 So again, just huge welcome, excited to see all of you coming in, welcome, get yourself settled. We're going to be talking about some things that carry emotional weight and bring up fear, bring up tragedy, loss, sadness, grief, hope, resilience. And so in that spirit, I just want to invite you to just put your feet on the ground and just steady yourself. One of the most important things that I hear humans do is breathe. And so I just want to invite you to come in with breath and ground in this. I'm really excited to have all of you here from Canada, from Switzerland, from Malawi, from Uganda, from Kenya, from UK, from Philippines, from Wales, India, Bangladesh. Sorry if I missed your country, the place that you're from, but just welcome all of you, Brazil. Welcome everyone. And today we're going to get to have this conversation about repairing and resisting, organizing after climate impacts. And I just want to say, if I look or any of our speakers look a little bit tired, some of us are a little exhausted. For me, this is my, I think the 17th session, I'm bad at counting, but I think this is the 17th session that we've hosted of different training skills during this week. So some of us are a little tired, I'm a little tired. But we're going to get to talk about repairing and resisting. And so we're going to hear a little about from several different speakers through the day. So I just want to start, we're going to hear from three different people who are on deck to share with us some stories, some kind of, let's just call them like case studies or examples of work they've been doing about handling, organizing in the context of dealing with climate impacts. And so if I struggle with names, just forgive me ahead of time. But Bugara, how close am I to that, to your name is coming from Akyaka, which is worked. I'm really excited about this. They've been dealing with wildfires in Turkey. And so they've created a volunteer crew to be in response to deal with both the immediate impact, but also some of the longer term impacts from the wildfires that have been happening there. And they've just been doing some very interesting organizing. Hilda comes to us from Uganda. She's been working with Fridays for Future, the founder actually of Uganda's Fridays for Future. And my colleagues, Johnson and Niko are just wild fans. Many of us are wild fans, Hilda, of the work that you've been doing. And then Nemo Basi, who's a very well-known, very respected activist, originally architect, is that right? You were originally an architect, but has founded Environmental Rights Action, has been involved in many, many different projects. And has just a very impressive human being and someone who we've respected for quite a long time. So just really excited for all of those. One request I have for you on this session is if you have questions or things that are on your mind about when you're coming into a session like this, you might have some things you're looking for or kind of hearing like, what could they speak to your condition? I'd just like to invite you to really think about those and just to put them on the chat or to put them on the question and answer. But to share, what are some of the things that you're curious or you're looking for? And so, for example, for me, I live in Philadelphia. I live on land that used to be from the Lennon and Ape long time ago, which is right next to the Delaware River. And in this last year, my neighborhood has flooded twice. We've had flood sufficient so that I could take a canoe and paddle to my neighbor's homes. And that has been, it had a low loss of property and no one got hurt, thankfully. But it got my neighbors more prepared for, we need to take this both more seriously, but also we need to begin building up our berm and being practical and also thinking about how do we check in with each other. And one of the questions on my mind is I'm curious, how do we do more than just surviving? How do we not just be in a reaction mode, but also what kind of things do we need to prepare for? And so, getting more ideas about how people are responding to some of these climate disasters and also handling our internal fear and so forth. And I've been thinking about this just as climate impacts, there's a number of different impact, different ways. And this is a framework I learned from Gopal that there are shocks, these moments of a sharp sudden disruption. For example, the Deepwater Horizon oil spills or the Typhoon Yolanda or Haiyan or many, many others like that. These shocks that are increasing in frequency as climate changes accelerating the way that our globe has been working. And then there's these slides, which are sometimes a little bit slower to observe. They're incremental by their nature. They can be catastrophic, but they're not always experienced all at the same time or not as cute. So sea level rise is a slide, rising employment is a slide, the rising costs of food and energy can be experienced as a slide. Sometimes there's moments where it jumps, but I mentioned all of this around shocks versus slides and that there's different ways we're responding to different kinds of the impacts. And so today we'll hear a lot about some of the different shocks in particular, but we'll also address some of the different slides as well. And I just wanted to mention that this is for me the anniversary of one of the floods I mentioned. And a group that I just wanted to honor a group earthquake or action team that I'm part of here in Philadelphia, and they organized a banner drop. What you're looking at right now, that's a highway that got completely flooded last year. And so it was completely underwater and so this group earthquake or action team wanted to highlight this. And they had a target PICO, which is the energy utility company who has done nothing to sort of deal with climate change. And so they were just taking this moment to address to kind of raise the issue. So I just wanted to honor, it's a one year anniversary and actually some of my colleagues right now are going out and going to do another banner drop again to address this issue. Of putting pressure for climate change. So we're going to get to hear from a bunch of stories. I'm excited here from all the folks here. I do want to say two things. I made two mistakes already and I just want to acknowledge I wrote Nemo's name wrong, sorry about that Nemo. And also neglected to talk about Nemo's currently working with Health of Mother Earth Foundation home, which has its head office in Nigeria. And so we'll get to, they'll get to share more about some of the work that they've been up to. And many of you have been aware of a big climate impact that's happening right now. So in a moment we'll get to hear from some of the people I just mentioned, talking about the work that they've been doing that's been, had the space of time to do reflection on what worked and what's valuable and what the lessons are that they've gotten out of it. But we also want to acknowledge that Pakistan has had a gigantic flood right now. And so we're in the range of 10,000 plus people have passed away and have died from this flood. One in seven people have been made internal refugees because of the severity of it. And so Shabayan, whose 350s South Asia organizer has been working with it. So I just want to invite you Shabayan to just bring us a little bit of a word about where people, where things are and to just share a little bit about that right now. So Shabayan, if you don't mind coming off of mute so you can share just to bring a word. Thank you. Hi everyone and thanks Daniel for inviting me to this call. And as Daniel mentioned that there's a gigantic flood like this is, is a climate change induced flood, if I can say that's devastated Pakistan. It's currently still going on. And the current status is basically that 33 million people are displaced. That's, if you look at the numbers, that's one in every seven Pakistani. And these are not people whose homes and lives were destroyed. This is 33 million people whose future is also destroyed because we know that the after effects of flood, post flood reconstruction, it's a long real work in the country and it takes ages to build what we have just lost. And we all know that who is responsible because Pakistan's is the lowest. But I will actually, as I see that there are a lot of folks here from many different parts of the world, I will actually ask you to, and I also see that there is somebody from Pakistan. Thanks for joining brother. And we have been working with communities and our partners in Pakistan. And one of our partners, a number of tours, she wrote a very important blog about what's happening and what's the status right now. I invite you to read that blog and share after the call, of course. And here's the link I've posted it. And I see a lot of folks from around the world, from local countries, I urge you to pressure your government to do more because for climate separations and also to funding the loss and damage fund, which they keep on delaying. And also that if you can, or if you can share, you can also share this fundraiser spread to a lot of different local groups that's fundraising to keep, you know, in terms of keeping materials reaching the worst impacted communities, sanitary care, groceries. So these are all local NGOs, the money will go to the back of the communities. Yeah, that's all from me back then. Great. Thank you, Shabayan, for your work, for your energy, and for sharing your what's going on in real time right now. This is a situation that's very much unfolding. So I ask everyone to, as you can, share those links and do as Shabayan's suggesting of putting pressure on our governments to do what they can to really address this, because this is a moral outrage and this is, in some ways, the beginning of the catastrophic phase that climate change is bringing to more and more of our