My name is Marc Buckley. I live in Germany. I’m originally from the Hamptons, New York. My occupation is climate speaker, serial entrepreneur and food activist.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that lead you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
Marc: It wasn’t one specific moment but many years that continuously gave me an awakening. I didn’t use to be environmentally conscious, friendly, or very conscious about what I ate, consumed or how I lived. I left a very big footprint in a metaphorically Texan manner: a big hat, big cattle, big land etc. Through travel, seeing different cultures, people, places, poverty and having come from five generations of organic farmers and three generations of hydroponic farmers, I just began to feel this connection with the things I at one time took for granted. Understanding the bigger system and connection to all of us with our planet through knowledge/education and hearing people speak, let me soak it up like a sponge. It led me to truly find out all there is about how we can live well beyond now. Soon we’ll be in 2030 and 2050 and way into the 21st century - for my grandchildren, for my children, for people I don’t even know yet, it’s such a wonderful earth and it’s such a wonderful human species. So it’s a daily process and I’m excited to wake up to do it everyday.
Q: What was an important moment that made you decide to become an activist?
Marc: The biggest moment was when Al Gore asked to train me as a climate speaker. He basically said: “This is the presentation I’ve given but let me give you all the tools, network, help and empowerment to do whatever you need to go train other people and talk about this. Speak as a climate speaker and I trust you’ll do the right thing. We need to spread the word.” He’s just one man and that’s not enough. We really need to spread the message, so I liked the platform and the tools and the ability to do that. I took it and ran with it. It’s really been wonderful because I’ve always been involved with food, how to produce food in innovative ways, and thought about the full systems of how to do it. I came to the realization that there’s always room for improvement, room for people to learn and be on the latest of the learning curve, but there are people who don’t know things exist or don’t understand things about the environment. It was a ‘business way’ to tell people about new solutions or innovations to eat better, live healthier, and do good to then combine it into a system that can be something good for the benefit of the planet and not just about money. Something good that gives back and doesn’t hurt our planet.
Q: You said you were raised with organic farmers - is that an environment you enjoyed growing up in?
Marc: I really did enjoy it. Back then the organics were very different than now. Organic doesn't necessarily mean healthy; as a matter of fact my grandpa died of diabetes. Just because you eat organic doesn’t mean you're healthy, but it’s one facet of importance we should look at. It was a blessing because I learned a lot of things about agriculture. I learned things about food and beverage production and about hard labor with tractors and that lifestyle. Then I thought about how we could do it without food waste and more efficiently - I thought: “How can we do it without hurting our finite resources?” I was a late bloomer and I didn’t find out about the book “The Limits To Growth” until I was 38. It was written in 1972. I wondered why I never heard about this and I was disappointed. My next thing is: “Why haven’t we done anything if we’ve known about it for so long?” It doesn’t make sense. It’s like somebody saying: “The world is going to end” and we say: “No problem, let’s go to dinner. Everything is fine.”
Q: After you mentioned your family’s lifestyle it’s hard to believe you had a large footprint.
Marc: I was making a big ecological carbon footprint. I drove a large suburban that was an 8-10 person vehicle and it was consuming ad nauseum. We lived in a big house and we did all these unnecessary things. Not only were they empty and unfulfilling, but they were hurting the environment. They were hurting the planet and they were teaching my children and other people, sending them the wrong message about the lifestyle being OK. First I needed to become an example about how to live the best way I could, before I could even start speaking about it. I had to make myself knowledgable and practice. After repeating the presentations, telling the stories, having discussions with people over and over again, I learned tons. I still learn every single time, but I’ve made more of a connection and it becomes more of a cohesive system of how we can reach solutions in the future. It’s something that needs to be done every single day. It’s part of a system that needs continuous repetition each day. Every moment you do what you can to improve our situation. I know we have a long way to go, but I’m very optimistic and I believe we are surrounded by an abundance of renewable energy and things that are going to save our asses in the future.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Marc: First I would want to listen to them and see how informed they are. I’d find out what their position is and why they feel that way. Then I would see what level they’re in in their understanding. I’d have them give their opinions and views, then ask if they’re open to hear more, to hear a discussion or listen to statistics, data, facts, science or examples we’re experiencing every single day with climate change. I’d have a discussion to see if maybe they could shift their paradigm, their thinking or how they feel about systems thinking for a resilient sustainable future. They have to believe that what they're used to at this moment is a situation they can see continuing well into the future. If they think it’s a short term future, then we can talk and see where they're at. It’s an individual discussion with each and every person on this planet. All of us are at different levels in our evolution and our adaptation of this world - some people might already understand, some other people might not, and some might understand enough to be dangerous with their knowledge so we have to learn about each individual.
Q: You mentioned that you became an activist with Al Gore but before that you must have already had an environmental awakening.
Marc: With Al Gore is when I received a lot of good tools, ideas and connections to other scientists that I didn’t have before. Before that I was working in a different way and trying to watch my health. The moment that was probably the pinnacle was the point where I was almost obese. I was 350 American pounds, so I was a very big person and had health issues. Had that continued I probably would have more issues today. I started looking into how I could change my habits and how to change as far as health is concerned. Then I found out how closely food is tied to our planet, our environment, how much food we waste and how a lot of our health problems (obesity, diabetes, asthma, etc.) are really connected to our environment. It’s the basis of all human needs. Water, power and food are these basics and we need security, protection, and shelter. We’re making it worse and it’s not just worse for our health and for us as humans, but it’s really hard on our planet. If we work on fixing one thing, it’s hard to ignore the other and say: “No, it’s just all about diet, it has nothing to do with our planet.” Things naturally mesh together and it makes total sense.
Q: Can you tell me about how you eat now? Many people assume that environmentalists are vegan.
Marc: No, they’re not. I used to be vegan and I ate totally vegan. I honestly believe it is one of the best ways to eat for your body and for the environment. But there’s a big problem and here in Montenegro it’s a huge problem: there are not a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables offered. We’ve been at beautiful locations for this forum but the choices in salads, fruits, vegetables, and things for people who eat strictly plant-based or raw are just not available. Instead, there’s a lot of bad other options, so our agriculture, fruit and beverage industry is really closely tied to 10 top companies who control all the brands all over the world. They're creating products that are sugary and full of preservatives and GMO’s. They're not vegan or fair trade and there are all sorts of facets in there that are creating pandemic health issues for humans. It’s so vital that the change occurred with my weight and I saw the connection to how important it is.
Q: So when you’re not traveling you eat vegan?
Marc: I do, but when you’re hungry you're hungry. If you're a vegan and you're in a place where there’s only cheese and meat you have the option to starve yourself until you can find a grocery store/restaurant that has the options you want, or eat what is available. That’s why we developed something called “adaptive nutrition”: you eat the best choices you can in the moment and then hope to be returned to an area where you can eat vegan again. But I really want to change the entire industry so that worldwide everybody can understand the importance of plant-based foods and that we can make them available without having to import them. I want to grow locally or regionally so that everybody has good nutrition where they are at, but that’s a transition that needs to occur over time. I just traveled through the Philippines and Asia and there’s a lot of meat, pork, fish and other things they eat, but there are also vegetables. It’s possible to be a vegan there but there’s a lot of pesticides, chemicals and issues with things, so it’s almost better not to eat pesticides and chemically filled vegan food, green salads or vegetables because it’s more damaging to have those chemicals in your body than to find alternatives.
Q: That’s what you’re building your factory for?
Marc: Exactly. The ANJA GmbH factory is there to help shift the industry and show them that it’s possible to do it with renewable energy. There are some alternatives making it easier for the rest of the industry to transition. Similar to Tesla helping push the electric car transition. That’s what our business is: to help the push. We would love for anybody to steal, use or duplicate our idea because it only would make for a better world. It’s not about profit, it’s about making the world a better place.
