Environment Minister,Amina Mohammed & Priscilla Achakpa As Climate Warriors For 'Vogue Magazine' Project On Climate Change.

   

Every year, the United Nations holds a summit on climate change, where it works to persuade countries large and small to give up fossil fuels. This annual gathering, now in its 21st year, is called the Conference of the Parties, and it begins today in Paris. Past negotiations have produced important treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord, but this year’s meeting, the COP21, is likely to yield the world’s first binding, universal agreement to cut carbon emissions and begin to address climate change.

The stakes have never been higher: Scientists have identified 2 degrees Celsius of warming as a dangerous tipping point for the planet, and we are 0.85 degrees of the way there. But hope, too, is at an all-time high: the international community has never been closer to taking decisive action. Here, photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, are 13 of the formidable women leading the way.
Two Nigerian women joined 11 other Women for this project,Amina and Priscilla.

AMINA MOHAMMED

When people have made up their mind that they want to fail before they start, that’s the hardest. Because at risk are millions of people, and they matter.

“In Africa, you don’t just think about the children that you bear,” says Amina Mohammed, special adviser on post-2015 development planning to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “Every child is yours.” In Mohammed’s home state of Nigeria, she says, climate change has exacerbated poverty. “It has come together as the perfect storm to create situations that have fueled Boko Haram, the terrorists that live in my part of the country.” But, says Mohammed, “I think we’re getting nearer the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Priscilla Achakpa

Where is the future of young people if we don’t do anything?

Priscilla Achakpa is an environmental activist from Nigeria. As executive director of the Women Environmental Programme, Achakpa has introduced thousands of women to sustainable solutions to everyday problems, such as waste-to-energy machines that can process rice husks. In Nigeria, Achakpa says, “The impact of climate change on women is huge. The men are forced to migrate and they leave the women, who are now the caregivers because they find they cannot leave the children . . . We don’t want a top-down solution” to climate change, says Achakpa. “We want bottom-up. But we need to be at the table.”

view the complete mag here....VOGUE