communities. So I want to turn it to Bugra to speak first to share with us about the work that you've been doing with Akyaka. And you don't know, but I've been watching Akyaka for some time. And I'm so excited to hear from you talking about the work that you've been doing. So thank you. So I won't set it up much more, except to say, I think you've got some slides. Go for it. Go for it. Sorry. Hold on. We're just having a technical thing. Bugra, I think that you need to select your language as English if you're going to present in English on the globe. Got it? I don't think we still hear them, right? Great. So, Bugra, we're going to pause you and just give you a minute to get your audio together. So we'll work on that in a second. And so, Neem, I'm going to just lean on you if that's all right to go next. And so that up here is what are some of the different ways that folks have been handling climate impacts? So we'll give you 15, 25 minutes to kind of share some of your contact stories in terms of how are people adjusting? And the theme here, again, the theme has been how do we deal in the moment of climate impacts as like Shabayan is dealing with and other folks in Pakistan, but also how do we do more than just be in reaction mode to the impacts that are coming, but also take that next step, bring people into that next thing? So how do we deal with climate disaster, but also still organize, still bring people not just from, not just from, oh, we should build a berm to protect my neighborhood, but we should get with other people to begin protecting whole communities. And even more than that, we should be dealing with the climate context altogether. And so that trajectory of bringing people into not just reaction, survival, but beyond that. So, Mimo, thank you for joining us and we're excited to hear your word. Thank you so much, Daniel. And Bugra, I'm sorry that I had to take your space at this time. But it's fine. I'll be brief. And I'm really glad that so many people signed on to this very important gathering. I will be sharing some slides. And I hope to, I may not follow the meteorology that Daniel just laid out, but I would like us to just give you a flavor of what the confrontation is for us, what the situation is for us in the face of climate change, and how it's connected to human rights abuses and environmental injustices, as well as all the harms you can think about. And the first slide I'm showing is from the nagi delta, which is the oil belt of Nigeria, where the multinational oil companies have been operating for the past 64 years plus. And this little boy is fetching water from a very polluted well because the rivers in the communities are already very polluted. And now I thought I should also share this map that shows the distribution of impacts of climate impact around the world. And you can see that it's restricted to a particular segment of the world. And this happens to also be the segment that contributes the least to the problem. So this actually amplifies the fact of climate injustice in the world today. 350 have done a lot of work on this. And so I've just been wrong. I believe many of us very well-appointed with what's going on, but the impacts that we have in Africa to a large extent is heightened by extractivism. Of course, you know, the continent has faced extractivist onslaught right from many, many centuries ago from slavery, from colonialism, neo-colonialism to the present petroleum civilization, extractivism that is ongoing. So we're having sea level rise. One of the slides that Daniel was talking about, sea level, according to the last intergovernmental panel on climate change report, the sea level rise around Africa is almost in a bit of its ongoing and it's not going to stop in the near future if it stop at all. This has impact not just sea level rise as a motion, but it's actually it your coastal communities, coastal land, displacing people and causing conflict in a place like Senegal. The sea level rise has also been accompanied by destruction of the soil in case of salamization. And so you have farmers who cannot fish, who cannot farm, who prefer one now to turn into fishing, but the sea is also less productive for a number of reasons, including of course, salamization of sea level rise and loss of species. But fishing is another factor and all kinds of illegal activities going on in the waters around Africa. In Nigeria, one other challenge in this situation, which is happening in Sahel, is water stress across the region, having unusual floods, maybe not at the magnitude of what we are seeing Pakistan currently, but really disastrous floods as what we've also heard about in Mozambique and that region. So displacement is a big problem that is to do. And unfortunately, in climate change discussion, we're not hearing about climate, we hardly hear about climate refugees, we've been still talking about migration or forced migration. But really, if you call them climate refugees, they stand a better chance of being the receivers of meditation. Now, the other problem that I should speak about before I run into other the talk about how people are resisting is the fact that now that the world is increasingly aware that we have to keep the fossil fuels in the ground. We are seeing more investment in Africa and this is potentially pushing towards more crisis, more climate crisis, more climate impacts and destroying the resilient that been built over by the years. The war in Europe is not helping things because as Russia turns off the gas stop, European countries, the EU is focusing on Africa and other regions for more gas, for more of the same thing that they should be thrown away from. And so the last check, the oil companies are planning to sink up to 230 billion in the next one decade. And 1.4 trillion dollars in the fossil fuel projects by 2050. Now that is a recipe for for horrors. I'm sure you're going to hear more about the East African oil pipelines, so I will not dwell on this, but it's also one of the examples of what is going on today. When the war should be shutting down fossil fuels, we'll have more infrastructure. The war in Europe is also bringing to life the idea of building a pipeline from Nigeria to Morocco with the whole recent purpose of sending the gas to Europe. This is really horrible. And it's going to have negative effects on fisheries and the livelihoods of coastal communities. And the coastal communities are going to assure you would not benefit from this project. So it's everything about colonial extraction, colonial exports, and the same old paradigm on going around here. Now, so we're having climate change, a sea level rise, solidification of water, de-certification, floods, droughts, in-person agriculture. But sometimes we forget to look at the two ends of the pipeline. One end is where extraction is taking place, the other end is where the fossil fuels are being utilized. Now, a whole lot of fossil fuels is extracted in the Gulf of Guinea, in where the Nigeria that is located has seen massive pollution in the entire Gulf of Guinea. And this has a lot of impact, many, many, a serious impact on how people can survive the impacts of global warming. So we're having the attack from two ends, two ends of the pipeline from the use and from the extraction. Now, if you also think about Mozambique, there's a lot of conflict in North Eastern of Mozambique in Cabo Delgado area. And the last one we heard about, we heard about cyclones increasingly in that region. Apologize for having over 1,000 lives written in this slide. It's actually over 3,000 lives were lost in cyclone EDI that hit Mozambican Tanzania in 2019. And every year since then, there's been other cyclones. And yet in the same region, North Eastern part of Mozambique, where gas has been found, companies and the government are investing in infrastructure to get that gas to Europe. And because of the violence that is generated, we have massive regional forces being sent in there to pacify the people. So these are some of the things that we don't really discuss often we talk about climate change impacts. Climate change impacts beyond the geographic things is beyond. What the science is saying is about lives of people at risk on a daily basis. And I'll come down to what is going on in Nigeria. Nigeria is one of the top 10 most contaminated places on earth. Why? Because this is where oil and gas has been extracted with totally responsibility over so many years now. Since 1956, without anything better. The picture here is the first oil where that was drilled in 1956. Commercial export began in 1958, 64 years ago. And what we have around the entire region is nothing other than ecocide. It's massive degradation that cannot imagine having this abetted within our lifetime. It's just a pipe dream to think that we can tackle this. But the fight is ongoing to stop the horror and then begin the cleanup. The client I'm showing here already illustrated kind of gas pluring that we have in the region. Sometimes in the middle of communities. Sometimes in the forests, in farmlands. And this pumping millions of tons of toxic gases to the atmosphere causing asthma, bronchitis, blood disorders, bed defects, all kinds of cancers and diseases in communities facing, having and living in this where this assortment is taking place. So we're having what you can best discover as environmental racism. What you can heighten any policies, gender discrimination and pure neocolonialism. I'll show the slide of a place in Toguniland, which is one of the ablimatic parts of the United Delta, where cleanup of the mess has been commenced. By the time the United National Environment Program conducted research on the environmental degradation in this area, some places were found to have hydrocarbon pollution to a depth of five meters. When the cleanup began in NS a couple of years back, in some of the same locations was found that the