Janet Kabue—Our Next International Commonality Reference Person for Care of the Environment
A few months ago, Janet Kabue, the Area Reference Person for Nairobi, Kenya, became my apprentice as International Commonality Reference Person (ICRP) for Care of the Environment.
I’ve been the ICRP since Wytske Visser (the first ICRP) had to retire for health reasons about three and a half years ago. I love the work. Climate change is a key issue for me, and I will always lead on it. But I am very happy that Janet is now working so closely with me and seriously moving toward taking over [assuming] this role.
I have worked alongside Janet with Sustaining All Life (SAL) and the COPs since the COP in Paris in 2015. She has moved into taking on [undertaking] big responsibilities with SAL—leading events, leading the African constituency, then leading the delegation. She has always excelled at what she has taken on.
It’s been clear to me for a while that she would be a good person to take on the ICRP role. I first spoke with her about it more than a year ago, and she agreed to discharge about it but didn’t say yes. I told her that if she were the ICRP, I would continue doing any leading in the area and playing any supportive role that she wanted me to.
After a few months, we talked again. She said she was seriously considering the role but hadn’t yet decided. I told her there was no hurry. Because of our work together with SAL, we had quite a bit of contact, and we kept building our relationship.
I needed more help with the ICRP job and put together a team of people to work with me. She was part of that team—a great team of women who led a series of daylong climate emergency workshops with me that were paired with the Pre-Pre-World Conferences in 2021.
At the end of that series, I again asked Janet what she was thinking, and we talked about how I could best support her to discharge and think about taking on the role. We decided that it would work best for her to agree to do it, but in her own time frame. Hoorah! She’s going to do it! There is no hurry. When she wants it, it is hers. Tim [Jackins] has agreed with each of these steps, and it is part of Tim’s job as International Reference Person to appoint each ICRP.
I have always thought that this RC leadership role, in particular, should be filled by a person of the Global Majority. Racism and genocide are so intertwined with the climate emergency that I think being white (and a USer) is a “limiting factor.” Janet has always made it clear that her relationship to caring for the environment is grounded in her life as an African woman and that her passion for it reflects her passion for Africa and the African people.
I have seen how our racism targets Janet as an African woman. I know it will not be easy for her to lead all the white people—as well as the other Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)* people who are doing this work and eventually everyone in the RC Community. We all need to make a commitment now to discharge on our racism toward Black people, and Africans in particular, and to stand against any of our distresses that could interfere with our fully backing Janet as our leader. The job of leading on the climate emergency is a huge job as it is; Janet should not be battling our racism at the same time. The peoples of Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, and South, Central, and Caribbean America, and Indigenous people, are over eighty percent of the global population. These people also occupy most of the global land mass. [* Using the term “Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)” for these people acknowledges their majority status in the world and interrupts how the dominant (U.S. and European) culture assigns them a minority status. Many Global Majority and Indigenous people living in dominant-culture countries have been assimilated into the dominant culture—by force, in order to survive, in seeking a better life for themselves and their families, or in pursuing the economic, political, or other inclusion of their communities. Calling these people “Global Majority and Indigenous” contradicts the assimilation.]
I also think that the RC Community will be best served if many more of us older white leaders turn more of our attention now to supporting GMI, working-class, and younger people to take on our roles. We can encourage them to see their strengths and capabilities as equal to the task. They are in better shape [condition] than we were when we started. And they will have us to back [support] them and to make their transition into these big jobs smoother, though the challenges they face are bigger. I’ll be leading groups for white leaders on “passing the baton.”
I’m very happy to be on Janet’s team as she moves into taking over the leadership of the work to care for the environment.
Shoreline, Washington, USA
(Present Time 206, January 2022)