When I was about nine years old, I was walking past a department store on a main street in my city, and there was a protest taking place just outside. At the time, I didn’t even know what a protest was, but looking back now, that’s exactly what was happening.

I was a very curious nine-year-old, so I crossed the street with my mother, and I approached the protesters. They were protesting a brand being sold at the department store that was using animals for their fur trims on their jackets, and they gave me a flyer when I approached them and asked for one. As I walked away, I took a look at that flyer. I was shocked, because it detailed the fur industry—an entirely new concept to me. And it was from that experience that I went on to learn about a variety of other animal rights issues.

That experience… it sat with me for so long, and it still does. It is the catalyst of all that I do. I was immediately motivated to get involved.

Now you may be asking yourself, how does this relate to climate?

Well, during the pandemic—as I think a lot of us did—I had time to sit down and explore what mattered to me, and it was through this time that I had the chance to learn about the connection between animals and the climate. I realized just how interconnected everything is, and how we can’t afford to look at these issues separately. From there, I started getting involved in the climate movement: I began diving deep into advocacy, attending negotiations like the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal last month, and more.

Everything that I do in the climate space stems from that one experience. It deepened my connection with the living creatures on this earth and just made me realize how interconnected we all are with each other. We cannot see ourselves as separate. We must see ourselves as connected with nature, with animals, with everything around us. And I think that experience I had as a child has just reinforced that perspective and allowed me to understand how important this mindset is. Even now, when I attend these conferences, when I do the work that I do, what’s at the back of my head always is how important it is to see ourselves, not apart from nature, but a part of nature.

Thank you.

My name is Pervez Ali, and I am from Pakistan. I will start with my own story, as I am one of the climate refugees from the floods of 2010. I was seven years old when that disastrous monsoon came to us. I lost my house—the place I was living, and the place where my siblings and I used to play. I was out of school for seven months. And now I carry that story, or that memory, everywhere I go. 

So I will start with what happened at that moment, how it felt to live through that experience, and how I evolved to become a climate activist, representing my country at the international level, including at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

It was 2010, and I was studying in grade five. In one of Pakistan’s first climate disasters, the flash floods hit at least seven sub-states, including my own Gilgit Baltistan, which is remote and mountainous. It was midnight when the flood started, and we were forced to leave our house, to move to safer places without even the essentials to eat. I remember the chaos: my mother was suffering from a cardiac disorder, and we were not even able to take her medicine. I was out of school for seven months, because my school was destroyed. We weren’t even able to communicate with relatives who lived nearby. We moved into my grandma’s house and stayed there for three months. Then we moved to the city so that I could receive education.

At the time, I wasn’t well aware of climate change as a concept, because in our country, the religious path is often followed. But later on, in 2015, we experienced another monsoon rain and more disastrous flooding, and we completely lost everything again, including our house. Some officials from UNDP and UNFCCC came to help, and I learned from them about climate change. I started to understand that we needed to adapt. Something clicked in my mind: I thought, “How can I be a part of this process? What can I do to bring awareness and good things to my people?”

Those are my childhood memories, so my connection with climate activism is very personal. I also understand in a very personal way that we were so unable to cope with that environmental crisis due to the other political and financial crises already facing our country. Because of my experience, I feel sensitive to what others are going through—like in Sindh province, which flooded in 2022, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is under a severe financial crisis and also dealing with flash floods from monsoon rains and overflowing glacial lakes.

I eventually moved to Islamabad, the capital, for further studies. I learned how to join and form organizations, and how to lead projects. I made a lot of friends, and we are working to increase climate awareness among the people. Because in Pakistan, climate literacy is low: 69% of people are unaware of climate science—they see this as an act of God. That’s one of the biggest issues currently facing our country. In 2019, I joined Fridays for Future as a member. And now, I’m the country coordinator of Fridays for Future Pakistan.

I made my way through the struggle, coming from an indigenous community to the city, making my own way and making my own place. I started out as a climate refugee, and now I represent the sufferings of my people, and of other climate refugees, on an international level. I think this is my unique story. Thank you.

You can hear me, but can you see me?

I invite you all to close your eyes, breathe in deeply, hold your breath, and slowly release.
Imagine
Imagine that as you walk in a garden, the earth caressing your every step like a devoted mother,

You glance about the trees and flowers, observing dust coating their leaves and petals
Their colors dulled to a gray, white, black

Imagine spotting a dragonfly, its diaphanous wings layered in soot
Imagine that the air you just breathed in was so toxic that it causes stillbirths, miscarriages, impaired brain development in children, and can lead to lung cancer, heart attacks, and stroke, and carves out at least two years’ off of your life
Imagine that in Thailand, a country adorned by adulations for Buddhism, you are unable to sit
sukhasana and meditate under a tree as the Buddha did, your core spiritual practice now a risk factor
Imagine being unable to take a full, satisfying breath, unable to feel the words, the letters roll around in your mouth,
b-r-e-a-t-h-e
Imagine a COVID-free world yet only glimpsing concealed faces of fellow human beings, half covered by N95 masks, at least on those able to afford them

