In 2020, Vanessa Nakate was cropped out of a news photo featuring her and four white climate activists at Davos, drawing global attention that she has since harnessed to expand her work in Uganda and beyond.
Vanessa Nakate, a now 24-year-old Ugandan, had participated in a news conference at the World Economic Forum with young climate activists, including the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. But when The Associated Press released a picture of the five from the event, Nakate had been cropped out.
The omission shocked and saddened Nakate, who in a tearful 10-minute video posted on Twitter denounced the “racism” in the global environmental movement and the erasure of Black and African voices from conversations around climate activism, even as their communities and countries are disproportionately affected by the crisis.
“I felt like I had wasted time going to Davos, I felt that I shouldn’t have been at the news conference.”
-Vanessa
Interview in the Uganda capital, Kampala
Yet her presence at the event and the effect that the episode had on her elicited a response that reverberated across the world. And by the time Nakate’s flight landed in Uganda a day after she posted her video, she had solidified her place as a leading voice among young Africans passionately arguing for action against climate change.
“You cannot have climate justice without racial justice, it isn’t justice if it doesn’t include everyone.”
...NYTimes
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