Joyce Kimutai Transcript
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Setting the stage
So it’s really about tomorrow and trying to leave a legacy and a better world for generations to come.
JANE
I’m Jane McConnell, and welcome to Imaginize World. Today we need to focus on the future for new generations. What kind of world do we want them to live in, and how can we help them build it?
Greetings, everyone. Today I’m with Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist from Kenya. She’s a researcher and is investigating the connection between humans and extreme weather events. She’s quantifying and trying to understand to what extent activities of human beings have contributed to how our climate has changed and how that climate is now impacting us. Her work helps provide data that’s needed to make people understand and recognize risks and responsibilities. As she says, the legal system today is not built for these cases.
JOYCE works on bridging the gap between legal practice and science, which today are two different fields that need to be connected for effective climate litigation. She works with the IPPC, the UN body dealing with climate change, and is the lead author of chapter three in their report about climate change. She also works on adaptation wherein a world we have created, what adaptations do we need to make that will make the world livable for future generations? Let’s hear what Joyce has to say.
Well, hello, Joyce. I’m so happy to see you face-to-face after our conversations online.
Quantifying the human impact on climate change
Yeah, I’m happy actually to join this conversation. I mean, I’m excited to be here and to speak to you today.
JANE
From what I understand, I’ve read some of your work, I see that you’re doing research on quantifying the impact of humans on climate change. You’re providing data for things that a lot of activists have no real data for, and that seems really valuable. Could you explain a little bit about what you’re doing?
JOYCE
You started by saying that we’re looking at the role of climate change, the contribution of climate change, and that is exactly what we’re doing. Basically what we’re doing is we’re trying to understand to what extent is the activities of humans influencing our climate, so basically trying to understand what have we done as humans over the years that has actually changed our climate,
One way of looking at that is how activities of humans are sort of modifying the weather that we experience, the climate that we experience and, most importantly, in terms of sort of the extremes or looking at how weather really affect us in a very extreme way, in a very adverse way, in a way that it creates impacts that are adverse or harmful to humans. It could be humans or it also could be just the natural system. It could be our crops, it could be our plants so it’s the fauna and the flora. It’s everything in the climate system that is being affected, so basically quantifying and trying to understand to what extent activities of human beings have contributed to how our climate has changed and how that climate is impacting us.
Joyce’s journey starting in elementary school
Where did you start from in your professional work, and what was your journey to where you are today?
JOYCE
That’s a very interesting question, and I’ve been asked that question many times. Sometimes I don’t know if the story is consistent or not.
I think the main thing is actually that I have always been fascinated with environment. I grew up in sort of the western part of Kenya, which is a region that is really characterized by very beautiful landscapes. It’s one of the very beautiful areas or regions of Kenya in terms of the geography, the features, so we have the escarpments, we have the forest. It’s quite cool as well in terms of the climate, so it was very fascinating growing up in such an environment.
So when I went to elementary school, I started to pursue geography, and when I went to do my undergraduate, I was very interested with understanding just sort of the environment. But for me, it was more intriguing how sort of the atmosphere, this very intangible thing, a layer of air above us that actually changes things. Sometimes it’s hot, sometimes it’s cold, sometimes it’s raining, and it’s about the raining bit that was a bit fascinating because I was like, “How do clouds form? How does that happen?”
But let me say the most compelling thing was about getting to know that in other parts of the world there are actually like changes in seasons, and I had not experienced any of that. There would be times of the year where it would be warm for like four or five months, and then you have cold, and then you have in-betweens where they call them springs or autumn. So for me, I was like, it can really be interesting to learn more about this.
At that moment, I had not even thought about climate change at all. It was just sort of the interest and the fascination of the environment and sort of the interplay of everything in it.
Greenhouse gases modify rainfall
You talk about the human influence on the heavy rainfall that caused flooding in Kenya, and you did it over three years, 2012, 2016, 2018, and you were trying to measure the extent to which human activity had caused that. How can you measure that?
JOYCE
When I started to do meteorology, which is the study of the weather patterns really, or just the science of how sort of the layer of the earth above us interacts to cause the weather that we see every day and the climate in general. I later tried to get fascinated about sort of understanding the changes in the climate system. So there was the understanding of things have actually changed and with time there’s need to understand how is this change affecting us.