I invite you to open your eyes.
Look around the room. Air pollution is an inherently social issue, latticed across nodes of capitalism, greed, racism, class, caste, and biopower
Where your bodies are not your own, where the privileged hook HEPA filters to their outlets and couple their circadian rhythms with dehumidifiers, connecting one’s refuge to products used to “purify” our air, to “clean” our air, when it was capitalism that drove us to this decrepit state in the first place

Imagine, again
Imagine duct-taping the loose windows of your home, terrified your parents will develop lung cancer from repeated exposure to airborne fine particulate matter less than 2.5 microns, or PM2.5
You insulate your loved ones as best as you can
You avoid the outdoor cafeteria at your elementary and high school
You miss the sound of children laughing, of basketballs bouncing, as students aren’t allowed to play on the courts, in the playgrounds, because the air is too toxic for outdoor physical activity
You swathe yourself in a commodified cocoon, aware that you live on pickpocketed time,
That your family is no more deserving of clean, fresh air than the next family

In this land, where capitalism drives the merry go round,
Extraction dictating human action
Existence an afterthought
Ego, the driver
You are maybe seven or eight years old, yelling, “See me, Daddy, see me!”
Eager to present to your father your latest playground choreography
Monkey bar achievements
You pick up the most suitable stick you can find for exploring and walk
Hand-in-hand with your father along your usual path
But what if your father can’t see you anymore?
What if “See me, Daddy, see me!” is a warning sign?
Toxic air rendering your usual path terra incognita
Your skips no longer buoyant

Imagine, though, that the buoy has not yet left your grasp
Because
Still, the Land breathes. A kaleidoscope of wildlife unfolds as the sun rises. Birds talk gleefully between branches, eyeing earthworms that burrow deeper into their sanctuary. The monarch butterfly pays respects to the jasmine, kissing it gently before bidding farewell to visit the hibiscus on its daily royal passage—bees and leaves its entourage. Snails sit on wet barks, camouflaged with neighboring rocks. Beneath the wide sky and messy humus, trees’ roots sink deep into the waterbed. The mahogany, palm, lamyai, jackfruit, and rose apple trees exist in majestic interdependence with the earth, months without rain not dampening efforts to thrive.

Also
Still, the Thailand Clean Air Network puffs and pants, an assuring embrace of values-driven advocacy and activism
Of storytellers, street food vendors, physicians, and lawyers linking arms to slay the slow violence of air pollution
To build a tabula rasa for our air,
Our silent, sine qua non (sin-letter A-qua-known) sanctuary
Bridging data points with persistence, culture and sabai sabai with truth
To b-r-e-a-t-h-e,
This is the pulse,
The homage to homes of quiet and cacophonous creatures alike
The circular value system that turns foggy ghosts into sincere smiles
The “See me, Daddy, see me!”

My story takes place in the Jordan Valley of Palestine. The Jordan Valley represents 30% of the West Bank, and 88% of the Jordan Valley is “Area C.” That means that this land is for Palestinians, but is under Israeli military law. And what does that mean? I’ll tell you the story…

So I used to do a lot of theater and storytelling work with communities in the Jordan Valley. We heard so many crazy stories from the people living there, under military law. And this made us crazy and sad, even angry. We started to wonder, as artists, what should we do? When we watched the community storytellers tell their stories, all the time they felt like this (she makes a cowering, sad gesture)—you know? And we wondered if we were just helping them to be more sad by telling sad stories. And in some cases, that was the reality.

But what about the Jordan Valley before Israeli military law?

We went hiking here and there, here and there, and we found a very crazy, beautiful, salty river, which has a lot of hot springs. If you come visit, you can bathe or swim in this very hot, salty water—maybe that’s something you’ve never experienced before in your life. And next to the river is a traditional old hotel in the middle of nowhere, for people who want to enjoy the river. On the side of the hotel, there grow many types of grass and wheat—there’s even a water mill, with a wheel for grinding wheat. The river is a natural resource for all types of birds, and animals, and people.

I was so happy to discover this place. I called my friends, who lived in Ramallah, Bethlehem, the Hebron area, in refugee camps in the West Bank of Palestine. “Come, come, come with me,” I said. “Come over. We want to invite you to this place we discovered in the Jordan Valley.” And they came—a group of artists.

And when they got out of the car, they looked around and said, “Fidaa, where is the water?”

And I said, “Oh, don’t you see the water?”

And they said, “No.”

I said, “Are you crazy? You can’t see the big, huge channel?”

And they said, “We see that, but it’s dry.”

