Ineza Umuhoza Grace

Ineza Umuhoza Grace in 2023

Ineza Umuhoza Grace (born 1996) is an eco-feminist, climate activist and environmentalist from Kigali, Rwanda. She is the CEO of The Green Protector, co-ordinator of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition and Research Assistant for the CCLAD project. She was a Global Citizen Prize winner in 2023.

Grace became interested in land neutrality activities, such as the conservation of the Congo Basin, during her time at the Youth Delegation at United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and as a MILEAD (Moremi Initiative Leadership Empowerment and Development) fellow, in 2017. She came to found The Green Fighter that year, later renamed as The Green Protector, through understanding the importance of youth engagement.

At first, The Green Protector aimed to bring together youth in the environment protection sector to create a better-protected environment in the local community. The organisation's aims remain the same, but now on a global scale. The Green Protector promotes the creation of youth networking platforms, social inclusion, innovative thinking, climate action and environmental education, now engaging with 25 different schools and universities. It has allowed Grace to work with 3500 young people, in addition to organising a cleaning day to clean up plastic in the local community and hosting a virtual dialogue between students from the University of Rwanda and South-West University in China about climate change.

In 2018, Grace was a climate change negotiator for the Rwandan delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where she served as a youth contact to provide a youth perspective on important issues, such as climate change, to the government. Ineza's previous experience through the UNITAR course aided her in this position. In 2019, she became a Young African Leadership Initiative for Cohort 35, where she was trained on how to be a transformative leader in Africa and became a Global Shaper for the Kigali Hub. This role allowed her to connect with leaders in Kigali to influence policies on education, employment, health, and the environment. In 2020, Grace became a JWH initiative grantee—she used the grant to partake in an internship at the Global Green Growth Institute, where she helped implement projects while supporting youth engagement in line with Rwanda's environment and climate change policies.

In 2020, Grace was part of a team that started the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, an alliance of over 600 youths from 60 different countries. Their purpose was to hold world leaders accountable and urge them to take action on addressing environmental loss and damage. The Green Protector is part of the founding organisation of the coalition. 2022 brought Grace to the COP27 global summit on climate change, where she helped present a demand from many youth activists for a fund to cover loss and damages. The campaign was successful, as World Leaders agreed to contribute to offsetting the effects of loss and damage on the most vulnerable nations.

Grace pursues her work for the CCLAD (Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage) project, raising awareness about how social and political practices at international and national levels influence the usual process of construction, conveyance and contestation. She additionally continues to be an activist against climate change and for eco-feminism through her work at The Green Protector and posts on Twitter.

