“When you hear a glacier melting, the rivers of water emerging from beneath it, it is enough to make your heart break. When Ice from a glacier breaks off into the Fjord it takes about 6 weeks for it to disappear into the ocean. A glacier takes 150,000 years to form.” ~ MARTI
EPISODE 16 – MARTI ON CLIMATE CHANGE, COMMUNITY AND TRANSFORMATION
FACING CLIMATE CHANGE WITH GROUNDED OPTIMISM
Listen to the conversation:
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About this interview:
How can we better respond to the challenge of climate change by moving beyond denial towards graceful, united action?
In this episode, Amisha is in conversation with environmental activist, writer and photographer MARTI, who gave a keynote at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 and more recently has been working with indigenous groups across the planet on the front line of the climate crisis.
Since Jacques Cousteau announced 35 years ago that we were approaching a point of no return with regard to our impact on planet Earth we have gone a long way beyond this barrier and the disruptive effects of climate change are already being felt across the globe. What is more, the next 5-15 years will bring ever greater impacts, the prospect and scale of which has already become overwhelming for most people.
The proximity of significant climate change most commonly triggers denial to some degree. MARTI and Amisha unpack and examine some of the ways this denial can manifest and what we might do to respond in a better way. They speak about why technology and Hollywood heroes cannot save us (but communication and connection just might). They touch on the topic of grief: how recognising and honouring the hopes and the futures that we have lost can help us step with more grace into the futures that await us.
MARTI shares her thoughts on why community is crucial to finding our way forward in the present reality of climate chaos. She tells why service to others holds the key to shifting the energy of depression when the woes of the world threaten to overwhelm us and how the most humble acts can have an incredible quantum impact beyond what we can imagine. She reminds us of the powerful ancient social technologies that we have available to us and how we can remember and reclaim the wisdom of previous civilisations to unite and face our future together.
Finally, MARTI speaks about her intergenerational work with Innuit culture around strengthening identity and community, safeguarding ancient traditions and wisdom, and the importance of Greenland in the planetary climate scenario. Listen in to hear how this work is being extended out to other indigenous groups including the Lakota people, the Kogi in Colombia, and the people of Bhutan.
“It is up to each one of us as a citizen of the world and a child of mother earth to move towards what will make a significant change. Never underestimate anything you do.” ~ MARTI
MARTI is a writer, photographer, scenarist, and environmental activist. She is based in Paris France and spends time in Auroville, a community in South India dedicated to human unity. She is currently working with indigenous people throughout the world on the impact of climate change and the importance of safeguarding and sharing indigenous wisdoms. MARTI is a Penguin Books author, a former professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris, and was a United Nations representative to Geneva under the ECOSOC programme. MARTI was the first chair of the International Advisory Council of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), a federation of thousands of communities throughout the world. She was a keynote speaker at the COP15 UN Environmental Conference in Copenhagen. MARTI was honored in Japan as one of <One Hundred People Who Love the Earth>. She was selected to be one of the major environmental speakers at the Universal World’s Fair in Aichi Japan.
MARTI has received a Rolex citation for her work in environmental education. She founded Children and Trees, a project that produces low cost easy-to-understand books on subjects such as afforestation, land management, species diversity, population and demography issues. Her book on human ecology, This Earth of Ours, has a prologue by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. MARTI co-initiated GREENLAND SPIRIT, a project aimed at strengthening Inuit identity and community, safeguarding indigenous wisdoms, and facing the impact of climate change in the Arctic. She is co-founder of a new project, AWAKENING SPIRIT, connecting wisdom-keepers from the Lakota tradition with indigenous tribes in the Americas.
To find out more about MARTI, visit www.martiphoto.org
To connect or work with Amisha Ghadiali, visit www.amisha.co.uk
Resources and links from this episode:
- MARTI – Green Land Spirit
- MARTI – Burning Man Photo
- GEN (Global Eco Villages Network)
- Gaia university
- Auroville
- Findhorn
Connect more with us:
- Beautiful Leadership mentoring
- Amisha’s One-to-One sessions
- Amisha’s book – INTUITION
- all that we are membership
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