I said, “You are here to see the water. We are trying to bring back the life we lost here—the plants, the animals, the stories, the people—the community.”

And my friends looked at each other, and they looked at me, and said, “Are you just asking us for impossible things?”

I answered, “No. I’m asking every one of us to imagine. Imagine the past, before the military came here. Imagine the salt water, and the bathing, and the fun.”

Then we went to the community, and we asked them about what had happened along the river. They told us amazing stories, about the plants and the wheel and the wheat and the flowers and the food and the dance and the songs and the amazing tea from a sweet, sweet spring. All these things we discovered. This life.

We also discovered how the Israeli military had planted a huge iron stick in the middle of the spring, and how they would come by every day in a white car to measure the water levels. The local people didn’t really know science—they hadn’t been to university. They were farmers. They didn’t know what the military was doing to the spring or how to stop them. And day by day, month by month, they kept coming, and then—khalas. The water started to go down, down, down, and then, eventually, there was no more water.

But we succeeded in bringing that life back, through our imagination, by listening to these stories. My friends and I created an artistic trail called “From Salty River to Sweet Spring,” where we invited Palestinians and international guests to come walk along the riverbed and learn some of its stories.

However, we never want to forget that, in reality, this salty river is empty today. There is no water there. And that means a lot of birds, animals, and plants are running away, or disappearing, you know? A lot of people. With our own eyes, we can see how colonization and occupation affect the environment and the culture and the nature. It’s all connected. Since the time of this story, even our trail signs and story markers have since been destroyed by the Israeli military.

But to this day, we are still walking, imagining, creating, and sharing our beautiful Palestine.

Stefan sits, staring at the distance. 

(This is a metaphor. There is no real distance: the line of sight stretches only a few meters beyond the window. The smog covers everything. Through the dark and heavy haze, it is difficult to glimpse human figures.)

Today we were informed that 200,000 new climate refugees had arrived in our city. That means 200,000 new masks: protection not just from the virus, but from the air itself. If they think our city is a good place to live, I wonder what they left behind. 

Stefan’s voice interrupts my writing: “Dunja, do you remember COP27?”

His voice reaches me. It’s no longer the deep and masculine voice that it once was. It’s heavy, weak, shaky, as if he’s struggling for air.

Of course I remember, but I choose to stay quiet. The silence is telling, self-punishing. How could I not remember gorgeous Egypt? The seven colors of the sea, overflowing and playing in the sun. Nature, begging to be set free. An environmental activist, convinced that we could stop the dying clock of nature. 

What did we get wrong, I sometimes wonder. Tick Tock. Tick—year. Tick—year.

“No Stefan, honey, COP27 never happened. It was just a dream.”

I’m Clara. I’m currently living in Portugal, but I’m from Brazil. And my story is a bit about that. So I’ve had this conundrum of colonization and exotic species in my head for a long time. When I was younger and people asked me to introduce myself, my nationality was never part of my answer, not because I’m ashamed of being Brazilian, but just because I don’t think that this says who I am. A nationality, for me, doesn’t encompass my traits, my aspirations, my accomplishments.

But moving from Brazil to Portugal, it was inevitable that my nationality was put on the table every time that I opened my mouth, because my Brazilian Portuguese accent is self-explanatory. Moving to Portugal was the first time that I started receiving glances of “you don’t belong here.” It’s unsaid. It’s not something that the person needs to say. I just feel it, and I had fortunately never experienced that before in my life.

But that didn’t make me sad, and it still doesn’t. Every time I’m in a situation like this, it just leads me to reflect on something else: what is this thing about belonging? For me, it’s an idealistic thing about belonging to a site. Because my ancestors came from the Atlantic rainforest in Rio de Janeiro, from the Black Forest in Germany, from the savannah in Angola, from the scrublands in Portugal. I think that I’m from nature. I’m not from one country on its own. Yet, my passport says that I’m from one country. I’m very grateful for the fact that I grew up in beautiful, tropical Brazil, but I feel like my heart knows no boundaries.

I don’t deny the fact that I was born and raised in the global South. That’s the worldview that I have and that I carry with me. But I also dare to say that the global North is also my home.
I don’t take sides with one or the other. I take the side of Earth—you know, the tiny blue dot, floating around the galaxy, which we all care so much about. The one we’re all here on behalf of today.

But that also doesn’t mean that I forget the past, this act of colonization. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the name “Brazil” derives from a plant. The pau-brasil was a plant which was extracted until it nearly went extinct in Brazil. The country carries the name of its colonial roots, and the word brasileiros, which is how we say “Brazilians” in Portuguese, were those who extracted the pau-brasil, the tree. So every time I think of the name of the country I am from and the name of my nationality, I think of that.

