I remember the day I first heard Vanessa Nakate’s name: the day she was cropped from a photo next to other young climate activists, and she decided not to let it slide. The backlash from that incident introduced the world to the reality of the many climate activists beyond Europe and the USA. It also brought home the fact that climate action must be intersectional to truly be relevant in our world.

A Bigger Picture is the book the world needs to see a more global picture of climate action. Its weakness lies in the fact that it is largely amorphous: now it is a memoir, now it is motivational; now it is a rallying cry for climate activism, now it is a treatise. While I’m not saying this can’t be done, I am saying that it needed to be restructured to be more impactful. While Nakate is clearly a formidable young woman, there are sections that required more depth and self-awareness.

Young people at the beginning of their activism journey will benefit greatly from A Bigger Picture, and the developed world will benefit from knowing - well, the bigger picture.

A Bigger Picture by Vanessa Nakate

In January 2020 at the World Economic Forum conference held in Davos, Switzerland Vanessa Nakate was cropped out of a photo with four white climate activists. This erasure highlighted the inequalities within the climate justice movement and the media.

Nakate is a Ugandan activist who advocates for African voices to be heard in the debate around the climate crisis. Africans are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis and it is the continent that is most at risk of very serious and devastating consequences of a warming planet.

“You cannot have climate justice without racial justice. It isn’t justice if it doesn’t include everyone.” - Vanessa Nakate

In A Bigger Picture, Nakate gives a voice to those in the Global South. A voice to the people of Uganda who are more at risk of drought, famine, floods, disease and death than ever before. Those with the fewest resources who have contributed the least to the climate crisis are those who are suffering the most. Nakate’s book shows her personal journey into activism, documents the urgent issues facing her homeland and gives inspiration and ideas for readers to engage with the problems in their own ways.

We cannot wait any longer to wake up to this truth, to these voices and to find ways to act.

On a final note, whilst I have a lot of love for the Wainwright Prize I can’t help but feel devastated that they had a longlist of 13 titles on global conservation and not a single one was written by an activist from the Global South. This book was eligible and was missed out.

A Bigger Picture, Vanessa Nakate

🌍 climate action in Africa
🌍 invisibility of the Global South
🌍 how to be an activist

The Bigger Picture details Vanessa Nakate’s journey as a youth climate activist and draws attention to some of the most pressing climate issues afflicting Africa.

In 2020, Vanessa Nakate attended the World Economic Forum as a young African climate activist. As the only non-white activist, she was later cropped out of a photo taken by the Associate Press (AP). Understandably, this felt like a negation of Vanessa’s personal worth and a dismissal of the whole African continent. Africa not only continues to suffer from legacies of colonial exploitation, but also experiences extreme climate events largely caused by carbon emissions in the Global North. Yet most of it is completely unknown to people from more developed countries, sometimes overlooked even by Africans themselves.

How much do we hear about deforestation in the Amazon or wild fires in Australia and North America? But how much do we hear about the destruction of the Congo rainforest or extreme draughts and floods in Africa? This disproportionate coverage says a lot about the way African lives continue to be sidelined. By raising awareness and writing this book, Vanessa shows the bigger picture and asserts the importance of the least visible regions in the Global South. Climate action shouldn’t just be ‘white people shit’.

In addition to geography, there’s also a bigger socioeconomic picture. Vanessa clearly outlines how climate issues, gender inequality, economic hardship, food insecurity, and lack of access to education are all interconnected, and must be addressed together.

I really appreciate how Vanessa always keeps the local context in mind when she promotes climate action. For example, education is not free in Uganda, so FFF-style climate strikes for schoolchildren could be counterproductive. Instead of organising students to walk out of classes, Vanessa brought climate education into schools, installing cleaner stoves to reduce pollution and planting fruit trees to supplement students’ diets.

Particular attention is paid to girls and women, since they tend to be disproportionately affected by climate disasters given their close connection to the land. For example, when harvests are bad, young girls might be taken out of school to help at home, or even married off in exchange for food and money.

On a more personal level, Vanessa also talks about the nitty gritty of becoming an activist: how to defy convention and speak out as a young Ugandan woman, how to organise climate protests, how to use social media to spread the message. She also shares her experience of coping with vicious voices online and recovering from activist burnout.

Overall, this book is clear, informative, and offers a unique perspective. Thank you @panmacmillan for the digital ARC.

A Bigger Picture
My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis
by Vanessa Nakate

Vanessa Nakate is an environmental activist. This is her account of her career in activism. It is an exploration of her motivation for joining the movement and an account of her experience within a predominantly white institution. It is a crushing indictment of capitalism, white supremacy and a power structure that cares little for either the planet on which it exists or for the people that it seeks to govern. It is also a celebration of the community of individuals who fight against these structures.

I was introduced to Vanessa Nakate last year, as she entered the world stage as the activist who was cropped from the photo at the World Economic Forum at Davos, whilst her white peers were celebrated. She was the only Black woman, and also the only activist from Africa.

A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis by Vanessa Nakaten is a
memoir, as well as an insight into how climate activism takes place in Africa. I read the book as the UK prepares for the arrival of world leaders to COP 26, and hope that the calls from Nakate and other activists in what we call the Global South are met with the urgency these activists require.

***Thank you Netgalley and Pan MacMillan for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.***