My name is Tigrilla Gardenia. I live in Damanhur, which is one of the largest spiritual eco-communities in the world located in northern Italy. I’m not Italian, I’m actually Cuban-American.
Q: What do you do?
Tigrilla: I study the effects of plant music on people by using an instrument called “The Music of the Plants”. It’s a musical instrument for the plant world, so I study the effects of plant music in two main realms; one is health and wellness (there’s growing evidence of the effectiveness of plant music in those areas), and the other is interspecies art. As David Buckland was saying in his speech: “What does it mean when we really start to look at the plant world?” He was talking about art being an easy way in - we have a tendency to open our doors to artists. We watch movies and do many things instead of listening to a scientist or reading a report. Through interspecies art we’re moving into a new realm and new paradigm of co-creation with the plant world.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that led you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
Tigrilla: Well, the spirit of the consumer is a problem because we tend to be on one side where we see the problem but we don’t really see the solution. The solutions have to be looked at from a consumer's perspective. Damanhur is a completely different reality; it’s like living in Hogwarts. Even though we call ourselves an eco-community, we really aren’t in the traditional way because ecology came as a side effect for us. Basically, we are a spiritual community that believes we can live in complete harmony with the plant world as well as other beings. You realize you have to. When you love something, you naturally protect it. A mother naturally protects her child and if you really love an object you're going to take care of that object. It’s not about looking at the environment as something you have to save, but instead falling in love with the environment. Before I came to Damanhur I was a city girl - I grew up in the city and I was living in Barcelona beforehand. My mother loves to call and say: “Why did you move to the middle of nowhere?”, but after moving here, I started to understand and appreciate not just the environment or going camping, but really loving this existence. We’re not hippies - people go to Damanhur at first thinking it’s going to be like a typical hippie commune, but it’s not. We have professionals of all types; there’s just a union/communion between all the different beings. Specifically with the plant world, where ecology is a natural step, so you don’t even realize you've been labeled as an environmentalist because you were just living your life. As a matter of fact, when you get to Damanhur many of our houses are painted with large murals and entire houses are completely covered with plants. People wonder why we do that and we do it because we realize that we are very small as humans - we think of ourselves as big, because we’ve got arms and legs and we can do a whole series of things they can’t, but in reality we’re about 1% of this planet. By painting them large on our houses, so they completely envelope us, it reminds us that we need to think of them first. They were the first inhabitants of land and if they don’t like what we’re doing, they push through the concrete. A plant can break concrete. If you build wrong, they’re just going to take over and if you leave, they’re going to be fine. They don’t need you. All of these little aspects made me realize that if I work with them instead of just stepping on them, my life would be completely different.
Q: So the moment you became passionate about the environment was when you moved to Damanhur?
Tigrilla: When I moved to Damanhur I finally realized things I had inherently felt. I was always someone who ate organic food and followed “reduce, reuse, recycle”. I guess, I had always been someone who looked at the environment as something that needs to be protected, but there was a shift that happened when I finally moved to Damanhur. I realized that how I had been living was not enough. That's why I get frustrated with events like the Green Culture Forum sometimes - I understand the importance of science, but I want to know how the little guy helps, because it's through purchases and actions that we move big corporations. Corporations are still made of human beings. Even here: if you're talking about being green but then throw your cigarette butts on the ground, or if you’re head of an environmental company but then go home and don’t recycle, there's a disconnect. Before Damanhur I had that disconnect where my actions were environmentally correct, but my entire lifestyle wasn't enough to make that leap and fixing the environment is going to require much more.
Q: What made you move there?
Tigrilla: I went to visit Damanhur in 2011 because I heard about it and I had moved to Europe. I heard about the community and when I got there I was blown away because you don't expect it. You think locations like this don't exist except in fairytales, but it’s real. We built underground temples and I put my hands into the earth to build temple spaces. The only difference between me and the pyramid builders is that we have the goal, belief, and ideal that we want to live in harmony. After being there, they asked me if I would be interested in working on a project in Damanhur and I thought they were insane at the time because I said: “I can't live in a community! I’d kill people! 20 people in one house is too much!” but I did. I thought I'd be there six months and now it's been six years and I'm really happy there.
Q: What kind of environment were you raised in? What were you taught about our treatment of the earth?
Tigrilla: I'm from Miami, Florida. We're talking about a place that is so beautiful but I see the environment through different eyes now. I’ve brought a lot of people to visit over the years since I live in Europe and come home to visit family. There’s a weird mixture: on one hand there’s a whole series of environmental and spiritual things that are the norm and yet there's a huge disconnect. For example, I love my brother but we don't see eye to eye. He is your typical consumer: he buys plastic bottles of water for his home, which I don’t purchase. I had to purchase them here and I'm kicking myself, because I hate it. He's your typical consumer who believes it's important to be comfortable in life and I think it’s a form of autohypnosis. To buy stuff for the sake of buying is something I gave it up in 2004, but Miami has this weird dichotomy where to an extent it’s beautiful so there is a certain amount of protection, but it’s only aesthetic. I went back recently and took someone from Damanhur with me. He was blown away by the trees, the greenness, and the nature, which is something I haven't seen after the big set of hurricanes that hit in the 1990’s. But it is very green and nobody would cut down a tree from their yard. You build your house around the tree. So there is a connection, but it's still subconscious, not conscious. I grew up in an environment of nature with the beach and trees and landscape.
Q: It sounds like a respect for nature without reducing consumption. Did you recycle?
Tigrilla: In my house we recycled but in Miami it was super limited. I’ve had big conversations with my mother because she does what the local government tells her to do but nothing more, and people like my brother don't even do that. He says he doesn't believe in it and remembers when people said they were just throwing the recycled stuff in the garbage anyway so he puts it all in the garbage. I'm the one who pushes the limits of the recycle bin: “They say they can accept paper, what about this kind of paper?” My mother says: “You can't put that in there” and I say: “They’ll figure it out eventually and they'll recycle it down the line.” So it's like three levels - I’m always pushing the envelope saying: “We can do more, we can be better, we can evolve”, my mother saying: “Let's do everything we're supposed to do”, and my brother saying: “Who cares, just live your life”. I grew up in the type of environment where either you do the basics of what's supposed to be done or you don't do anything at all.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Tigrilla: I've had this conversation with my brother, but I realize that he is messed up to a certain extent because there are a few elements that have come to light for me over the years. Even if you're not religious, you have to believe that there is something beyond you. It doesn't matter what - it could be God, it could be the community of beings on this planet, it could be your children etc. You have to have a belief system that makes you realize the way we live today has an impact on something that's happening tomorrow. That's one element I think is important. The other important thing is that you don't have to look at the big scale. If you're a visionary you can make art to combat companies’ actions and that’s good. But people like my brother don't have a belief system that's beyond them, so there's really nothing I can do because they’re always going to be in the physical realm. It's not that he doesn't believe the science, because he does, but he doesn't care about it and there's no way to change that. A paradigm shift has to happen within him, so he's not our target. He's not the right person I should go after. My mother is deeply spiritual and she does the basics because she says she doesn’t know what else to do. I think that’s where the power is that we tend to skip over - the little guy looking out saying: “I can't recycle more than this”. They don't know to push the envelope or who to talk to about getting more done. If you go online there's so much information like: "Do I use cloth diapers or do I use plastic?” Well, do you have an abundance of water? Do you live in a place that has a drought? If you live in California, use plastic right now because you don't have the water to wash cloth. If you live in Miami use cloth. Both can be environmentally sane decisions based on what is going on. I think we need to have more local conversations that make it even easier for people to recycle. In Japan there's one city that has 22 different types of recycling bins. It's become part of their culture and they have fun with it - they look at the stuff and they break it apart and they chat while they're doing it. They made it part of their culture. If you don't make it part of the fun culture or the way you go to school or the way you shop, you can't make it part of the conversation in life. I think we need to do that on a regional level because each region is different. I live in an area where it takes miles to take things to the recycling bin so it's hard. It's not about people being lazy. It's about fitting it into a lifestyle and asking: How does it become a part of your lifestyle?
