All too often, the conversations around climate change erase the voices of the people who are most affected by it. In this series of interviews, we talk to climate activists from throughout the Global South about the fight for climate justice and their visions for a sustainable future.

Do an internet search for “climate activist” and you’ll be presented with several pages featuring the name of one famous Swedish teenager. Greta Thunberg’s achievements are undoubtedly astounding – from kickstarting the global climate strikes, to popularising concepts such as flygskam and even shaking up the stuffy world of the climate conference with her impassioned speeches. But the media’s ongoing focus on this one particular activist’s story is a reflection of wider mainstream climate reporting – that often lacks diversity when it comes to voices, experiences and opinions.

Not only are people in the Global South often among the most vulnerable to rising global temperatures, but they are also activists, educators and changemakers – fighting for a better world, innovating and inspiring others to tackle the issues that we as a planet face.

In this series of interviews with Fridays for Future activists from Latin America, Africa and Asia, we want to do our bit to tackle this imbalance, decolonise the conversation around climate change and lift up the underrepresented voices within the climate movement.

In Interview #2 in this Voices of Climate Justice series, we talk to Iqbal Badruddin, founder of Fridays for Future Pakistan. Pakistan is in a challenging position. The country emits only a tiny portion of the global greenhouse gases, but it is also predicted to be among the hardest hit by extreme weather events, including droughts and floods, in the wake of climate change. And on top of all that, there is very little awareness about climate change in Pakistani society, and about the need to fight it and adapt to its effects. We talked to Iqbal about Fridays for Future Pakistan’s work to raise awareness about the climate crisis, the role of digital and online media in their climate change education projects and the importance of bringing climate change into the school curriculum.

How did you first learn about climate change? Was it through the news, or is it already affecting you directly in Pakistan?

I first learned about climate change when I personally experienced extreme weather events in my country – in particular the floods of 2010 when the country faced huge economic damage. It hit the agriculture sector, which affected food production. It affected the whole country. This made me do research on extreme weather and climate change and now I aim to raise peoples’ awareness of it in my country.

How and when did you get involved in the student strikes? And what was your motivation?

Strikes are the backbone of this movement, but when it comes to Pakistan, doing weekly strikes means mobilising people who want to take action on climate change. But how could we find so many of them? Because according to a BBC report, 65% of the people in Pakistan don’t know what “climate change” means. So, we have demonstrated, but we focus more on raising awareness among the masses. We started striking from late December 2018, starting in different universities in Pakistan. This was mainly because we wanted draw everyone’s attention to the fact we are doing something for the planet that we have in common. The main motivation was that Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, but we emit less than 1% of the total global greenhouse gases.

What do you see as the role of digital media in your own development as an activist?



Social and digital media was and will remain an important pillar for activism. Whatever we do, we convey our messages through them. Without them nothing positive is possible in an activist’s life. For me, digital media played an important role in shaping me and the campaign for the climate that I lead in Pakistan. Shaping the minds of people in Pakistan can be done through the use of media and we are doing our best to use this platform to reach as many people as possible.

How has the coronavirus affected your protest actions? Are you perhaps taking the protest online and if so, how are you doing it?

The pandemic has affected our physical protests in every respect. The social distancing guidelines have made it harder for us to protest during these times, so, to keep the momentum going we have switched to online protests. I feel that the online protests may not create as much impact as the street protests, but we have to keep putting pressure on the policymakers.

We are posting weekly protest pictures from our social media accounts and also, because FridayForFuture Pakistan focuses more on awareness, we are now also conducting online awareness sessions to educate people about climate change. We’ve also working on developing a virtual 5-day activist training session, which started recently.

What do you think we can learn from the coronavirus crisis and what are some positives you hope will come out of it?

The coronavirus crisis has taught us that we can make big changes in the way we live our lives. This is the same thing that the climate crisis has always demanded. The world has witnessed that anything is possible, all we need is the will to do it. Health is wealth and we need to make sure that whatever we do, it doesn’t harm the coming generations. COVID-19 has taught us that we can live balance our lives and nature and live in harmony with it – and also that we absolutely cannot survive without the natural world.

