The Nairobi Summer School on Climate Justice is an initiative of the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA). It is conducted annually. Its overall purpose is to promote creative voices, especially from young people and climate justice activists and inspire social and scientific innovations that tackle the vexed questions of environmental and climate justice, including intra and intergenerational equity.
It brings together long-standing climate justice actors, younger generations of campaigners and activists, climate justice advocates and practitioners both individual and organizational representatives from across the world to share experiences and perspectives to especially reflect on just pathways to a low-carbon, climate-resilient, socially-just development trajectory.
The inaugural event was held between 30th August – 11 September 2021 at Kenyatta University. Similarly, the Second Edition of the Nairobi Summer School saw over 150 participants attending physically while over 700 others attended virtually. The participants were drawn from 47 African countries. It was held again at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya from June 26th to July 10th, 2022. It commenced with a high-level symposium graced by established individuals and organizations such as PACJA, Cop27 Presidency, UNECA), SIDA, Kenyatta University, ACC, and WEDO.
The following days saw learners being introduced to various topics under particular themes. These were as follows: Introduction to climate change and climate crisis (day 2); response measures, emerging solutions, and policy options (day 3); critical climate justice issues for the global south (day 4); political economy analysis of climate change and the relationship between Africa and the global north (day 5); climate finance and green jobs (day 6); renewable energy and just transition (day 7); renewable energy development in Africa (day 8); climate justice advocacy, movement building and action in the global south: skills and tools (day 9); and advocacy and approaches in climate justice movement (day 10).
The end of the summer school was crowned with a high-level closing ceremony attended by representatives of the partner organizations including Kenyatta University, ACC, University of Glasgow, PACJA, AGN, Africa Adaptation Initiative, Embassy of the Netherlands in Nairobi, High Commission of the United Republic of Tanzania in Kenya, and the CAHOSCC.
Participants were also taken for exposure trips within the University and to Gatundu South in Kiambu County, on the outskirts of Nairobi city. The closing ceremony also culminated with a tree planting session where over 200 trees were planted. READ MORE/ DOWNLOAD
“After Nairobi Summer school the acquired aided me in understanding climate change advocacy and other correlative subjects such as the origin and trends of climate justice, climate finance tool kits, social media campaign strategy and good networking skills”, says Jiata.
Jiata says she gradually changed the wrong stereotypes about unsustainable ways of living within youths in her community especially the one around deforestation practices.
One of her activities that was actually conspicuous was her involvement with Pakit Foundation School through the climate Leadership Fellowship programme back in 2022.She empowered 104 students on climate change with innovative toolkits and built a community of young climate actors by establishing an environmental club.