Q: An attendee of this forum said that she gets frustrated because she's been listening to the speeches and she's so excited, but she recycles and doesn’t feel like she’s making much of a difference.
Tigrilla: Absolutely. I think there are some smaller movements happening. The package-free movement is great. I had an eye-opening experience when I lived in a forest environment for a little bit and we did an experiment where we tried to create zero waste. There is no such thing as zero waste or zero impact, because in a place like the woods you can't put oil into the ground since it doesn't decompose quick enough. We were trying to make soaps where you wet your hands first, then put the soap in your hands and then wash because as soon as it hits the water it starts to breakdown. By the time it gets to sink into the ground it has to break down, since there can't be any kind of chemicals that are harmful, so you can't use anything oil-based and we couldn't figure out how to make conditioner.
Q: Did you use apple cider vinegar as conditioner?
Tigrilla: I grew up with that, but in Italy where I was, they didn't know about it. For example, I said we can just use coconut oil for our hair. Now I use coconut oil in my hair to untangle and I wash it after, or I use vinegar depending on when I have a certain amount of buildup. I'm still looking for the best solution and it's an experiment. The point is, that when I was living in the woods I couldn't even do that because coconut oil coats the plants and harms them. I learned that. We had a big conversation about all these soaps and detergents, but of course I live in a place where we can do this. Our experiments are things working in our house and we have lots of conversations about detergents, shampoos, conditioners, etc.
Q: Do you all make it yourself?
Tigrilla: Damanhur likes to do a lot of research on something. We start in the nucleus and if we think we've got a formula that works, we create a little company and then we test it out with all of the people. If that company works, then it gets bigger like the “The Music of the Plants” company. It was something we experimented with and then eventually it became something we sell in public. So we developed a company that makes detergents. It's developed by a chemist and a biologist and they were really interested in this, so they did a lot of testing to make more sustainable detergents and processes. But in Italy we don't have the culture of loose bulk stuff yet like in other countries. Things like zero packaging we struggle with. We grow a lot of our own stuff and have our own animals, so we try to eat as much as we can that way. When we do buy stuff like beans there is no bulk in the areas we live. There’s no market there. But these are conversations to have. I showed people pictures of U.S. supermarkets and we now have a small supermarket because we wanted zero kilometer - only stuff from our area. Our supermarket buys everything organic (we were the first organic supermarket in the area), and it's open to the public. We do as much as we can with zero kilometers, getting as much as possible from close by. That's what we wanted, so we had to build it ourselves. Our bulk section is only five little bins and it's mostly nuts. They don't have package-free because it's not a movement yet. But these are the conversations we need to have, so in that aspect the internet does help. You get inspired by seeing package-free solutions.
Q: You're also living in Italy where a lot of food is naturally grown - maybe in Miami it was different?
Tigrilla: Absolutely. And talk about ignorance - I didn't even know you could have a home garden until I moved to Seattle. When I went to Europe, a friend of mine moved from Seattle to Miami and she bought a regular house with a little backyard and turned it into a food forest. It's fantastic. Every time I go there I just look at it and say: “I didn't know you could do this with your house!” There are a lot of things we can grow: mangoes, avocados, papayas, all of these tropical fruits. We weren't raised with those conversations and I think those are important conversations to have. Edible forests like the one they're building in Seattle are great. Forest schools like the ones they have in Germany, where kids go out and play, show that a lot of schools are getting their own gardens. I think all these things start to change our relationship with nature. When you fall in love with the lettuce because it's something you grew, all of a sudden the relationship you have with nature changes completely. I had a friend from New York who would collect plastic, because they didn't recycle in New York but they did in California, so she would bring it to California to recycle. Where there is a will, there is a way. More importantly, the people who do these things need to speak - they need to share information with their friends about what they're doing, because their friends might try it and little by little it expands. I think we’ve lost the art of community, the art of friendship, the art of sharing ideas and trying experiments. I've tried so many things because my friends showed me and if we keep doing this there’s a great possibility of making significant change. If we don't change the way we're acting, we won't change the impact that anyone can make in their New York City apartment. In reality, a city is the most sustainable architecture we have. Green building techniques and shared spacing is so much better than people moving out to the middle of nowhere where you have to get electricity to them. Even if they live off the grid, the amount of car traveling to come to the city to do things is excessive. In a city building that’s very well built with compost bins and maybe a community garden, you can make a huge impact with one piece of real estate.
Q: Living in a city also usually means more walking and public transportation instead of driving.
Tigrilla: Absolutely. Transportation makes a big impact. Plus it's fun because now you’re not doing it by yourself, you’re having fun doing it with other people and that's the fastest way we're going to evolve. People ask me why I’m still at Damanhur and besides the fact that it's like Hogwarts, any idea that I have I instantly have people I can share it with. They can tell me whether it’s good or give suggestions on how to do it another way. I wanted to create something and all of a sudden this little idea I had that I thought was fantastic, turned out to only be good but became so much greater because of everybody's input. I said I would adopt their ideas after having tried it of course, and then all of a sudden people are using it and it starts to grow and that grows in the collective consciousness.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Tigrilla: I think the individual is still important. The Internet is great and talking is great, but in Damanhur one of the biggest things I've learned is that the meditation you do with your hands is so important. Do just one thing. Don’t try to change everything in one day. Change one thing you know. You want to buy a Louis Vuitton purse? That's fine because a Louis Vuitton purse is going to last you 30 years instead of buying 17 purses from Marshalls. We think cheap and it's not about that. Thinking cheap is not thinking about quality. Our purchasing should support change by buying from the right companies. If we do that on a global scale, then we ourselves are getting the bigger benefit. I think it's important for us to really think about quality and take a look at the little plants and think of them as your friends. If we have a company that's hurting something and you take the power away because you stop buying from it, that should enact change. The problem might be people thinking: "How do you get the mass to go in this and this direction?” and I understand when you have poverty and all these types of things, it’s difficult. This is what I love about projects like the food forest. The food forest is for anyone in Seattle to walk in and grab food. We also have to understand the reasons people are doing things. Why are we buying that cheap shirt? Is it because we don't have money? Is it because you can come up with €50 but you buy five for €10 instead of one quality one, because that's all you can afford? Then we need to look at the problem in a different way. I think we need to get the heart of the matter. If we don't get into the discussion points, we're always going to stay on the surface.
Q: I think it’s changing. I was raised with quantity over quality, but I don't live like that now. I don't know if that's because of the internet but companies’ transparency and quality is more affordable now.
Tigrilla: I did the same thing when I moved from a big house into a small house and I asked myself: “What am I doing?” Then I went to work for Cirque du Soleil and I went down to basically three large suitcases. I had my whole life in three large suitcases and you really start to think about what's important. Now I pretty much have one room worth of stuff. Everything I owned I used to be able to fit in a big car, but now I have a bed and some furniture, which I haven't had for years. The other cool thing about Damanhur is that we have to clean everything for the solstices, so at least twice a year we have to clean the house from top to bottom as clean as it can be. I use it as an opportunity to bring out and look at everything to ask if it’s bringing me joy. That's the question. For example, this dress was something I bought 15 years ago and maybe it’ll go. Sometimes I don't wear things but they bring me so much joy and I know that I'll wear it sometimes and that is OK, but I had pants that I bought and didn't actually like. Living in a community we have the benefit that everything we throw out goes to someone. We have two bins: one is for things going to your house first by asking if anybody wants to recycle it - we recycle a lot. Then we have a place called Trovatutto, which means “find everything”, and it's basically our own little shop - everything you don't want goes there, kind of like Goodwill. We donate there and then people from the rest of the community come. Lots of guests come who don't realize how to dress when you get to Damanhur, so they can go in there and buy a pair of pants or shoes for two euros or something. It continues the cycle of not just throwing things away but using things from the garbage, like: “These pants can be cut up and used as a rag to clean”. By the time we throw things away we don’t have much and it’s just because the item has no use anymore and lived a good life.
