Dive In

I am a part of this mess.

This blog series is written from within. It is not a journalistic effort, an attempt to offer an objective outlook on efforts made to save our planet. It is fully subjective as we human beings can only be. We are not machines, and even machines have preset conditions and assumptions. By now I know this organisation and its work intimately. By now I have been fully immersed in this world of sustainability for close to 15 years. For better or worse.

And this perhaps relates to the first learning from my experience at Earthworm. It seems evident but only rarely happens: if you are connected to an issue you care about, you need to dive in, you need to go where the problems are and talk with the people driving it.

Being deforestation or discrimination, it does not really matter. Change is neither engineered nor forced from a distance. It is not triggered by safely judging other’s actions from behind our walls (starting with the conclusions we have already made about them). Well it can but it never lasts. We need meet the “enemy” where he lives.

Let’s say a large corporation responsible for clearing forests is finally forced by an NGO campaign or a new regulation to clean up their act. As long as the pressure is on, the company will do enough to keep out of trouble. When no one’s looking anymore or worse incentives are created to encourage reckless expansion, then what happens? The world burns again. The renewed fires in the forests of Brazil are a painful reminder of that.

This will continue as long as change has not been internalised by the actors holding the chainsaw or driving the tractor. Be it a large company or a local farmer. Nothing will be “sustainable” until an actual shift in the internal values driving their work happens and they are supported to put them in practice. This cannot take place solely with market, legal or civil pressures. It happens by building real connection with the people and the reality they are experiencing. We need to get to the ground with them, not as judges but as fellow human beings looking for practical solutions.

Be it in government, NGO or in the business world, there is way too much grand standing going on. Too many high-level forums, not enough direct engagement with the people and the places where the actual issues are. No one wants to get dirty. There is a supply chain, a chain of human connections driving the destruction of nature. This chain goes all the way back to consumers looking for cheap products. Our hands are already dirty. If we want to change something, we need to dive in.