mudfish. There’s no orchard where we would get fresh mangos—instead, there is a massive building. It belongs to the sugar factory.  

And I just walk around thinking about all the joy that I had and sigh, and then I go back to my little apartment in town. I tend to my two dying plants, then I sit on my couch again and order chicken nuggets and fries, because what else can I do? I sit there, hoping that my two plants will end up growing and surviving—unlike the forest we had when we were kids, which has been replaced by the sugar factory. 

And I try not to lose hope, because I honestly believe that’s the only thing that I can confirm I truly own. That’s the only thing that nobody can take away from me.

As they always say, most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain smells, lights of the day, fleeting sounds, and certain views. That’s how life sounded to me, growing up in Kajiado County, Kenya. For a little girl who enjoyed taking nature walks with her father, it was a place of stunning beauty, where the land stretched out in every direction, and the blue sky was vast and open.

I frequently observed groups of giraffes, zebras, gazelles and other wild animals and insects sauntering across the plains. My favorite part has always been watching many kinds of birds of unique colors and unique sounds in the acacia trees that stood tall and proud. The river Mbagathi was a vital source of life for the indigenous community living on this land, providing fresh water for our homes and fields and an abundance of fish for the community to catch and eat. It was where we went to dive. In Swahili, it’s a common term: “Duff – mpararo,” a game that involved us diving and playing with mud, and we’d often get into trouble for that! Our moms would beat us up for coming home with soaked clothes, and others would even lose their clothes during the swim! There were often moments of our brothers from the neighborhood being chased by an ostrich after trying to steal her eggs! Hilarious memories!

As I grew older, I began to notice that the environment around me was changing. The wild animals started to disappear, due to human encroachment, and the river Mbagathi began to dry up. The weather became more unpredictable, and we started to experience longer periods of drought, followed by sudden and heavy rains that caused flash floods. Our livestock started to die, struggling to find enough food to eat. 

The once-beautiful landscape was slowly turning into a barren wasteland as more human development happened.

It was then that I joined university, and I started to interact with other young people who were also concerned about the environment. I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t simply observe as my surroundings fell apart. We began to rally together and take small-scale actions to make a difference. We started by re-sensitizing the community to traditional water-harvesting structures designed to catch the rainfall during the wet seasons, which were becoming less and less predictable. We also started to plant trees and clean up the river Mbagathi, removing the waste that was clogging the drainage and causing flooding.

Although the journey so far hasn’t been simple, we are gradually realizing the outcomes of our actions. I noticed that our sense of community grew stronger as a result of our collaborative efforts. 

Preserving the land that had sustained us for so long was our shared objective, which brought us all together. We are now a startup community organization, called the Greener Communities Program Kajiado. What started as an initiative now is a movement that seeks to work with communities to embrace climate action. We adopted some sections of this river Mbagathi, cleaning up frequently and taking the trash to recycling plants, so that this river can start to flow freely again during the wet seasons. Our trees are striving to grow strong in order to provide shade and shelter for the animals that still call this place home. It feels like we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves when we rediscover how to live in harmony with nature.

But there is still a great deal of work to be done. I am aware that as young people, we will have a significant influence on how the world develops. Our generation is the one that will feel the full impact of climate change (that’s why I get eco-anxiety sometimes), but I will never stop trying. Although we may appear small given the scope of the issue, giving up is not an option. I have hope, just like the hummingbird who tried to put out the forest fire, despite the fact that the big animals who could have helped had already given up, in a story narrated by our celebrated legends, Prof. Wangari Maathai.

To ensure that future generations may appreciate the same beauty and plenty that we have been lucky enough to experience as kids, we must continue to take action both big and small on behalf of the environment. The lush greenery, the diverse wildlife, and the endless blue skies always left me in awe. I was aware that I had a responsibility to safeguard and maintain this beauty for coming generations, because it is the legacy we should leave them. 

We must not let this opportunity slip away. Let’s all work together to preserve and cherish the earth, learn from its history, and respect the crucial bonds we have with the environment and our shared future.

Our story is Biblical and lyrical, generational and sensational. My story is a call to action, a hope that you’ll react to these disasters. This is a piercing steeple, this is an account of a dying people. 

I remember when the heavens opened and flood waters cried across the city of New Orleans, in the same way that the earth quaked and cracked at the feet of Haitians holding hands hoping for a moment of solace, a minute of silence, both from the climate’s creaking curses and the media’s menacing malice that painted them as the cause of their own suffering. 

Why is it, then, that we’re constantly, consistently the victims, the melting brown ice-caps whose colors never qualify for the same coverage as some others? From here to there, don’t you think we too are scared of the skies that seem to force us into more misfortune? Every minute and every hour someone who looks like me dies at the hands of a natural disaster that acts more like a master, whipping and lynching with rain instead of rope, pain instead of hope — flood waters wiping out what was once someone’s village, someone’s home, someone’s town that has been drowned down into nonexistence. 

When was the last time you thought about the rising Caribbean seas that see floods and insane hurricanes, winds that blow harder than kids with their birthday cake candles? No, instead we look at what’s trending, while people are fending for themselves with no help. And before you tell me these are things not from any familiar source, half of these facts were read in an article from Forbes. So pull the cord on your subtle bias. You cannot deny this. You cannot hide this. 

A 2009 report from the USC states consequences of climate change, including extreme heat, devastating floods and air pollution, result in higher risks of death for African Americans and low-income individuals. 

According to the APHA, communities of color are more likely to experience pre-existing health conditions and poor living conditions, making it difficult to build climate resilience, or the ability to prepare and respond to extreme events that occur due to climate change. In South Los Angeles, where residents are predominantly people of color, nearly three-fifths of households did not have access to air conditioning in 2020. 

This is not a moment to show off your Instagram wack activism, this is life or death, a matter of this Black man’s health. Kids in the projects are exposed to the most pollution, but I’m supposed to place my hand on my chest and sing high keys of the Constitution? There are no trees in the ghetto, only concrete and heat with no solar panels. At this point most people have changed the channel. I mean, why take a stand, when our kids are dropped into a wasteland and there really is no reason to bother when Flint, Michigan still doesn’t really have clean water. More likely to breathe in polluted air, more likely to live near coal plants, more likely to live near housing waste from fossil fuel infrastructure. 

In my short time I have to make these mentions, even if you can’t do anything to stop it, I urge you to at least listen.