Can you hear me? OK. Hello everyone. 

Just to recap, my name is Taiye Ojo, and I’m a Nigerian eco-activist and writer who uses poetry as a tool to hide my frustrations with society. For a couple of months, I’ve been involved in series of art projects engaged in ideas of ecology, place-making, migration and the effects of climate change (e.g. subsidence in coastal communities); nevertheless, my creative praxis is specific to a geography, or community (and in this case, a particular marginalized community). This place provides fuel for the carbon bloodstream of our society and yet is so forgotten and ignored by those of us who live in the metropolis. The name of this place is Ogoniland. 

To begin with, Ogoniland was once an ecological sanctuary. It was a living place for all kinds of animals and plants: the likes of lions, elephants, even lizards and ancient rainforests. But today, the mangroves, the creek and rivers have become an open graveyard for the fishing communities and their livelihoods. 

As a poet, I try as much as possible to reiterate or create awareness of the issues that marginalized communities in the Niger Delta face, so that people can be aware that, in the past, this place prided itself on the variety of crops and seafood it produced. The local economy was tied to the richness of the natural environment (which includes the mangroves, fertile farmland and the creeks). 

My role as a writer-cum-storyteller is to bear witness to the intensity of destruction in this ‘zone of sacrifice’ (and even though it has been a victim of big oil, corruption, and pollution, Ogoniland remains one of the most beautiful places on earth). The aim is to give a voice to those who are silenced by the dominant narrative, offering alternative ways of thinking about historical events or traumas, whilst imagining a new positive future, as well as stimulating public dialogue and healing our collective body. 

Finally, here is a poem that wishes to point out that a moment of crisis can also be an opportunity for us to change our perspective:

CLIMATE APARTHEID

I live in a blanket of smog,
At times my heart turns into bells.
When I say we’ve lost it, I am referring
to the future – home is falling apart,
the blue beautiful world my mother
left behind needs our help. When I say
I am self-flagellating, I mean my mouth,
my teeth, my tongue – the scrubland
is changing. How tricky this makes
the word drought. And our lazy elders
still gather all its argument for polite
emissions. Listen – memory dims,
and the past becomes a pentimento –
like a scene, a kind of snapshot,
a photograph in my head, where
my extended family, are all smiling
and they are not even the ones who
survived the flood.

This is my story. Thank you!

People generally don’t realize that only a handful of marine biologists spend their daily lives in the ocean. The rest of us tend to work in labs, offices, or from home. For us, the moments we can get to the ocean (usually for holidays or fieldwork) are treasured.

With ocean habitats degrading and marine life increasingly under threat, these fleeting moments of connecting with the ocean are even more special. For me, one particular moment that will stay with me forever is a manta ray night dive I went on in 2017.

I was in Hawai’i supporting my mum, who was competing in the Ironman World Championships on the Big Island. I did a bit of research before the trip for things to do while my mum was training, and found that the island has a resident population of reef mantas. There are three spots around the island that you can visit for a night dive (or a snorkel) to see these mantas feeding.

On the night of the trip, our boat set off into the sunset, accompanied by a pod of dolphins playing in the waves at the bow. I’d never been in the water with anything bigger than a turtle before, so I was really excited to see a manta ray!

After we kitted up, we descended down the mooring line and finned towards the bottom of the ocean. We’d each been given a torch to be able to see, but as we got nearer to the feeding station the ocean became more and more lit up.

Directed by the guide, we all sat cross-legged in a circle on the seabed and were given a rock to place on our laps. We pointed our torches upwards, and lights shone from the surface and the seabed all around us.

I settled into my spot, readjusted my rock, and then I looked up… Being a scientist, I’m not a very spiritual person, but the scene that met my eyes was…  ethereal. Over thirty manta rays danced above me, to music I couldn’t hear. Shoals of silver fish gathered, shimmering and moving as one.

The ocean was so well-lit that it created the feeling of being inside an aquarium. With nothing but the sound of our bubbles, it was comparable to being inside a hushed cathedral, or watching the sunrise on a secluded beach. So serene, and completely mesmerizing.

The graceful acrobats performed somersaults in the water. Swimming in large chains and groups, they often synchronized their barrel rolls and loop-to-loops—filtering as much of their prey as possible from the water column. Despite so many being in the water, they always managed to just avoid colliding with each other, and us… I can’t count the number of times I’d look up to see one swimming over me, just inches from my head. They were so agile.

What I found really interesting about the night dive is how the lights work. Phytoplankton are basically tiny plants that live near the surface of the ocean. When the sun goes down, they can be attracted to artificial lights—like the ones used by the tour operators. Another kind of plankton, called zooplankton, usually comes to the surface at night to feed on the phytoplankton under the cover of darkness. With their prey concentrating around the lights, it makes for an easy meal. So mantas come to these feeding stations to eat this thick soup of zooplankton.