hydrocarbon pollution has gone as far down as five meters. Some places as deep as 15, 15 meters, 10 to 15 meters. So as long as this pollution are left unattended to, so long they get more complicated, the situation gets more complex and more difficult to deal with. And let me say that at the moment, all major transnational oil companies who have created this, who has carried out extraction in very criminal ways in United Delta are currently embarking on what they termed divestment. Now, divestment in the United States or in Northern, in Europe are completely different from the one we're facing in Nigeria, while activists in US campaign for an end to the, for divestment or investment in this dirty energy sector in Nigeria after years of extreme pollution of the entire region, where life expectancy has dropped to 41 years on the average. Oil companies like ExxonMobil, like Shell are planning and trying to sell off their assets and just take their briefcases and their dollars and move away, leaving that mess. And the resistance that is building in the area, in the region, in the country, is that this corporation will, yes, we want them to live, but they have to pay off, they have to take care of the cleanup that is needed to restore the environment to a livable territory. So our campaign is that divestment must go with responsibility. They can't offload the responsibility of pollution on the poor communities and on local companies who are rising up to buy off the shields from transnational oil companies. We think that this divestment is criminal and we require global action to join to support our local communities in the fight to hold these companies accountable for massive ecocide they've created. Now, I decided to share this slide so that there was a well blowout at a place called Rural One off the coast of Nigeria, the Nigerian, this blowout happened in 2020 April for more than two years now. It's still not been, the blowout has not been contained, it's still burning and still spilling. So you imagine from this location, just off the shores of Nigeria, millions of tons of greenhouse gases that are exacerbating the climate change have been pumped into the atmosphere without anybody taking responsibility. So what are the people doing? A whole lot of resistance going back to the 1990s when Kansai, we were the late minority rights and environmental rights activists who was in seclusion in 1995, led the Ogoni people and from 1993, we were able to succeed in keeping the Ogoni oil in the ground in Ogoni land and the struggle has been to duplicate and replicate that in other regions. And so the people have been in the background of direct actions including naked action, the naked option, which is a situation where elderly women go take off their tops and protest against the harms of these corporations who are driving global warming and who are denied that they are the ones responsible and who still go to the conference of parties and influence decisions that countries are rather than facing as possible, I talk about facing down coal. The other means of resistance by the communities to just have a kind of relief from the assaults from these corporations and from the government is litigation. There's been litigation, massive many litigation going on in Nigerian courts as well as in courts outside of Nigeria. There's been landmark decisions in the Supreme Court in the UK holding Shell International accountable for what their subsidiaries do in other places including Ogoni land. There was a case at the Hague against Shell also where four farmers have sued for environmental pollution and got positive ruling from the court and are now in the process of resolving that problem. Now the other thing that we are involved in and which we do very frequently is a series of learnings and risings with sharing knowledge, building knowledge and exchanging, having cultural exchanges, having a change in different ways. We have what we call all field dialogues where communities leave a discussion about what way they are hopes and what these things happen and how they are responding to global warming, how they are responding to continuous pollution and how others can team up with them to resist. There's also a series that we call learning from the wise. The wise are those who are learning from those who are knowledge holders and not just those who are old, young people. So mostly young people sitting down to listen to the elders to learn the best ways to take out the environment, the ecological defense and to be able to speak up as necessary and to rise up against environmental climate criminals. And then we're building teams of eco defenders, community youths who have learned, have skills and environmental monitoring. They can go around monitoring what is going on in the environment to before the corporations report what they've done when there's any incidents already out there in the media from community monitors who are constantly on the lookout. And then around what we do, we have what we call the different schools of ecology and learning across the continent. In Nigeria, we call it schools of ecology where we pick up particular topics like diversity, like climate change, like blue economy and have defenders to begin to learn about this. Uganda, a group like Napa, has sustainability villages in Mozambique, Justika, and Bienta runs every year what they call sitting climate justice. In South Africa, there's a climate justice school run by Groundwork. And so there are many groups across the continent who are building up knowledge. We're building up resistance because the best resistance is resistance that is done with knowledge. So the Web's IS funding, we're also working with Fisher folks in the Fishnet Alliance, campaigning on fish, not all, but fish employs more people. Fish fits the people. Fish treat us communities. Fish is part of the culture, part of the spirituality, but extractive activities in the water bodies are very destructive for all this. South Africa is called ocean, not oil. And activists and fishers in South Africa have been very, very successful in stopping shell and other corporations from carrying out seismic activities off the coast of that country. There's also a network of resistance. They send no rate in African network, no rate at REDD, campaigning against the appropriation of forest and dislocation of communities from their resources. Of course, there's also one part, one means of building resistance that I love so much, that is using the arts, using poetry for advocacy, using mobile phones to make video documentaries for advocacy. And that's so many things. Then finally, two months ago, we hosted what we call the Niger Data Convergence, an idea that we hope to spread across the continent for everywhere their extractive activities. I came up with the Niger Data Manifesto for socio-ecological transformation. And the key demands in that manifesto is that there must be environmental audit carried out in every location where extraction has been carried out. It's ongoing or has been ongoing. And the whole idea is to map out the impacts, the climate impact, the related impacts, and also the health of this so that we know what is killing our people, the economic demands for clean jobs for the young people, security of facilities. There's a myth asking for a comprehensive review of a petroleum law that we'll just sign in Nigeria and to halt deforestation, especially those of demand groups and rent forests. And then, of course, calling for mitigation against an adaptation, climate change, and other political actions, but everything being guided by popular participation. Now, finally, finally, finally, there's a saying that I love so much in the book, Climate Wars, where people would be killed in the 21st century written by Harald Wells. He said, it is not the objective circumstances themselves that determine how people behave, but the manner of their interpretation. And this is so profound. If we look at climate change as something that has colonial roots, that has racist roots, that builds inequality, that is extremely harmful in different ways, culturally, spiritually. When we have this understanding of the holy crisis from all aspects, then we're able to see how urgent the situation is that we must act. So with this, invite all of us to think and act, and we should do this right now. Thank you so much, Dany. Fantastic, Nima. Thank you. There's so much there, and I just want to underline some people came in with a question, how do we deal with people who their objective reality isn't seeing the issue of climate change. They're still in a kind of denialism about it. And as you say, just because we're experiencing climate change does not mean that we'll necessarily put the pieces together. It doesn't mean that we're going to understand the roots, the history. And so what are some of the things that you are doing to help people uncover those roots so that they can sort of connect the dots about climate change and deal with their own denialism? Yes. Thank you for highlighting that. One of the, somebody says that the best way to begin talking about warming is by sharing, building and sharing of knowledge about the crisis. And that is why I mentioned that sometimes people look only at one end of the pipeline, counting carbon molecules in the atmosphere and not looking at the beginning of the pipeline, where the crimes are being committed, destructivist crimes. So we begin with all our efforts to bring the two ends together. And this is why we have so much, so many learning spaces at different levels, at community level, at academic level, at policy level. And we do a lot of exchanges. And sometimes we don't learn to go to the community, to sit down quietly, to hear from the people. Because sometimes activists tend to think that they have all the knowledge. We don't pay as much attention as we thought to when we