My name is Alina Averchenkova. I’m originally from Moscow in Russia, but I’ve been living abroad for the past 19 years. Now I live in London.
Q: Where do you work?
Alina: I work at the London School of Economics in the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. I do research and policy analysis to help policy makers design climate change policies around the world. I also monitor international negotiations and their activities to address climate issues.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that led you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
Alina: I don’t know if it was just one moment or a process. I think it very much came from my parents; especially my father. My father is an environmentalist and from a very early age he brought us to the woods and into nature. He taught us to appreciate the beauty and told us we have to take care of it. Everything started with him gradually building my interest. I was raised in Moscow but in the summer we would take trips to the countryside where my grandparents had a summer house.
Q: Have you solely been involved in environmental work in your professional life?
Alina: At the age of 14 I got involved in an NGO. It was a youth and environmental NGO affiliated with the geography department at the Moscow State University. I think that had a big influence on me. We learned about the environment and took trips to study plants, soil, pollution etc. After 3 years I decided when I finished school, that I wanted to study geography and I wanted to focus on environmental issues. So that’s what I’ve done. Since then I started focusing specifically on climate change as an issue.
Q: Are you teaching about the environment now or conducting research?
Alina: In my current role I don’t teach classes to students. I do research and analysis, which looks at experiencing and designing environmental policies around the world. I work with governments in developing countries and do trainings and conferences. I also work with legislatures around the world to help them design policies.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Alina: I would try to understand first and ask them why they think we shouldn’t. I’d try to understand what their arguments are. I think all people understand being in a beautiful green setting, wanting clean water to drink, a clean lake or beach to swim in, and to eat food that doesn’t poison them. Unless we care about the planet, unless we care about nature and the ways that we produce and consume things, none of that will be available for us or our children in a few years.
Q: Why is there still a need for environmental activists - why haven’t these issues already been fixed?
Alina: Some people are not aware and I think we need to do more work to raise awareness. For example, not a lot of people learn and even less people understand what they can do to help. I think that’s one part of it. The other big issue is shifting leaders and that’s what I focus on - influencing leaders and decision-makers on a political level, as well as those who run big companies. I do believe that if we engage in a dialogue and look for solutions, those decision-makers can be shifted. They can then put laws and policies in place or make investments that actually have good intentions.
Q: When you talk to these leaders, do you predominantly show them science/evidence to back up climate change claims - how do you talk about what needs to be done?
Alina: It depends on who you talk to, but in some instances I do start with science. In the past 20 years science has made a lot of advances and the majority of the scientific community has already shown us that climate change is happening. It’s happening faster than we thought it would, and unless we really change policies and consumption, it will cause disastrous circumstances for the next generation. We’re focusing on solutions, looking at what can be done, taking each sector and each region, and also sharing experiences from other countries/cities that have been making progress with some of the challenges. For example, we’ve looked at a database that monitors climate change laws and policies in 164 countries, which is 90% of the global world. As of now, there are 1300 laws and policies that address climate change either directly or indirectly through safe policies about clean energy, green culture, foresting etc. If a particular country or city wants to learn how to design clean energy, our database allows them to look for examples from other countries and learn from each other. That’s what I’m very interested in doing - I think it’s very important to bring people together and share experiences.
Q: You mentioned that you're optimistic and have an idea of a solution. Can you talk about that?
Alina: I’ve spent quite a few years working with the United Nations system and international negotiations - watching it from the inside and outside. Progress has been very slow in terms of countries coming together and finding solutions. Being an optimist means that I believe we shouldn’t give up despite political activities, but rather try to reach a solution at a global level. For example, the Paris Agreement has been an important step in the right direction. It doesn't bring us the emission reductions that are necessary to prevent dangerous global warming, but it’s an important step to having companies investing in greenhouse technologies, having more inventors look for new technology and new solutions, and for individuals to be more aware of the problem and start changing their behavior. For me, the solution is not just in changing leaders or heads of state, but companies or mayors etc. All of them are leaders like the people I saw here at the Green Culture Forum: young people who have startups looking at green agriculture, looking at clean furniture, looking for solutions to problems we saw here. I think of all the teachers who are trying to introduce innovative curriculums in schools, so kids can be educated about climate change and environment in a different way. Each of us are leaders in what we do. I think we need to focus on having more environmental leadership, informing leaders who are now in power about the problem and also informing about solutions that are available to us. Once we move the leaders, we can actually move the system.
Q: You worked for the United Nations?
Alina: I did. I worked for the UN for three and a half years in Bonn, Germany at the climate change secretariat (UNFCCC). When countries would come together to negotiate on an international agreement, my job would be to help and try to strike a compromise with other colleagues. We wrote the drafts and texts of agreements, we tried to search for compromises and also brought countries together bilaterally in groups. It was all about climate. At that time it was before the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, so we were focusing on the new international agreements, which became the Paris Agreement, but it was a long journey.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Alina: As I said in my speech; I’ve been to many conferences and have met a lot of people through my career, but in these 3 days I actually feel quite inspired by the conversations, people, and this intersection of creative sector, science and politics we’re experiencing here. Each of us has our own ideas, our own means, our own understanding of the world, and our own networks of people we know. I can really see how coming together and combining methods like visual arts and nature can be helpful. One challenge I’m taking from this week is: how can I change the way I communicate or present information? Perhaps in a more visual way with something that will speak to more people, not only to experts in my own field. How can I work with someone like David Buckland or maybe with musicians to find a creative solution? It’s very exciting. I feel a lot of energy to try and see what I can do in a different way. I was also thinking about how we all come from very different backgrounds - you have musicians, you have artists, you have physicians etc. How do we find the common ground for a conversation? When I was preparing what to say here, I was thinking about how to find a way to speak to such a diverse crowd, but that hasn’t really been a problem. The conversation has not been lacking, it’s always a very rich discussion. This was something new for me because I expected it to be more difficult and it wasn’t at all.
My name is Dragan Hajdukovic. I’m a physicist. I work in the field of physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. I’m from Montenegro but I worked in Geneva for over 20 years. There is a big scientific center there called Cern. I created a new theory of dark matter or dark energy of matter in the universe, but it will take a lot of time to explain. Experimentalists and astronomers are now testing the theory. I was also on the BBC about it, but they do not permit you to explain the theory, since they have commercial programs where the main goal is to have a lot of viewers without really presenting the complex science.
Q: What do you do now?