There are few moments in life that are truly memorable, and this manta ray night dive was definitely one of them. It was pure ocean magic.

On our way back to shore, I was reflecting on how lucky I was to have experienced this underwater show, and also wondering how manta rays are affected by climate change. I was just about to start my master’s degree in tropical marine biology, and I didn’t have the answers yet.

Over the next year, I learnt about all the various ways manta rays are threatened by human activity. A more obvious, and very significant threat, is the gill raker trade. But climate change also plays a role. I learnt that ocean warming is altering the distribution and composition of zooplankton, manta rays’ main prey. Climate change is also severely threatening coral reefs, where manta rays feed and visit cleaning stations.

I often think back to this dive, and hope that we can tackle climate change so that other people can experience the same connection with the ocean.

For those who don’t know me, I’m Peruvian, and I study in Sweden. Naturally, a question that often arises when I introduce myself is, “What is the most shocking thing about moving from Peru to Sweden?” 

And honestly, nothing was genuinely shocking. On the contrary, I probably felt more shocked going back to Peru. Perhaps, in the beginning, I referred only to socioeconomic inequalities, because these are less apparent in Stockholm and thus even more evident in Peru after a long time away. But now I realize that another issue that astounded me then and keeps agonizing me today is: climate inequality, which, I’ve come to learn, can be challenging to identify. 

I come from Ica, a coastal city. And, often, when I say this, people imagine a stunning beach. I’m sorry to disenchant you—Ica is a desert. Its population is rapidly growing, and so is the water demand. But, simultaneously, water availability is rapidly decreasing—and, let me tell you, the water resources in a desert aren’t by any means lavish, even in an optimal scenario. 

The decreasing water availability is partially due to the absence of infrastructure, inadequate policy adaptation and enforcement, the blooming agricultural exportation industry, and—another factor we must recognize—climate change. The winter in Ica used to be warm, and the summer warmer, but nowadays, the winter is hot, and the summer is hotter. But climate change has resulted in more than a higher demand for deodorant and AC. Climate change has resulted in more infrequent and unforeseen precipitation occurrences, increased evaporation rates, and thus more prolonged and recurrent droughts. 

These aren’t fun facts to hear, especially when living with their consequences—devastating consequences. Lack of water access has slowed the eradication of poverty and illiteracy, and generated disputes between social classes and neighboring cities. Lack of water has led to mass migration, increased demand for bottled water, and thus increased plastic pollution. And this isn’t the reality only in my hometown. This is the reality worldwide. 

It’s essential to recognize that the climate crisis can look different in every corner of the world. Access to water and sanitation is a human right. It’s not something from which to profit. It’s not something of which private companies, governmental bodies, and richer countries can deprive the people. But they do. 

We need climate action. We need climate justice. We need change. And we need it now.

In the morning, the birds woke me up
—and the wind, the breeze rushing into the canvas.
I had pitched my tent on the slopes, in the middle of a highland forest in France,
in this hexagon with a temperate climate.

I planted the pegs, these small pieces of metal hung at the ends of the canvas, in the soft and hydrated ground, at nightfall, in time for dinner at dusk.
In the morning, the sweat of the earth, the dew, settled around me to reflect the dawn on the foliage.
One morning of hiking, then sleeping in the quiet.
I planted my one-night home on a piece of land where one can bivouac—wild camping, far from the agricultural fields where one breathes pesticides. This spot wasn’t even a nature reserve—those glass domes of biodiversity, where one can only look in from the outside.
I found a place sheltered from the wind so as not to be blown away—that requires attention, foresight.
From one site to another, the atmosphere changes.
You must choose your one-night home with care: the legislation on wild camping is very strict. The extensive regulations provide for the authorization to pitch your tent anywhere excluding protected areas, between sunrise and sunset, and then there are the exceptions.

I am grateful that from a very early age—since I was eight years old—I have learned to admire landscapes from the infinitely small to the infinitely large.
When I hike, I thank guiding and scouting for having made me grow up in nature.
That’s when I learned to know her; to recognize the trees; to understand the evolution of sociopolitical concepts of open space, of place, of massive urbanization; and finally to appreciate, in my guts, an instinctive power, a deep conviction that we must protect these spaces from threats and from profit.

From my little tent/window to the world, facing this political landscape, I truly believe that it is here and now that we must lay the foundations of a new society—we don’t need to follow the instructions to put the pieces together.

I owe to the bivouac my will to protect, defend and guarantee that, on earth and at home, the conditions of life are livable, likable, attractive.