find those who are actually impacted by this crisis. And we put a lot into exchange visits. Recently I was in with other colleagues in oil work Africa, in Ghana. We're not just going there to watch the oil. We want to see precedent environment that will be destroyed when that country takes extractivism to the certain regions. And also talking with officials about how they're already impacted by global warming. In the coming days I'll be in a team group on a solidarity business somewhere else in Africa. So we're doing this continuously, learning from what people are experiencing, building on that and also researching. I've been a part of a research team building on looking at climate change and conflict in the Gulf of Guinea, in the West African subregion. And all this learning was from the communities, not from the classroom, not from the laboratory, but the actual laboratory of life, the lived experience of people. And from there we're learning about how to take the actions forward and how to show that the Conference of Parties, the UNFCCC, is not about solving the climate problem. It's about how to avoid action. And that's what we're going to see in Egypt in November this year. The countries will gather to debate how to avoid action. How could nations be taking voluntary action on something that needs global action determined by science? That's what we're trying to do already that will be bumped. People are not taken by surprise when the storms keep coming, because those who should do something are not doing anything. Wonderful. And one request is coming in Nemo. If you can share your slides, people are excited to use them. So thank you. All right. I'll certainly send them to you by email. Perfect. And we'll email those out for everyone. This is being recorded. And some people will send them out, both the slides and the recording for people to be able to connect afterwards. Thank you so much. And if people do have additional questions, I love that people are organizing on the chat and starting to connect with other people. And if people have other questions they want to put in, chat's a great way to do that. So thank you for that. And we're going to see if we, Bugara, do we have you now? Yeah, let's try. Do we? Yes. Fantastic. So Akyaka has been doing work in Turkey where there's been a series of different wildfires, very large wildfires that I'm sure you'll discuss and talk about. And they've been dealing with a very specific climate impact and organizing around it. And so a chance for us to hear about how you're working on climate disasters. I might jump in with some questions, but I know you also have a presentation in your mind. So go for it, Bugara. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. And let me share my screen here. Yes. I think it works now. Perfect. So yeah. Hi, everyone. And I'm really honored to be here and to share our story and especially talking after Nemo is to you. And it's great to be here because to be here with the very diverse background people all over the world and basically the people who cares, who cares about the nature, who cares about the future generations. And even if you haven't met, I feel that connection. And my name is Ra and I live in southwest of Turkey. And I've been a tech entrepreneur for my career. And last six years, I co-founded the social innovation platform in Istanbul. And because of that, I worked with impact investors, national international nonprofits, corporates and like issues such refugee crisis, youth unemployment, and equality. But today I was getting to the dark side, like the dark side of becoming a boring doomer. But then the story that I'm going to share now, it changed all of my life. I moved to southwest of Turkey during the pandemic in March 2020. And I was burned out and Mediterranean Forest basically welcomed me with open arms. And in 2021, last summer, same forest changed my life by burning like never before. And today I'm going to share the community led disaster response and preparedness. But I want to start with the answer. Like the biggest learning from our experience was that disasters can be a leverage point to build an antifragile neighborhoods via these community led initiatives. And it is also very transformative to witness in personal level. So I want to emphasize also antifragility here, because I believe that we should aim for antifragility, not for resilience. If, as Nasim Taleb mentioned in his book, that if we can stand our current approaches to prediction, prognostication, and risk management on their heads, we can transform humanitarian efforts such as disaster relief to regenerative development programs. So, and the second concept that I want to make in short introduction is this community led part. It's kind of like an umbrella term that is those who are already part of the local community who are affected and lives in this area. This definition distinguishes such as such responses from other types of localizations where international agencies support local actors to undertake projects basically like subcontracting. Because these kind of community led organizations, they organize in a common goal at community level. So like where you don't have traditional extractive model of boss who has a lot of capital, then hire some managers and manage bunch of people in a strict hierarchy. But community-based efforts are bunch of people coming together who are, in our case, neighbors, essentially peers, coming together and putizing each other and figuring out how to make this work. And in modern Western societies, we don't have that instinct programming of being able to organize ourselves in those kind of non-hierarchical ways. So we are much, much accustomed to that chain of command, like tell me what to do and what my part is. But actually in Anatolia, we have this concept, this phenomenon called IMECE. And since the thousands of years, especially Ottoman Empire, since the centralized government is not answering all of the requests and the needs of the locals, so village people develop this concept of collective action towards the common challenges and the needs. So that concept, that separate was very crucial in our story as and so what happens? I'm here because as Daniel mentioned that we had our biggest forest fires in Turkey's history last year. And what started as just preparing for 200 sandwiches for the firefighters in region became this civil initiative that shifted our relationships. And most importantly, our perspective about what it means to be neighbor and what we can do about the future disasters and other issues that our region is affected by. And yeah, to put context, this is where I live now. And these four region was affected by huge fires in just a couple of four days, starting simultaneously. And Akyaka was basically in the middle of and best location for to become a logistic hub. And we were both lucky and agile to put out the fires that happened in the region in the first 30 minutes. So they didn't became they didn't become a disaster. So we put our efforts to become a logistic hub for the region. Because of the magnitude of the disaster, the centralized organizations like failed to respond and lost their all effectiveness. It was like pure chaos on the field. And like the neglect of neglect and the misallocation of the resources. And for example, it turns out that Turkish government had not been entirely prepared for this and 85 million population and we don't have even one single operational firefighting plane. They've been renting three of them for Russia to put context compare that Greece has 39 firefighting plane planes in Greece. And the other coordination failure was that municipality who is responsible for the firefighting department, they didn't have any experience on the forest fires. I mean, their trucks were not even four wheeled off ready. And also between these organizations, they are not any information flow. But to put perspective of the coordination failure, their fire hose equipments are not compatible with each other. So these debates over how the fire started and the government's lack of preparedness in fighting the fires continued but distributed self starting initiatives flourished all of the affected areas. So we were one of them. And we have built a bridge between the needs of the field and the donor donors from all over the Turkey. And we were able to source and distribute 35 load of trucks, eight material and mobilized like 1000 1000 volunteers on the field. And like the way we did it was very organic, like we didn't have time to plan anything. So it was just happening. It was very emergent process. And once the fires couldn't control and rapidly grow to the second day, we started to have open calls via social media, WhatsApp groups to meet neighbors. And first we formed two teams, one for to visit the villages and talk to the neighbors. Since they've been dealing for forest fires for all their life, they have already experienced and know how. So we mined that insights. And the other team was responsible as that affected by the fire to see and learn about the process and what are the missing parts and also getting contact information from the regions so that we can coordinate with them. So basically, we collected the insights to tap in the local knowledge and seek advice from the experts, for example, like, okay, need to buy fire extinguishers, but do we buy the chemical ones? Or do we buy the form ones? We don't have any idea. So that was very important. And then make decisions with collaborative input. But we didn't wait for consensus. It was basically what we were doing that if someone has insight and takes responsibility to see the jobs to be done, then they can take initiative. And once the project ready, ask for objections. Is there any objection for this project and collect the feedbacks and decide and act? That's why it was very fast. And to give more