The work that you just mentioned is the work that I did two years, three years ago, and I was trying to understand how rainfall has been changing in parts of East Africa and Kenya. And I was trying to understand that kind of rainfall in that particular season of March, April, May, which was really causing extreme rainfall resulting in flooding that was affecting especially a lot of like agricultural systems.
So in that case, I just wanted to understand like to what extent is actually climate change has modified that kind of rainfall, which was associated with that impact. So with that, you are trying to just quantify how much the emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere actually modifying the rainfall in parts of the world, and this was specifically was looking at East Africa to understand how was that modification happen for that particular region.
JANE
By looking at the emission of greenhouse gases, you can draw conclusions then.
JOYCE
But greenhouse gases does is it sort of causes the warming, so it causes something called… That’s why it’s called greenhouse. It’s called a greenhouse effect. Greenhouse effect basically is the using very lay languages that it sort of causes a blanket that covers, that traps heat and that heat trapped in the earth over time causes the warming of the planet.
Vulnerable people lack resilience, need help
You talked about the importance of this work because of vulnerable people, societies that don’t have a lot of resilience to these things, and that your work could be used as a basis for scientists to learn more that can help these vulnerable people.
JOYCE
That’s correct. So basically what happens and what has been happening in these parts of the world is that we’ve had seasons of prolonged droughts, then they’re really punctuated by extreme rainfall events. So in that case, it means then really the vulnerability of the people is dampened so, with time, the people are not able to absorb the shocks that come with these extreme events.
So you find that in an aftermath of a prolonged drought when flooding happens so the system is not able to absorb the shock because it had not recovered enough to be able to sustain a further exposure to extreme event. So what happens is that for any activity, for any climate-sensitive activity that is taking place in that region is really going to be impacted by sort of that very recurrent and frequent shocks in the climate.
Citizen science increases awareness and uses indigenous knowledge
I’m interested in citizen science involving everyday people in being able to measure things in different parts of the world. Have you done any work in that area?
JOYCE
Yeah, I’ve been working a lot with communities across East Africa to understand how they use their own local knowledge, the indigenous knowledge, how do they conserve the environment, how do they understand the environment because that’s very important. You want the science to complement with sort of the indigenous of the local knowledge so that you’re sort of enriching, like having diverse views or also enriching those knowledge systems so that it can be able to support adaptation and resilience-building.
What I’ve been doing as well in terms of citizen science is involving communities, for example, in observing the environment, trying to work with them to understand what are sort of the indicators of changes in the environment.
And also some of the communities that I’ve worked with is they engaged in like looking at or observing so they have their own, so they are like voluntary observers, so they observe the weather, they have their own very… the instruments where they measure, say, rainfall or temperature for their region, and that is how basically they get to understand their own environment. So they get to understand like what are the changes in temperature and rainfall in their region and, at the same time, just really having that sort of general knowledge of their surrounding.
So that is more of having citizens being very actively participating in science and being part of the wider conversation in terms of what’s happening. And also for them to really understand why it’s important to conserve the environment or be involved, building resilience amid sort of the changes in the climate.
How children can be involved
Yeah, that’s interesting. Being involved in it, of course, is a way of educating people. That’s the best way of education, anyway, in any field is to involve people actively. Can children be involved in this?
JOYCE
I think children can be involved, especially from like the onset. It’s really important to let your children understand why conserving environment is important, why waste disposal is important, why they need to conserve water, why we need to recycle, say a plastic that you use in the house, so that instead of disposing it, you can use it to store something. You could use it over time to use to store water or something like that. Really having that knowledge from the word go, I think for me is very important.
I do that exactly for my daughter. My daughter when I plant a tree, she always accompanies me. Even when I plant like flowers in my garden, we do it together so that she understands that it’s important to do this. It really grows with them so it’s a culture that you’re cultivating in young people and that stays with them forever.
Attribution science provides new and essential data
Forever, yes. I saw in your work a term that was new for me, which is attribution science, and somewhere I read that that’s a new discipline that’s growing rapidly and that you are in that area, that’s what you do. Could you define what it means, attribution science?
