As a way to mitigate the rapidly increasing impacts of climate change and accelerate the achievement of sustainable development goals, the Cli-Mates of Change Advocates drama group has started performing plays to the public to create awareness and sensitise communities on environmental protection. 

Cli-Mates of Change is a collaborative green theater arts group comprising filmmakers, actors, dancers, and artists from northern Uganda who advocate for and create awareness among the public about how they can come up with solutions as social agents of change in communities. 

The group acts, sings, dances, and recites poems on the impacts of climate change by exposing human activities that destroy the environment and how communities can protect it. 

The group performed at Elephante Commons in Gulu City on World Environment Day on Monday, June 5. 

Ann Grace Apita, an environmental steward and scriptwriter who works with climate tracker associates, said for a long time, creative art has not been tapped in the search for sustainable solutions to climate change. 

“We partnered with them to use their skills to influence the public who follow and listen to them to come up with solutions on climate change because most people talk about the impacts of climate change and forget about the solutions,” she said. 

The actresses and a actor playing drama on environmental protect as students.

“We want to advocate for sustainable solutions geared toward fighting the rapidly increasing impacts of climate change and accelerating the achievement of sustainable development goals. The drama initiative draws urgent attention and ambitious action toward resilience-building in the education sector by capacitating learners in schools and out of school to be agents of climate change across northern Uganda,” she added. 

Apita said they performed the drama at Gulu Secondary School, and there is a partner in Denmark who is interested in integrating the play across 24 schools in Soroti so that young people get to know the importance of conserving their environment and using resources sustainably so that they become better at protecting the environment. 

She explained that some of the impacts of the communities on the environment include plastic pollution, which leads to health hazards for community and aquatic life; prolonged sunshine as a result of indiscriminate tree cutting, which is impacting the agricultural sector and leading to an increase in food prices; and flooding, which leads to diseases like cholera, malaria, and dysentery. 

Odong Ojok, a filmmaker who doubles as the president of the Northern Uganda Filmmakers Association and co-produced the drama and managed the stage, said they produced the drama so that people could watch and relate to environmental injustices with solution-based approaches. 

He said their involvement could cause positive impacts and also inspire people to change and have a proactive approach to the environment.