Julika Tribukait (ELP 2021) | Policy Advisor, WWF Germany, Germany
I work in nature conservation. When people outside of what I usually call the “conservation bubble” ask about my job, it is often pretty hard for me to explain and pretty hard for them to grasp. I would start with: “I work for WWF. No, not the World Wrestling Federation (I’ve been asked this several times). The World Wide Fund for Nature. You probably know their logo. The panda.” Then they might ask what exactly my job is. I would say: “I’m coordinating an international mangrove initiative. We try to increase political ambition for their protection and restoration.” Some people might now ask how we do this, and I would clumsily try to describe how policy advocacy for nature conservation works. This becomes very abstract for most people. Some might also ask how my typical working day looks. “In the morning, I open my laptop and kick off the first of a long series of virtual meetings. By noon, I have spent 4 hours in front of my screen, mainly talking to people, reading and writing e-mails, creating and commenting on documents. And this is how most of my work week looks. Before Covid, there was also travel. Mostly to international conferences, where I’d spend 10-12 hours per day in a conference center.” And finally, some will ask why I am doing all this.
Well, I care about nature.
And that’s not limited to my professional life. I have been a vegetarian for 23 years. My bicycle is my preferred means of transportation. I try to avoid producing waste as much as I can. This includes all kinds of waste: food waste, plastic waste, energy waste, water waste, and waste of any resource. When things break, I spend more time and money repairing them than it would cost to buy them new. I have a hard time shopping because I always try to figure out which product is most environmentally friendly: the apples shipped in from New Zealand or those kept in cooled storage places over the winter. Two years ago, I decided that I don’t want to fly for private purposes anymore. This year, I joined the Green Party to support their election campaign. Most of this became a simple routine. Some of this is fun. But I can tell you: a lot of this can also be quite exhausting every now and then. But I still do it. Why?
Well, I care about nature.
I never questioned it. It’s just always been like this. And then, about two years ago, I found the reason – without looking for it. After a long day at another big conference, I found myself with other tired people in a tiny room without windows, attending a side event. We were expecting the usual presentations and panel discussion, but then the session kicked off with a question to the audience: “What memories of experiencing nature do you have?” Almost everyone in the room told a fascinating story about a trip to a special place or time they had spent outdoors as a child. I thought of my dad and all the walks we took in the forest, the mountains, and the countryside. I thought of all the times he brought my attention to a certain flower or beetle. I thought of the first night we slept under the open sky after a long day of rock climbing, and the gorgeous sunsets we watched from the top of a mountain. The cozy summer days we spent kayaking on small rivers or swimming in pristine lakes. The bees humming and birds singing in a meadow at sunrise. The smell of summer rain in the countryside. The passion he had (and still has) for spending time in nature. And suddenly I knew that this is the reason why I care so deeply about nature. I felt overwhelmed by gratitude and when I left the conference centre that evening, I texted my dad to thank him.
What I realized that day is what makes people care about nature: experiencing its beauty, its wonders, and its awesomeness. Everyone should have access to nature. Everyone should have the right and the means to spend time in nature. In a world where more than half of the population lives in urban areas, where half of the population is categorized low to lower middle income, where land conversion for infrastructure development and cultivation has reduced the area of pristine and intact nature dramatically, and where pollution and climate change threaten what is left of it, this is not guaranteed. But how can we care about something we do not know? Rational explanations on how we depend on nature alone won’t do. We need to bring people to nature. And we need to bring nature to people. Let’s go. Because we are nature.
