I am a Climate Migrant

This month our climate article was written by Nyombi Morris, a climate activist in Uganda. It appeared in a 2022 issue of Time magazine. It illustrates how poorer nations and people are having to deal with climate change which is mostly caused by wealthy nations. It also points out that wealthy nations have a role to play in helping poorer nations deal with the consequences of climate change.
I am a Climate Migrant
I was 10 when flooding displaced my family from the Butaleja District of eastern Uganda in 2008 – illegal sand mining along the riverbanks exacerbated flooding already made worse by climate change. We lost our farm and home, so we moved over 130 miles away to Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, where we lived with my maternal grandma. But her home quickly became crowded, so we moved to a one-room rental – much smaller and less beautiful than our old home. It was too much for my father. My mother raised my siblings and me after he left. She often struggled to find enough food or money. I can’t count how many times we went to sleep hungry because we couldn’t afford food. Back on our farm, we had plenty to eat.
And we still couldn’t escape the impacts of climate change. I’ll never forget one night in November 2014. It began to rain, the power went out, and water flooded our room. We stood outside all night. The next morning, we moved back into our grandmother’s house for four months until my mom could afford to rent a new home.
Living through endless flooding made me realize I had to protect the environment. In 2020, I founded Earth Volunteers, a climate-justice nonprofit supporting youth climate education. That knowledge is essential: I believe my father wouldn’t have abandoned us if he had known why those floods hit in 2008, or how to respond. We had no help or compensation for losing our home. To this day my family still lives in a single room. I’ve wanted to go back to my old village many times, but people there are now living in a swamp. This doesn’t need to be the story for the rest of the Global South.
Sandy McKitrick, Climate Care Team