Climate change advocate, Nazanin Alakija, has published an oped titled ‘Global Conflict is Losing Focus on Humanity’s Biggest Threat, Climate Change.’
The article published in Forbes Africa Magazine examines the potential impact of how resolving global conflict is shifting the focus from climate change, an impending threat on humanity.
Alakija is a fierce advocate of climate change and a UNICEF ambassador who, over the years, has championed the need for greater awareness for climate change within both the private and public sectors.
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At a time when the risk of inaction is growing, fueled by the influence of climate sceptics with increasingly audacious tactics, Alakija’s article brings to the fore, the still hotly debated issue of climate change and its role in fuelling global conflict.
Alakija notes that till date, all institutional reports on the NDCs and climate change policies implemented to transform development trajectories for sustainable growth have
not been sufficient to mitigate this global crisis.
She notes that numerous factors contribute to the delay, pointing out that there is one aspect that is setting back progress more than anything else – global conflict.
“Climate change is a global problem, thus requiring global co-operation and multilateralism from all stakeholders. The geopolitical climate today is not only delaying, but it is destructing any progress that has been made. Increase in global political crises from unbridled nationalist leaders to brutal hostility towards immigration from ultra-nationalist parties is causing our world to become more segregated by the day at a time we need solidarity more than ever before. Today we observe global growth emerging with hateful and violent extremism, with serious neo-Nazi movements of Europe to permutations of white supremacy and toxic nationalism that plagues US politics,” she writes.
Alakija recently launched the Social Accelerator for a Green Economy (SAGE) Innovation Centre, an initiative that empowers entrepreneurs to build and scale bold solutions to fight climate change. The centre focuses on five key economic sectors: energy efficiency and renewable energy; solar power; climate-smart agriculture; domestic waste management; water management and purification.
In addition to her advocacy work, Nazanin Alakija has also invested in the development of solar-panelled boreholes through WASH and UNICEF in different parts of North-East Nigeria.
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