Nature Solutionaries

There aren’t many places on Earth you can call unexplored. The Darién Gap in Panama is one of them. This mountainous, densely forested area, which is often used by refugees to cross from South to North America, is a place where you won’t find any roads, shops or hospitals. When you’re there, your survival depends on you.

As it happens, it’s also one of the world’s most beautiful and biodiverse places, with more biodiversity per square foot than the Amazon despite being much smaller. Plus, it has one of the highest carbon stocks in the world.

Home to venomous snakes, poisonous insects and dangerous rivers, the Darién Gap is one of the riskiest places to be. And that’s exactly where Alexandra Climent, a grassroots conservationist and artist, has decided to do her life’s work.

Despite its remoteness, even the Darién Gap is falling prey to fast deforestation and habitat fragmentation. Alexandra has been working with indigenous communities to buy up degraded land and reforesting it with native trees. 

The goal is clear: to create a 5,000-hectare forest corridor for wildlife that will connect reforested areas with protected areas and serve as an important carbon sink.

Listen to Alexandra’s story to discover why protecting this place matters, and why now. 

When Ayesha Amin, a renowned Pakistani women’s rights activist, first saw a condom in a workshop, she refused to touch it.

“I felt so embarrassed that I just wanted to disappear,” she says. Her shame, however, turned into curiosity and this moment helped Amin realize that talking about sex and reproduction shouldn’t be taboo.

In 2018, Amin founded the nonprofit Baithak: Challenging Taboos, which has reached 300,000 women across Pakistan with workshops on family planning, menstrual health and gender-based violence.

Having witnessed one of the worst climate disasters in Pakistan’s history, Amin has also been a fierce advocate for climate policies that address the needs of young girls and women.

Together we talk about

• her dogged persistence to never stop dreaming
• her daring acts of resistance to patriarchal norms
• dismantling harmful menstruation myths
• and about why there has to be more than just 2 women out of 50 men in climate meetings.

Even though child marriage might seem like a thing of the past for some of us, one in five girls globally are still married off under the age of 18.

This means that for millions of these child brides, their childhood, education and future have been stolen forever. Uneducated women often end up having worse health and economic outcomes and their families are more vulnerable to climate change.

To free girls from this nightmarish practice, Ugandan activist Joan Kembabazi has been challenging traditional beliefs in her community and advocating for girls‘ education and empowerment.

In this interview, Joan talks about why child marriage happens, what it‘s like to be a child bride and what needs to be done to eliminate this practice.

If we truly want to liberate women, access to contraception is just the tip of the iceberg. We also need to feel comfortable talking about our bodies, our sexuality and sensuality, menstruation, post-partum depression, parental burnout and menopause. Because if we feel ashamed or embarrassed about these topics, we’re still being repressed.

To have a large family, and at least one son, are such strong cultural and religious norms in Nigeria that when women don’t meet them they’re often considered failures. Not only is this unfair to women, it’s also becoming nearly impossible to provide for a big family in Nigeria, where poverty is rampant and the cost of living has recently tripled. 

It’s not easy being a woman in Niger. The odds are especially high for women to drop out of high school, get married young (17 is the average age), or be displaced due to climate change, insecurity or humanitarian crisis! What happens to women in Niger, though, doesn’t stay in Niger alone. It impacts the whole region and ultimately, the global fight for women’s rights and climate justice.

Together with Sani Ayouba Abdou (Director of Young Volunteers for the Environment in Niger) and Lou Compernolle (Advocacy Program Lead at Oasis), we talk about the solutions that will help women overcome barriers and live secure and healthy lives.

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Uganda’s first wildlife vet and award-winning conservationist, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, shares her personal story about how her organization “Conservation Through Public Health“ has contributed to a steady growth of mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. That’s in addition to a major improvement in community health, a threefold increase in family planning use, and new opportunities for people living around the park to thrive in coexistence with gorillas and other wildlife.   

In this 30-minute interview, we touch on:  

• How the nonprofit incorporates public health and family planning into conservation

• How to prevent the spread of diseases between humans and gorillas

• Why improving public health and hygiene helps communities and gorillas thrive

• How they achieved an increase of contraception from 22% to 67%

• Why ecotourism is great for local livelihoods but can’t be the only option 

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (1970) is one of the leading conservationists and scientists working to save the endangered mountain gorillas of East Africa. Her NGO Conservation Through Public Health promotes coexistence of gorillas, other wildlife, humans, and livestock. For her outstanding environmental and humanitarian work, Gladys has received a number of awards from the United Nations, Sierra Club and Edinburgh International Science Festival. Her memoir “Walking With Gorillas: The Journey of an African Wildlife Vet” came out in March 2023. 

