Everyone knows about global warming.

At least, I bloody well hope so. You’d struggle to have ignored The Wave demonstration in early December, students founding climate camps here, there and everywhere, and the hoo-ha around police brutality at the Copenhagen summit.

What’s less shouted about is that climate change, as well as drowning penguins and increasing counts of malaria, is actually about morality and injustice.

It’s not fair that nations like Kenya are suffering because of a changing climate, because they’ve done little to cause the problem. It’s Western nations who have polluted the atmosphere.

I recently visited Ukamba Christian Community Services (UCCS), an organisation in Machakos, Kenya, who are helping their local community deal with the effects of climate change. In this area the last five rainy seasons have failed – that’s insufficient rain for more than two years. People are suffering from poor diet because the staple crops of maize and beans are failing, and women and girl children have to walk miles each day to find water sources that haven’t dried out. Esther, from UCCS, said that “water is like gold” in Kenya now.

No one is suggesting that water scarcity’s anything new in Africa. What is new is the frequency and severity of the drought. 71-year old Jones told me that this is the worst drought he’s ever seen. The cattle have died of dehydration, so people have to plough the fields by hand.

Jones is the Secretary of a community-based organisation in Nzauni, which UCCS supports. His group has built a dam near their village, to collect rainwater that would otherwise have flowed away. The water flows through a filter to a tap for the villages and a cattle trough. UCCS also helps the group to coordinate Farmer Field Schools, where farmers are encouraged to improve their knowledge about nutrition, so that they may make informed decisions about what crops to plant.

Climate change is going to make extreme weather conditions like drought, and flooding in other parts of the world, more common. So steps like the ones Jones and his village are taking are crucial – they have to adapt, or suffer as a result of a changing climate.

It’s important that whilst people in the UK do what they can to support people in Kenya and elsewhere that are suffering because of climate change, they also pressure their governments into action. The UN talks held in Copenhagen were supposed to shape the world’s reaction to climate change in the coming decades, but it didn’t work out. Time’s running out, so it’s crucial that we continue to influence our leaders. People like Jones are a little busy right now, what with the drought and all, so it’s up to us. We have to speak out alongside people in the developing world.

Action: Avaaz petition