Dragan: I was permanently in research for 30 years at university. As a physicist I created the theory of gravitational properties of the quantum vacuum, which may explain some of the biggest mysteries in the universe. Of course, I don’t know if I am right or wrong. It will be confirmed or rejected by experiments - it’s always like that in science. I have created something really very interesting. Concerning Montenegro; at the end of the former Yugoslavia (which was a much better country than the country today), I proposed the creation of the first ecological state. The philosophy behind the idea was very simple: the main lines of world history are always resolved from the activities of big nations like America, Russia, etc. A small nation can become important as an example of something good. Montenegro is such a beautiful country with less than 700,000 people, so in a small city here let’s try to create something that might be called an ecological state. Unfortunately because of war and everything else, the wrong things have happened. Now the nature is very, very destroyed. Since you are American, I will explain the situation in Montenegro in your way: Imagine that legislative and judicial power are not separate entities but must listen to the president. Imagine your senators and your judges just following the orders of the president. More than that, imagine that the president is not only a strong man and everyone must listen to him, but he’s also a bad person who is not using his power for the good of the United States, but for personal affairs. Imagine such a president for 25 years ruling in the White House and making damages in the thousands of billions. Of course you cannot imagine something like that in the U.S., but that’s exactly what happened to this country in the last 25 years. Look at the national lake Skadar - they want to build houses in the heart of a beautiful national park and there are always rich Arabs or Russians or British who will buy. They can sell it very expensive. So I organized a protest on the lake with a few boats in December. In fact, I had half of the parliament on boats, plus a number of organizations. I even contacted the European Union, but I call the EU “sleeping beauty” - hopefully with time they may be more active. I say “sleeping beauty” because after 100 years she was woken up by a prince, but during the 100 years she was not getting older; the process had stopped. Europe is a “sleeping beauty” without the process of aging and we woke up as an old grandmother. Now I’m trying to organize a “green resistance”, and I’m also working on an idea that will become public this fall. I have contacted Italy and all countries along the Adriatic coast - my idea is to propose to the United Nations and European Union to have the Adriatic Sea as the first sea in the world without the presence of an army. Of course it is utopian and they will not accept it, but there will be publicity around it, so people will think about it. Right now we have a lot of members of national parliaments who have signed to support and we have a number of cities along the coast. Now we will collect everything and organize a meeting to launch the idea in the fall.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that led you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
Dragan: I will explain how I started my life in the 19th century - not literally, but in the old Montenegro in the village I was born we had no electricity or water at home. I started walking to school and the school was between two villages, so it was like living in the 19th century. I have the great advantage of knowing three centuries: 19, 20 and 21. Now it’s not just love for nature but a real danger. The trouble is that the world of business and the world of politics are all connected and they don’t care about the problems. There are 600 world physicists, but they don’t think about society. I was in Marrakech at the COP22 (2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference), and I was surprised that even scientists, who are involved in the environment of science, would not say something stronger at the risk of discussing politics. I have the impression that everyone is afraid. I’m not sure that we really have freedom. I was in the U.S. and you are a good country. In my opinion an American (not the government, but an American person) is more enthusiastic and more ready for sacrifices than Europeans. Americans do not have good education - universities are different, but generally there are people that are ready to sacrifice and have a kind of enthusiasm. To tell you the truth, the USA is danger number one for the world right now. I’m not religious, so I’m not an enemy of America - I love humanity and I’m a friend of the U.S., but I’m also a friend of Russia and China and everyone else. Many Montenegrins have contributed to the development of the states. In my family, the cousin of my great-grandfather is very famous in Alaska and he has his own museum. I am personally not an enemy of America, but what they are doing in the world is terrible. For instance, now Montenegro must be a member of NATO. Why? What do I have to do in NATO? I’m not interested. This country is a small one, we can be an example of something good and not be members of the military alliance, but someone from big politics wanted to do it.
Q: You said you grew up respecting nature but was there a moment where you noticed you became an activist?
Dragan: I understood that the troubles were very big in the 70’s already. At the time it was not possible from a scientific point of view to know what the damage would be, but it was clear that you cannot create such pollution of water, soil, and air without any consequences. It was clear to me then that civilization was going in the wrong direction. In that moment I became in favor of saving the planet.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Dragan: We must have production. The damage of production can be made smaller by better technology, but even if present day production produces a smaller damage, it is still too big. You cannot save the planet just by using better technologies. The key is that production must be smaller. Now the question is how to get a smaller quantity of production without impacting the quality of life negatively. This is the key point that’s not clear to many people. What’s the real reason for production? Quality for our lives. What’s the reason for production in our society today? Profit. Are these two concepts compatible? No. You’d prefer a washing machine that will work for 30 years, but they want to sell you 6 machines in that time frame. If we’d produce for the quality of life, we’d produce a single one. If we produce for profit, we will produce as much as people can buy. Because of this wrong reason for production, we have overproduction. They are producing products that are bad quality and that’s one reason for overproduction. When my daughter and son were children, near our flat in Geneva there was a shop for toys and it was a very expensive shop. One lamb toy cost more than three lamb toys in Montenegro. In one corner you could buy things to surprise your mother, like dog shits - you can put them on the carpet and your mother will think: “Oh my God, what has the dog done on my expensive carpet?” This shit of the dog cost more than a liter of milk and a kilo of bread. It is an extreme example, but look at the official statistics: baby car production is much bigger than the number of babies. What's the reason? In the name of competition and in the name of the free market we are destroying civilization. To help the issue, we must produce the right quantities of very high quality, but it is not in the interest of the big companies. It’s not easy but we must find a solution. For over 40 years we wondered what dark matter is and we still have no final solution, so it’s not easy. 15 years ago they said the level of the ocean would rise 60cm, then 1m, and now it’s 2m. It will continue to be more and it will change the currents. We will liberate big quantities of methane in the atmosphere and we will destroy phytoplanktons. The problem with phytoplanktons is that not only will you destroy the life in the oceans, they are also the main producers of oxygen in the world. People will tell you the Amazon is the main producer of oxygen, but actually the plants in the sea are the main producers.
My name is David Buckland. I’m an artist and I’ve been an artist for a very long time. I’m now living in London, England and for the last 15 years I’ve been running the Cape Farewell project.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that led you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
David: Yes, there was a moment. As an artist you’re always intrigued by next steps, and I read an article about some mathematics modellers, who had a made a huge environmental model about the Atlantic Ocean, which intrigued me. I was in Venice at the time, so when I got back to England I contacted them and went to see them. The models were interesting. Through these algorithms they could say: this is the past, this is the present, and in the future (15 -20 years) they could predict what was going to happen to the environment. All of our projections on climate change are based on these models and humanity has never had a tool like this before. We have these huge computers run it and it intrigued me, because artists always dream of the future and these guys were saying what was going to happen in 20 years. They said I should talk to the oceanographers who were gathering all the data that feed into their models, so I went to the Southampton Oceanography Center and talked to them. They were fantastic. It was very clear that climate change was real. That was 15 -20 years ago. They said: “Why is nobody listening to us?” In a way, their language was all wrong. The public can’t absorb that kind of scientific language. So the whole Cape Farewell project was started to create a different language to talk about climate change. One that is much more user friendly: we used creativity. Although scientists are absolutely uber-creative people. They're always creative but the way they think about things and the way they understand the world is through their language, so if you reframe the language you can use the same kind of creativity. What we did was use artists to pick up what the scientists were saying and then found ways of telling stories.
Q: What kind of environment were you raised in?
David: The reason I started this project is because I’m a passionate sailor. I’ve sailed all my life and I’ve sailed oceans. Then these guys come and say they’ve got a mathematical model of the Atlantic Ocean and I’m thinking: “It’s so complicated, there’s no way.” So there was always a love of wild places but it wasn’t a real awareness of climate change until this started.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
David: I think right now it depends on where you are on the planet, but most people actually understand climate change. They know there’s something happening, they just kind of push it away because it’s too complicated. In a way, my passion is to find ways to communicate to people that they can be part of the future. What I would say is: What’s going to happen next is inevitable. We’re going to move away from carbon-based fuels for our energy and we’re going to go to cleantech (solar, sun, wind, tidal flow). That’s inevitable, so why not embrace the future? That’s where all the new business, the new economy, the new everything is going to happen. It’s going to be a fantastic world, so why are you resisting? People are scared of change. They're comfortable and think they just want to carry on like that forever, but it’s not going to work. You've got to think of your children or think of the future. It’s not just about you.