The Fridays for Future protests have been getting a lot of attention in the media – but that’s not translating into much action on the part of decision-makers. Why do you think that is?

Protests are meant to gain attention from the policymakers and our protests have made a fruitful impact overall but what is missing is climate action. Rather than taking action in advance, we always wait for the crisis to hit us and then we take action. And this is what is happening now. We aim to carry on with our strikes though, and keep bringing attention to the issue so that one day we might be able to make them implement green policies. We know this might take time, but we won’t give up.

What are the key messages behind your particular protest? What does your poster say when you hold it up? And who do you want to see it?

The main slogans on our poster are “Make Earth Great Again” and “Youth Climate Strike”. We want our policymakers and the international community to see our posters and protests so that they know we are concerned about ours and everybody’s future. The main goals of the Global Climate Strikes are to stop policymakers from investing money into environmentally unfriendly industries and also to help countries that are been impacted the most due to climate change. The government should make it compulsory for the schools to teach climate change, meaning that they should introduce a curriculum that is environmentally friendly. Our main message is to raise peoples’ awareness of climate change because here the majority of people are not aware of this crisis, and teaching people about climate change is the first step in fighting it.

What do you hope the Global Strike for Climate can achieve?

Well, the main message behind our protests is to wake the government and the international community up and encourage them to take action on climate change. Pakistan only emits a tiny amount of global greenhouse gases, but we are one of the countries most affected by climate change. We are a developing state and an agrarian economy and the fifth most vulnerable to climate change in the world. We demand, and we need, for people to pay attention.

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?

I would like to let the readers know that being a country that is one of the most vulnerable to climate change it is very tough to survive – the economy is another factor that makes a country vulnerable. And we all need to fight this common enemy together. I believe that one day we all will unite like we have come together against the COVID-19 crisis.

This story originally appeared in Reset.org and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaborative strengthening coverage of the climate story, of which Real Leaders is a member. You can visit Fridays for Future Pakistan’s website right here where you can find out more about the team and read their blog. Follow them at their official Twitter accountto keep up to date with their (online) strikes and other activities. And connect with Iqbal Badruddin right here. Co-authored by Jan Wisniewski and Marisa Pettit.

A series of domes containing pollution from cities around the world was placed in the Norwegian city of Trondheim and London earlier this year as part of an investigation by psychologists to ascertain whether art can change people’s perception of climate change.

The idea is the brainchild of British artist Michael Pinsky’s, who created the Pollution Pods installations — a series of five connecting domes that recreates the pollution from London, Beijing, São Paulo, New Delhi and Tautra in Norway. He decided that “smelling is believing,” and set out to give visitors an experience they would never forget.

Pinsky filled five interconnected geodesic domes with carefully mixed recipes that emulated ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide — found in the air in some of the world’s major cities. Entering a first plastic-domed pod, visitors then passed through increasingly polluted cells, from dry and cold locations to hot and humid, giving them a firsthand experience of the air quality of that city.

The UK installation formed a circle in the center of Somerset House courtyard, one of London’s most renowned art centers. Visitors passed through the climatically controlled pods to compare the quality of different polluted global environments. The five Pollution Pods were linked, so that visitors were forced to pass through all of them to exit the installation. This visceral experience encapsulated the sense that the world – and our own impact on it – is interconnected.

The release of toxic gases from domestic and industrial sources increase the rate of global warming and have a direct effect on our health. In the West, in cities such as London, one in five children suffer from asthma, while in developing countries such as Delhi, over half the children have stunted lung development and will never completely recover.

Those living in the developed world have environments with relatively clean air, while people in countries such as China and India are being poisoned by airborne toxins created from industries that fulfill orders from the West. The experience of walking through the pollution pods demonstrates that these worlds are interconnected and interdependent. The desire for ever-cheaper goods is reflected in the ill-health of many people in the world and in the ill-health of our planet as a whole. “Within this installation people will be able to feel, taste and smell the toxic environments that are the norm for a huge swathe of the world’s population,” says Pinsky.

Agriculture faces considerable challenges: population growth, soil pollution, and heavy use of water reserves. To overcome this, we need to rethink the current yield-based model used by the agricultural sector. Aeroponics may offer a solution.