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Natural conservation and making improvements in the health and livelihoods of our communities are not at odds, although sometimes it feels this way. In reality, they are inherently connected. For example, in many rural communities where access to quality health services is low and jobs are few and far between, poverty-stricken people depend on exploiting natural resources to survive, which actually harms their quality of life long-term. Luckily, there is a better way of doing things that doesn't force communities to choose between their livelihoods and local flora and fauna.

The Population, Health and Environment approach proposes a way to improve access to reproductive health, while also helping people find alternative livelihoods, sustainably manage natural resources and preserve ecosystems. The nonprofit PATH Foundation Philippines, which has reached hundreds of thousands of Filipinos with its programs, is one of the pioneers of this approach.

Joan Castro, the Executive Vice President of this organization, talks about:

• How sexually transmitted diseases, poverty, natural degradation and population growth are interconnected
• Why it makes more sense to address all the issues through an integrated approach rather than individually
• How PATH Philippines tackled food insecurity problems and resource depletion in two biodiversity spots 
• How they made family planning services accessible 24/7 by using small convenience stores instead of only village clinics
• How they addressed harmful social norms and misconceptions about contraception
• How they helped to improve management of close to 2,000 hectares and to establish 44 marine protected areas
• Where else the PHE approach is applied

Joan Castro is a licensed physician, who has more than 20 years of experience in sustainable and community development initiatives in rural and urban settings in the Philippines. Joan serves as the Executive Vice President of PATH Foundation Philippines.

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Many people feel desperate about the state of the world today. It’s no wonder because the number of negative news we hear is endless – biodiversity loss, resource depletion, increasing inequality, wars, and so on. The more informed we are, the more helpless we feel, thinking, “How can I make a difference?”

It turns out that all of us can make a difference if we take a solutionary approach to our work. No matter what you do - a biologist, a teacher, a gardener - you can tackle big issues  and change your field so it is more just, humane and sustainable.

In this episode, Zoe Weil, the co-founder of the Institute for Humane Education, explains:

• Why it’s important to cultivate the culture of service in our communities
• What can local organizations do to involve young people
• Why it’s more important to change the system rather than individuals within it
• How you can solve pressing global issues locally
• How you can find a meaningful career by answering only three questions
• What a solutionary is and how you can become one yourself

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When soap operas are designed in a way that they not only entertain people but also educate about social issues, they can have a huge positive impact on society and the environment. This type of approach is called entertainment education and is at the core of what Population Media Center does.

Through hot TV soaps and radio dramas, this non-profit draws attention to family planning, gender equality, domestic violence, girls’ education, children’s health and education, and conservation. Since 1998, their 40 shows have helped more than 500 million people live healthier lives in more than 50 countries.

In this episode, Bill Ryerson, Population Media Center’s founder, talks about:

• why just raising awareness about environmental or health care issues does not make people change their behavior
• why storytelling and role modeling are extremely powerful tools for social change
• how soap operas helped Mexico achieve the most dramatic decline in fertility rates in the 20th century
• how TV soaps and radio dramas that address contemporary social issues are made
• why audiences fall in love with transitional characters rather than positive ones
• how long it takes to bring change to a community
• why effective communication is central to human progress and why we should fight misinformation

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Even though people mostly view fish as tasty food on their plates, freshwater fish species are in desperate need of our attention and action. They are the world’s most threatened taxon, due to pollution, aquatic habitat loss, invasive species, overharvesting and water flow changes. Fish are at risk worldwide, but Southeast Asia is one of the key areas where fish are suffering with more than 80 different fish species currently on the brink of extinction.

In this episode, Nerissa Chao (a conservation biologist who has been leading the IUCN SSC Asian Species Action Partnership), Mike Baltzer (founder of Shoal, an organization that strives to protect freshwater species) and Nathaniel Ng Shengrong (a fish conservation expert from Mandai Nature) talk about:

• why freshwater fish are important for the ecosystem
• what happens when fish go extinct
• why fish are neglected and overlooked
• how the ASAP Action Plan will help protect fish in Southeast Asia
• how local communities, governments and hobbyists can help
• successful fish conservation initiatives

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When Colombian conservationist Sara Inés Lara started helping women from rural communities access family planning and education and become guardians of their own environment, she got a lot of pushback from local men and conservation colleagues. After all, it was a taboo to address environmental protection, women’s empowerment and population. Seventeen years later, her NGO Women for Conservation has reached more than 2,000 women and helped the recovery of the yellow-eared parrot, which was downlisted from the IUCN Red List in 2021. More than ever, Sara is convinced that this is the correct way to do conservation.

