East African church leaders respond to climate change locally, globally

As the effects of climate change devastate communities in Kenya, church leaders are helping address the crisis locally while calling on industrialized nations to own up to their responsibilities for spewing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

“I think they [industrialized nations] are responsible for most of the emissions,” said Peter Solomon Gichira, the climate change program officer at the All Africa Conference of Churches. “They have responsibility to support climate change adaptation and mitigation as a moral obligation.”

“But we [in Africa] also have a role to play, because we have not been very good stewards of the environment,” added Gichira, a poverty and development expert.