By Anne Jellema, 350.org’s Executive Director
Anne has a rich history of working with social movements, women’s organizations, and grassroots activists across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Her career began in South Africa as a community organizer and land rights activist, embedding a people-first approach to strategy design and advocacy. Connect with Anne on LinkedIn
Let’s be honest: this is a scary time. On the one hand, climate impacts are hitting us harder and faster than anyone was prepared for. On the other hand, fossil fuel giants like Shell, BP and Total have abandoned their climate targets and are massively increasing production instead. Our governments seem unable or unwilling to stop them. Worse, they are actually encouraging fossil expansion with over $1 trillion in public subsidies a year. At this difficult juncture, what’s the best way to make progress? Stopping bad things, or championing good ones? Hope, or anger?
Like most activists, I’ve always believed in saying “no” to injustice. I have to admit that it’s only recently that I came to understand the power of “yes”.
Take the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), for example. Billed as the world’s longest heated pipeline, it would saddle Uganda and Tanzania with massive debts, destroy pristine natural habitats and displace over 100,000 people. All so that French oil giant Total can export African oil in its relentless quest to keep the world consuming more and more fossil fuels.
When the project kicked off a few years ago, I was at an international anti-poverty organization that had worked in pipeline-affected areas for decades. Our research showed that EACOP would wipe out many times more livelihoods than it created, while also hastening the destruction of the planet.
I was furious. I pushed my organization to join the #StopEACOP campaign that 350.org had helped to launch. But there was just one problem: our local staff and partners didn’t want to take part. In the global headquarters, we could not understand why they were being – as it seemed to us – so risk-averse. We convened a meeting in Arusha, Tanzania to break the impasse.
There, a different reality dawned on me. Our East African colleagues explained that with their leaders fervently promoting oil exports as a patriotic route to energy access and prosperity for all, simply saying “no” to the pipeline would not be enough. In fact, politicians could (and did) dismiss the campaign as a neocolonial ploy, and Western investors pulling out didn’t persuade the Ugandan and Tanzanian governments – or voters – to shut down the project. As Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate explained: “The Global North developed and became rich at the expense of very many communities while extracting fossil fuels and we see how wealthy these nations are. So for many people in developing countries, coal, oil and gas … means a door to wealth.”
Indeed, if Donald Trump can convince Americans that “Drill, baby, drill” is the best way to improve their living standards, imagine how much more compelling such false but seductive claims are in a country like Tanzania – where only 2% of rural households have access to electricity.
Mukabarungyi Jolene is a farmer in Kijumba village, in the region of Hoima, Uganda. Before she received a solar system through the REPower Afrika campaign, she struggled with darkness and health issues due to the use of firewood and grass to light their homes at night. Photo credit: Henry Desouza Nelson / 350.org
That’s when I realized that for the climate justice movement to bring ordinary people along with us, we need to offer more than stopping the bad. We also have to propose a better alternative. I joined 350.org because it is on the forefront of building a movement for people’s solutions. A movement that harnesses the anger and fear for the future that we rightly feel, and channels it towards hope.
350’s REPower Afrika campaign responds to Vanessa Nakate’s call for “solutions that are led by African people, for African people, on African terms.” It offers exactly what people in the path of the pipeline were asking for: jobs, economic development and accessible energy but without the pollution, violence, corruption and displacement that accompanies fossil extraction.
Meanwhile, the #StopEACOP campaign has successfully stalled the pipeline project – creating vital breathing space for 350 and our grassroots partners to show that renewables provide a more affordable, healthier, more inclusive and less risky path to better quality of life for all. And in many other parts of the world, 350 local groups are doing the same.
While the challenges are steep, if we join together we can put an end to fossil fuels. Science and economics are already on our side, and so is a majority of public opinion. Now we need to create an unstoppable groundswell so that governments take our tax dollars away from the planet’s number one enemy – the fossil fuel industry – and back a massive rollout of renewable energy instead.
Together, we can say “yes” to energy solutions that are clean, affordable, and safe for the planet; “yes” to a future of shared human thriving; “yes” to the power of people to make a better world. Join us!
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