When I was a kid, I would cry or be sad at home after history classes, when we learned about human slavery in Brazil, and I didn’t understand how that could have happened. And it still happens in some places. I also still cry about the slavery that our nature lives under—this forced appropriation or removal of something from its original place.

This is another part of the conundrum, because even though plants can be exotic in one environment—the pau-brasil is totally an exotic plant here in Europe—is the idea of “exotic humans” also a thing? I don’t think so. I feel like I’m an adaptable being. I feel like I’m able to find parts of myself that I can identify with in every environment I go to. In some, if I were to be a seed, I might be planted and flourish more easily. In others, I might take longer to grow fruit (especially in colder environments), but for me, nature is nature, and I can find ways to thrive in different habitats.

So why do human beings keep fragmenting each other by territory, then nationality, then pieces of paper? I’ve been trying to find my place in the world for a while, trying to understand if there’s a place I belong or not. But I guess the world is my place, so that’s why I fight for it as a whole.

That’s what I wanted to say today.

My childhood was full of fun, with a lot of pleasant memories. I always say, with a lot of pride, that I am a coastal girl. I loved going to the beach, just to smell the ocean and hear the waves crashing. I loved to see the blue color that gives the ocean its beauty, and I would see huge green trees, covering vast tracts of land along the coastline. I would learn later that those were mangroves.

The ocean was home to me. I felt a sense of belonging, and I could always run there whenever I was out of school. That place gave me a lot of peace, a lot of serenity.

(Before I forget, one thing—I used to have a favorite type of fish. In Swahili, it is known as kiboma. I would literally cry if my mom did not cook kiboma.)

But with time, I realized that the beauty of the place I called home was fading. Fishermen were cutting trees to make boats for themselves, the smell was changing due to piles of trash dumped close to the ocean, and the saddest thing I experienced was that, after some time, I was no longer able to get kiboma. I would ask my mom, “What’s wrong? Why am I not able to eat my favorite fish?”

And she’d tell me, “I went to the market, but the fishermen say it’s not available anymore.”

As a coastal girl, according to our culture here, education was not really given a lot of priority. Most of the time, we would sit by the fire, listening to stories that our mother told us. Because we were next in line: once she had to tend to the other kids, we were supposed to take on the role of cooking and preparing food for the family. I, however, liked school so much and was utterly curious about what was happening around us and our environment. I didn’t have someone who could tell me what, exactly, was happening—that our actions are actually doing a lot of harm to our coastal way of life.

And then one day, it happened. I bagged an award for the best essay on the importance of trees. Our English teacher was impressed and gave me a newspaper, and that was around the time that a Kenyan woman named Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize. So I read through her story, and, as young as I was, I felt like I really connected to her: to the fact that she was able to use her power. She was able to use her voice. She wanted to change her community, and she was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize because of her relentless efforts in environmental protection. There was one time when she was in braids, and she was protesting, and security forces actually pulled the braid from her hair. You can imagine how painful that was, but it didn’t stop her. I admired that courage, and I told myself that I wanted to be like her, because the beauty of this place I call home is fading.

I wanted to be able to bring back this beauty. I wanted to be able to speak up for the ocean, and speak up for the trees being cut down on a daily basis. I wanted to be able to educate my community about the issues of climate change. And the story of this woman carved a path for me, because by the time I joined secondary school, I already knew my calling was in environmental conservation. As much as my parents wanted me to do a different course, I was adamant.

There’s a saying in Swahili: “nabii hatuzwi kwa.” It means that a prophet is never appreciated in his home country. But this woman, Wangari Maathai, changed the story. She gained a lot of recognition, and through her work, lots of women and girls started learning about environmental conservation—not just nationally, but in my community. You can imagine the smile that came to my face the time that I went back home for the school holiday break and my mother told me about planting trees. “My people are becoming aware of the responsibility to take care of our shared planet,” I thought to myself.

Wangari Maathai has inspired multiple generations, bringing forth a movement of women and girls who want to use their voices, use their power, in climate action. I’m one of them. And there are a lot of us, who are doing so much in our communities. But that does not mean that we need to slow down. If we do not change our activities and our attitudes, then we are going to have more plastic than fish. We are not close to conquering in the climate war. As a young person from the Global South, I think that we need more collaborative action to bring climate justice to people like us, who are really most affected by the emergency.

Drawing on my experiences as an environmentalist throughout the years, I founded an organization. Known as Wiblue—for “Women in Blue Economy”—our main objective is to put women at the center of environmental conservation by letting them take lead roles in shaping environmentally sustainable societies. We also hope to develop the next generation of women conservationists who will advocate for the climate resilience of communities in coastal areas.

We say that we are able to make the light brighter by lighting each other’s candles. And just as Wangari Maathai’s story has inspired me, I have pledged my commitment to create positive change in my community through climate action, and I hope I will be able to inspire a lot of other girls and women, too.

Thank you.