IGC Podcast: Building resistance in a crisis-ridden world - Tackling eco-anxiety through global cooperation and gender justice

For the October 2024 episode of the IGC podcast, we are joined by Angeline Eugenia, gender equality advocate and IGC Youth Champion, and Elise Buckle, CEO and Founder of Climate Bridges and Geneva-based Gender Champion. Following the Summit of the Future, they discuss eco-anxiety, the need for global optimism, and the importance of intergenerational collaboration in promoting climate justice and community resilience. 









TRANCRIPT



Lara Franken

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of the IGC podcast. My name is Lara Franken, and I'm with the International Gender Champions Secretariat in Geneva.

Today, we are going to highlight the Youth Champions Programme, which is a six month long mutual mentoring exchange that connects 10 Geneva based gender champions with 10 young gender equality activists from around the world. The programme seeks to promote an intergenerational dialogue between participants, amplify the voices of the young activists and facilitate learning experience for our established gender champions. Today's topic will be: “Building resistance in a crisis-ridden world - Tackling eco-anxiety through global cooperation and gender justice”, and here to help us shed light on the topic are Elise Buckle and Angelina Eugenia, who are both part of our Youth Champions Programme. Before we dive in, let's take a moment to introduce today's speakers.

Elise Buckle is a globally recognised climate leader, she is president and CEO of Climate Bridges, Founder of SHE Builds Bridges. She is an engaged international gender champion and co-chair of the climate and gender impact group. She is a leadership mentor and teaches sustainability and entrepreneurship at the Glion Institute of Excellence and Hospitality. Welcome to the IGC podcast, Elise.



Elise Buckle

Yes, thank you so much, Lara and Angeline, and welcome everyone. I'm so happy to be with you today.



Lara Franken

Our second guest is Angeline Eugenia. She is a youth activist and consultant in the field of women's economic empowerment and gender justice. Her experience spans from being the regional leader for Girl Up Southeast Asia. In her free time, she spends her time as a public speaker and educator. Her interest leads and expands within the implementation of sustainable development goals and intersectionality lense of practise. A very warm welcome to you as well, Angeline.



Angeline Eugenia

Thank you for welcoming me here. Thank you for Lara and Elise!



Lara Franken

Today, we're talking about climate anxiety and, more importantly, how we can tackle it by building resilience and exploring strategies to cope with the challenges of climate change. Let's start with a little emotional check-in question. The much anticipated Summit of the Future took place in late September, with a focus on multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow. If you had to summarise your state of mind and feelings about the event in three different adjectives, for example inspired, energised, frustrated, what would they be? Maybe we can start with you, Elise.



Elise Buckle

So, the Pact for the Future, I feel, is quite important because it's building bridges of trust for global cooperation towards a more sustainable future for all. So, I want to feel hopeful today because it's really injecting a well needed doses of global optimism into the UN system, with a strong focus on youth and women empowerment. What is also important there is that the civil society groups have been fighting very hard to keep some language on the need to transition away from fossil fuels, which is what we had in the COP 28 decision, and that will be on the table for COP 29. And I think that's very important to keep pushing on the energy transition.

Maybe just one word of caution: I would say it's not legally binding, so it's also a reflection of the world that we have today, which is very fragmented. And now it all depends on the political will of Member States to implement this Pact for the Future and to see also how much money they're willing to put on the table to.



Angeline Eugenia

As for me, I think it's important to remember that it's possible to fill two different things at the same time, and for me, it will be both empowered and disillusioned. I feel empowered to see the young people being there, being able to attend the summit. However, I am disillusioned as the presence of young people, there is still being heavily tokenised. I also saw from Yasmina on social media, who is also a champion here in this programme, who was there during the Summit, that there is a lot of exclusion towards young girls and women coming - especially ones who are coming from the Global South. And as I am both empowered and hopeful to know that the UN is inviting more and more young people each year, I am still disappointed by this, by how there is still an act of exclusion towards young women from the Global South.



Lara Franken

How can we use intergenerational dialogue and collaboration to not only address this anxiety, but also create a more supportive environment for climate action.



