Lessons from the Environmental Frontlines
We need radical leaders to shake up the way we think about the world around us and how we carry our lives, our businesses, and our non-profits within in it. Bold environmental leaders have led us into the light on seed diversity, climate change, indigenous, black and people of color environmental justice, and deforestation. In honor of Women’s History Month, we want to specifically highlight 5 powerhouse women and their work in providing us with education and a better quality of life. Let’s learn some radical lessons from these barrier-breaking leaders!
Lesson #1 Evolve Beyond the Monocultures of Mind, Society, and Crops
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher and a seed activist who advocates for sustainable agriculture. She authored over 20 books, including The Violence of the Green Revolution, Monocultures of the Mind, Stolen Harvest, Staying Alive, and Water Wars. Through her work, she has shed light on many agricultural issues, including bringing attention to the costs of corporate-led globalization in social, economic, and ecological ways. Dr. Shiva founded and collaborated with many organizations throughout of her career. Her organization Navdanya, formed in 1991 in India and grew to help more than 500,000 farmers. According to vandanashiva.com, “Navdanya’s efforts have resulted in the conservation of more than 3,000 rice varieties from across India, and the organization has established 60 seed banks in 16 states across the country.” She even went on to establish an international college for sustainable living! Dr. Shiva has been named one of the top five most powerful communicators in Asia by Asia Week, one of the top Seven Most Powerful Women on the Globe by Forbes Magazine, and an environmental hero by Time Magazine.
Lesson: Dr. Shiva teaches us the perils of diminished foresight. We must use Dr. Shivas’ lessons when applying them to policy, marketing, and educational content for sustainable business and causes. We need to build our educational strategies on diverse seeds, at strategic times for an array of harvests. Having only one tool, for multiple purposes will inevitably fail us all. We must embrace the idea of biodiversifying our minds, our businesses, and our sustainable education-based marketing for reaching more people and creating deeper, lasting change.
Lesson #2 Use your Privilege to GET ARRESTED (metaphorically, of course).
Photograph: Jose Jacome/EPA
Daryl Hannah is a well-known American actress as well as a social and environmental activist that isn’t afraid to get down and dirty for a good cause! Hannah founded the website dhlovelife, a source for tips, resources, and environmental products. She also hosts the LoveLife vlog series, where she dives into environmental topics and ways to live a sustainable life. Hannah is the founder of the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance (SBA) and sits on numerous councils, which include: Environmental Media Association and the Action Sports Environmental Alliance. Some of her most daring activism work involves chaining herself to a tree to protest tree demolition, drinking biofuel to prove the safety of it, and dipping hands in an oil pit to demonstrate the severity of oil contamination on the Amazon rainforest.
Lesson: Daryl Hannah teaches us that sometimes you have to push boundaries in order to push agendas and get attention for things that matter. BE BOLD in developing your education and connection strategy with your audience, to ultimately improve society. Push the boundaries and if you have extra privilege, use that privilege to advance people around you who lack it. Make strides in the world to be a leader and to break the rules that you feel are holding humanity back. Shake up the system in a status quo industry! Make your sustainable way in the world, boldly.
Lesson #3 Take Back What is Yours
Melina Laboucan-Massimo is a Canadian indigenous rights advocate and a climate/energy campaigner for Greenpeace. She advocates for the land and the basic needs that have been taken away from the Lubacan Territory. She also defends against the impacts of Oil Sands Development which include deteriotated health, sustainability issues, and an overall decline in the well being of the Lubacan Lake Nation. According to New York Times, after dealing with her sister’s mysterious death, Massimo began advocating for the missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada, as there is a lack of resources for helping this population in crisis. Massimo has worked with Indigenous Media Arts Group and Redwire Media Society and has produced documentaries and various research studies on issues related to environmental and social rights.
Lesson: Melina teaches us to stand up and take charge of what is rightfully yours. In a capitalistic, dog-eat-dog world, it’s the bold innovator, the empowered underdog that can truly make changes. We need to collectively and boldly stand together to support and unify against monopolistic, takeover-style practices. Sustainability business leaders must employ the triple bottom line method in order to ensure that people and planet are given priority when creating systems for making a profit.
Lesson #4 Kill it with Content!
Laurie David, is best known for producing An Inconvenient Truth to open the eyes of the nation to global warming. Her list of content work includes HBO documentary Too Hot to Handle, co-producing the Katie Couric documentary Fed Up, authoring two family culinary books, a book of poetry collections, and co-authoring The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming.
Lesson: Laurie teaches us that to share our knowledge and understanding of the world for its betterment, we must develop and create compelling content for environmental communication. Whether through movies, videos, cooking, books, or articles, compelling content moves us to thought leading and legacy creating.
Lesson #5 NEVER limit yourself, nor your Mission
Wangari Maathai is a world-renowned environmental activist who inspires brilliance as well as creative solutions. Although Maathai passed away in 2011, her legacy absolutely lives on! Maathai authored four environmental books: The Green Belt Movement, The Challenge for Africa, Replenishing the Earth, and Unbowed: A Memoir. Maathai came up with the idea of starting an organization centered around community-based tree planting in the hopes of reducing poverty, domestic violence, and working towards environmental conservation. She founded the Green Belt Movement, which is responsible for the cultivation of over 20 million trees on farms, schools, and churches across Kenya.
Maathai went on to become the first woman in both East and Central Africa to obtain a doctorate degree and the first African Woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She has received over 50 awards, 15 honorary degrees, and is affiliated with over 15 organizations all over the world while advocating on numerous boards for environmental health and conservation.
Lesson: Wangari Maathai is the SUPERHERO of teaching us that there are NO LIMITS to a mission! Employ your brilliance, your spirit, your creativity, and unlimited support will abound. Creating an employment opportunity for women in a win-win situation to plant over 20 million trees is simple brilliance. REFOREST your brain and your sustainable business by employing Maathai’s creative brilliance to meet your mission in boundless, new ways that live on.
These 5 women heroes with 5 bold lessons teach us to believe in something bigger than ourselves, something better than we might consider today. Seeing their path helps us to push the boundaries and not accept the status quo for our environment and also for how our sustainable actions protect it.
We DARE YOU to take these lessons to relinquish your fears. Engender these lessons and where you can, incorporate them into your life, your business, and your non-profit endeavors this year.