concrete example about this process, in the third day of the fires that we learned that the village villages has this fire trailers, but only two of them have these trailers. And village people said that, okay, we need these trailers. And then one of our team member find a suitable manufacturer that is going to be provided in two days. And fundraising team stop all other fundraising efforts and focus on the because the neighbors insist it and they had the knowledge. So we changed the trajectory. And with the help of the local military police, we gathered the village chiefs. And we ended like 24 of these trailers in just three days. And fundraising happened from around 100 people. Imagine that like we couldn't, we would never manage to do this in three days in a hierarchical organization. And during the fires also like be connected with experts, our friends, our networks, they came and they helped us to have this organizational structure, which helped us to onboard and mobilize more volunteers. It was very important step in terms of mobilization. I'm not going to go to the details, but the big operations that was like need assessments, okay, what is needed on the field then logistics and procurement, fundraising, basically the government was like, you can't fundraise without a legal entity. So what we did was we find the places that needs to that can source the product that we need and send it the link to the donors and logistic team organized the arrival of the products. So that was really big hassle for us. And we had field teams, both for the fire intervention, but for also observation, the observation part was also important because the government started the fake news that fires was a terrorist attack. Somebody, some people were deliberately says like sabotage or attacked and people started to get their guns and start to cause some problems. So, but we can't go there and explain them, okay, this is, this is not a sabotage, but this is a climate change relating sub so what we did again connecting with the local military police. We changed the structure of the observation and it helped us build a new dialogue as well. Also animal rescue team and local coordination was other part of the efforts. Let's see. So this is a story. This is basically the military military station. And they led us use as a logistic center. Sounds are. Let's see. And this is the part where held where they hold the prison prisoners, but it came a storage unit, and people spent like eight hours, 10 hours here. And the other part that we filled the gap was that you can see here, the fire trucks needed to have at least four people to operate effectively, but because of the cuts and this allocations of the resources, all the trucks had only two people. So volunteers filled that gap. And these are the young kite surf teacher and young community in Akyaka, who are helping the firefighters. So like one of the most important learning for me was that diversity was our strength. And to be able to have that, I mean, I even joke about this, if I can, we can develop a diversity score and forecast the effectiveness of a community led organization. Because if you talk about disaster preparedness and response, you need everyone. You can't be just the volunteers because volunteers concept is a privileged urban concept. It doesn't have a relevancy in the village. So you need to have a solidarity across all demographic democracies and all community clusters. So that one of our strength and one of the most important learnings. And like after the disaster, we worked on a report and we realized that most important thing that we had was relationships that trust networks that already happened there. And also the key player, the bridge people who connect these networks during the crisis. Also competencies, if you need everyone on deck, if you have some special competencies that you can apply during the disaster, it changed the course of and know how and effectiveness of the organization. So after the disaster, we had a link report. And also, as Daniel mentioned, this is this affects you in very different levels. And especially the psychology that affected the parents, the young, the child, everyone. So we had a social first training. And also we field visits and social activities. And the learning report was important for us because it provided accountability and transparency for us because we were able to provide leads of the equipment that we distributed to the region with a complete report. So that was important. And also, since we don't have any legal entity, we use the report to have a main stream PR relations to build legitimacy. It was also important for us before we start to this summer's preparedness. And in the winter time, we started with the resource mapping with the local NGOs and municipality. And then we developed a blueprint with the village chiefs and volunteers in a workshop. And then the third step was we need a decision making an organizational structure that both easy to implement and easy to execute. So when we look at how we can solve this, we saw that sociocracy was basically what we did during the disaster organically. So we developed this organizational structure. And then we started trainings on first date and first fires. And also we use that blueprint to map the neighborhoods in terms of the risks and the resources. Here are some photos that we like we visited the neighborhoods and we met with the village chiefs and neighbors here. So we have 90 minutes of structured conversation blueprint for our volunteers to exit when they visit the villages. And we also developed an organizational driver to be able to align all these autonomous neighborhoods and the working groups. So our organization driver is basically we need to put out the fire in first 15 minutes. And how are we going to do that? Neighbors needs to be have a cube and ready for that intervention. So this is our organizational structure based on the sociocracy. And it is very dynamic. And every circle has at least three or four people here. And what we have here also a communication and very good program and what's up strategy on the red first fire of the season was put by the youth in the village. So we got we met with them and we interviewed with them. And actually we started to develop a project with them now. And we got training from the director of the forestry. And also we got first aid training and also like garbage collection meetings regularly during the high risk season. And one of the other things that we developed was also our technology work group connected with experts and the local university here. We developed this telegram chatbot to map the risks and resources. And we have this dashboard that we are using and all of the data that we collected is here on our air table database. And this is like we have the risk, we have the resources and the needs and the communication information of the people. So during this summer we had only four fires luckily in the region. And this database was so push to mobilize people. I mean, we have a long way to go. And one of the things that we are working on right now is training simulation. So it's in Turkish, sorry, but it's basically based on your role in your neighborhood. It says that, okay, you see the smoke and what is your next step? And you call the number then what's your next step. So this is kind of like a training simulation that one of our friends in Doctors Without Boards helped us in his surplus time. And yeah, this is and next for the next year, this winter, we already in touch with other civil initiative initiatives in the region. And we are working on a meeting in our region to be able to share these learns and tools with other initiatives, because based on the region and the context, every civil initiative has different strengths. So if we were to combine those learnings, we will have a wider solidarity in the region. And just to mention about since we became not just for the disaster, but we became neighbors, friends. And that solidarity helped us game this fertile ground for other projects, such as in December, we had a local heirloom seed project. And he did a local youth law food camp with university students and the young people who live in the village. And also we launched a young farm program, which that one young farmer is learning to apply regenerative agriculture practices. And we hope that he will become a role model and also help us to fuse the regenerative farming practices in the village. And so these are the some of the project that we've been working on. And yeah, thank you for the opportunity. And for me to see, I've been waiting for these disasters for the last six years, seven years. And I was kind of like stuck in a place that Habiga survived from all these. And I knew intellectually that solidarity and collection was important, but experiencing that and embodying that relationship and trust had me change both professionally and personally. And I'm gonna stop now. Thank you for the opportunity. I couldn't follow the chat, but yeah, does it make sense? But I don't know how others are reacting, but I'll just say whoa. The moment that I got most impressed was 24 trailers in three days. Go ahead with what you want to say, but two things. One, Shafak asks if you'll have your presentation if that's shareable. If you can email it. And they shared it and asked in Turkish. And so if there is a Turkish translation, let us know. And if not, we can maybe do some translation for some of the materials. But it's an incredible array of self-organizing that happened. And I found a lot of pieces that I was taking notes as an organizer about, oh, that system that you built. And I'm curious if you could say more about just how some of those unfolded. So sometimes when self-organizing happens, it can look like magic because it's like, they're just doing things. But also there's a way in which some