The agricultural sector today faces the huge challenge of feeding an ever-growing world population. Exposed to pests and weather hazards, outdoor crops face many odds. Using arable land to push for the best possible yields, and using artificial fertilizers and pesticides can be as problematic for the soil as they are for consumers. Agricultural experts also estimate that 70% of drinking water is used to irrigate fields worldwide. In countries such as Switzerland, the cold season stops agricultural activity and it’s necessary to import food from distant countries by truck, ship, or plane for much of the year. Creating a sustainable approach to agriculture is a real challenge.

CombaGroup, a company located in the Swiss municipality of Molondin, plans to reinvent agriculture — by growing lettuce and other leafy vegetables locally all year round, but without any fields, pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Their method saves 97% of water compared to traditional outdoor methods. This is thanks to a meticulous application of aeroponics — a technique of growing vegetables above the ground, using supports under which the roots spread freely in the air. A system sprays a mist of water mixed with nutrients directly onto roots and excess water is reused. The plants receive exactly the right amount of nutrients they need to grow, in protected greenhouses that don’t need any artificial fertilizers and pesticides to fight pests. The plants can be grown all year round, and have a lower carbon footprint, resulting in less pollution from imported products during off-season.

“We currently operate a 250 square meter pilot production facility that can supply the equivalent of around 500 fresh salads per week, says CombaGroup CEO, Serge Gander. This facility has allowed us to test our system on an industrial scale. We have already sold the first systems to France, and we’re in discussions with industries in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, China, and the Middle East. In fact, any region where weather conditions, lack of water, or soil pollution represent real problems for the agricultural and retail sectors.”

Compared to conventional farming methods, the CombaGroup aeroponics system is impressive in its yield. Based on current production, it will be able to produce 800 tons of lettuce and more than 300 tons of leafy vegetables per hectare per year when deployed on an industrial scale. In a field with soil, current farms can produce around 25 to 30 tons of lettuce per hectare per year. Aeroponics can grow one kilogram of lettuce with only six liters of water, compared to 250 liters in conventional farming.

While these performances are particularly impressive and promising in terms of productivity and yield, they are also remarkable in terms of quality and taste. Naturally grown without being boosted, these vegetables have won over many great chefs at several Swiss gastronomic establishments. During the coronavirus crisis, the company donated part of its output to support these local establishments.

“Without claiming to be able to revolutionize the agri-food sector with a single solution, we are, regardless, wanting to question the foundations of the current paradigm,” continues Gander. “The idea is to innovate, open up the debate, confront new ideas, and propose alternatives as part of a complementary approach to the different types of agriculture and supply chains available today. As an entrepreneur at the crossroads, I believe it’s essential to have a thoughtful and committed approach. Making money is one thing, but to do so while trying to improve the common lot becomes a necessity — especially when considering the environmental issues that face humanity.”

With the pandemic still working its way through our healthcare, social, and economic systems, many have asked me whether business has come to a screeching halt. As the founder of a growing but still fairly small reforestation nonprofit, I can see why this is a sensible question. The economic pressure is real. 

But the answer might be surprising: businesses are more dedicated than ever to addressing the climate crisis, and now is actually the perfect time for a company to start or develop a sustainability program. 

Now is the Time.

Climate change isn’t taking a break, even if nature has had a reprieve in carbon emissions the past few months. The truth is that this issue is the most important thing our generation, and upcoming generations, need to address. It’s our air and water, food, climate, health, and just about everything else we need to survive on the planet. 

And while understandably some businesses are struggling, others are weathering this storm and have more time on their hands to actually plan for the future, to reflect on what matters to the business and employees, and to implement a solid CSR program they can be proud of. Just starting with the simple act of planting trees is a great first step. 

Think about the next 50 years. 

As we come off of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day recently, it’s important to reflect on how the businesses of today can influence the next 50 years. Humans are responsible for the state of the earth, and businesses are equipped to make a big impact, quickly. Also, from our experience we know corporate sustainability programs help build team morale internally. They give employees a common and positive goal outside of their everyday workflow. Now, probably more than ever, your team is likely looking for something to rally behind – even if they rally remotely.

