On April 27, Rwandan eco-feminist Grace Ineza Umuhoza received the prestigious 2023 Global Citizen Prize in New York, inscribing her name on the list of renowned activists who have won the coveted award.
The 27-year-old impact-driven activist and founder of The Green Protector, a non-governmental organisation focusing on engaging young people in environmental protection, was elated to win the global accolade but above everything, it challenged her to do even more.
The bubbly self-confessed ‘eco-feminist’ in an interview with The New Times said that she is now setting her sights on getting more young people involved in environmental protection, but also pushing the world to act now because the planet is in peril.
Call her Rwanda’s Greta Thunberg if you wish but Ineza has cut her name in the environmental advocacy circles yet this is something she never dreamt of growing up.
"I wanted to be a pilot or someone who can work closely with the planes, but I found myself here because I was exposed to the vulnerabilities of our community,” says the water and environmental engineering graduate.
"I heard that inner call inside me saying that there should and there must be a point where I could start in developing a solution to protect my community for a better tomorrow,” she said, explaining how she ventured into her current occupation.
In her own words, her journey has been a long one, even at her seemingly young age, but it started early. As a child, she would see people displaced from their homes due to environment-related disasters such as flooding and landslides.
It was something very inconvenient for her and she thought she could do something about it. That is how she abandoned her plans to pursue mechanical engineering or anything to do with planes upon finishing high school.
As a teenager, she recalls an incident in which she survived a weather-related event when her family’s house was rattled by Mother Nature.
Being woken up by her mother in the depths of the night to a collapsing roof due to intense wind and rainfall is something she will never forget. The more she saw pictures on television of similar incidents in different parts of the country, the more she wanted to do something about it.
The Northern Province where she partly grew up is one of the areas that experience extreme weather disasters. "It is scary when natural disaster strikes, you don’t know whether you will make it out or not.”
ALSO READ: Kigali awarded for upholding environmental protection
To her, a course in environmental and water engineering was the closest she could get to understanding what was going on, and there was no better place to study such a course than her home country. This is how she ended up at the National University of Rwanda (NUR), now the University of Rwanda (UR).
She was around 16 when she came face-to-face with nature and, to take up the challenge, she knew she had to be a leader in what she was doing. In 2014, when she joined the university, she set her dream in motion and started working.
Today, Ineza is being recognised globally for her work in engaging young people and leaders in environmental causes, which is how she was acknowledged for her outstanding work in environmental conservation.
The Global Citizen Prize aims at celebrating activists and leaders around the world who positively impact their communities. Ineza is still smiling after her feat, and she says she is honoured and grateful for the recognition.
"I am honoured and grateful because it is like a simple highlight and recognition of how much the world is ready to understand and take risks in investing in working with today’s generation. We are the generation that is past the phase of only blaming leaders because we are also pacing the solution,” Ineza said.
Ineza said the award is timely, coming at a time when the world is recognising the contribution of young people like her who are actively working to make a difference, especially when it comes to fighting climate change, both at the national and international levels.
She believes climate change is the most toxic issue young people have to deal with, especially when it comes to loss and damage.
"We are living in an era where climate change is interlinked with every sector, especially sustainable economic development sectors for communities, but then we are not having the same urgency of action in the political phase,” Ineza said.
ALSO READ: Environment protection and waste management in Rwanda
She believes that the award is going to be a platform for her and other young people to really advocate for the future they want to see.
"The future for us is going to be achieved if we address the climate crisis to the full extent of its magnitude, that it is happening right now,” she said.
Ineza was nominated for the award by fellow environmental activist Elizabeth Wathuti for the work she has done in the Loss and Damage Coalition, an initiative they started in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We realised that, although people were being recommended to stay indoors, for some of us it was not the case. That was the same year that Rwanda experienced serious flooding, and people were not able to stay indoors to protect themselves from Covid-19,” she said.
The scenario prompted youth from developing and developed countries to come together and discuss the challenges and find solutions through concrete actions.
Part of what they do is face leaders and tell them the truth about climate change, hold them accountable, and ask them to act. She has been doing this since 2018 when she set out to start The Green Protector with her colleague.
With the support of local authorities, they attended a global conference where they became familiar with the concept of "loss and damage”.
Loss and damage refer to all the negative consequences that arise from the unavoidable risks of climate change, like rising sea levels, prolonged heat waves, desertification, the acidification of the sea, and extreme events, such as bushfires, species extinction, and crop failures.
It was a topic that touched Ineza and her colleague, and they realised that it had been largely ignored, with no voices from developing countries, no women, and no young people. They decided to take it up.
"We were coming from a community that really lived those experiences,” Ineza said, adding that while other people could be simply reading about these events, other people were living the experiences in real life.
When they started talking in 2020, there were not more than 10 young people from across the world; today, there are more than 800 young people from at least 70 countries, both developed and developing.
The award, her first, is something that really affirmed that she is doing the right thing and that she is one voice out of the many that can do something to make a difference in the world.
The accolade also comes with bigger responsibilities to hold leaders accountable and push for more tangible change.
"It really means a lot that we got this recognition,” Ineza said, pointing out that it presents a major opportunity to do more, also considering that Rwanda is among the countries doing the most in conserving the environment by putting in place the right policies and actions.
Ineza said that Rwanda is a country that understands how vulnerable it is to these challenges and has put in place an ecosystem for her and others to operate and support the government’s efforts.
Whenever she travels and has to speak before a conference or group of people, she has a lot of examples to pick from, regarding what Rwanda has achieved in minimising the loss and damage associated with climate change.
From a wetland reclaimed to create the amazing Nyandungu Eco Park to lakes, to rivers and forests that have been restored—there is a lot to talk about. These are some of the examples she shares with the world when she gets the chance.
That is not to say that Rwanda is not exposed anymore to climate change-related dangers, such as the recent floods and landslides that hit parts of the country, which is why work must continue. It is a wake-up call.
It is also happening across the globe with floods in Malawi, Germany, Italy, etc. and the difference in resources means that countries cannot respond to these challenges the same way.
The developed countries quickly intervene but developing ones struggle when they are hit with such disasters. Ineza and her colleagues are working to ensure that at least there is some sort of balance in terms of access to resources.
Using her voice, Ineza hopes to draw in more young people to this cause because it is them to determine the future, and the future belongs to them.
She believes that the environment and climate change, topics which young people tend to leave for adults, is a pertinent issue that all young people need to be fully involved to secure their own future.
Going forward, Ineza believes she can use her platform and global recognition to encourage young people to join in because the time is now.
She argues that despite Rwanda contributing just 0.01% to global greenhouse gas emissions, the country experiences some of the worst effects of the climate crisis, as seen recently in some provinces of the country.
It is high time the youth took up the mantle to do their part in averting a crisis that has already exposed its underbelly to innocent citizens that have contributed less to its occurrence.