JOYCE
Basically attribution science is what I started initially by saying we are looking at the contribution of climate change. So we are quantifying the extent to which climate change is modifying sort of the extremes and that is the field of attribution science. Some people would consider it a little bit new, but I don’t think it’s really new now. It’s been here for like 25 years now. So there’s a lot of technological and methodological advancement in how we have been quantifying the role of anthropogenic climate, sort of the human influence on the climate.
Causation is needed for climate litigation
There have been cases brought against governments. There were a couple in the United States that I followed, young people bringing cases against the government, calling the government responsible for certain acts that have occurred because of climate change. It seems to me that the data that you are collecting, or other scientists are collecting, can support those cases. Have you worked on legal cases like that?
JOYCE
The kind of work that we do would be very useful or very handy in supporting climate cases. That’s very true because what is very central to climate litigation is actually evidence on causation. So you want to stand before a court and say, “This is the evidence that says this is linked to this.” Basically you want to understand the particular activity that the defendant has done is linked to what the plaintiffs have and what the case has been brought forward is on.
Basically you are saying, for example, for oil majors, you are saying that, for example, for Total, you’re saying that “The emission of greenhouse gases that have up and due to your activities involved in that industry is actually leading to the particular impacts that vulnerable people are facing in this part of the world.” Just to answer your question is that yes, I have been participating or been having discussions around how the science can support some of these climate cases.
Cross-jurisdictional learning and exchanges
I am also one of the co-chairs for a climate research forum, which is a platform that sort of supports in the disciplinary or cross-jurisdictional learning and exchanges. So lawyers and scientists sitting together to say, “What exactly is this field about? What is climate litigation? What do we need to know? What kind of evidence do we need?”
It’s about also lawyers learning, sorry, it’s about climate scientists learning from lawyers to understand what kind of a case would you require from scientists and scientists as well saying, “This is the best and the latest science that is available, and this is how it can support cases.”
Being part of these conversations is important because we know that we are not on track, our planet is rapidly warming, we are seeing escalation of impacts, but unfortunately, still see some actors in this field not willing to change their business models, and they continue to profit at the expense of lives and livelihoods of other vulnerable people. So really I think we should look for ways in which them can sort of compensate or help those vulnerable communities.
JANE
Do you feel optimistic in general?
JOYCE
Honestly speaking, I think it’s a daunting task. I think with time, with these conversations, it’s also trying to speak to these organizations and say that, “Things should be changing. You guys should realize that it shouldn’t just be about profits. You should look at how humanity is being affected by your actions, and you should try to change ways in which you do your things.”
At the same time, it’s also trying to see that we could actually have a legal system that is not able to protect the people that are suffering. What that means is that it’s likely that this suffering will continue for these communities if there’s not any sort of advancement in the way in which some of these injustices can be addressed.
JANE
So the whole, what I might call a informal legal infrastructure for the moment, is missing. It exists to some extent in some places, I gather, but it’s not strong enough yet.
Still more work for legal practice and climate science to come together
We haven’t had a successful case per se, so we’ve had cases in court and it’s largely really due to the fact that the legal system is not ready for such cases. It’s never been ready for such cases. It wasn’t built for such cases.
So legal practice and science are very two different, I’ve come to realize that these are very two different fields, and they look at things very differently. Having legal concepts merge into scientific concepts is not just a straightforward line. There’s a lot of in-betweens there, and that is what’s sort of the gaps that you’re trying to bridge, so basically me explaining my attribution findings to a lawyer is not just straightforward. The lawyer can just stand before a court and explain that in a way that it’s very convincing and in a way that it can prove that it’s epistemologically correct or the methodologically sound. We still need to do some work in terms of these two fields coming together.
JANE
I think people who feel depressed about climate change should be very interested in hearing that work is being done that could deliver real proof that it is happening and that there are things that could be done to prevent it.
JOYCE
And I think the most important thing is that people can actually be held responsible and held liable as well.
The role of IPCC, a UN group
I saw that there’s a UN group, the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that you worked on a report with them. Do you think this UN group is helping make a difference?
JOYCE
This is really the mandated authority, the global authority to provide the latest, the best available science. Through the work of this body that we’ve learned the world has got to understand a lot about what’s happening to a planet and what changes have been occurring to a planet and what are the impacts, and how and sort of trying to discuss what are the options that are available to adapt to these changes, and also to try to mitigate some of the causes that are causing these changes.
