“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs,
but not every man's greed.”

Mahatma Gandhi

I live in Sydney, AU where the temperatures right now are topping 35 degrees Celsius, the bushfire danger rating is at ‘catastrophic’ and already hundreds of separate occurrences have broken out- affecting thousands. Meanwhile I’m migrating to Seoul for a conference on renewable energy and the need for better urban design to facilitate drawdown of carbon from our air. Coincidence? I think not. Because across the globe, millions are waking up to the climate catastrophe which now is unfolding- and our voices, so amplified, are being heard.

There’s a whole rhetoric surrounding the activism-apathy divide, with political leaders sitting on one end and the likes of XR, FFF and Greenpeace on the other. I propose a simplification to the equation here, whereby activism simply becomes a mindset, a description for all those who seek to redefine the edifice of Human Nature in the present day. As with all things worthy fighting for, it’s not an easy change to make: shifting public dialogues away from egocentrism towards ecocentrism, turning dim awareness into appreciation and respect for natural systems.

This January I was lodging in a castle in Southern France, freezing my fingers off caring for hedgehogs, bats and raptors, teaching an injured owl how to fly. And in the long, cold, dark winter nights I spent there I did some thinking: clearly what we were doing was insufficient, something lacking in the whole strategy of environmentalism. 200 species going extinct every day; global temperatures smashing all-time highs- something had to give. And yet, given all these complications and competing issues, the solution which I envisioned was simple.

Under the status quo, the chief factor inhibiting our success was ourselves. That is to say, with the ecological IQ of society at an all-time low, there simply wasn’t a widespread understanding of the stakes we’re playing with, less still of the solutions at hand. Hence by incorporating a wider audience into the dialogues we’re initiating this inevitable downwards spiral might be turned around. And so, in June of this year Human Nature Projects was formed.

With 1200 volunteers across 102 countries, our first steps have been a great success, providing a platform for everyone to enter into environmental pursuits. The secret to this success lies 4 C’s of Conservation: connection, curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. Combined, these have the power to revolutionize people-powered preservation of natural spaces- it’s that easy.

So ending on a lighter note than that with which I began, I would say to any aspiring leader that having a big problem doesn’t necessitate a big solution. There are countless others out there just like yourself who are desperate to make tracks in this journey, and all of us can make a difference. By linking up, reaching out, taking that leap of faith to start without knowing of an end, we can collectively rise to success. As a great man once said:

““Changemaking is like a baboon: you risk life and limb getting tangled up in it, but boy does it look attractive from behind!!”