On this episode, Sara Inés Lara and Catriona Spaven Donn, Empower to Plan Coordinator from Population Matters, talk about:

• Why it is important to engage women in conservation
• Why addressing conservation, family planning and population is crucial
• How family planning programs help women have better lives and get involved in local protection of nature
• What experience Sara and Cat have had talking about population and conservation
• How Colombian activists saved the yellow-eared parrot

While in most places, we hear about rhinos and elephants being killed, in North Luangwa National Park in Zambia, one of the most untouched wilderness sanctuaries in Africa, the situation is quite the opposite. This little-known park is home to Zambia’s only black rhino population, which continues to show one of the highest growth rates in Africa, and Zambia’s largest, most stable and ever-increasing elephant population.

On this episode, Claire Lewis, a British conservationist who manages the park, talks about:

• What it's like bringing up three kids in the wilderness
• How the rhinos, elephants, lions and wild dogs have recovered from poaching
• What it was like to reintroduce rhinos who had gone extinct
• Why having too many rhinos is risky and where they plan to put them
• Why this park is so successful in protecting its wildlife
• How conservation is also about managing people

Conservationist Claire Lewis has been living and working in the park with her husband Ed Sayer and their three children since 2007. She is the Technical Advisor at the Frankfurt Zoological Society, a conservation organization which created the North Luangwa Conservation Programme with the Zambian Department of National Parks and Wildlife in 1986.

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With fewer than 50 animals in the wild, saola is possibly the most threatened mammal on the planet. Even though it was discovered in 1992, very little is known about it, as no biologist has ever seen it in the wild and there are only a handful of photos of it from camera traps – last one from 2013. To save the animal from extinction, the Saola Foundation for Annamite Mountains Conservation wants to lead an intensive search for the last saolas in order to capture them for a breeding program. William Robichaud, the president of the organization, talks about:

• Why saola was discovered so late
• Why saola is on the brink of extinction 
• Why it is so hard to find saola
• Why captive breeding program is necessary for the survival of saola
• How saola search can benefit other endangered species
• What methods they want to use to find and capture saolas
• How to effectively protect nature in the Annamite Mountains

William Robichaud has been working on wildlife conservation in Laos and Vietnam for more than 25 years. In 2006, he co-founded the IUCN Saola Working Group, and served as its Coordinator until 2019. In 2015, the IUCN Species Survival Commission recognized Bill with its Harry Messel Award for Conservation Leadership, for his contributions to Saola conservation. 

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The impact of our growing population on nature is such a sensitive topic that nobody really dares talk about it. Better sweep it under the carpet and forget about it, right? Well, not necessarily. If you think it through, the solution is really simple and beautiful: give women full rights, opportunities and access to family-planning methods.

In this interview with Paul R. Ehrlich, the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies at Stanford University, we talk about:

• What is a sustainable population and how to achieve it
• Why women play a key role in creating a sustainable planet
• How we can empower women and why women still don't have equal rights
• Why our Stone Age genes make it hard to address global issues and why we need to change culturally
• Why we need 8 billion Greta Thunbergs and everyone to spend 10% of their time helping out society
• What is Paul's vision of 2050
• How hot soap operas can help us talk about overpopulation, and more.

For 7.8 billion people to live sustainably on the planet, everyone would have to be a vegetarian; never drive a car or fly in an airplane; live in a one-room apartment with minimal electricity and no heat, hot water, washing machine, dryer, or dishwasher; and have only a few sets of clothes and pairs of shoes. Sounds crazy, right? But what's even crazier is that nobody, including environmentalists, really wants to talk about our growing population and consumption. With 7.8 billion people on the planet and a few billion more (between 9.4 and 12.7 billion people in 2100 based on UN estimates) to come, it is time we look at the elephant in the room.

Together with Terry Spahr, the environmentalist and filmmaker behind "8 Billion Angels," we talk about:

• how population growth impacts our lives, health, and the planet
• why so few people talk about overpopulation and why some even deny it
• why having a smaller family is the most impactful thing anyone can do
• why providing access to education and family-planning methods helps both people and nature
• which countries are successfully slowing their population growth
• why reducing consumption is almost impossible
• why educating people about population is part of the solution

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Even though the elephant population decline is a gigantic problem – only 415,000 elephants remain compared to 10 million in 1930 – there are ways to protect this iconic species. The nonprofit Save Elephants, in collaboration with EAGLE Network (organizations fighting corruption and wildlife crime), have seen some success protecting elephants in Congo, Cameroon and Chad. 