Quotes

• Rwandan children need the Loss and Damage Fund because children are vulnerable. When you see what happened in Rwanda in May this year, schools were destroyed by disasters and children were much more affected. If the Loss and Damage Fund is there, they recover faster. The fund could help the country avoid heavy debt in rehabilitating the damages .
  • https://www.newtimes.co.rw/article/13000/news/environment/cop28-youth-call-for-urgent-action-on-climate-finance (Grace said that in Rwanda Pavilion in UAE, Dubai.) The New times Rwanda, December 11, 2023.
• Rwandan children need the Loss and Damage Fund because children are vulnerable. When you see what happened in Rwanda in May this year, schools were destroyed by disasters and children were much more affected. If the Loss and Damage Fund is there, they recover faster. The fund could help the country avoid heavy debt in rehabilitating the damages.
  • COP28: Youth call for urgent action on climate finance December 11, 2023
• I am honoured and grateful because it is like a simple highlight and recognition of how much the world is ready to understand and take risks in investing in working with today’s generation.
  • Global Citizen Prize winner on steering the environment protection ship, getting young people aboard The NewTimes, May 26, 2023
• e are the generation that is past the phase of only blaming leaders because we are also pacing the solution.
  • Global Citizen Prize winner on steering the environment protection ship, getting young people aboard The NewTimes, May 26, 2023
• We are living in an era where climate change is interlinked with every sector, especially sustainable economic development sectors for communities, but then we are not having the same urgency of action in the political phase.
  • Global Citizen Prize winner on steering the environment protection ship, getting young people aboard The NewTimes, May 26, 2023
• The future for us is going to be achieved if we address the climate crisis to the full extent of its magnitude, that it is happening right now.
  • Global Citizen Prize winner on steering the environment protection ship, getting young people aboard The NewTimes, May 26, 2023
• We realised that, although people were being recommended to stay indoors, for some of us it was not the case. That was the same year that Rwanda experienced serious flooding, and people were not able to stay indoors to protect themselves from Covid-19.
  • Global Citizen Prize winner on steering the environment protection ship, getting young people aboard The NewTimes, May 26, 2023
• Also, minor research I did in 2016 showed that girls graduating in hospitality and hotel management did not have jobs because they do not know where to turn to. I thought of a sustainable and reliable project that can connect the two parties and create an open platform for the youth and help working parents feel better at work.
  • How 21-year-old Umuhoza plans to fight climate change The NewTimes, September 27, 2017
• When I finished secondary school, I had the option to go for civil engineering or water and environmental engineering but when I searched the Internet and saw the global wars of climate change, I realised that environmental engineers are the ones able to find solutions and that is how I opted to be an environmental engineer.
  • How 21-year-old Umuhoza plans to fight climate change The NewTimes, September 27, 2017
• During my course, I realised that in terms of land neutrality, Rwanda can do more, and that was my inspiration. The land environmental engineer is one that can take care of the environment and community because both of them can live in harmony in order to attain sustainable development.
  • How 21-year-old Umuhoza plans to fight climate change The NewTimes, September 27, 2017
• UNCCD stepped forward in opening a door for the youth around the globe in order to mitigate and adapt to this by also protecting the environment for us and the future generation.
  • How 21-year-old Umuhoza plans to fight climate change The NewTimes, September 27, 2017
• I am working hand-in-hand with the youth who graduated from University of Rwanda to design the project which will have a positive impact on the environment and the agricultural sector. This is the starting point in the process, to have more youth fighting for suitable land management in the region
  • How 21-year-old Umuhoza plans to fight climate change The NewTimes, September 27, 2017
• In rural areas, for example, people just know that Rwanda is a beautiful country but they do not know how to keep the land sustainable, and how to practice more in conserving the environment. This is a big challenge because rural people are more vulnerable to global warming but they don’t know how to protect themselves from that.
  • How 21-year-old Umuhoza plans to fight climate change The NewTimes, September 27, 2017
• From my small research I realised that we do not have adequate information, like how desertification is affecting Rwanda, how we respond to this, how much are we saving or losing, the soil erosion going on and so forth.
  • How 21-year-old Umuhoza plans to fight climate change The NewTimes, September 27, 2017
• We engage with other youth through a series of events organised in schools; that is, capacity enhancement in different areas and elevating our country’s experience beyond our borders to advocate for proper youth inclusion in climate action.
  • One environmentalist’s drive to get youth to be climate actors The NewTimes, March 29, 2023
• We work closely with the government on a vast level that allows us not only to augment our voice as active stakeholders but also by equipping us with a safe space to learn how to reshape our vision and engagement while receiving capacity enhancement platforms that help us contour an enhanced future.
  • One environmentalist’s drive to get youth to be climate actors The NewTimes, March 29, 2023
• "Through her unwavering determination and mobilization efforts, Ineza continues to inspire a new generation of environmental activists, empowering them to create meaningful change in their communities and beyond."
  • Ineza Grace Umuhoza: The impact driven leader elevating youth climate engagement UNESCO (19 April 2024)
• "The ceiling disappeared, and I remember being woken up and feeling like I was drowning because of the rain."
  • In conversation with Ineza Umuhoza Grace, eco-feminist, climate advocate and environmentalist University of Galway (Oct 21 2024)