While committed, forward-thinking businesses continue to prioritize sustainability programs, we need everyone to participate. And you might just find that it’s even good for the bottom line. Most surveys show that upwards of 80% of consumers want sustainable products and packaging. 

And while coronavirus is still in the headlines, consider this: restoring healthy environments can help prevent future disease outbreaks. Climate change, environmental destruction, and encroachment on wildlife habitats are all factors in the potential spread of zoonotic diseases. Trees are an important part of addressing this to not only reduce deforestation but to actively restore the millions of acres of forests that have already been damaged. Governments drag their feet when it comes to real change and nature-based solutions, but you know who’s quick and nimble and actually helps us get trees in the ground? Business partners who are committed to making a positive impact. 

The hunger for images that show new and existing solutions to the climate crisis continues to grow exponentially as our collective awareness deepens.  But relevant and engaging imagery is hard, or even impossible, to source.

As a career photojournalist focused on environmental stories – researching, finding, chasing and shooting climate solutions is a provocation and frustration I have wrestled with personally for over a decade. Since August, I have also been consulting and editing professionally as I head-up the Climate Visuals programme (part of the non-profit Climate Outreach) that researches, advises and curates climate photography. Working with news editors and journalists on a topic that is under-reported at best has helped me better understand why climate solutions imagery is so stubbornly absent from the news stream.

The dominance of negative and even distressing content, which makes for popular and powerful news, can leave audiences with a sense of hopelessness. The stubborn dominance of clickbait and disaster coverage of climate is not a new observation. However, social science has long purported that promoting actionable solutions, particularly coupling them with these emotionally arresting stories of negative impact, helps promote a more effective and lasting positive reaction in readers.

Earlier this year, we hosted a Hackathon in conjunction with Exeter University convening a dozen academics specialising in climate change imagery, as well as industry professionals from both Getty Images and the World Press Photo Foundation. All are leading experts committed to refreshing and collating further evidence into what makes editorial climate photography not just illustrative but also impactful to viewers.

One of the key takeaways:  News and social media using high quality, relevant photography increases viewer engagement, saliency and likely its onwards sharing. However, save for the dwindling clutch of premium news titles, the ability to commission quality, new photography is made unaffordable against established and continuing cuts in publishing ad spend and funding. Lens-based reportage unequivocally requires the camera to travel to its story and has suffered disproportionately. The start of this unconcluded race to the bottom of image pricing was the debut of free online news.

Confusingly, over the same period, photography has enjoyed rising cultural importance, becoming a ubiquitous medium and universal communication tool throughout society globally. Every graphical magazine, any branded news layout and every social media author requires and will include the strongest imagery they can afford or source – but not always legitimately. Recent analysis of news illustration suggests that the most popular and effective type of illustration for climate narratives is still traditional, authentic editorial photography.

Photography as a documentary medium cannot easily travel beyond the present as literature, interviews, opinion pieces or statistics on climate change delve into predictions. In order to talk in the future tense, photographers or editors must lean on illustrative or conceptual photography, without the gravity or authenticity to convince viewers. Worse still, news teams are often forced to illustrate climate solutions with the climate causes or impacts that  the solutions are designed to counter. This clash of tone between image and their headline is proven to undermine an article.

When turning a camera backwards on science, wielding the latest digital camera technology is ironically problematic. If a company is innovative and genuine, the positive benefit of granting access to a journalist is undeniable, but a camera’s high resolution mechanical eye risks espionage. If Musk, Bezos or those based in Cupertino were designing a solution to climate change, the first visual results would inevitably be released at a highly choreographed and scripted, share price-boosting stage show. These visuals are the bland, carefully choreographed and airbrushed lifestyle scenes designed to sell us a finished technology ‘solution’ once it is available on the market. Commercial imagery can reek of constructed values and veiled attempts at authenticity that feel contrived. Without real integrity, these images rarely ascend into the journalistic domain, nor buy our long term behavioural trust. The more interesting and believable stories on the details, endeavours and failures of climate solutions and those working to develop them remain hidden in research basements or patent applications. 