I want to be able to pitch my tent where it is beautiful to wake up in the morning,
to admire the sun reflecting on the dew.

Le matin ce sont les oiseaux qui m’ont reveillée—
et le vent, la brise qui s’engouffre dans la toile de tente.
J’avais planté ma tente, sur les côteaux, au milieu d’une forêt de ce massif de moyenne montagne en France dite métropolitaine
dans cet hexagone au climat tempéré. 

J’ai planté les sardines, ces petits bouts de métal accrochés au bout de ma toile de tente dans la terre meuble et hydratée; à la tombée de la nuit, à temps pour dîner au crépuscule de la nuit.
Le matin la transpiration de la terre, la rosée s’est déposée autour de moi pour que se reflète l’aube sur le feuillage.
Un matin de randonnée, à dormir dans le calme, simple avec une petite laine.
J’ai planté ma maison d’une nuit sur un terrain où on peut bivouaquer. loin des champs. agricoles où on respire les pesticides. Ni même  une réserve naturelle, une sorte de cloche de biodiversité où on la regarde avec les yeux.
J’ai trouvé un lieu à l’abri des vents pour ne pas se faire emporter, cela demande de l’attention, d’être prévoyante.
D’un bout, d’un lieu à l’autre on ne bénéficie pas du même cadre. Il faut bien choisir sa maison d’une nuit, la législation est très stricte sur le bivouac et le “camping sauvage (en français dans le texte). La réglementation extensive prévoit l’autorisation de planter sa tente n’importe où sauf en zone protégée entre le lever et le coucher du soleil, puis c’est là qu’interviennent les exceptions. 

Je suis reconnaissante d’avoir appris à aimer  très jeune, dès 8 ans, admirer les paysages de l’infiniment petit à l’infiniment grand.
Randonner, je remercie le guidisme et le scoutisme de m’avoir fait grandir dans la nature. C’est ensuite que j’ai appris à la connaître, reconnaître les arbres, puis l’évolution des conceptions socio-politiques des grands espaces, des lieux, de l’urbanisation massive,
et enfin partant de mes entrailles, une puissance instinctive, ma profonde conviction qu’il faut protéger ces espaces de ces menaces et de la rentabilité. 

C’est depuis ma petite fenêtre et face à ce paysage politique que je sais que c’est ici et maintenant qu’il faut poser les bases d’une nouvelle société, pas besoin de suivre le modèle pour savoir comment se montent les éléments. 

Je dois au bivouac ma volonté de protéger, défendre et garantir des conditions de vie sur terre, et chez moi, qui soient habitables, désirables et likeable.

Je veux pouvoir planter ma tente là où il est beau de se lever le matin,
d’admirer le soleil se refléter sur la rosée.

My story is called “The Indian Sandwich,” which is actually a mistake from auto-typing, because Google could not understand my accent. (I just let it stay, because it was funny to me.) So yeah, growing up in the Global South looks very different. Oftentimes around us are the slums—the basthis, the sewers—the nalas, but it definitely isn’t the same everywhere. And maybe I can show you another side.

Living in the middle class can be a sandwich between different spaces. You don’t know what you are and where you are, because you can look at things, you can look at people, but you can’t get it. You can’t touch it. You can’t afford it. And that’s what living in India, for me, feels like. I know I’m part of the larger universe, the Global South. But when you look at our greenhouse gas emissions, our per capita expenditure, our baseline poverty rates, you see something entirely different. When you’re stuck in that middle place where you do not have money, but you also do not live on the streets, you don’t know whether you need therapy or just a good friend to talk to.

Although I feel very proud to be homegrown—as in, I’m connected with my family, I’m still in the place I love to be—there will always be things which, for anyone, pull you out of yourself. And here in India, perhaps the struggles are harder, but when you take a longer view, everything is still connected. There are different lenses through which to see everything: there’s a lot of privilege in my language when I call myself Indian and not a Bharatiya. And the land that I am living in is not just my own: there are countless bloodsheds that our people have done to ourselves, and there are also people who have committed violence against us. And I want to practice compassion and kindness to others, to myself, because, in the long view, we are all the same.

In this process of equalizing, I ask myself a lot of questions. “What is fair? Who is it fair to? Who am I playing at? What language am I using? What has been taken away?” I started asking these questions when I was six, when I was eight, when my grandmother would tell me stories. (I see a lot of my people and my friends feeling empty, but maybe this is why we are sticking to our grandparents, to our culture.) My origins are in Bengal, and I wasn’t always proud of that. When my grandparents used to talk about Bengal, they didn’t used to say “the East” and “the West,” because they didn’t want that reality—the fact that a partition happened: somebody came, took something from us, and we are different. The fact that my cousins who live in the East Side are from a different nation, and we are not the same, even though they still call it desh.