Angeline Eugenia

Yesterday I stumbled upon these tweets from X or Twitter that says: "First a climate change will manifest as a series of disasters. Fill your phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it", and the second one says: "Sobering reminder of how easily and quickly any of us can become climate refugees". Seeing these two reminders of how close we all actually are to the climate crisis and also how any of us can become climate refugees at any time, awaken something profound within me. I think, there is a deeper sense of urgency to understand, of course the complexities of climate justice and its impact on the vulnerable communities that include women and young girls. Intergenerational dialogue and collaboration, as what has been given to me here in this programme, can be very powerful tools for addressing climate anxiety and crisis, and also to create a more supportive environment.

First of all, by bridging all the experiences of our seniors or elders, who I know have a wealth of experience, resilience, thoughts, ideas and plans, which definitely could offer valuable lessons for young people and we can also combine it with the innovation of young people that brings more contemporary ideas, energy and innovative solution. And this way both generation can also share more on the perspective and what strategies can we implement moving forward and this is what I've also gained from this programme. It is a sense of mutual empowerment, of validation of climate anxiety by Elise. She always open conversation that helped me feel heard and validated, reducing this feeling of helplessness and anxiety within me. And she has been offering me with a sense of hope. And I can now think that another world or a better world is possible to be created in the future if we work together for this intergenerationally. And throughout our mentorship sessions, we always have conversations around resilience, mindfulness and community care. And, I feel like that can definitely also be interwoven within climate action strategies to be implemented all around the world. And also, I think, older generations often have more influence, in formal and political structures, while younger people - like me - are more actively involved in more grassroots or localised movement, I think by working together, from the young people, from the young people perspective and also from the older generations, I think, we can create a more, stronger and more diverse focus efforts so we can push together for systemic changes within all levels.



Elise Buckle

Thank you so much, Angeline, and deep gratitude for our mentoring relationship. I think that intergenerational solidarity is really essential, especially right now because we are facing all these changes around us. And the beauty of peer-to-peer coaching and mentoring is that it's creating these very strong bonds between the mentor and the mentee, between somebody a bit more senior and somebody more junior, but it's also a mutual learning experience and both sides are learning in that process and it's also to create solidarity, beyond national boundaries, beyond the North-South divide, beyond the generational divide. It's also about listening deeply with compassion, without judging, and to offer a space where we can express these emotions where we can hold these emotions and take care of them. And I think that's really the first step to build more resilience and to nurture the well-being is to instead of sometimes suppressing the eco-anxiety, to recognise that we have it and to, to be fine with it and to say, "OK, how do we transform this energy of eco-anxiety into positive energy to act on climate change, to mobilise our strength, our community, our personal and collective resilience?", and I think, it's very important to, to have this mentoring space to, to hold our emotions, our dreams, our anxieties, and it's really the first step to be resilient. So, I really encourage everybody to join this mentoring programme or others - there are many others who are also being developed.



Lara Franken

Thank you so much for these motivating and appreciative words, both of you. It's really touching, I think. Moving from individual concerns to broader strategies. Let's consider how we can tackle these global challenges collectively in the face of growing global crisis like climate change. How can we foster resilience? Both at the community level and within global governance systems.



Angeline Eugenia

I think, I can answer from the community level perspective and Elise on the global governance systems. As from my own experience, the way to foster resilience in local community level or in this context, maybe in my own community or organisation is first of all, by strengthening local capacity. What I always do is, I always try to mobilise resources to share the knowledge and experiences that I gain from all the classes or all the programmes that I have attended and also maybe add articles or podcasts. And secondly, to also provide emotional support, because we all know that young people nowadays, we all are facing climate crisis, and also we have this deep sense of climate anxiety within us. That's why it's important to always provide emotional support. And I think, one of the things that I can also highlight that I've done is to drive grassroot initiatives by investing in new and innovative social action. It doesn't have to be a big, massive social action. It can be small and within a very community level and in my organisation grow up, I also provide an internal education class in climate justice with the intersection with gender justice, which is something that we focus on more to equip these younger generations, these younger girls, with a skill to be able to respond to, respond more effectively to the climate crisis. We also are planning a climate gender camp. We want to cultivate new activists with an aim to dive deeper in the intersection of gender and climate change. And of course, on top of that, this is what I think has been missing from the narrative. What we often forget is we also have to ensure that we also provide a space for individuals coming from vulnerables and marginalised group. For example, the indigenous communities, LGBT IQ+ and persons with disability and so on. The way to do it is that we can pass on the mic for them, for the people coming from a more vulnerable and marginalised position for them to speak up about their experiences themselves. And, I think, what's also important and what also has been missing maybe in my community in Indonesia, there is a lack of climate education. And one thing that I want to also implement in the future is to also organise a climate education classes in schools, in middle schools and high schools, and also to promote schools to have their own climate resources. In their libraries or community centres so that young people coming from the younger generations will be equipped with more computers.