Many accepted and actionable climate solutions rely on personal or societal behaviour change, much of which is reductionist or physically subtle. Photography uniquely documents only a tiny chronological slice of shutter speed selected reality, and so struggles to convey any concept expressed as a change in frequency as opposed to static volume or scale. Part explaining why cyclists have long represented sustainable behaviour, dense gridlocked traffic indicates pollution and all environmentalists eat greens when interviewed over lunch. More natural or forest solution efforts, if implemented correctly, return habitat to its original, arguably undramatic, state.  Photographers and clients alike are seduced by images of tree planting as remedy, the well worn, critical moment when a sapling is placed back into the earth with human hands.

In considering how to push past such clichéd traps, photographers need to remain patient, research more deeply and work in a manner closer to that of the written journalists they are drafted to support. As both transport and time are costly units we have all the more reason to empower local storytellers, ingrained with the values and sensitivities of their subject matter. Yet there are systemic failures of the photography industry to use local, ethnic or gender-balanced voices in reporting real global solutions. The issue is often one of connectivity and trust in the broadest sense. Localised professional news photographers in emerging economies, where many climate solutions are also emerging most organically, are often focussed on local or political reporting. We cannot assume they are free or even be able to work safely near state-controlled news agencies. The battle lines of the free press often track closely to the boundaries of the climate justice nexus.

Citizen reporting and user-generated photography has also grown globally with the proliferation of smartphones. The billions of images and climate stories that are captured, and no doubt proliferate locally on closed peer-to-peer apps, rarely make it into international publications unless they are truly exceptional. The barriers to distribution and verification are complex, and even if a story idea could be framed or connected internationally, the presentation style and resolution of smartphones rarely match the expectations required by professional news agencies. Only the most viral, and therefore most valuable content, is ever verified, with none of that value or story drivers trickling back to the original source in the field.

It is tempting, in conclusion, to suggest the need for a radical overhaul, a new way of working or a magic bullet funding model to reinvigorate or democratize  photojournalism at large. However, this would be an unrealistic goal given the rapid, unpredictable evolution of news media reporting, and how utterly fragmented, digitized and unmappable the future content creator and agency network is. However, raising resources for targeted geographic and systemic interventions –  for the current state of play – is a unique and urgent cause for optimism. Seizing a chance to build photographic capacity where it is most needed; with climate solutions in frame. These new unseen images and stories, could intrinsically possess a value, quality and uniqueness that cuts through and exploits the broken, unrepresentative visual index, and sees them easily proliferate as intelligent, fresh and inspirational metaphors. Only then can we trace the eloquent and clear theory of change shared by the solutions journalism network, offering empowerment and creating more discerning actors capable of shaping a better society.

By Toby Smith. This story originally appeared in Climate Visuals and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

Pope Francis made an impassioned plea for protection of the environment on Wednesday’s 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, saying the coronavirus pandemic had shown that some challenges had to be met with a global response.

Francis praised the environmental movement, saying it was necessary for young people to “take to the streets to teach us what is obvious, that is, that there will be no future for us if we destroy the environment that sustains us”.

The pope, who wrote a major encyclical in 2015 on the defence of nature and the dangers of climate change, dedicated his general audience – broadcast from his library because of the coronavirus lockdown – to the theme.

Recounting a Spanish proverb that God always forgives, man sometimes forgives but nature never forgives, Francis said: “If we have deteriorated the Earth, the response will be very ugly.”

A landmark in the emergence of the environmental movement when it first took place in 1970, this year’s Earth Day has prompted calls from many, including U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, for governments to pursue “green recovery” in response to coronavirus

Both the pope and Guterres have made environmental protection and climate change signature themes of their offices.

“We see these natural tragedies, which are the Earth’s response to our maltreatment,” Francis said. “I think that if I ask the Lord now what he thinks about this, I don’t think he would say it is a very good thing. It is we who have ruined the work of God.”

Saying the Earth was not an endless deposit of resources to exploit, he said: “We have sinned against the Earth, against our neighbour and, in the end, against the creator.”

Last year, after a synod of bishops from the Amazon region, Francis said he was considering adding a definition of “ecological sins” in the Roman Catholic Church’s Catechism, a compendium of teachings and rules.

Francis, like Guterres, has likened the response to environmental dangers to that of the coronavirus.