Q: In your speech you were talking about bringing artists to the Arctic. Do you do that every year?
David: No, we did it for 10 years all across the Arctic. Northern Canada, northern Russia, Greenland and all around there, but then we stopped because we basically know what’s happening. We know the ice is melting, the polar bears are suffering etc. It was more interesting for us to work with people so we started working with communities in the Scottish islands. We’re now working with cities. This climate change is about human beings - it’s about us and our culture. Our organization is exactly the same: inspiring artists to create. So we need this creative energy, we need new stories, we need new engagements. We’re also working with scientists in cleantech. All the new technologies coming through are fascinating and wonderful; it’s so exciting. If people only knew how exciting it was they’d say: “I want it now!” Our aim is to tell or show people how exciting it is and creative storytelling is a great way to do that.
Q: What’s the most exciting part about it for you?
David: I think that the future is potentially amazing. It has to be. At the moment we’re screwing up the planet so we’ve got to find a different solution. There is a solution; we have the technology, we have the money, we just need the will power from the politicians. Most of all they need us. We need us. We all have to engage. We can't leave it up to somebody else.
Q: You’ve traveled to a lot of places. Have you noticed big differences between countries and their thought processes?
David: There is an enormous change. It’s always buried by the capitalist media, but in England everybody gets climate change now - actually anywhere in Europe. We’re in Montenegro and people here know it; especially the politicians we’ve met. You go to the United States and most of the U.S. is up for doing things, you just have this neanderthal Trump. But actually on the East Coast and West Coast, everybody is engaged. All of the new technology industries like in Australia and everywhere are charging at it, especially China, and boy do they need it. So everybody is on the curve, it’s just about dragging the last few: the big media communication companies, this old fashioned capitalism and the oil companies. We’ve just got to turn them around.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
David: If we just engage in the world, it can be wonderfully optimistic. It’s so beautiful, you don’t want to screw it up. Why would we do that?
My name is Nikola II Petrović-Njegoš. I am the crown prince of Montenegro. I was born in Bretagne, France and I lived in France almost all my life. I studied architecture there and became an architect. From the beginning I was very interested in the environment. I made my first house with solar 50 years ago, before it became popular. I came back to Montenegro in 1989 when I was able to return. My great-great-grandfather was buried in Italy under the authority of Yugoslavia. They wanted to return him to Montenegro and needed my authorization to do it. I was so surprised when I arrived in Montenegro to see how the people in Montenegro were happy in this small town where we were this morning. 10,000 people live here and there were 200,000 people coming to see the return of the king. It was one month after the Berlin Wall falling and for me it was something very extraordinary - this connection between the two events. I wondered how I could return to Montenegro and I proposed to the government to make a biennial of contemporary art in the city. I thought it would be a good idea to make a place where artists from east and west could get together to make confrontational art. I made the first biennial but a war began after the opening in Yugoslavia so it was a little complicated. During the war I continued with my non-violent resistance - a cultural message to society. We made a big biennial with many artistic interventions against the war. After 2002 was my last biennial in Vienna and we invited 150 artists from all over Europe and had many very interesting installations, performances, exhibitions, architectures, workshops etc. After that, the government kept the budget for themselves, so I was not able to make more of these events. I returned to Paris to my job. After the independence of Montenegro in 2006, I began to take action about the situation in Montenegro with the roots of my family. Montenegro is independent now, so we can decide what to do about the dynasty and the property of the dynasty. After six years of discussions about the historical rehabilitation of my family and morale, we tried to make an agreement about the stature of my family in Montenegro. I wanted the old palace of my grandfather for use and they promised to build a new residence with this palace. I named it the green palace because I wanted to make a plan to have it be a completely autonomous house. But after six years nothing happened - I made the plans immediately but they didn’t realize it. Now I have to fight for my place and a place for my family; my children and grandchildren, so they can feel at home in Montenegro.
Q: You said the first house you built was with solar energy?
Nikola: Yes, but not with solar panels. At that time they didn’t exist. At that time it was bioclimatic houses with a wall and glass in front of the wall so you could make a system of air that’s thermodynamic. In the winter and summer it regulates.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that lead you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
Nikola: In 1968 I was a student and in Paris there was a big demonstration. I was one of the students at the barricades because at that moment we wanted to change the world with the Berlin wall and all those things. I was very impressed with what happened in California, where the new community tried to live like they wanted to live. At that moment I discovered the book “Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered” by Schumacher, who was an English economist. He made the first ecological theory (economic theory about ecology), and it’s fantastic. When I read Naomi Klein, I remembered Schumacher when he said that all the systems and the change of society/change of democracy, are a huge part of success. My first job as an architect was with a client who was a mathematician and he designed a recharge system so I learned a lot on his team. After that I had to work but didn’t find such good clients. Anyway, I like being an architect, I think it’s a good job - not just a good job, but a good education. You can learn music and it’s good for you even if you don’t play like a professional; architecture is good in the same way. You look around the world differently when you’re an architect - you say: “Why don’t we make something like that? This house might be better like this.” etc. You are always thinking. For example when I am on the train and look out the window, ten hours can pass just looking.
Q: So when you were a student you learned about the environment?
Nikola: Not at school but outside of school I did. At the time we had a big hero in France who did a lot to promote sustainability. He made small drawings and the majority of his drawings were about ecology and sustainability, so he was one of the first people in France to make a plan. We were friends and we made the delta plan together.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Nikola: We don’t have choice. It’s no longer a choice. We are conscious and one generation earlier had some romantic ideas, but now it’s a reality and we have to find other ways. It’s not only about technical solutions, it’s a concern of all the segments of life now. We have to understand that we don’t need so many things to be happy - you don't 200 pairs of shoes.
Q: You said most of your architectural clients weren’t seeking sustainable buildings - do you still try to infuse your projects with environmental thinking?
Nikola: Architecture is not an object. You design and you put it into the nature. You have to be connected with the environment. It’s the first thing you look at, so you have to think about the landscape. Landscape and architecture go together; you cannot separate them. Now we have to think about a new revolution because the last generation was not at fault, but the new generation has more knowledge now to think about how humanity lives in a town. The town could have 30 million people living together and so the stress begins. We have bad food and we have this very expensive life in the town so we need to use many natural resources.
My name is Melusine Reimers. I’m from Germany and I live in Bonn. I started working at an NGO during my studies in 2013, which was about adding qualified refugees to the workforce. Then I went to a TEDx event and met Marc Buckley. Last year I came to the Green Culture Forum as a speaker for the first time and I enjoyed it, that’s why I came again. This year I talked about my new startup “Readymade”, which is about furniture sharing and minimalism.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that led you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
Melusine: It was definitely the work with the refugees. During my philosophy studies I learned a lot about international relations, international policy, and new colonialism. I realized that refugees are the victims of our consumption. Apart from political refugees, I met a lot of environmental refugees. I focused on the startup because the refugees’ situations weren’t really common knowledge. According to Greenpeace, at the moment we have 20 million environmental refugees and they are not known, they are not visible, they are not here. That’s what makes sustainability the focus for me. It will be much more important in the years to come. I want to join the ANJA GmbH team, so I’m looking for products/things that could be accessible for the mass to change our lifestyle into a sustainable lifestyle; not just for a few people to be interested in, but for the whole society. A shift to a sustainable paradigm.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Melusine: I would just say that they’re really closing their eyes. We have a responsibility with each decision we make for ourselves to affect animals and nature. If someone doesn’t recognize their responsibility as a human being, to me they lose their “human being status” because I don't respect them as much. I think if you want to take part in this human society, then you definitely need to be respectful of nature.