All I can think about in relation to this are the songs, the stories, and the poems that my grandmother has remembered since she was in the first grade. It honestly feels like I am living in her memories. Because I don’t know what she’s talking about when she says that, in my hometown, there’s a place called Nau Lakha—which means “nine million,” and refers to nine million trees in that spot at one time. Because when I was younger, there was nothing there. When I was six or seven, my river was already a sewer, and I did not understand why there was a Hanuman temple beside it. By contrast, in my grandmother’s stories, there were plays, and fairs, and you would go into the jungle, and the tiger would randomly come ransack your home, and you would have to run into the basement to hide. This was not my reality, but I desperately wanted to live in it. Even though it sounded scary, it felt so much more connected.

I think, no matter where I go, I always come back to this remembered space, to these dreams. It is not just me that lives through me: it is all the different people I have met, who are no longer with me. It’s the club my best friend and I started at twelve years old, when she asked, “Hey you like horses, right? When you go for a horse ride, why is it so dirty? Have you ever thought about that?” And, honestly, I had not. I just took the garbage as my reality. But that question sparked something inside of us. I am part of a generation that was born inside this movement—since I was little, the cloud has grown as I have grown, and it has engulfed my hometown.

My town used to be this dirty place, like what you think of when we say “Global South” and “the poor,” and when we talk about the parts of India that are dirty. But it’s now going to be the cleanest city in India for the eighth time in a row! And that change wouldn’t have been possible if we relied only on policies and officials. It was possible because of my friends, my community, everybody when we understood that this city is ours. Nobody else is going to come here and take care of it for us. Our movement was able to see not just that the river was a sewer, but that flowers grew around it. And in the sixth grade, my friend told me that you can eat those flowers, as a little pakora—and that solidified something in me. This thing that we used to call a weed, that we used to pluck out because it was unnecessary, was actually purposeful. I couldn’t see that purpose, initially, but the minute I thought, “Ooh, this is tasty,” it had value for me.

That shift did a lot in my head—it’s a change that I still carry with me, as I try to stay alive purposefully. And something about my hometown brings all of this together—the company of all the different people who have changed me over the years, and my grandmother’s poems about nature. Knowingly or unknowingly, I owe those stories, and those people, everything.

My name is Amara. I’m from Lagos, Nigeria, and I’ve basically lived here my entire life. And I don’t think there is ever just one reason that any of us get into climate activism or become interested in caring for our earth, but one thing that feels true for me is that I’ve always been a curious kid. I’ve always been the one to want to learn the name of every plant I see. I would cut samples, or pull them up (which is probably not the best for the environment) and stick them in my room, trying to get them to grow myself.

I always wanted to know how to preserve life, because I grew up in a major city—one of the most populous cities in the world. I never had the opportunity to go out whenever I felt like it and hike a mountain or surf in the ocean. I don’t drive past trees every day. I never really got to see a proper rainforest until I was 13, and that was when I traveled to the US over one of my yearly summer trips. I think that trip was the first time I absolutely knew. For the first time, I was able to see something that I never really had access to before. I poured myself into it—I spent the entire day just lying in the grass outside and playing with my younger cousins under the shade of trees. I was like, “is this what life really is?”

And that same year, when I was 13, when I came back to Lagos, my entire house got flooded. We had to pack our bags and relocate into the safe lodge of my Godmother’s house until our house got back to habitable conditions. These floods we’ve been having are recurring, and they displace so many people, destroy homes and communities. And no one knows what to do about it. Because I grew up in a city where there’s so many more things to be worried about than climate change—there’s poverty, there’s corruption, there’s crime, there’s kidnappings. Something that isn’t as tangible or relatable was not discussed when I was younger. So I was confused about why our house flooded—how did that happen? I felt vulnerable. I was scared. I was like, “How do we know it’s not gonna happen again, even if we rebuild? We can’t keep living like this.”

So I took it upon myself to find out exactly why the floods are happening and to learn how to protect people against them. And I used this knowledge. I told my parents, and they told other people, and they were like, “Amara, you need to find a way to help everyone else know, too.” Because we had the money to rebuild. I’m privileged in the fact that I still have a roof over my head. But what about the people who don’t?

So I tried to find a way to raise awareness, and that’s really how I got into the whole climate space, by trying to educate people, to let people know—so that they aren’t as vulnerable. Right now, I’m focusing on raising awareness about the crisis and empowering other people to make a change in their environment, their actions. I’m trying to help people see how much nature does for us, and how we’re vulnerable to her because we haven’t treated her well.