people, for example, play a coordination role. So just do magic it for a moment. It is also magical, but also bring us a little bit more about how some of those networks unfolded to make that happen. I think one of the things that in Turkey, the OECD charts and statistics, the polarization is a top five. And when you think about like, you wouldn't expect something like this happen in Turkey because of that polarization, but the love of the nature and to be able to extend this nature's presence to next generations was a combining and like being a shared purpose. Like we have like lesbian couples convincing the police, local terrorist, you know, and like, and all the biases that people have like the village people had a lot of biases towards the newly immigrated people. But once you have that shared purpose, that moment when you look at in the eye of your neighbor with that same aim, then something started to change. And also I think one of the most important role that people play that the ones who are really calm and really have an empathy towards others, those are the ones who connect that bridges for us. So like in our core team, as you said, very magically, I sometimes I say that the big forest fire became a campfire that we gather around in a circle and become and remember our enemy cultures, you know, like and it it demolished all of the polarization and biases and and it's still going now, you know, like that's why we emphasize that our strength comes from our diversity, you know, like that is the most important part. And I'm not very happy about this volunteer concept, because it doesn't work in my opinion. And we are talking about this battery, blockchain, new economy, shit, you know, sorry, we need to be able to compensate the this care work that David Graber also mentions, you know, right now capitalism causing these problems. And they're trying to solve the problem that caused by that mechanism with the volunteer. I believe in that. So we are working on how we can utilize blockchain and new funding mechanisms as well. Yeah. Great. Thank you for that. And more people are asking for the slides. So you'll definitely have to share the slides. And another just question about how you I think one thing that I saw in the story that you're talking about is just how, as you say, lots of people sort of came in in a moment of a of a serious need and immediate impact. Politics in some ways went to the wayside. It didn't disappear at all. But it in some ways, it steps aside where you can use a place where people are waiting for prison as a spot for organizing. And something that like Kerry was talking about is sort of the feelings of hope and hopelessness. And I think one thing that happens is, in these moments when we have an impact, spaces can open up where communities can also they can collapse, they can also strengthen. And so you're signaling to us some of the ways that they can strengthen. And that's by both bringing an organizing approach that's very broad and very open. And I also hear bringing also serving people's immediate needs. And so dealing with very practical questions. And so we're not up here talking at a very high level, but a very practical, how can we assist you in protecting your home? How can we assist you in putting out a fire? How can we find four people to find 24 trailers in three days and find four people to staff each of those? What are any other things that you feel clear about like, maybe as one individual in who maybe we don't have a whole system set up. But what does one individual do that assists to help get into that terrain to help us organize? If I'm just one person and I know two neighbors, what's that starting spot to help do that self organizing? Great question, actually, because like, usually, like, people like us in this call are not very surrounded people like us. You know, we are alone in the neighborhood, we are alone the company, we are alone in some organizations. But for this, if you go to your neighbor and just talk about the risks and resources, like, okay, what are the risks in our region, right in our neighborhood? What are the risks that we should prepare for? And also what are the resources we have in case something happens and if you would need to use that? I think disasters are like great conversation openers, you know, like it is the perfect way to start a conversation in your neighborhood about to be prepared, you know. And during this disaster times, you know, in Greek, ancient Greek time has two structures like Kairos and Kronos, you know, like the Kairos is different while experiencing right now. And during the disaster, I think the Kairos opening up and there is more possibilities, more emerging futures that are waiting to born. And if you would even one person go to your neighbor and start that conversation, I mean, at least you can see that you're not alone. I mean, that is one thing. And also, like, even this winter, I say that like, even this winter that the people we worked at during the disaster, the majority opinion was, okay, this was a 100 year event. Maybe it's not gonna happen again. So we like even that fresh memory of three months, people were still, you know, maybe it's not gonna happen again. And we lost momentum on March and April. And we were like pushing like we had this core people. And also, that's why I don't believe in volunteers, because during that winter time and March and April, we worked with village chiefs, we worked with the locals, you know, like, because they knew if something couldn't, it's gonna, but you know, that that mindset, you need to connect. This is like community led, community based, anything is hard work. And you need to, you need to be there completely 100%. But that is even if you progress is slow, it's really very strong, very powerful. And luckily, we are in the end of this summer season. And like, we are that's why we're very happy and we end up not losing any area in Africa. But we had like four fires. And the structure that we built worked really good. People were not helpless. And people like people knew what they supposed to do in case of that emergency. And if you have family memory, if you have like, if you are father, if you are mother, if you like with your loved ones, for cat, for your dog, best thing that you can do is be prepared. And just start the conversation with your neighbor. Excellent. Thank you so much. Any, any last words that you want to offer? And then we'll go over to Hilda to share about some of the work that she's been doing. Yeah, just I want to say that, like, we have, I was really stuck between the nihilism or depression because of the collapse narrative. But now I see a third way. And that is the solidarity. And it just starts a conversation. It's, and even if small and local, it works. And it helps and it's very transformative. And thank you. Thank you so much, Buddha. So we're going to turn to Hilda. Hilda, if you can come off mute and on your video. We're going to get to hear from Hilda who there are many of us who are fans of Hilda for quite a while for the work that she's been doing on founding FSS in Uganda and being a spokesperson and just being a very powerful speaker engaging. And so we're excited to hear from you about how you and your community have been responding to climate impacts and the lessons that you're bringing with us. So again, I might interrupt just to ask a few questions along the way. But otherwise, I'll kick it over to you, Hilda. And so excited. Thank you for joining us. Yes. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Your video isn't working very well. So but go ahead and begin. Thanks. Okay. Thank you so much, Damia. I'm glad to be here. Hello to everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. According to where you're based, my name is Hilda and I come from Uganda. I come from a country that the colonialist once called the pearl of Africa. I come from a country whose past was glorious but present is uncertain. I come from a country which has vast rainforests. It has birds flying. It has wildlife. It has waterfalls and very fascinating flora and fauna. And in most cases tourist travel from developed countries to my country to frequently watch this thing. I come from a country that is filled with rivers and lakes, swamps and wetlands. And this country had copper but people of my generation are only seeing empty copper miles thanks to the British who exhaustively exploited it and developed themselves. My country is called Uganda and it's formed in the east of Africa. It's one of the poorest countries and that are very vulnerable to the impact of climate change. But with resources that continue to develop the already developed countries. I come from a country with diverse culture and tradition and my country has over 50 languages but thanks to the British who are made to speak one language and that is English so the other languages can be forgotten. By forgetting our language is giving up on our culture and our words. In my culture we have clans. We and every clan has a totem and every totem has its own beliefs and norms and these clans are differentiated on animal basis such as cow clan, lion clan, monkey clan, frog and so on. So I come from a Uganda culture and my clan is Kalabash monkey. One of our norms is that you are not supposed to eat your clan but rather you have to take care of it, you have to love it and this is done to preserve nature because you cannot hurt what you love so you cannot hurt your clan or your totem and this is how preservation, conservation and sustainability is practiced in my culture and 20 years back having a tree in every family's compound was unknown and we believed that our traditional spirits lived in these trees and that many and many people respected these trees so they could not cut them down for whatever reason but this is not the case anymore and that is why there is increased need