Q: You spoke a lot about minimalism today with your new company. Can you talk about that?
Melusine: My company is called “Readymade”. Our aim is to reduce, reuse, and repeat. We want to make minimalism accessible for everyone in everyday life. Until now, minimalism is a side effect; it’s really hard to implement in your regular life if you have a job and a family. We want this company to work especially for the youth - for people starting to study until they're old enough to permanently settle down. For these people to have the opportunity to lease furniture and reduce their waste is great. We invented “Readymade” as a sharing concept for innovative/modular furniture that we offer as a company. You rent the furniture through an online shop so it’s really flexible and you can send it back whenever you want. I hope it’s a revolution for the furniture market, because the way things are now it’s not sustainable at all. One IKEA factory destroys 5000 trees per day. For a year they need 13.6 cubic meters of wood - that’s like four times the Allianz Arena. In Germany we throw out around 7 million tons of furniture per year.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Melusine: My main aim is to show people their basic and essential needs. Think about what you really want to do, who you really are and what you need. This is the most important thing when it comes to sustainability. Sustainable living is progress - it also has to do with technology and innovations, so I think it’s about being clear on your own views and learning what you are able to do for the world.
My name is Peter Ivanov. My origin is in Bulgaria. Now I live in Hamburg with my big family of four girls and my wife. I was a senior IT manager for 20 years, but for the last three I’ve been a keynote speaker and executive coach. My passion for public speaking led me to become a keynote speaker, so I live on stages now. As an executive coach I’m coaching senior managers on how to unite teams in different locations like in virtual remote teams. I’m doing teamwork not just for the managers but for the whole team. It’s for big project teams where people are sitting in different companies across the world. I also work with startups and NGOs. NGOs are a big part of my work and also my joy because it’s work for a better world. I work with quite a few NGO’s leadership teams and project teams.
Q: With the Green Culture Forum we’re here to talk about the environment and sustainability. How does your work fit in with this forum?
Peter: I’m helping them be more effective through teamwork. I have a method I developed in the corporate environment, leading big teams in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, etc. Now it’s proven to work in different scenarios. A virtual team is like an atom where you have the nucleus and various particles flying around. I help them create team spirit to preserve and retain the particle gravity and unleash team power. I have a method to make a group of individuals feel they are working as one team with a strong team gravity regardless of culture, background or where they sit. The environment is very close to my heart, but I haven't as an individual taken part in such an organization. My awareness level is always rising; even after today. I work with other NGOs in Germany, like “Youth Against AIDS”, which is quite a big group of people (30 people on top, 30 geographers in Germany, 3000 members running about 10,000 projects), so I help those people work as a team to know each other and build a goal together. With one of the planners here we are planning to do a workshop with KRUG’s Green Culture Forum. I can make any group of people that have a purpose work much more effectively, so I’d like to see how it goes in this ‘green awareness world’. I look at my little kids who are very conscious - three of them are vegetarian and my eldest has a perspective that’s for a better, more sustainable world. The younger generation is luckily working on this. I’d like to be more conscious and active.
Q:What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that lead you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment, or are you mostly learning now?
Peter: To be honest, I am a big fan of nature. I relax in nature. I was raised by my grandparents in a village with just 10 houses, so nature is a natural habitat. If I’m stressed out I go to nature, but it was a given in my childhood because there were no iPhones or distractions so we were playing in nature. Now that is in danger and I think it’s time to give back.
Q: What kind of environment were you raised in? What were you taught about our treatment of the earth?
Peter: My childhood was condensed in one area. The town was in the middle of Bulgaria and I was raised in a small village by my grandparents until I turned six. Then I went to school and came back to my parents. Most of my time was spent in nature, so now if I have to rehearse a speech I go outside for a walk. If I have to come up with a new idea, I go outside and that’s how I get inspiration and new ideas. Nature is a great source of creativity and tranquility after being stressed.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Peter: Because I’m a speaker I usually just tell things, but we need to touch these people emotionally. For them it would be best to feel it somehow - maybe to be exposed to a polluted environment. As a speaker I do storytelling because if you give people facts and figures nobody moves, but if it's a dramatic story about life and death, people react. I would probably do my homework and find a case that was very dramatic. The movie “Avatar” went in that direction but I wouldn’t recreate something because science-fiction isn’t the same as a real story. I believe it’s more effective if it’s experiential; if you design a workshop and then are exposed to the challenges and risks. If people feel threatened, they’d probably be more aware. I was happy to hear about David Buckland and some other artists who create those experiences and make it public. If people can feel it; that kind of action is probably better. If you look at things like the exhibit of gas masks around London, you realize you have to get creative and represent the danger through art.
Q: You’re welcome to speak about what you do instead, since everybody else here is actively involved in environmental work.
Peter: As I said, normally I do one or two days of a workshop. In the NGO environment I would initially focus on the individual because they're volunteers. They're passionate but they don’t know much about each other. If you are an NGO operating in Montenegro and you have some other members in other cities, you need to spend conscious time with people and let them present themselves. It’s important from my perspective to discover the strengths of the people, because virtuality brings some limits. Normally if you work together, you don’t need to spend conscious time discovering generic strengths and balancing a team. I fine-tune, streamline and work out goals for the virtual employees to work as a team. Then we structure communication, define what the team charter is, structure how often we meet and who takes part, etc. Giving input is key for an NGO, because normally they only call a meeting for a problem. I have quite a few stories with team experiences where we’ve finished a two-year project three months earlier. We were going the extra mile - there were no obstacles we couldn’t overcome. It’s very important how you facilitate a team and how you report progress. You end up with an appealing team experience or a prize for extraordinary achievement. A big part is having ways to recognize progress, because if people are dispersed, sometimes the recognition is even more scarce than with a local team. That was a bit of a technical approach, but I’ve seen it work in many different environments. I think whole industries will be threatened if they don’t think more about teamwork. For challenges like creating a green sustainable planet, you can only do it with teamwork. You have a lot of opponents whose only interest it is to produce and sell more and you have quite a lot of skeptics. You have to make them part of a team, so I think there will be more in the future; we’ll look at commonalities and teams and things that unite us, but it will be push and pull. If we continue what we’re doing now it won’t be sustainable. Teamwork is the best solution. You need a different perspective to balance whatever products, service or concepts you have. Within the team you need diversity for creativity and there is proof that it’s a much more effective way of working.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Peter: This is my closing sentence I normally say in a speech and I truly believe in it. It’s a John Lennon statement and I’ll say it as I say it: “If you dream alone, it is just a dream but if we dream together; this is the beginning of a new reality.”
My name is Robin Gellately Smith. I’m initially from Dundee in Scotland. My middle name “Gellately” is actually translated from Gaelic; meaning “go lightly”, which means I walk very softly and I tend to have the habit of creeping up on you. That aside, around the year 2000 a friend of mine went on holiday to Dubrovnik and got bored, so she took a bus to Montenegro and when she came back she showed me some photographs. When I look at people's holiday photos I tend to glaze over, but these snaps caught my attention and I had a strong feeling that this should be my home. Within a month I came here to see for myself what Montenegro was like and it confirmed my feelings. If you believe in reincarnation, then for sure I was born here before, lived here and died here. In Montenegrin history they have a character who appeared on the shores of Montenegro and decided that this is the place he wanted to stay. This was in the 18th century and he let rumors multiply that he was related to the Czar of Russia. He was a brilliant organizer so he started schools, an education system, and the administration for governing the area. He became very popular and I think people’s jealousy became too much so he was eventually assassinated. Here I am again back in Montenegro, not organizing schools or organizing the government. In fact, I don't say anything in criticism of the montenegrins because anything that people criticize here, I can think of being ten times worse in the UK (especially now with the elections and traumas of the Brexit).
Q: How long have you been living here?
