Malala on Girls, Education and a Clean Energy Future

As COP26 draws to a close, some reflections on clean energy from a leader on girls' right to education

Welcome to Sustain What - my new journalistic journey after a couple of decades at The New York Times and 33 years on the climate beat. Here, with your help, I'm building a cooler relationship between people, our planet and each other - one post at a time. Tell friends what I'm up to by sending an email here. Follow my hour-by-hour tracking of the endgame at the Glasgow COP26 climate treaty talks on Twitter via this link.

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Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel-winning champion for girls’ education and welfare, has had a rather busy stretch, getting married in Birmingham, England, on Tuesday, just days after virtual appearances at the COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland and all the rest of her work. My best wishes to Malala and her husband for a healthy and fulfilling life journey together!

As you might have seen here last week, she had a digital conversation on girls, education and climate risk with me and two remarkable sustainability leaders, the Kenyan futurist Katindi Sivi Njonjo and Xiye Bastida, a Mexican-Chilean climate activist and member of the indigenous Mexican Otomi-Toltec nation.

Malala was able to find time for a subsequent email conversation with me on girls, education and clean energy. Here goes. Please weigh in below with your thoughts on how access to energy has enabled, or hindered progress.

Andy - Growing up in Pakistan, did energy challenges affect you or your extended family or friends? Do you recall stories from your parents' generation about the transition to electricity or clean fuels?

Malala - Yes, absolutely. My parents often shared stories about how their grandparents lived in a time without electricity. They talk about the moment when my grandmother saw a lightbulb for the first time!

Andy - I'm always struck by Ban Ki-moon's stump speech when he campaigned for the U.N. Sustainable Energy for All program a decade ago. As I wrote in 2012, "The most effective lines in these speeches draw on his personal experience growing up with no electricity in post-war South Korea: 'I studied at night by a dim and smoky oil lamp. Only when I prepared for examinations was I allowed to use a candle. Candles were considered too expensive to use for ordinary homework.'"

In your work for girls and education access, what kinds of situations have you seen where access to clean energy, or the lack of it, affects girls' prospects for a safe, productive life?

Malala - I like this question because I think the relationship between girls and energy is overlooked. And I think this oversight is likely because this is a problem that mostly affects the poorest girls and women.

My friend Vanessa Nakate spoke at length about this in Glasgow last week, including on the panel we sat on together with The New York Times Climate Hub. In Uganda, where Vanessa lives, women and girls are responsible for gathering water and preparing food for their families. It’s not a question of whether to send their daughters to school, it’s just unspoken that this is the responsibility of women. And it’s very time-consuming. Women and girls spend all day walking to fill up jugs of water, gathering firewood or preparing food. There is simply no time for them to go to school or complete homework. So not only are girls and women dealing with the health effects — inhaling dangerous fumes from cookstoves and the physical burden of carrying water and other things — they also are not receiving education, learning skills they can use to help support themselves and their families or pursuing their dreams.

Girls and women in these communities are also affected by the fossil fuel industry. Two activists from Brazil spoke about this impact on their lives and education: Alice Pataxó advocated against the deforestation and mining that is affecting her Indigenous community, while Bianca Maria da Silva spoke about how poor air quality is forcing girls out of school.

On the positive side, educating girls can help us transition away from a reliance on unclean energy. Vinisha Umashankar, a 14-year-old from Tamil Nadu and finalist for the Earthshot Prize, developed a solar-powered ironing cart for vendors in India to use instead of ones that rely on charcoal. The people who iron clothes spend all day breathing the unclean air from burning charcoal. It causes lung disease and other health issues — and collectively these carts contribute to wider greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our planet. So Vinisha invented a cart that used solar energy so iron vendors don’t have to risk their health to make a living. This is a small-scale solution, but if we had millions more girls thinking like Vinisha — thanks to a great education system — we could have millions more solutions to reduce carbon emissions.

Andy - In my reporting from urban Kenya in 2016 and rural India in 2017, I met girls and young women whose visions of a better future included access to clean energy. I'll never forget the bright light in the eyes of Shanize Njeri Wanjiku, a 10-year-old budding poet I met in a sprawling informal settlement in Nairobi, as she described her thirst for peace and how electricity helps her do her homework and housework.

Given what you've learned in conversations on climate in recent days, is there a key takeaway you think leaders at any level — from students to school superintendents to presidents or prime ministers — should take away from this COP26 moment?

Malala - I have been to so many of these global meetings where leaders make grand promises and then fail to deliver on them. I know there are complicated reasons for this and that political decisions involve compromise – but it’s particularly difficult and frustrating around an issue as urgent as the climate crisis. There’s so much talk about quantifying the answer — by emissions totals or billions invested — and not enough about the impact on real people and their lives. What does $100 billion dollars mean to a girl in the Philippines whose school has flooded for the third time this year? What changes will happen in her life?

We need solutions that reach the most vulnerable populations – and the only way to ensure that is to include women and girls in the conversation. So many young women activists came to COP26 to advocate for the change they want to see. I want leaders to listen to them.

We also need solutions beyond new technology to cool our climate — like strengthening our education systems. Schools can become the lifeblood of a small village or community. Children can charge mobile phones and batteries while learning and then bring home for their families to use each day as renewable sources of energy. This way they don’t need to rely on generators or charcoal stoves. Climate education is another way we can create more resilient citizens. If girls could learn about climate change in school, they would know how to prepare for extreme weather events and keep their families safe. But we need to build these schools first in order to educate every girl.

Girls’ education is an untapped climate solution. The research is there – and it’s critical for our shared future.

COP26 participants watch a presentation on "gender day" (UNFCCC.int)

Andy - One thing that I stay focused on is the reality that any school can be a laboratory for progress, from the curriculum to the physical structure. If you come through New York City any time soon (or we can only do this via a video connection!), I'd love to take you to the High School for Energy and Technology in the Bronx. It's an absolutely inspiring example of such a school - and one where the students come out with skills they can use in the economy that's being built around cleaner energy futures.

I was invited to go on a "boiler room tour" during a visit to that school several years ago. That's something anyone can do anywhere to better understand, and improve, the energy systems we all rely on.

Reading

Subscribe to Malala's Podium newsletter on Bulletin.

Solar lamps support education in Burundi's rural areas - Unicef, August 2021

Fact sheet on Gender and Clean Cooking - the Clean Cooking Alliance

The Impact of Improved Cookstoves on the School Attendance of Girls - Energypedia

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