So I think IPCC is a very fundamental, very crucial body that has really provided the science. It has furthered the discussion. It’s also supporting the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is the sort of negotiating body that tries to bring parties or countries together to agree on ways of providing solutions for a better planet.
JANE
One thing that I’ve heard about, and I’m not really sure what it means, I think you talked about it, you talked about adaptation options, and I guess that means that there are adaptation, there are things that can be done to adapt to a situation to help mitigate some of the damage. Is that what it is?
Changes have happened, adaptation is necessary
Yeah, so that is what it is. It’s basically understanding that changes have happened. We are in a world that things have changed. We are where we are. We need to adapt to these changes. We’re in this world now. But how do we want to be resilient to these changes so that we can still provide for our society, still produce food, still move from one place to another, but in a way that we are adapting to the changes that are happening?
JANE
Do you see things that could be done on the educational level?
JOYCE
I think there’s a lot that is being done in terms of climate literacy, but I think there’s still room for more. And it’s really to do with having people, and when I say people, I mean like just the general public really understand some of these very basic concepts about climate, about climate change, about the environment. It’s to do with things like, “What do we need to do? How do we conserve our environment?” But at the same time also understand what do we really mean by climate change and what is changing and what do we need to do to adapt to these changes. It’s through the literacy of understanding through our relationship to the environment, but also at the same time, to see what can we do to ensure a livable future for generations and the generations to come.
JANE
I like that, your phrase, a livable future for generations to come. That’s strong. It’s a strong sentence.
JOYCE
Yes, because it’s really, I think it’s more than us. It’s more than this generation.
JANE
Yes.
Acting now for future generations
Yeah. We’re doing things because it’s beyond us. I mean, it’s easy to say that, “I’m 50 years old. I might be in the next 50 years or so, I’m unlikely to be here.” But I don’t think that’s fair for your generation, I mean for your kids and your grandkids. So it’s really about tomorrow and trying to leave a legacy and a better world for generations to come.
JANE
We’ve covered the questions I wanted to talk about, Joyce. Do you have any final comments, any final point that you’d like to make before we close?
Climate denialism is blind to real losses of lives and homes
I think the final important comment that I wanted to make is the rise of climate denialism as well. There is a lot of organizations that are trying to fabricate doubt, say in the science, so that they can make their activities, so that they can preserve their activities or they can actually like delay decision-making at all costs for their benefit. And it could be governments, it could be organizations really for selfish interest.
But I think the most important thing that I wanted to say is that as much as all that can happen, it’s really important for people to understand that that is really, really affecting the lives of people in other parts of the world. I mean, it’s easy for someone who lives in a place, in a world where things are fine, maybe their environment is good, maybe their surrounding is good. Maybe they don’t see those impacts every single day. But I can tell them as a scientist and as someone from Africa and I go to, I visit some of these vulnerable communities, I see the impacts of those changes in the climate system affecting these people. It’s really a problem because it’s affecting people that are not part of the cause of the problem or not part of the problem. And also for people that don’t have so much resources at their disposal to be able to respond to these effects or to be able to cushion themselves against these adverse impacts.
So you find that over time they are experiencing losses and damages to their societies, to their cultural heritage, to their social cohesion, for example. Some people have to migrate, which is very involuntary in many cases. They lose their homes. People can be lost in the idea that it’s always about money that brings happiness. But to some people, it’s really about their home. It’s about their culture, it’s about their sense of belonging that is really important.
See with their own eyes what’s happening
And you are right that a lot of people who are involved in the causes don’t think about it, aren’t aware of it, and they just don’t realize it’s too bad they can’t all take even a week-long trip to some of the places that you’ve visited in Kenya, for example, or other countries, and see with their own eyes what’s happening.
JOYCE
Yes.
JANE
Maybe you should make a movie about it.
JOYCE
Yeah. Can we do it together? Maybe we should collaborate.
JANE
Yeah, why not?
JOYCE
I mean, that can be a start before we give them maybe a real visit.
JANE
Okay. Well, thank you very much, Joyce. It’s been a great conversation.
JOYCE
Yes, thank you for having me. I’ve enjoyed having this conversation with you today. Thank you.