On this episode, Arthur Sniegon, the founder of Save Elephants, talks about:  

• why elephants are being killed in Africa and why poaching is #1 problem
• how beehive fences mitigate conflict between small-scale farmers and migratory elephants in Chad
• what it's like to investigate the illegal market with ivory in Congo and Cameroon
• why better law enforcement is a strong tool in a toolkit to fight elephant poaching
• how detection dogs are used to prevent ivory and bushmeat smuggling

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In this episode, I am talking to Luis Mazariegos and Stuart Pimm about their successful conservation project in Western Andes Cloud Forest, in Colombia, one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet. Since 2008, The Hummingbird Conservancy, with financial support from Saving Nature has restored 3,500 hectares of degraded land and connected about 100 km2 of intact forest with the main Andean chain into a land corridor.

Together we talk about: 

• Why the Western Andes Cloud Forest is so unique
• Why creating land corridors is vital for species survival
• How corridors are built - land acquisition and restoration 
• How the corridor brought back pumas, ocelots and other species
• How the conservation project involves and benefits the local community
• What challenges the reserve faces

Luis Mazariegos is a world's leading hummingbird photographer, founder of The Hummingbird Conservancy and virologist by profession. He resides in Colombia but frequently travels to US where he has company that sells bio pesticides. 

Stuart Pimm is a world leader in the study of present day extinctions and he is currently, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University.

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Lisa Carne is a marine biologist and founder of Fragments of Hope, a community-based organization that stands behind the most successful coral reef restoration project in the Caribbean. Dr. Maya Trotz is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida and a board member of Fragments of Hope. 

Together we talk about: 

- How Lisa started coral reef restoration in the Laughing Bird Caye National Park in Belize 

- How coral reef restoration works (methods, techniques)

- What results Fragments of Hope has achieved in Laughing Bird Caye National Park

- What makes the conservation strategy so unusually effective 

- If this strategy can be used by other conservationists elsewhere

- Why interdisciplinary approach to reef restoration is important

- What challenges Fragments of Hope face

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Annette Arjoon-Martins is a Guyanese conservationist and pilot who founded the Guyana Marine Conservation Society, an NGO that originally started with protecting sea turtles on Shell Beach and now aims to protect mangrove forests and marine habitats in general. Ivana Thompson is a young marine biologist who has recently joined the organization to deepen the scientific knowledge about sea turtles. 

Together we talk about: 

- Protecting of sea turtles on Shell Beach

- Working with indigenous communities and finding alternative livelihoods

- Restoring mangrove forests along the Guyanese coast

- Barima Mora Passage – one of the largest most intact mangrove ecosystems in Guyana

- Opportunities & threats of a newly discovered oil & gas industry for Guyanese nature

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Hana Raza is a Kurdish wildlife conservationist who rediscovered the Persion leopard, once thought to be extinct, in the mountains of Kurdistan in 2011. She dedicated her career to establishing a program for conserving this globally endangered species.  In 2017, she was awarded the prestigious award of Future for Nature.

Together we talk about:

• Why it is important to protect the Persian leopard
  
• What the main threats that this animal faces in Iraq are
  
• What it’s like to be a woman conservationist in war-torn country
  
• Hana’s current efforts to establish a nature reserve in Qara Dagh
  

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In this episode, I talk to a German conservationist Tilo Nadler about: 

- How he managed to establish the only viable population of Delacour's Langur in Vietnam

- What it's like to negotiate an extension of an existing reserve

- Why captive-born langurs are re-introduced in Trang An UNESCO World Heritage Site 

- How Tilo tries to protect langurs threatened by limestone quarrying

- What's the future of primates in Vietnam

- Why law enforcement is so important in stopping illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam

- What motivates Tilo to pursue conservation at the age of 80

Tilo Nadler (*1941) is a German-born primatologist and conservationist living in Vietnam. In 1993, Tilo founded the Endangered Primate Rescue Center which has rescued over 400 endangered and critically endangered primates and bred more than 300 of them. He also helped create a community of 30 local rangers in the Van Long Nature Reserve thanks to which poaching of Delacour's langurs has been eliminated and the population nearly quadrupled. 

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