Untangling the Impossible Knot: The Discourse of Kenyan Youth in Global Warming-Climate Change Activism

Debate and organizing by the youth on global warming, and on climate change in particular are of age in Kenya to date since the government signed and subsequently ratified the United Nations Convention Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the early 1990s. Various youth-led organizations such as the Green Generation Initiative, the Kenya Youth Climate Action Network, the Fridays for Future Kenya Coalition, among others, have not only voiced the negative impact of global warming on local communities, but they have also participated in climate change mitigation programmatic projects at local community, government, and international levels. Notwithstanding this presence of young Kenyans in the global warming-climate change nexus discourse, it is the case that, as key agents in tackling this threat to humankind, the active membership is negligible, their 'languaging' strategies are to a large extent illegible and in most cases, inaccessible to a large number of the beneficiaries. Drawing from a critical discourse analysis framework, it is our argument that there continues to be a mismatch between the perceptions of the youth involved in addressing global warning, and, most specifically, climate change and those for whom the debating and organizing are targeted as beneficiaries. In addition, that even for those in the know, their discourse, as evident from available literature as well as field drawn data sets, continues to bear elements of blame and attribution rather than responsibility for this global threat.