February 23, 2024
Just Because Some Bad Wind Blows Ends UN Climate and Clean Air Conference in Nairobi
February 23, 2024
Just Because Some Bad Wind Blows Ends UN Climate and Clean Air Conference in Nairobi
I was pleased on 23 February, 2024 to be the final act of the annual meeting of the United Nations’s Climate and Clean Air conference that closed in Nairobi, Kenya.
As the meeting wrapped up the pumping bass notes of Just Because Some Bad Wind Blows filled Conference Room 1 at the headquarters of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
By the end of the song, which is also the title of my album produced by Bernadette La Hengst, many of the remaining delegates had started a Mexican wave-like clapping and on the final note erupted into cheers.
It was quite moving for me. I spent 13 years at UNEP’s Kenyan headquarters leaving in December 2013 to join UN Climate Change in Bonn and I this was the first time I had returned in just over 10 years.
I was there to make a three-part chat show about the work of the UNEP-hosted Climate and Clean Air Coalition for broadcasting on We Don’t Have Time TV.
The coalition, which I had a hand in establishing as far back as 2010, brings governments, companies and civil society from across the globe together to phase down some of the less well-known gases that also cause climate change while having other, multiple, nasty impacts from air pollution to damaging crops and nature.
It had already become clear during the week’s TV shoot that former colleagues would not let me leave without singing from my album.
The sound Technik conditions were a little challenging—Conference Room 1’s sound system is not designed for concerts! But in the end, with the help of an enthusiastic audience, we pulled it off! Now I can add Nairobi to my list of performance venues and cities and one album was sold to Spanish delegate and another to Mexico.
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