We are too pressed to wait
Statement developed by residents of Mukuru, one of the biggest informal settlements in Africa, at a Community Dialogue organized by Global Center on Adaptation and Akiba Mashinani Trust on 3 September 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya, in advance of the Africa Climate Summit
I
n our homes in Mukuru, all that stands between us and climate change are thin iron sheets.
When it rains, we are filled with dread as we raise our beds on stones, to prepare for contaminated floodwaters that we know will enter our houses to cause disease and destruction.
When the temperature rises – as it now often does in Nairobi – our homes heat up like ovens, and we get sick because we have nowhere else to go.
When there is drought, food prices go up and some of us go hungry.
Many of us are daily wagers – who may or may not earn a wage daily, because jobs are hard to come by. Yet we pay higher prices for poor quality public services, more than formal citizens of Nairobi. A 20-liter jerry can of water costs 6 shillings in Mukuru and 20 shillings during times of water scarcity. It costs 70 cents for the formal citizens of Nairobi.
Excellencies, we welcome you to our city for the Africa Climate Summit.
We ask that you understand our urgency. We are too pressed to wait.
Communities like ours in Mukuru urgently need the support pledged to protect us from the impacts of climate change.
Keep your promise of doubling adaptation finance. It is a must.
That is our first challenge for you.
But we know already that US$ 40 billion by 2025 will still fall short. It is urgent that limited adaptation finance is used effectively and targeted to the climate vulnerable. To avoid waste and maladaptation, the vulnerable should be empowered to decide how their needs should be met.
We in Mukuru already have a People’s Adaptation Plan, which describes what needs to be done to control flooding in a space-constrained informal settlement, and to reduce social and economic vulnerability. It is a locally-led Plan that is inspiring replication in cities across Africa. But we cannot access climate finance to implement the flood control measures that we have developed.
Commit to ways to make adaptation finance easily accessible by the urban poor – the most vulnerable in Africa’s cities – for locally led adaptation.
That is the second challenge we set you for the Summit.
Kenya has demonstrated how climate finance can be delivered for locally led adaptation, through the County Climate Funds Mechanism. Mechanisms like this, which make flexible funding more easily accessible by affected communities, should become the norm rather than the exception.
We know the problem. We have the solutions. We are vulnerable to climate change, but strong, willing, and ready to act.
We now need you to deliver on your promises to provide adaptation finance, and to make it accessible by the most vulnerable.