for us to practice it. I'm speaking about this right now because there are a lot of climate catastrophes that are happening in the world. We are facing the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced and we have a lot of questions about what do we need to do, what has to be done, we are forgetting what we used to do that didn't lead us into what we are right now. These are this indigenous knowledge and practices that we used to do but we are so much on development that we forget what we used to do. I put together a short presentation here. This is a country where I come from and it has like you can see a lot of agriculture, forests, you know lakes like Lake Victoria which is the biggest freshwater body in Africa and it's also the second biggest in the world. We have forests like you can see here or what I'm talking about and the rate of forest cover, so yeah of forest cover loss in my country right now stands at about 2.6 percent annually and this is one of the highest in the world and most 30 percent of the forests are on protected land but then 70 percent is on private land that means there is more risk of this forest being cut down for human activities you know for construction, for agriculture and many other reasons. The mid variability which is becoming rough and has led to low productivity of crops, rampant droughts in some areas there are floods recently in the eastern part of my country we experienced floods and lost about 30 people and this is a very big challenge because this is a mountainous area and there are rivers that come from where the mountains pass from and these rivers burst their banks because we were experiencing heavy rains and because of these people's houses were flooded people's plantations were submerged and it goes on and on it happens each and every year my country keeps facing these floods and in the northern part it's a different story because there it's a question of drought there is a lot of drought in the northern parts of the country around here and these droughts affect close to 2.4 million people and it's estimated the estimated loss and damage value up to 1.2 billion equivalent to 7.5 percent of Uganda's or Mike's 20-inch effects that we experienced so as we may know Africa contributes less than 4 percent of the global greenhouse emissions but it's one of the continents that are facing firsthand effects of climate change and we continue to face this as the direct cause of the climate crisis is still happening and it's still going on global greenhouse emissions are continuing to increase even at a time when we have to limit that in order to stay alive this is a picture of the droughts that are happening in the whole of Africa and the floods that are happening in Uganda so this here is my village it's where I come from I remember traveling to my home village there it's in Masaka district when I was little and all I could see on the way were swamps, forests and bushes and more often my grandmother used to send us food in the city from our plantation because there was plenty in the gardens as time went on things started to change food became scarce and very expensive swamps and forests were cleared for rice and sugarcane growing by the so-called investors global warming causing unpredictable seasons disastrous weather conditions characterized by heavy rains strong winds lower high temperatures that threw down our crops dried our streams and without plantations making it hard for agriculture which was our source of survival as more and more conditions came up we had my family had to sell off of our land so as to survive so we started buying food from the city instead to take to take to my grandmother in the village because there wasn't more food coming from the village to support us or to sustain us so we had to buy food expectively from the city and sent her which was not the you can this past was glorious but the present is polluted I do not know about climate change until I attended a dialogue at my university and the speaker mentioned that very little is being done to tackle climate change and at that moment I felt very terrible and even more determined and responsible to be part of a solution and since then I joined millions of other people fighting for climate justice globally and from that time I made a decision I refused to be silent about the global crisis about the greatest challenge that we are facing and so I stood up and as I speak to you right now investors are clearing the forests for sugarcane plantations in the name of development what we've been working on lately is the east african crude oil pipeline oil giant total energy is yet to cost a 1,443 kilometer long pipeline it will be the world's longest heated crude oil pipeline I have pictures of it right here yeah uh this is the pipeline that I'm talking about it will start from hoima in Uganda and to the port of tanga in Tanzania it will be the world's longest heated crude oil pipeline and it is a climate bomb it is passing through major national parks it's passing through wetlands rivers it's passing through lakes it's putting millions of lives at risk a third of this pipeline is is expected to be built around lake victoria benzene as you can see this area so and this lake is shared among many countries in african which only that three but it's also that's also the longest river now and it goes all the way through Egypt a lot of people are at risk if in case of an oil spill happens from this pipeline the eco pipeline because it will cause uh it will affect lake victoria which benefits over 40 million people's lives and many that project has not uh completely compensated the people those who were able to get compensation uh it has been halfway and not fully paid and that is a very big challenge because they are not able to meet their regular lives or to meet their regular needs and live a normal life like they have been even before the pipeline many people are are at risk many people's lives are at risk and many communities have been affected many cultures have been affected have been had traditions are being lost due to this and this is what is happening in the community so most of the people's land has been taken and that time during the covid pandemic in 2020 people started to speak up because they didn't have land to grow crops because most of the land that was taken from them and total as a company promised to pay these people so it acquired land from the public and people were refused to use their land even when compensation has not been made so during the covid pandemic many people were affected because they would not access their land and yet they were not paid so people started to speak up about this and they say they could at least grow crops that do not take over three months to harvest so very small crops like beans that do not take a long time this pipeline is going to affect a lot of biodiversity which includes lakes and rivers Uganda is a country that is blessed with many lakes and rivers and where this pipeline in the previous place where this pipeline is pathing here is a lake there are many rivers around here and also this is a lake so Uganda as a country benefits a lot from fisheries and it contributes a lot to our economy lives it contributes a lot of life to water and other resources that means many people not to be able to get clean water you want to be able to carry out activities like fishing agriculture our health will be affected and many other things other by diversity is at risk this pipeline is passing through natural parks game reserves and one of the oldest which is Maksion Falls one of the one of the genders oldest national parks it has very many animals it has elephants it has both of those it has chimpanzees it has snakes birds crawlers all kinds of animals are already at risk also to mention this pipeline passes through forests one of Uganda's only net tropical forest that is the gama forest is going to be affected and this forest is already facing risk from sugarcane growers like I said investors who are coming in to take these natural resources away from the people in the name of this means and they love so investors are already clearing up this forest and otherwise from that is advocate could go pipeline because it would be cleared to create space for this pipeline which is not good as animals from this forest are already running away and encroaching in people's plantations and houses causing distractions and because of self-defense people are also killing these animals and thus reducing their numbers so the animals are afraid to the humans and the humans are afraid to the animals so it's because of this type of that wants to be constructed because of the all the bad species in Uganda the biodiversity Uganda is a country that is rich in biodiversity in nature there are lots and lots of birds so as activists as youth as young people we are mobilizing to to create an end to this pipeline because of the effects it has on our country on our land on the people on nature but also on the world at large this pipeline is expected to emit over 34.3 million metric tons of carbon a year and that is only in the exploration part that means there's more carbon to be emitted throughout the transportation period and this is a risk to all of us because at a time like this the world is looking at reducing carbon emissions in order to stay below 1.5 degree Celsius but projects like this are continuing to be constructed and they are proving to be a source of carbon emissions so this is a very it's a very ridiculous project and as Nemo explained in his presentation that many European countries are now looking at Africa as a resource of oil and gas but we just want to be clear on this that the African or Africa is not known for oil production it's not known for gas production we are known for agriculture and it's agriculture that can make our survival it's agriculture that