Pope Francis to speak on climate in Kenya

By Andrew Ross

NAIROBI, Kenya

Kenya is getting ready to host Pope Francis who is set to make his first visit to Africa on Nov. 25 and deliver a speech on climate change.

The Pope will be greeted by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and religious leaders when he touches down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Kenya.

The Vatican said that the Pope who is traveling with 80 journalists will make a key speech on climate change at the United Nations Environment Programme headquarters in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

His critical talk will come days before the Paris Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change also known as COP21.

“Pope Francis is not only leading a discussion in the Catholic community, he has become an environment ambassador because he speaks to us in a way that perhaps is not defined by being the Pope of the Catholic community but by speaking to each one of us about the responsibility we have in relation to Nature,” Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), told Anadolu Agency.

Steiner noted that the Pope’s visit to Kenya will be special in that the spiritual leader - head of the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church - will be speaking from Africa, a continent most affected by climate change.

“He will be speaking about what some of these changes in our environment are, what the implications of climate change are but also on injustice, poverty and inequality,” he said.

“We are very proud that he has chosen to come to the environment capital of the world which is Nairobi just a few days before the climate change in Paris, it is here that in 1972 the world decided through the United Nations to establish the United Nations Environment Programme, we feel privileged that he will be here with us speaking to us but also to the world about these issues,” said Steiner.

Steiner said that Pope Francis’s speech will greatly impact decisions made by world leaders to contain global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.

He added that any decision taken in Paris is of consequence to African nations and also to their economies in the future.

“Over 70% of Africa’s citizens do not have access to electricity in the year 2015, so the world should not be surprised if Africa is saying , look, we want to, we can and we need to be part of the global response but you also need to make us make our development priorities become a reality,” Steiner said.

State House in Kenya said that security has been heightened in the East African nation to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

“Security agencies continue to fine-tune plans to secure the city during a particularly busy period, and when we expect Nairobi’s population to swell by an additional 1 million people,” Manoah Esipisu State House spokesman said in a previous media briefing.

“Some 10,000 police officers will be deployed. Additionally, 10,000 young people from the NYS (National Youth Service) will be involved in crowd management,” he added.