- Alfred Fornah
A CLEAN GREEN FUTURE FOR A FOSSIL-FREE SIERRA LEONE
Join us tomorrow for a Friday For Future Fossil Free World converging on the Council offices at Waterloo, Freetown seeking to influence policy-makers and promote investment in renewable, clean energy not oil which contributes 30% of global CO2 emissions and causes global warming and rising sea-levels - our biggest global threat and challenge in Sierra Leone, the third most vulnerable nation to dangerous climate change impacts.
We believe that instead of seeking to exploit our natural resources, Sierra Leone has a chance to protect them, a chance to lead, setting an example to other nations by pledging to leave our oil in the ground.
We don’t have to follow a failed model of unsustainable exploitation of our finite resources but can instead focus our national efforts and invest in clean affordable renewable energy. By doing so our society can fast-forward to the next industrial revolution founded on sustainability. In a fossil-free world solar, hydro and tidal produce clean cheap electricity that can power our homes, industry and transport creating thousands of jobs for Sierra Leone youth and women in this innovative sector
As our generation is discovering, products like plastics made from oil, are having a disastrous impact on our environment whether in Freetown where regular burning releases toxic fumes that are hazardous to our citizen’s health, or on our beaches where plastic washes up from the ocean imperilling vital ecosystems and threatening our potential for tourism. Perhaps, most worrying of all are the effects on our fish and sea-life, where plastic consumed by fish enter our own food chain with as yet unknown consequences.
Now, we do agree that it is every sovereign nation’s right to choose whether to exploit its natural resources. And some say that we must somehow not deny ourselves that which the west has built its industry and empires on. And that this oil could enrich the nation like never before. We hear all of this but we say we are already rich in natural resources – not just the richest riches of old, our diamonds, gold and iron ore but modern riches that hi-tech manufacturers across the world desperately seek, our titanium, bauxite and chromite - and our history shows, if nothing else, that the benefit of these riches has always been misused, mismanaged and misappropriated always lining the pockets of a few not the many.
Can we really expect any different if we start pumping oil?
And we know from other nations, some very close, where the discovery of oil has not only had a terrible human impact of displacement, exploitation and even war but a direct impact on the most precious natural resource of all, our planet with deforestation and water table pollution.
Join us in our call for a fossil-free Sierra Leone and petition the Government to pledge to leave our oil in the ground.
The event is a collaborative effort between School Green Club Sierra Leone, Society 4 Climate Change Communications, 350.org, Young African Leaders Initiative, Citizens Climate Lobby Africa and the Mother Earth project.
FOLLOW OUR JOURNEY!
Please ❤ and share our journey harnessing the spirit of innovative volunteerism to empower youth and women for environmental and climate action in Sierra Leone the third most vulnerable country to Climate Change.
