Gaia Vince

Human ingenuity is really quite extraordinary. In a lot of ways we face a hostile planet. We have to make our own food, we have to keep ourselves warm, we’re prey to the weather, prey to disease. And yet all around the world we’ve worked out ways of enriching our lives and extending them and dealing with things as they come up. The other thing is just how incredible our planet is. You can still gasp with wonder at something as mundane as the sun coming up every day. You see it from a different angle in a different place and it’s just incredible. [Read more at Ensia]

I’m hoping to remind people that the Global South is not just some disaster zone you see on the news. Yes, this is where the impacts are being felt first, but it’s also where some of the solutions to the world’s problems are coming from. We are a global society now, and so all of us need to take on some of these challenges and work out what we’re going to do about them — because they’re not just going to go away. Looking at how we might solve this, I think it is really important to look not just at species diversity, but at human diversity — to include the thoughts and experiences and viewpoints of women and to include voices from the Global South. They’re not really featured in a lot of these discussions. I think that’s very limiting because you miss out on potential solutions and on understanding what people’s experiences are and where you need to target solutions and interventions. That’s where we need to spend a bit more energy. [Read more at Ensia]