we know how what to how to do it and it's agriculture that we did if there is any form of development it should be a just transition from fossil fuel from fossil fuels to renewable energy and some of these actions have been done locally but also internationally there is a stock ECOPE coalition which has over 20 organizations both local and global and we work together to address the issues around the African crude oil pipeline a lot has been done emails have been sent to different stakeholders total total as a company approached different bankers and insurers asking them for support in this project and we have been having different actions that included meeting these banks and these insurance companies and talking to them about the dangers the project is the dangers the project is is bringing on the people and how the project is violating human rights because many people's rights are not respected activists who speak up activists on human rights defenders who try to speak up against this project are silenced in different ways sometimes they are arrested sometimes they are detained sometimes they are harassed and sometimes they are threatened just uh get this message someone's telling you stop doing this or else something that will happen so there are a lot of insecurities with uh this project and if a project has such a beginning a beginning of arrests a beginning of detaining people a beginning of human rights violations then that means that project is not good for the people and that is why we are trying to create awareness about this and we've been working together with other activists internationally to create awareness especially in europe and in france because total is a french company and we created awareness about this economy uh france to get um support to get to create solidarity around us and also so that we have different actions happening around the world especially in these countries that have more freedom than us in Uganda it's not safe to have for example a climate strike and um you can be arrested you can be detained you can be shot so we work with other activists abroad who can have these actions of like the climate strikes freely without risking their lives without risking uh without risking their lives without risking anything and we continue to speak up about uh this is african huddle pipeline to create awareness among the people both locally and also internationally and uh biggest challenge locally is that uh many people know about the injures or the effects of the pipeline has uh government and the media and since the media is governed by the government there is even a bigger risk of people misunderstanding what what the pipeline is all about and there's even a bigger risk of the picture that people have about the pipeline because they think that the pipeline is a source of you know money is going to bring a lot of money to the country but which is not the case because the pipeline provides very free jobs and these jobs are uh for a short time they are just temporary jobs and our biggest challenge is changing the mindsets of the public and having them to to get the right information to understand the real the real actions that are taking place on ground and how people on the ground are being affected by this pipeline and many people are in denial because they think uh this project will benefit each and everyone and yet this project is just meant to benefit uh a few people who are having higher positions in the government but what is happening on ground is that the people that are being affected do not have a lot of space to share because they fear risking their lives because whoever talks about this project on the ground is threatened is harassed is detained and this is the kind of uh this is another challenge that we face that activists who want to support and you know join these activities have this fear that their lives will be at risk uh because of the threats that are going on because of the arrests but we try to gather use uh gather use and carry out a lot of sensitizations we talk to people in different languages uh which are to you explain to people the truth about the eco project and uh the threats it has and why that and how the government is miscommunicating or misinforming and all that and we continue to do this at universities because universities have a big number of people you can talk to big numbers of people at the same time and also because these are percentage a good percentage of land people so they uh they can understand this information uh quickly and these people can also talk to other people in the communities about this project about what is happening on ground so that we can build a movement of youth who are spreading climate awareness who are spreading uh the right information about the east African capital pipeline and doing different actions together so that we can store this pipeline and what we've been able to rally is uh first in building the numbers because if we are so many people speaking up about the east African capital pipeline then that increases our security so there's less risk in numbers as they want for example detained over 1000 or 2000 people in a police station so that is what we try to tell the people and also it has been very difficult to explain to people who do not have any clue about climate change and they are very many in Uganda because climate change is not taught in school so it's very hard for them to understand and what we do is we tell a story on what is happening in people's lives right now so for example if you go to a region that's being affected by floods you talk to them about what uh you try to explain climate change in a way that they understand or that they feel so you will use that as an example to help them understand what you are trying to convey and this has helped us in getting more people on board but also helping them understand easily what climate change is or what their role in combating climate change is by relating with the things that they understand or the challenges that they are facing at that exact moment sorry I'm going to interrupt and say thank you Hilda for your presentation I think many of us may have caught the heartbeat that what you're doing involves risk in fact and that given the political situation it's such a it's the kind of situation in which you said it that there's great risk and yet with numbers it actually supports us and so I appreciate that you sharing stories of both the place that you come from but also the international work that you're doing with the ECOP campaign a campaign that connects multiple countries both those who are immediately connected to um uh the pipeline and and directly impacted but also other countries who've also been being ally and support with it and so even just being on this call again is part of that global experience and so we're experiencing the global experience uh also a reflection of the international uh lack of justice just by internet disparity um and so I just I appreciate everyone bearing with some of the moments when we couldn't hear every word uh but we got your heartbeat and we got the message of what you're bringing Hilda and so thank you for that so much and I just as we're as we're heading into a close I want to invite people to share with us anything that you're committing to any lessons that you're bringing so I'm hoping that people are are pulling things out threads from all of the different people from Shabayan from Nemo from uh Hilda from Buda um and so feel free to post those on the chat some of the pieces that you're bringing and taking away that you're gonna use um I do again want to say thanks to all the panelists um I'm I'm reminded at this moment uh as I was we were organizing these training sessions one of my colleagues said to me she said look if there's if you speak to one person if you can move one person to commit their life to doing work on climate change or believing that this work it matters that's a success it's not about the 10,000 I mean if you can convince 10,000 that's good too but if you can move one person and I'm reminded about this in the spirit of of dealing with our climate impacts that it's about saving the people next to us is about protecting the people around us it's about building a global community but also as Buda said it's about connecting with uh just the the the neighbor next to us and so whether we feel like we can speak to thousands or we can just speak to our neighbor we have uh responses available uh ways to act and I'm reminded also about my own uh my own daughter uh who she after after the flood um when the flood happened we we canude over to our neighbors to check in on them and my daughter came out smiling after that experience uh and she said Daniel I hope it floods again she's four uh three at the time but I appreciate it as a just I mean it blew my mind because I did not want it to flood and I do not want it to flood and yet I hear Buda telling us that in fact this this moved him out of despair uh I hear Nemo talking about how people are refusing to act out of fear and are still committing to justice greater and greater justice and awareness I hear Hilda saying even though our government is can be repressive even though acting can be dangerous that actually when we build a circle of people that it connects us and so thanks for joining us for today thank you for the work that you're doing um uh we will share these chats we will share these recordings um Hilda you seem to have a new fan Jane wants to connect with you uh and have your email address I hope you'll be able to connect directly um and just thank you all the panelists interpreters I know not every moment is easy thank you interpreters um thank you all the panelists again thank you for all the tech people and thank you everyone so have a great night morning afternoon wherever you are um and all blessings all right bye everyone