Robin: I’ve been living here for 17 years. People say: “You’ve been here 17 years and you don’t speak the language, how come?” That’s because whenever I try to speak the language I tend to provide some kind of comedy show and people burst out laughing. Once I was invited to a saint day with my montenegrin family and a woman walked in, so I said in a very loud confident voice: “Dobra cosa, dobra rosa” and my friend turns around to say: “Robin, you just called her a goat! It’s ‘corsa’, not ‘cosa’! Please don’t speak our language, you just embarrass me.” So that’s my story, but I’m generally quite bad at languages. I also married a girl here and I now have a 12 year old son.
Q: What kind of environment were you raised in? Did you grow up in Scotland or did you live in England?
Robin: No, you can probably tell I don’t have a Scottish accent. My family sent me off to boarding school in the UK, so I was educated there - hence the rather distinguished English accent. But when I go back to Dundee and visit family (which no longer exists because they’re dead), I very quickly turn into my old Scottish brogue. My stepmother used to say: “Robbie, would you mind nipping into the shops to get some messages for me?” This is Dundee speak for: “go and get something from the shop”. It doesn’t take me long to wheedle back into the Scottish accent. In the first part of my life, I was in the royal navy for 6 years. I came out of that and went into construction, so I spent quite a lot of time in London, which is where I made my base and got involved in all sorts of construction projects. The ending of my construction era was when I was a property developer and got caught in the 1980’s property slump. That meant I was in a bad way - having been a millionaire I reverted back to being broke, so I took the opportunity to study in the evenings and I managed to get qualified as a cross between an architect and a structural engineer - mostly building surveyors tend to err on the side of report-writing, analyzing buildings, and the faults of buildings. Then I got interested in the renovation of old buildings. I’m a member of the organization SPAB (Society of Preservation of Ancient Buildings). In the UK I did that a lot; mostly acting on behalf of investors who bought old buildings and wanted to renovate them with English Heritage trying to stop them. Obviously English Heritage have the responsibility of trying to maintain the preservation of the old style/architecture and the new investors want to take advantage of altering them for modern needs. When I came to Montenegro I was lucky, because I had the opportunity from foreign investors who bought old stone houses to be able to advise them on how to alter their homes in a sympathetic way. I was involved with the Montenegrin Heritage on the other side of the table - very similar to English Heritage, which is good. It adds into the dichotomy of what the investor wants to do and the need to preserve old buildings. This is my forte now and I was given the opportunity to design an old stone house in a famous area in Montenegro. For that I won an international award which I received in London, so that helped put Montenegro on the map. I then joined a group and am a founding member of the Montenegro Green Building Council, which is part of the World Green Building Council and we try to promote sustainable development. The thing about using the words “green” and “sustainable” is that a lot of people have their own interpretations of what they mean. “Green” is used to describe various things, but the principle is to try to limit the amount of damage the construction industry does to the world. Over 60% of our contribution to pollution comes from construction. I mean all construction - not just houses and buildings but also roads, bridges, tunnels, civil engineering and the associated industries that provide all materials for them. This is a big industry making a major contribution to the world’s greenhouse gases. Developing countries want to produce as much as they can in terms of construction, in development for their people, for their industries, to advance their way of life, etc. so this tends to be an expanding problem. The idea of the World Green Building Council is to try to limit that as much as possible without stopping production - to do that, we concentrate on businesses rather than individuals. As an individual all you can do is stick a finger up in the air and say: “this is where I stand, this is what I believe in”, but you need millions of fingers up in the air with a common goal to be able to make an impact. Businesses control thousands of people and management controls sways of the population, so that’s why it’s good to get businesses on board rather than individuals. That’s why the WGBC has grown exponentially and I firmly believe this is the way forward. I think there is a balance of what we all need against a balance of what we should all preserve.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that lead you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
Robin: Not a single moment as I recall. I’m 71 now, so I’m reaching the twilight of my life and I have children and grandchildren. I look at people my age and think: we are the custodians of the world and now the youngsters have to take it on. I don’t want to leave them with a mess to solve, so encouraging youngsters that this is a very serious problem they’ve got to fix for their children and their grandchildren is important. This struck home in the same way as my children saying to me: “You're the last surviving member of our original family” because my mother, father and most of my aunts and uncles are dead. They said: “Dad, you really need to pass down all the information you can about our family to us and write it down so we can preserve it and pass it on to our children.” That’s the sort of responsibility I feel on a grander scale we should do with the world. Our time on this earth is not a rehearsal. You don’t get to live it again, unless you believe in reincarnation, and that doesn’t necessarily mean you will come back as a human being. I might come back as a beetle.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Robin: There are quite a lot of people who don’t believe in climate change and most of those people are in this world for profit and gain. Trying to pass the message along is like trying to sell fog; it doesn’t have any sort of substance you can produce against the argument: “Well, what’s in it for me?” What’s in it for them is their life on this planet because there are no rich people in graveyards. Whatever they do and make in this world they can’t take with them, but what they can leave behind is a sort of heritage. A space in which their being or life existence can be passed on and has some sort of meaning people can talk about. You can pass on money, but in a limited way because of taxes and what people do with it, so I think this is the way forward - encouragement and experience count for a lot. When people finish their lives’ work, they think that retirement is the end of the story but it’s not. There is a lot more that can be contributed and people have the time to do that. I think that this is the strongest message: leave a legacy rather than a profit.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Robin: I’ve done these interviews before and the last question is always: How would you sum up your life? I came up with a brilliant summing up, which is: “I’m one of God’s souls on this planet that tried to do the best he could”. Everything in life is a balance; there is good and evil, rich and poor, fun and work. I think it’s important to have a balance and not too much of one or the other, otherwise you distort the natural way of things. I’m incredibly amazed at the planet and what it’s provided and how it’s evolved.
My name is Vesna Sokolovska. I’m from Macedonia, but I live in London. I am the producer and founder of the NGO KRUG, which is currently managing the Green Culture Forum.
Q: What was the moment (or series of moments) in your life that led you to become passionate about sustainability and the environment?
Vesna: Actually, my purpose in life is to bring people together. My background is in the arts and I put this forum together thinking of how artists are the biggest catalysts in society. They can be the biggest influence in making people change their attitudes and behaviors towards the environment. The power of this culture really excites me.
Q: Was there a moment for you where you became an activist and decided to start this forum?
Vesna: I don’t think of myself as an activist. I’m excited about bringing the right people together for the right causes, so they can do something together. We are more powerful if we stand together to take action. What really excited me was how the creative sector can contribute to this green agenda and what was really interesting was to find out how artists in all different cultural disciplines (theater, film, visual arts, photography etc.) can really affect people and make a difference.
Q: What would you like to tell someone who doesn't believe we need to seek sustainable solutions for our environment?
Vesna: The toughest part about this environmental subject is communication and this is something I really would like to explore more. Obviously all the different methods so far have not proven successful for one reason or another. I don’t know what the solution will be, but through green culture and creativity you can bring the matter closer to people’s hearts to get them to stop and think about it, which will be a great first step.
Q: Are the people you're trying to reach by doing this forum, people who might not be aware of climate change?
Vesna: Yes. It’s actually a mixture of both, because in order to build it we need to make it interesting for people. So we need a group of people who are already familiar with this and who want to find out more, but equally important is to reach people, organizations, groups, communities who don’t know anything about it and who we could enlighten. It’s very specific for the region we’re in, in the Western Balkans.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Vesna: I want to say that I feel really blessed to have this growing group of people around the Green Culture Forum. I feel like this is meant to be. Even though it’s a tough issue in the world right now, I somehow feel very calm inside that we are going in the right direction. Almost effortlessly the right people are gathering around this, so I’m really blessed.
