Climate change education: Teach large corporations to protect the environment

I used to work at an NGO focused on climate change and environmental awareness. I was expected to develop educational and agricultural programmes targeting mostly rural farmers in the Kavango East and West regions to sensitise them to climate change issues. In these regions, subsistence agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for 16% and 31% of the population. The NGO’s programme encouraged local farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices.

In these regions, there has been contention over oil exploration and discovery. In mid-2021, Canadian-based firm ReconAfrica announced that they had discovered oil in the Kavango East and West regions. Since then, ReconAfrica has started operations for oil production. However, several environmental groups, such as Frack Free Namibia (FFN), have expressed concern over the impact of such activities on the region’s sensitive plant and animal life.

Through my work in the Kavango East and West regions, I started to think more deeply about climate change and environmental awareness programmes run by NGOs. I started questioning whom these organisations chose to target. Why are they targeting primarily rural (and poor) communities when it is clear that large corporations are causing the most harm?

I approached a few of my team leaders and shared my thoughts. I wanted us to become more involved in addressing concerns in the Kavango East and West regions over oil production. I thought we could be effective by pursuing an environmental campaign with ReconAfrica. The campaign could potentially assist in mitigating the impact of oil production on the environment.

My idea was to sensitise some of the staff of ReconAfrica through a workshop on climate change and environmental awareness issues. My team leaders, however, turned down my proposal because they thought it was bizarre to target ReconAfrica for our environmental campaigns. The work we did was to only sensitise rural and poor communities to climate change.

However, the reality is that environmental programmes depend on large corporations for financing.  These companies often only fund programmes that target rural communities. Therefore, my team leaders did not accept my proposal. This perpetuates a perception that rural communities are uneducated or not aware of environmental issues. These communities were mostly framed in this way to secure funding from international organisations. This means that the NGO would propose educating rural communities on their environmental impact to encourage them to adopt more environmentally friendly ways of living.

This perception perpetuates the belief that rural communities threaten the environment. The dependency of rural communities on wood for fuel and timber is often cited as the underlying cause of this belief. For example, about 75% and 91% of the population rely on wood for energy in the Kavango East and West regions. This is one of the reasons why NGOs primarily target rural communities for climate change and environmental campaigns.

The targeting of rural communities is largely unnecessary. These communities have their traditional knowledge about how to deal with the issues of climate change. For example, in November 2021, when I attended a workshop on climate change at the Mashare Agricultural College, the Senior Traditional Councillor for Administration, Alois Gende of the Shambyu Traditional Authority, also stressed this point.

In this workshop, we presented a newly developed programme for rural farmers on climate change mitigation primarily focused on encouraging farmers to adopt sustainable agriculture practices. Gende criticised the programme for not including the traditional knowledge of the Shambyu tribe in creating more awareness around climate change and environmental issues. For him, it was like the NGO was imposing specific ideas of climate change that were far removed from the situation of the Shambyu – especially as it relates to their present socio-economic struggles. For example, the Shambyu know when a rainy season or drought would approach them. They rely on observations of their environmental surroundings to predict the weather. Therefore, it does not make sense for the programme to use expensive technology for early warning systems. Instead, it was suggested that people from Shambyu be employed to fulfil such a role.

This should be seen in the context of broader socio-economic challenges facing the Shambyu, especially its younger population. There currently are high levels of unemployment in the Kavango East and West regions. About 62.5% and 46.8% of the population are unemployed. Even though subsistence farming exists, most of it is inadequate, leading to food shortages. In the Kavango East and West regions, roughly 92.1% and 89.2% of the population face food shortages. Therefore, it did not make sense for the Shambyu to use technological tools while the local population could be employed and provide such services to the programme. That traditional knowledge systems are generally not included in programmes by NGOs shows that the concerns of rural communities are rarely taken seriously. 

This relates to views that regard rural communities as a problem to climate change and the environment rather than as equal partners in contributing to efforts at addressing climate change. It serves to frame rural communities as destructive to the environment, which is based on their present socio-economic challenges. Moreover, it downplays the role played by large corporations in furthering environmental destruction. There have been several cases of companies contributing towards environmental destruction. In 2014 Bosveld Phosphate’s industrial activities in the Kruger National resulted in the pollution of the Selati River.

This leads to ill-conceived development programmes by NGOs that do not speak to the aspirations of local communities, resulting in limited socio-economic changes envisioned by these programmes. Therefore, NGOs should include traditional knowledge systems in their programs to ensure more effective results. In addition, large corporations should engage in more introspection and become aware of their role in environmental destruction. Therefore, their financing programmes should be more encompassing and include climate change and environmental awareness in corporations (and not only rural communities). This can assist in strengthening programmes on climate change and environmental awareness.

Edited by Cassandra Roxburgh and Uzoma Ihejirika