Nancy Glock-Grueneich, Ph.D.
Connected Futures, Equatorial Voices, United 4 Planetary Health & Well Being (U4PHW), Unity with Nature Committee of the Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
Going on 4 hours sleep, I was walking a small group of Africans and Germans through a screen share, on Zoom, of the draft proposal for our nascent organization, U4PHW, that I’d been up much of the night finishing. In it I described us this way:
We are a network of multi-sector, mid-level leaders, with expertise and enough influence to reach into higher circles while still closely connected with, listening to, and trusted in local and front-line communities. We connect person-to-person, not constrained by our organizations, Global South and North, coming from different sectors, cultures and countries, and focused on different issues. We seek to support, trust and care about each other, share knowledge and act on those opportunities that we are especially well-positioned to make the most of.
I went on, in the draft, to justify this effort:
The Global North, where most of the current decisions are made, and impediments to real solutions most often encountered, is focused on keeping the world largely on its current course by swapping out our current energy systems for ones seen as sustainable. At the same time, even while glancing up often and warning of catastrophes ahead, we’re not yet really factoring these in, the full consequences and constraints that our not so far off future is already bringing down upon us.
In the North, that is. Not so in the Global South. Here the lessons soon to be learned all over the world, are already well-underway—even where not yet all that well understood. Resourcefulness the world will need is rapidly maturing here within affected communities, and already manifest in the knowledge, courage and leadership from the equatorial voices in our group.
In the discussion that followed were those who’d started U4PHW, at COP28, my close friends, Nightingale Wakigara, a Kukuyu-American based in the Monterey Bay area and in Kenya, her homeland, and her German-American husband, Dr. Nathan Uchtmann, both leaders in planetary health advocacy; and their colleagues in Kenya, Maison Kipila, a Maasai, and Matindi Benson, a Rendille tribesman. They’d all just rushed back to Nairobi in time to catch our Zoom call.
They’d all spent the past week in Marsabit, Matindi’s home, a county in Northern Kenya where they’ve been working together on projects to reclaim indigenous languages, foods, plants, medicines and the tools, skills and culture that go with these, recording stories, and planning awareness campaigns. Nightingale’s two children have also been staying there for a while, to experience tribal ways. Marsabit County is mostly desert, and the tribes there pastoralists. Matindi, commenting on their trip, said “Marsabit County has been really hard-hit by drought. 70% of our animals have died.”
(I knew from others that 4 of the 10 million people of Northern Kenya, are affected in this way, now living on way too little, and even that mostly donated food.)
EmilUnderberg, in Berlin, spoke up. “Matindi, could you get your Kenyan ambassador for Germany, to clear the way for our ‘Greening the Desert’ project to work with you there in Marsabit County? We’d be happy to do a demonstration project there and teach people how to grow a multi-functional agroforest.” Since hanging out with these folks, I’ve learned enough about Emil’s work in deserts elsewhere, and that of others—and about the African Great Green Wall—to see how this approach could in fact feed people and animals, without taking water from underground—and could even start restoring water to the aquifers. “Yes”, Matindi said. “Let’s talk next week”.
Then and Now
Speaking of the need and potential for this kind of people-to-people work?
— Case in point!
