5,000 Kenyans Rally International Community on Climate Change

Thousands of people, including Christians, united in the streets of Nairobi at the weekend, to demand that the international community immediately tackle the global threat of climate change.

The rally brought together a reported 5,000 people under the theme 'Our Climate, Our Survival'. It was jointly organised by the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Africa under the recently launched Caritas, Africa Office (Catholic) and the (Protestant) All Africa Conference of Churches or AACC - in short the Caritas/AACC Ecumenical Platform.

Caritas Africa regional coordinator, Mrs Margaret Mwaniki, has said, "This is part of our activities during the two-week UN conference on climate change, taking place in Nairobi from November 6 to 17 and where the Church is well represented."

Mwaniki used the occasion to emphasise the need for the industrialised nations to respect the contents of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which urges the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions - gases which seriously damage the ozone layer - by the year 2012.

She also demanded that industrialised nations give funds to Africa and other developing countries to combat the effects of climate change, many which are even being seen in today's era, such as floods, drought and receding of snow on the mountains of many poorer countries.

Now is an especially urgent time in Africa to commence the re-planting of thousands of trees, Mwaniki urged.

To carry out this task, children in schools and women, particular in rural areas, as well as the community in general, would have to be educated on how to plant and care for trees and respect water catchment areas.

The occasion was also addressed among others by Dr David Hallman of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Bishop Geoff Davies of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Kenyan Professor Jesse Mugambi, a member of the Ecology Commission of the WCC and Ms Grace Akumu, Coordinator, Climate Change Campaign-Africa.

They all gave their full backing to Caritas and the AACC, who under the Caritas/AACC Ecumenical Platform organised the march