Elise Buckle

Thank you so much, Angeline, and, and what you're doing in Indonesia is so beautiful and well done on that because you are making space for everybody to be heard. And, I think, that's very, very important, especially for vulnerable communities that are at the front line of climate impacts. And, I think, you're totally right that resilience starts with community building. It's about building an ecosystem of people, of organisations that are committed to climate action, that want to work together on climate action. Making sure we have gender balance. We have youth balance in these spaces is essential because we're all part of the solution and we will get better solutions if everybody's around the table. And that's also what we do with our global ecosystem of climate leaders, climate bridges and also our woman led network SHE builds bridges. It's really also about creating network of networks. And in a way, we're all part of the same system. So your question about global governance, actually, all these communities are part of our global governance system. We are all part of one living system and just the way you have biodiversity with various ecosystems around the world. Our society has various communities which together form this global governance system, and I think what's really important, one of the lessons from COVID-19 is that we have to be ready for some systemic shocks and we saw that we when we had COVID and the same happens when we have a climate disaster, when the community is strong the community is in a much better place to prepare for these shocks, and also to recover from it much faster. So, I think, the challenge now for a lot of international organisations is to really move into this systemic transformation to make sure we work as one team on one earth and to go beyond institutional boundaries beyond the egos and the logos beyond the silos also that we keep creating in these organisation. And really see ourselves as being part of one big family on one earth and really nurturing this spirit of shared humanity. I think, that's really something very important that will make all of us more resilient in the face of the climate crisis.



Lara Franken

I think, it's crucial that we examine solutions on all levels, so thank you for those reflections. To end on a positive note or on another positive note, could you share some successful examples of integrating gender justice into climate action strategies from your perspectives and what made these approaches so effective, and also what can leaders, including our gender champions, learn from them?



Elise Buckle

So, the campaign we led at COP 28 and the dialogue with Sultan Ejabberd, Co-President and Mary Robinson from Project Dandelion and then on COP 29, we convinced the organising committee of the Presidency to include women, 11 women when they had no women at all. And, I think, the key to success and I've seen that in many campaigns, is the combination of top down policy and advocacy with bottom up pressure with public mobilisation, with media pressure. And it's really this double squeeze that can create impact, I think, also it's probably perseverance and patience because sometimes you can run a campaign on gender and climate for many, many years, which we had done before, but it's only at a certain point in time and you never know when that there will be the ripening time for this campaign to bring the fruits of your work and then that creates really a butterfly effect.

And in the case of gender and climate, I think that at the beginning of the year there was enough awareness and I think the work of the International Gender Champions is also essential and it's something that you know needs a lot of perseverance for many, many years and you go little by little. But once you have a critical mass of people who are aware of this topic of the importance of connecting gender and climate. It can really go very fast, but you never know when, so I think it's very important to be perseverant to be patient and to understand that the ripple effects may happen after actually even after you have started your campaign. I think the challenge that remains what we see is the structural barriers at the country level. Patriarchy is still very strong. It's actually stronger than ever. And I think to really counter this backlash, we need to be smarter. And this is why I think, we really need to have more men on board with us. And this is also why we have moved on with our narrative from she changes climate to she builds bridges, he builds bridges, and together we build bridges. Because I think that we really need the men on board to make even more progress in the future.



Angeline Eugenia

I agree with that and I think what also matters is to, from the local perspective or the community level perspective. I think, it's also important to prioritise women's leadership and climate action on this level because we all are impacted by climate change. And to cultivate more and more agent of change on a community level to integrate women, these women into leadership roles, also ensuring that common strategies can be more inclusive and effective, and also maybe in the context of Global South, I think we need more investment in capacity building and also empowerment when it comes to climate justice and solution. I think it's important to that, the coming from the Global South to be provided with more training resources and also technology that allows them to be able to actively participate in climate actions and solutions. Because this is still very minimum here and I think all of this can lead to a more sustainable and resilient communities for everyone.



Lara Franken

Thank you so much for joining us today and for stressing the importance of gender justice and global intergenerational cooperation. I feel a bit more hopeful after listening to you, and it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you.



Elise Buckle

Thank you.



Angeline Eugenia

Thank you.