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Constance Okollet's COP23 Message: Climate Change is Reality in Uganda
Last June, I traveled to southeastern Uganda to write an article for Sierra about Constance Okollet, the head of the Osukuru United Women Network—a female-driven, grassroots organization that works to mobilize rural communities in the face of climate change.
I caught up with Okollet by phone this week while she is attending COP23, the UN Climate Conference in Bonn, Germany, where delegates from 195 countries are hammering out how to follow through on the Paris Climate Agreement. The work is forging ahead despite President Trump's announcement last June that the United States would withdraw from the agreement.
Okollet is at the conference to tell anyone who will listen that climate change is already a reality in her community. The normal cycle of rainy and dry seasons has been upended, making it almost impossible to time when to plant and harvest. Droughts and intense storms destroy the crops people rely on to feed their families. Torrential rains wreck the huts they live in and their children go hungry. Without any surplus crops to sell in the market, parents don't have the money to send their children to school.
Photo by Anthony Torres
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