Support 50 Global South Environmental Leaders

Nessie Reid, a GESA 2013 alumna, shares her thoughts on the transformational impact of the academy:

When I applied for the Global Environments Summer Academy (GESA) in the spring of 2013, I was at a crossroads in my professional life. I was seeking direction and mentorship in the field I was most passionate about: protecting and conserving biological and cultural diversity. In 2010, after graduating from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), I was fortunate enough to work for the ICCA Consortium: a non-profit NGO seeking to promote and provide appropriate recognition and support to Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities Conserved Areas and Territories (ICCAs for short). It is here where the seeds of my interest in food security and food sovereignty were planted, but it was only when I attended GESA was I able to recognise that it was this direction I wanted to go in.

During the three years of working for the consortium, I carried out field research and organised events in Japan, India, the Philippines, Italy and lived in Indonesia for eighteen months where I worked as Project Coordinator for an ICCA ‘high threat’ documentation series. My fieldwork led me to West Kalimantan where I witnessed a Dayak Limbai Indigenous community protecting, managing and conserving their ‘Bukit Bunyau’ ICCA using generation-old customary intuitions and natural resource management practices. The experience irrefutably affirmed my belief that areas where local communities are able to independently govern and manage their natural environments (i.e. ICCAs) – with full access and control over their food production – biological and cultural diversity is far higher, compared to areas with externally enforced conservation management systems. Whilst documenting the work of a community radio network and organic seed bank cooperative during my time in India, I learnt of the rewards that small scale, community-led projects can reap. Similarly, when co-facilitating a community-made Photo Story in the Philippines, I witnessed a formidable spirit of resilience and innovation as this community fought to defend their ancestral homeland from encroaching mining companies.

I brought all these ideas and learnings to GESA and it was during the three-week period – with peer-to-peer learning, coupled with mentoring from GESA resource people and Global Diversity Foundation staff – that I was able to discuss, brain-storm and envision how to most effectively put my plans for ecological and social justice into practice. Up until this point, since leaving university, I had ploughed on with my career, never really giving myself enough time or freedom to stop and scrutinise if I was really affecting change. Despite people’s best intentions for ‘saving the planet’, within the NGO, activism and environmental movement, burn-out is a common manifestation and I believe we lose many great people within the movement due to it. GESA allowed me the breathing-room to stop and really consider what felt meaningful and alive to me, rather than just ticking the “right” boxes.

After GESA, I returned to the UK and became co-director for This is Rubbish: a food waste Community Interest Company which raises awareness about the preventable scale of food waste in the UK through policy research, community and arts led public events. In November 2014, I became Rural Artist in Residence for Cape Farewell where I created the on-going The Milking Parlour: an artistic inquiry exploring and opening up questions about the future and current situation of our food and farming system. Since receiving the residency, I moved to an organic family-run farm in South West Wales, from where I manage the Oxford Real Farming Conference: one of key organic and agroecological farming conferences in the UK, and Biodiversity – a Journal of Life on Earth.

My experience at GESA empowered me to pursue a meaningful and rewarding life of environmental change-making and more recently, environmental leadership and management. I was so inspired by GESA that I am now in fact the coordinator of both the academy and the Global Environments Network (GEN), which gathers alumni of summer academies and other events into a transformational leadership network. With other members of GEN, I am busy planning this year’s summer academy, which will take place 25 July – 11 August in the city of Oxford, UK, collaborating with the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute and Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science.

GESA brought much change and meaning to my life, providing me with a platform where I was able to speak of my experiences and begin to explore how to channel them into the next chapter of my life and work back in my own local community. If you want to read more about GESA 2018, click here. The deadline for application is 31^st March, so you still have time to apply!

Plans for the 2^nd Latin American Socio-Environmental Academy [Spanish title: 2ª Academia Latinoamericana de Liderazgo Socio-Ambiental/ALLSA] are well underway. Alumni of other Global Environments Network events are leading the planning, integrating their concerns and vision for change.

Scheduled for 30 June - 8 July 2018 in Guatemala, ALLSA 2018 will focus on the intersections between youth, climate change and migration in Central America, the Caribbean and North America.

Why climate change?

Several countries in Central America and the Caribbean region rank amongst the top ten in the world for long-term climate risk. As climate change worsens, this unique region of interwoven lives, economies, foodsheds and cultures will face ever-increasing challenges associated directly or indirectly with climate change: gendered and youth migration, cross-border violence, resource extraction-related conflicts, depopulation of rural areas, and loss of traditional knowledge bases, food security and sovereignty.

Ana Elia, Global Environments Summer Academy alumna, co-organiser of ALLSA 2015, and of the upcoming regional academy says, “This comes at a crucial time. According to UNICEF, in the coming years climate change will increasingly be the cause of large-scale migrations of people, led in most cases by youth who are more willing to take risks. Latin American and Caribbean youth leaders need to connect local and international networks to find adaptive solutions to the complex threads of challenges associated with climate change.

We believe there is a pressing need to create platforms open to youth from different disciplinary backgrounds to encourage… critical discussions on climate change. …We are designing the 2018 academy for committed, proven young emerging leaders to deepen and expand learnings, explore critical pedagogies, develop social networks, improve communication skills and strengthen leadership skills that advance practice and understanding for social and ecological resilience.” she continued.

The 2^nd Latin American academy builds on important lessons we learned from the inaugural Latin American regional academy in Dominican Republic, alongside other regional and summer academies held over the years since 2011. For ALLSA 2018, academy alumni, under the auspices of the Global Environments Network, are partnering with Global Diversity Foundation and UNESCO Prize laureate SERES, a grassroots nonprofit working to cultivate and catalyse Central American youth leaders to build just and sustainable communities.

To read more about the 2^nd Latin American Socio-Environmental Academy, click here

Links:

• Global Environments Network events listing
• GDF North America programme
• SERES website