The sight of smoke emanating from a bush on a hill or forest in my motherland is likely to be charcoal burning.
We did this in our youth, when schools closed and there was need to complement our parents' income. We escalated forest degradation if not deforestation, killing some biodiversity and polluting, all at once. The cut trees would grow fast though.
People trooped back to forests for wood fuel, timber and charcoal burning when President William Ruto recently lifted the logging ban. Blame it on poverty, which drove us to burn charcoal, and which may have informed the president's decision to lift the ban.
When we burnt charcoal, we influenced one another. Smoke appearing on the other hill or mention by a peer or relative that theirs was on was motivation enough to prepare a kiln. Parents burnt charcoal to raise school fees and make ends meet. Some still do.
The youth are already vocal against fossil fuel extraction in Africa, especially with East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), Tilenga and Kingfisher in Uganda projects and the planned oil pipeline in West Africa, among others.
In the efforts to save the Earth from continued disasters, the UN-backed IPCC has consistently called for end to new or expanding of existing fossil fuel projects.
It calls for "ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas" as per the advice of International Energy Agency, fast compensation of those adversely affected by climate change, among others.
Africa is caught between development using fossil fuels (like the West did and does) and saving the world from climate crisis, which will need massive phasing out of fossil fuel projects.
In all these, the future of youth, and those between 35 and 45, is affected, as they are the workforce in some of the fossil fuel projects. They are stuck there because they have to provide for their families.
Phasing out fossil fuel projects therefore means helping find greener alternative jobs. It is for this reason that there are calls for phasing out existing projects and stopping any new fossil fuel project. This demographic is also a huge consumer of the fuel generated from harmful sources. Opting for renewable energy sources would help increase the overall good health of the African population, majority of which are youth and children.
While the fossil fuel industry promises so much, with a lot of green-washing in form of advertising and massive social media presence, plus scholarships and building of social amenities such as hospitals or schools, the harm on the same youth cannot be gainsaid.
Fossil fuel project demand a lot of land, meaning displacement of people. The EACOP has for instance affected at least 100,000 people along its 1,443km stretch from Uganda to Tanga Port in Tanzania.
Some of the people who gave up their land in exchange for money to create way for EACOP transacted with their ancestral land. The compensation was squandered leaving the youth with no inheritance. In the process of constructing the pipeline, forest, national heritages and wild animal habitats were affected. The national Muchison Falls in Uganda, for instance, now has a tarmac road passing through it. The wild animals have since moved further inside, and there is nothing to show tourists.
For those that earned from the tourism industry, livelihoods are either lost or threatened. What the fossil fuels industry gives with one hand it takes with another.
The youth are the most technologically advanced to tell this story and offer solutions as a way of climate action.
The writer is communications manager at GreenFaith
