My Climate Action Story

My name is Glory Amarachi Brendan-Otuojor. I am a Nigerian climate change and development professional. I hold a master's degree in Environmental Planning and Management from IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands. Since 2008, I have been contributing to driving the climate change conversation to different actors and sectors in Nigeria as well as in developing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and action plans, advocating for policies for renewable energy development, and advancing gender and youth inclusive climate change programming in Nigeria. My interest in climate change activism started during my undergraduate study of geography. After learning how human activities have altered the atmosphere and depleted the ozone layer, leading to global warming and climate change.

As a teenager, I lived with my elder sister who was a civil servant. To supplement her income, she acquired agricultural land where we plant some crops every year. We would plant groundnuts, maize, yam and vegetables in the farm. These were crops that are usually planted at the onset of the rain and harvested within a very short period of time. My sister will sell some of the proceeds while we consume some. There was this particular year, the rain started quite early in January rather than the usual April/May. The rain fell for over two weeks and so farmers including my sister started planting their crops. Just when the crops started spouting, the rain seized and never came again until after two months with intense heat. Because farming here is rain-fed, the crops withered and died and many farmers lost their produce. It was a devastating year for peasant farmers that year. I could not understand exactly what happened until I got into the university to study geography. Then I knew that human activities are causing the planet to warm leading to climate change-induced disasters like flooding, drought, and erosion which often result in the destruction of infrastructure, loss of lives, farmlands and severe loss of food crops, thus posing a great threat to food security as well as a devastating impact on the environment and on human society.

Since learning about climate change, I have joined several platforms used to drive the climate change conversations, amplify actions, engage multi-stakeholders and galvanize Civil Society inputs into critical climate change decision making and policy development in Nigeria and Africa. I participated in pioneering advocacy for gender mainstreaming and youth participation in climate change programmes in Nigeria and Africa and was actively involved in organizing the first Nigerian Youth Conference on Climate Change which called on government to consider the future of young people and take action to reduce global warming. I have equally been very active with shaping discussions around gender and climate change and in empowering women and girls to be active contributors to addressing climate change impacts. I belong to the Women and Gender Constituency, one of the nine stakeholder groups of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established in 2009 to ensure that women’s voices and their rights are embedded in all processes and results of the UNFCCC framework, for a sustainable and just future and so that gender equality and women’s human rights are central to the ongoing discussions.

In 2018, I founded Development Impact Pathfinders Initiative (Devimpath), a nonprofit organization that works with vulnerable communities, young people and women and girls to address social, economic and environmental issues including climate change, water and sanitation, gender, education and related challenges. I have led capacity building programmes that catalysed the creativity of young women and girls in developing sustainable solutions to climate change and waste management. I have been involved in climate action mobilization, advocacy, training projects that enhanced the understanding of young people about climate change and built their capacity to push and influence climate action. 

There are several publications that contain information that mislead the public and rubbish scientific evidences of human induced climate change. Powerful corporations who are involved in activities that are contributing to climate change and global warming are funding researches and media campaigns to push out false narratives about climate change to the public. This disinformation is negatively impacting on people’s perception of climate change and impeding climate action globally even as human activities continue to devastate the environment and induce extreme weather events. In the near future, I hope to produce articles and documentaries to bring to public knowledge the threats of climate disinformation on climate action with the aim of equipping people with the tools they need to identify and resist climate disinformation and contribute to the fight against climate change.

For now, I am focused on the intersection of climate change and gender. I see social, cultural, economic and gender-based barriers that make women and girls more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and limit their capacity to adapt to the impacts. I want to be able to tell stories of the increased burden women and girls are facing because of climate change, and bring to light how women and girls are contributing to addressing climate change impacts in their communities. Luckily, I have been accredited as a Civil Society Observer to participate in the 2023 Conference of Parties (COP28) holding in Dubai in December 2023. But there is a challenge, I have to bear the cost of my participation and it is a whole lot. I will appreciate anyone that will like to support me attend COP28. Thank you for taking time to read my story.