Marie Auma

Maria Auma (born Maria Emma Auma Ojok, June 11, 1990) is an Ugandan climate activist and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Better Living Initiatives Global (BLI Global) a not for profit that works to improve environmental conservation and access to health and education through capacity building. Through BLI Global she has collaborated across Africa and Asia on environmental projects including the Save our Dolphins project with IUCN Bangladesh in 2019. She is also a contributor to Africa Business Communities and has started three funds to increase finance flows into impact investing.

Education

Auma graduated with a bachelor's degree in Mass Communication from Makerere University.

Climate Action and Environmental Lobbying

In 2018 after attending a Parks for the Planet Salzburg Global Seminar that focused on the inter-linkages between activism and policy, she partnered with IUCN CEC to deliver a world environment day session at Hill Preparatory School, a special needs school to teach children how they can keep their environment free of plastic waste under the theme "Beat Plastic Pollution". In April of that year Auma started the Global Ambassador Program (the GAP) to equip young people from the global south on skills and tools to take action in their communities. In August of the same year Auma took the challenge to get over 100,000 postcards from children in the Guinness World Record 100,000 post card challenge. The project was initiated by the Swiss Agency for Development and she felt the need to help raise voices of children and youth from the global south that have been heavily underrepresented so political leaders could take urgent action to fight climate change. Through the GAP, Auma worked with young people from 10 countries including Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Libya, Lebanon, Nepal and Bangladesh going to schools to get children's opinions what climate action means to them. The Swiss project ended up mobilizing over 125,000 post cards in total which were displayed on the Aletsch glacier. Her participation in this advocacy campaign propelled her to the global stage where she attended the COP24 conference in Poland.

Through BLI Global, Auma continued her climate action work participating in the "Beat Air Pollution" campaign in 2019. She also became involved in lobbying governments for environmentally friendly policies and participated at the UNEA4 conference in Nairobi, Kenya where she met the incoming Executive Director of UNEP, Inger Anderssen at the time.

United Nations and Climate Finance

In 2019 Auma participated at the Africa Climate Week and the ECOSOC Youth Forum where together with the YOUNGO constituency organized the SDG13 Climate Action break out session. She would attend the HLPF session and the United Nations Climate Action Summit where she advocated for more financing into youth-led climate action. She also participated in the Climate Change conference later that year in Madrid where together Plant for the Planet, Youth Climate Lab and Hatof Foundation and with support from the COP25 Presidency they organized a fireside event for young people to understand how business friendly CEOs can work with youth activists. Together with Seyifunmi Adebote from Media for Community Change she helped organize and moderate a session with the Republic of Nigeria at the South African Pavilion on "Understanding Climate Finance." As one of the ambassadors of the Africa Youth Climate Hub Initiative, she spoke alongside Oladuso Adenike on the kind of support that young people need to push for climate action. Auma continues to share knowledge to young people on how to lobby governments at grassroots level for youth-inclusive financing. She is a strong advocate for financing as a catalyst of climate action.

Interviews

• AfCFTA has the potential to unite the continent - Interview by Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden
• Finding our Future Leaders - Impakter Interview
• Becoming Seld-Employed is one of my goals - She Leads Africa interview
• Building African Businesses - Interview with Theonera