Webster Alumna Is Nobel Prize Winner
Geneva campus graduate Grace Akumu is lead author with climate change panel that shared the 2007 award with Al Gore

Current discussion of human rights issues often brings to mind issues such as torture, poverty, or access to health care – abuses happening “somewhere else” on the planet. But many of these issues are so intertwined with our global market-dependent way of life, their causes are right under our nose.

Years of work in one of these areas earned a Webster University alumna the Nobel Peace Prize. Grace Akumu, who earned her B.A. in international relations from Webster’s Geneva campus in 1986, is a member and lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 prize with former U.S. vice president Al Gore.

An outspoken Kenyan, Akumu’s work has focused on the disproportionate effects that global warming is having on African nations. Akumu is executive director for Climate Network Africa, where she has worked since 1992. In her role, Akumu has witnessed firsthand the way climate change has blindsided African states through floods, drought, and famine – affecting every aspect of life, industry and interstate relations.

The unintended consequences are many. Akumu says the snow on Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro is melting away. By 2015, there will be no snow on Mt Kenya. That’s not only an aesthetic and spiritual loss – it’s a threat to Kenya’s way of life.

Hydroelectric power, which is how 70 percent of Kenya’s electricity is generated, is threatened. As the snowmelt continues, the streams fed by Mt. Kenya – which power the plants – are drying up.

“Agricultural communities, who are 80 percent of Kenya’s population, have become seriously water stressed,” Akumu says. “Rivers are drying up and their survival is our top priority, considering that they also live on less than $1 per day.”

Through her work with Climate Network Africa, Akumu has coordinated efforts to raise and address these issues over the past two decades. For that, Akumu says, her study of international relations at Webster was invaluable.

“My studies at Webster helped me understand the climate change negotiation process, as well as in policy analysis of the implications of some of the agreements reached regarding Africa’s priorities,” she says. “The wide range of courses and professors of international repute, excellent library, a melting pot of all nationalities at the campus, as well as practical experience at the United Nations Office at Geneva – that all prepared me for the international work I have done.”

That work has never been more ugent than it is now.

In a bitter irony, according to Akumu the former colonies of Africa are once again bearing a burden created by the industrialized states who first colonized them.

“Despite being the least emitter of greenhouse gases responsible for the climate change problem – 3 to 4 percent of the global total – and now seriously threatened by the negative impacts of climate change, Africa remains the least recipient of climate change funds and technologies,” Akumu says.

Part of the problem for developing nations is that climate change exacerbates already existing vulnerabilities. The poor already live on the edge; even incremental change to fragile resources pushes them over. And most African economies are overly dependent on the export of just one or two primary goods – usually agricultural or raw materials, whose collapse can be brought about by climate change.

To take just one projection by Akumu and the IPCC, wheat production may disappear completely from Africa by the 2080s.

Meanwhile, the climate change negotiations are now at a critical stage, Akumu says. The Kyoto Protocol is up in 2012, with the United States – the largest emitter – never having ratified it, and other major emitters who did ratify it never lived up to their own set targets and timetables.

“The Climate Change Convention states that industrialized countries who are historically and presently responsible for climate change shall take the lead to combat climate change based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities,” Akumu says.

“But major emitters in the North such as the U.S., Japan, and some European countries are against some of these ideas and instead favor market-driven concepts. As negotiations move on a snail’s pace, climate scientists are warning of continual increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere leading to warming of global temperatures,” which is threatening a catastrophic meltdown, Akumu says.

These are the most intractable positions between industrialized and developing countries, Akumu says. “But since scientific evidence is out there and the impacts are not sparing any region of the world, rich or poor – except that the magnitudes may differ – industrialized countries should hurriedly take the lead,” she says. “Time is of essence because Africa is highly vulnerable and must not be left to suffer because of the actions of others.”

Akumu proposes an adaptation fund, unique to Africa, that would help get Africa the resources it urgently needs – and let Africa manage it.

“Experience with multilateral arrangements, such as the GEF, World Bank, etc., have previously marginalized the continent,” Akumu says. “A post-2012 framework should have an insurance fund for compensation of damages occasioned by climate change. Africa must also be allowed to determine her climate change priorities and not those of the major polluters, who presently appear to be determined to reduce Africa to a ‘forestry’ continent.”

For Africa—which lacks the resources to fight climate’s effects on its own, the time to acquire resources before it’s too late, and the political influence to stop the emissions of others—that may be the only hope.