Dancing is joyful and fun. And, as an environmentalist in Zimbabwe proves, it's also a great way to get people interested in climate action.
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00:00This is Kuwazana, a suburb of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.
00:05It's home to 17-year-old Lincoln Marambauche.
00:10For over two weeks, the trainee mechanical engineer
00:13has been practicing a new dance routine.
00:19Then his crew, called the Pandas,
00:21are preparing for Dance for Climate Action,
00:24a community-based song and dance competition
00:26organized for the second year running by Greening Kuwanzana,
00:31a local environmentalist group.
00:51Zimbabwe currently produces over 300,000 tonnes
00:54of plastic waste every year.
00:56Much of it is dumped in public spaces,
00:59causing environmental as well as health hazards.
01:03Awareness of the causes and effects of the climate crisis
01:07and other environmental issues is low among Zimbabwe's youth.
01:12According to a recent study,
01:13one in ten can't name a single climate adaptation measure,
01:17such as recycling or clean energy.
01:20This year's competition theme is Dancing for a Plastic-Free Future.
01:34Dance for Climate Action is an event that uses dance and, of course, poetry
01:39to communicate messages of climate action, environmental justice.
01:43We believe that art has a unique way of speaking to people,
01:47whereas academia states facts.
01:52Art can deal with emotions.
01:55It can bring this sense of kinship
02:00to remind us that together we are the environment.
02:09The competition among the teams is on.
02:11The goal is to communicate the problem of plastic pollution in a performance.
02:18Lincoln and his group, Pandas, are last year's defending champions.
02:24But this year they are not as lucky.
02:27Although they miss out on the top prize,
02:30Lincoln knows their efforts weren't wasted.
02:34We are going to be friends from now on
02:37because they have the same vision with us.
02:40So we are going to take each other's numbers.
02:44Then we are going to sell our projects,
02:48social media, posters and everything.
02:51We are hoping that Dance for Climate will move on.
02:56The dance competition is over,
02:58but today a group of ten volunteers with the Greening Kwanzana Project
03:02are turning to another form of pop culture
03:05and spraying graffiti to encourage people to reuse and recycle more
03:10and reach people who otherwise aren't familiar with these issues.
03:15Some people relate better to music, some people relate better to dance,
03:18some relate better to graffiti.
03:21So we have artists here,
03:23some of these artists had no clue whatsoever about what climate justice is.
03:28But now that we educated them,
03:30now they are actually using their art skills
03:34to actually draw messages that will communicate with other people.
03:39As attention from some few community members begins to build,
03:43the reactions are a mix of this creative form of environmental advocacy.
03:51If people drive by, for example,
03:53the painted messages will discourage them from throwing trash out the window.
03:58I hope they continue with this in different communities.
04:04Not everyone gets what they are trying to say with the graffiti
04:07and some might even ignore it, but others learn something from it.
04:17Here too, some more Greening Kwanzana volunteers
04:20are taking climate action into their own hands.
04:26Planting new trees where old ones were cut down.
04:29They aim to plant around 5,000 new trees by 2025.
04:38With this, the activists are reclaiming a public space
04:41and turning it back to a recreational area
04:44that can be used and enjoyed by locals.