The common narrative about climate change is all about Carbon as its cause. This gives the appearance that there is a set of villains wastefully burning fossil fuels in the developed world, while the energy challenged south, mostly in Africa are the victims, and victims have no agency. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

While Carbon emissions are a big part of it the problem, an even bigger part it is the loss of forests and desertification of landscape. These directly effect the climate where they occur, and we are the ones cutting down our trees or burning our grasslands and savannahs. We need to recognise that, own this part of the problem and consequently drop our useless victim status. 

One thing we have plenty of in Africa is deforested land, Mozambique alone, which I know best, was once 75% Miombo woodland and now has over 60 million ha of deforested land. We are experiencing every symptom of angry climate, floods, droughts and cyclones of record destruction more frequently than ever. If restored pressure differentials will be reduced making winds less severe, rainfall runoff will be slowed down and water absorbed into the soil, so less flooding and less frequent droughts, and best of all, massive amounts of carbon dioxide sucked from the atmosphere to be stored in the trees and soil, assisting the global problem. We have proven the point with our work at Mezimbite. 

This done, we come to the conference with something of a solution to offer the world, our kleptocratic leaders no longer have to beg for favours because we are loosing our crops. We can, as grass roots and private citizens, negotiate a fair price for the environmental services that we can provide and that the developed world needs.

Published 08 September 2025