Gombe Network Champions Climate Action and Environmental Justice through WikiforHumanRights 2024

Between June and August 2024, the Gombe Network, Wikimedia UG Nigeria joined forces with other Wikimedia communities across Nigeria for the WikiForHumanRights (WFHR) campaign, focusing on the theme “Knowledge for a Sustainable Future.” Our local campaign centered on “climate change and environmental justice” in Gombe State and the Northeast region. The campaign, which started in June, included an online launch led by national organizers, followed by a series of training sessions aimed at empowering participants with the knowledge needed to contribute meaningfully to Wikimedia platforms.

Building Awareness on Climate Change and Environmental Justice

From the 14th to the 15th of August, 2024, we held our in-person training in Abdullahi Mahadi Library, Gombe State University, Gombe State. For a successful campaign, Gombe Network partnered with the Department of Geography and Abdullahi Mahadi Library, both of Gombe State University, to leverage their academic expertise and resources to meet our campaign goal. The first day of the program was about deepening the understanding of participants regarding climate change and its relations with environmental justice. The session was moderated by a scholar from the Department of Geography, Gombe State University, Dr. Yusuf Umar Ahmed, who made a very educative presentation. He underlined some key causes and effects of climate change, citing that climate change was caused by human activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation.

He spoke elaborately on the long-range effects that include a rise in global temperature, extremes in weather conditions, disturbance of ecosystems, and many more. His presentation included major indicators of climate change, which comprised changes in precipitation and melting polar ice, and described their effects on agriculture, infrastructure, and human health.

The major highlights of his talk were on environmental justice, and he elucidated that the marginalized communities are usually economically disadvantaged or people of color who bear a disproportionate share of the harmful effects brought forth by environmental degradation. These communities, such as the Afghanistan community, have greater vulnerability to pollution, toxic waste, and lack of access to clean water. He urged participants to act in active championing of environmental equity through entailing all communities in benefit sharing in environmental protections and underrepresented groups in decision-making processes.

Practical Wikimedia Training: Contributions to Climate and Environmental Knowledge

The second day of the training was led by Ismail Atiba with support from Umar Faruk Yunusa and Hussayn Akhanamhoya, providing the participants with practical skills to contribute to editing on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikivoyage. Again, with much emphasis on contributions that concern climate change and environmental justice, our community members were instructed on how to create and improve articles in regard to the environmental issues affecting their locality: deforestation, desertification, waste management and the socio-economic impacts of climate change upon rural Northeastern communities.

Participants made valuable contributions on climate change and environmental justice, ensuring that Wikimedia platforms reflect a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of the topic. 

Campaign Goals and Outcomes

As a community, our campaign goal was to localize this year’s theme (Knowledge for Sustainable Future) to address the urgent issues of climate change’s impact on vulnerable communities in Gombe State, Northeast Nigeria, specifically focusing on raising awareness, advocating for sustainable environmental policies, and promoting access to information/knowledge about best practices to achieve a sustainable future. Furthermore, the campaign aimed to engage 10 existing users and recruit 10 new editors while contributing and/or improving 80 Wikipedia and Wikidata items (50 Wikipedia, 30 Wikidata).

Outcomes

The campaign successfully achieved its goals and targets by creating and improving 382 contents (articles, items, and media files) through content creation, expansion, and improvement of existing articles. A total of 49 participants registered to participate in the campaign, with over 15 new editors joining the campaign. 

Testimonies

In an interview with some of the participants, they expressed satisfaction in the campaign exceeding their expectations while acquiring new knowledge and skills in creating awareness on the effects of climate change and promoting environmental justice in their community. Mrs. Maryam Bornoma, in an interview while expressing her satisfaction in the campaign, said, “As a legal practitioner, the concept of environmental justice is a new concept for me, and my participation in the two-day workshop has broadened my knowledge of what environmental justice means; hence, I have developed a research interest in the field and look forward to stepping down on the knowledge gained.” Another participant in the interview, Umar Faruk, saw the workshop as an opportunity to gain new insights both as a participant and support trainer.

Challenges

Communication gap: Prior to the kick-off of the campaign, the national organizers had online meetings with the community leads of Anambra, Gombe, Imo, Kaduna, Osun, Rivers and Igala Community, to delibrate on the action plans and deliverables for a successful campaign. However, new approaches adopted on coordination, contributions review by the campaign team reviewers without prompt comunication and consensus on the new development created gap and initial confusion on the part of Community organizers on contribution review and the end to the edit-a-thon.

Outreachdashboard: Article Scope Outreachdashboard introduced by the national organizers to track selected articles that falls within the campaign theme and topic list prove challenging in capturing the contributions of editors. Several attempt to reconfigure the outreach dashboard was unsuccessful as participating communities were forced either delete their existing dashboard and create an edit-athon scope dashboard or rely on manual collation making it difficult track contribution automatically. To mitigate this challenge, Article Contribution Table became handy collating Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items editors improved or created during the campaign timelone. Initially, it was a bit challenging and discouraging for newbies across communities, tutorial videos explaining how editors can input their contributions to the table shared by the national organizers to ease the challenge.

Looking Ahead: Sustaining the Momentum

The success of the WFHR 2024 campaign in Gombe reflects our community’s commitment to SDGs initiatives through open knowledge platforms. Moving forward, we aim to continue collaborating with local experts and engaging our participants to create more content on climate and environmental justice issues. Our collective effort will ensure that Wikimedia remains a powerful tool for raising awareness and driving action on climate change in North East Nigeria and beyond.