“Only together, and looking after the most fragile (members of society) can we win global challenges,” the pope said.

So far, massive economic stimulus packages launched by the United States, China and European governments have focused mainly on staunching the damage to existing industries and staving off the threat of a global depression.

But ministers from Germany, France and other EU members have signalled their support for subsequent interventions to align with climate goals, a theme taken up by climate campaign groups around the world.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined calls for a combined effort to tackle coronavirus and the climate crisis, saying the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday was the time to choose a “new way forward”.

Dramatic improvements in air and water quality as coronavirus lockdowns have cut pollution have prompted calls for a low-carbon future, but the need to get millions back to work is clouding the picture for the future.

Thunberg, taking part in a streamed event to mark Earth Day, said the extraordinary measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus did not mean the climate crisis had gone away.

“We need to tackle two crises at once,” she said.

“Whether we like it or not the world has changed, it looks completely different from how it did a few months ago and it will probably not look the same again and we are going to have to choose a new way forward,” the teenager said.

With economies round the world shut down, wildlife has returned to some city streets, with wolves, deer and kangaroos spotted on thoroughfares usually teeming with traffic.

Fish have been seen in Venice canals no longer polluted by motor boats, while residents of some Indian cities have reported seeing the Himalayas for the first time in decades.

Satellite imagery has shown significant air quality improvements across Europe and Asia, including China, where the coronavirus pandemic emerged at the end of last year.

Residents in some of China’s most smog-prone cities said they feared blue skies would not last as the world’s second biggest economy got back to work, however.

“In the second half of the year, when the epidemic eases, the weather will slowly be worse after factories reopen,” said Tang Zhiwei, 27, a resident of Shanghai. “Try your best to enjoy the blue sky now.”

Shanghai saw emissions fall by nearly 20% in the first quarter of 2020, which also saw China’s economy contract for the first time on record.

TOGETHER

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres echoed Thunberg, urging governments to use their economic responses to the pandemic to tackle the “even deeper emergency” of climate change.

With battle lines emerging between investors backing “green stimulus” measures and industry lobbyists aiming to weaken climate regulations, Guterres cautioned governments against bailing out heavily polluting industries.

“On this Earth Day, all eyes are on the COVID-19 pandemic,” Guterres said. “But there is another, even deeper emergency, the planet’s unfolding environmental crisis.”

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who on Wednesday was endorsed by two of his party’s most prominent climate change campaigners, including former vice president Al Gore, said green jobs “can be the very thing that helps us get through this existential threat to our economy.”

In November, Biden will run against President Donald Trump, who wants to re-open the U.S. economy to get the 22 million Americans who filed for unemployment benefits in the past month back to work. Trump has touted a strong economy as one of the biggest reasons why he should be re-elected.

Peter Betts, a former lead climate negotiator for Britain and the European Union, said although there was now pressure for coronavirus economic stimulus packages to be “low-carbon, climate-smart,” the effort faced strong headwinds.

“A risk, clearly, is that for some governments around the world there will be a huge premium on getting the economy moving, getting people back into jobs,” Betts, now with the Chatham House think-tank in London, told Reuters Television.

HOTTEST ON RECORD

The environmental stakes have been rising.

Last year was the hottest on record in Europe, extending a run of exceptionally warm years driven by unprecedented levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to a study released on Earth Day.

Of Europe’s 12 warmest years on record, 11 have occurred since 2000, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

“This warming trend is now unequivocal anywhere on the planet. And as a consequence of that, the frequency of these record breaking events is going up,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.

The coronavirus pandemic is expected to drive carbon dioxide emissions down 6% this year, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, in what would be the biggest yearly drop since World War Two.

But that’s not enough to stop climate change, the WMO said.

“COVID-19 may result in a temporary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but it is not a substitute for sustained climate action,” the WMO said in an Earth Day statement.

In a general audience at the Vatican streamed over the internet, Pope Francis prayed for the protection of the planet.

“This is an occasion for renewing our commitment to love and care for our common home and for the weaker members of our human family,” Francis said, and urged children to “take to the streets to teach us the obvious: we have no future if we destroy the very environment that sustains us.”