During the first day of the Copenhagen summit, where world leaders meet to decide about the future of our planet, the expected focus tends to be overshadowed by the Climate-Gate Affair. An extra concern is now whether science behind climate change is real. Or are we this time facing an inconvenient lie?

By Sara de Wit

The story of climatic change with its ‘apocalyptic aura’ is under threat. With the human driven obsession for truth we seem to forget that the story is a reality in its own.

A new message for Africa
In the Bamenda grassfields, situated in the North West region of Cameroon, the rainy season has come to an end. It paved the way for the harshness of the dry season. With the crisis rhetoric and the Copenhagen summit in the back of my mind, my recent encounters with farmers in this fertile mountainous area seem all the more surreal. For farmers who have not yet been converted into the new regime of truth, this rainy season was just one of those years with abundant rainfall. The list of the more urgent problems they are facing is endless. Other farmers have yet been sensitized, by NGOs, churches or radio programmes. They link the climatic message with an experienced reality which leaves them in fear. One of them is Toto.

Toto
Toto Ngang (38) lives with his wife and eight children as a subsistence farmer. He shares his understanding of climate change with me: “We have never been so terrified in our lives. We hear about a global fight, we hear that we in Africa are the first victims. We don’t know when this war is actually coming or how it will be, but we have witnessed the first signs already this year. We are not even sure about our lives. It is because we have cut down all our trees. The only thing we can do is wait and pray. We want to plant trees, but we lack the means”.

Since the Kyoto protocol we all must ‘think globally, and act locally’. Including Toto. Toto does not only lack the means, but he has other concerns than planting trees for combating the global threat. Unluckily for Toto and his family, he might lose his land if he doesn’t act locally.
Transmitting the green message

Thinking of Africa’s carbon emissions on the global scale – less than 3% – on the one hand and the scope of the environmental consciousness in Bamenda on the other hand, there seems to be a discrepancy between realities. The green message triples down to the grassroots through various facets of society. But not necessarily to adapt to a changing environment. No. It’s the global interest that matters. Schools, traditional rulers, churches and mosques are part and parcel of NGO policies. Churches unite climate change discourses with eco-theology (the earth is God’s creation) or eschatology preaching (the end of time is arriving unless we pray, show morally good behavior and plant trees).

Traditional rulers have grouped together and seized the climatic threat to reinforce their power. A powerful king addressed other kings in this region: “We intend to mitigate the effects of climate change by intensifying community participation in climate change related activities as a matter of law. And installation of local climate change control committees and observation posts around the palaces.”

While top leaders in Copenhagen are trading air and questioning the source of the story, Toto’s wife is mitigating climate change. She lacks firewood to feed her children. But sure, let’s fight together.