(introductory music) - [Announcer] And now Crosscut Festival Main Stage featuring a selection of curated sessions from this year's Crosscut Festival.

Thank you for joining us for, A Reason For Hope, with Jane Goodall.

we would like to thank our keynote track sponsor BECU.

We'd also like to thank our founding sponsor, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Foundation.

- Hello everyone.

And welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

I'm Dr. Katharine Wilkinson.

And today I get the chance to speak with one of the world's most beloved leaders in conservation.

A teacher and a peacemaker, Dr. Jane Goodall.

She doesn't need much of an introduction of course, over the last 60 years plus, she's reshaped our understanding of species conservation.

And she's redefined our understanding of our responsibility to protect the planet, its people and its many wonders.

Dr. Jane Goodall, welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

- Well, thank you very much and I'm very delighted to have been invited.

- Well, I am just delighted to be able to have this conversation with you.

And you said early in your time in Bombay, that being alone was a way of life in the forest.

And I'm curious what this last year has been like for you.

- Well, this last year, my goodness, the year of lockdown.

It was very lucky that I happened to be here in our family home, when the lockdown happened.

I was very nearly captured and locked down in Abu Dhabi, but I'm so glad to be here.

So I've been with my sister and her family, her daughter, and two grandsons.

And at first I was very frustrated and angry, that I couldn't go on traveling and spreading the word.

But then I thought, well, that's useless.

So with my Jane Goodall Institute team, we created Virtual Jane.

And although sitting here day after day after day with no holiday, no respite, doing Zooms and Skypes and podcasts and webinars and video messaging and all the rest of it, has not been exactly fun.

The silver lining is I've reached millions more people, in many more countries than I possibly could have, when I was doing my 300 days a year, traveling around the world.

So, you know, it's not what I would choose, but it has had advantages.

- And it looks like you may be having some bluster outside your window today.

What's it doing out there in the world?

- Yes, out there we have a gale, but we also have sunshine.

So the light is kind of changing, as the wind blows the trees and the sun's behind the trees.

So, you know, at any moment it may become very dark when the sun drops down, but I can't do anything about that.

- I think it's a nice reminder in this virtual world that we are nestled in our ecosystems, wherever we are.

- I'm very lucky-- - Jane you've been doing...

Yes, please go ahead.

- I was going to say, I'm very lucky that I was grounded as I call it, here, because outside we have a lovely garden that I grew up in, the trees I climbed as a child, we're by the ocean, so walking with the dog each day, you know, I've been very, very lucky really?

- Hmm.

The dogs have had it the best perhaps, because of this last year.

- I love dogs, I mean, I love him because he's an animal but he was a very ancient rabid, who never liked walking even when he was young and he's boring to take for walks.

First of all, people look at you like, why are you dragging this poor old dog?

As soon as you turn, boom, I have to run to keep up with him.

I mean he's really bizarre.

(both laugh) - He sounds like a character.

Well, Jane, you have been doing this work since 1960, and you've seen a lot of change during these last decades.

And right now our planetary crisis between biodiversity loss and the climate emergency feels more dire and more urgent than ever.

But it also seems like more and more people are aware that we have to be better stewards of our home, this earth, that we share, and more and more people seem to be stepping off the sidelines.

And I'm curious, what do you see happening Jane, in this moment?

- Well, first of all, I think that this pandemic, it's caused a huge lot of suffering.

It's brought out the best and the worst in people around the world, but people have begun to understand, we brought this on ourselves by our absolute disrespect of animals, invading that habitat, forcing them into close contact with each other and humans capturing them and trafficking them or their body parts around the world, selling them in wildlife markets, for food or for medicine or for clothing or for pets and all in these conditions, as well as our factory farms, which are described as concentration camps for animals.

We are providing environments which make it relatively easy for pathogen like this virus to jump from an animal to a human, when it may actually bond with the cell in the human body, and as it has in this case, create a new disease.

In fact, 75% of all new emerging diseases in humans have a zoonotic origin.

So the disrespect of the environment has led to climate change and loss of biodiversity.

And so all of these three coming together, I do think that more people are aware that it's up to us to change the way that we actually think about our relationship with the natural world and try and get together, to create a new, more sustainable economy.

- And I've heard you Jane, speak of animals as non-human beings.

Why do you use that term?

Why do you refer to them that way?

- Well, the thing is that when I went out to study chimpanzees in 1960, nobody had any faintest idea of how they behaved in the wild.

And I didn't have a degree, but Louis Leakey, I don't know, he saw something in me I suppose, and he gave me this opportunity and we got money for six months.

And fortunately, although first attempts ran away from me as soon as they saw me, you know, they'd never seen a white ape before, and we are white apes but then one of them began to lose his fear there, he even placed his ears behind me, up here.

And I saw him using and making tools, from stems, leafy twigs to fish for termites.

And at that time it was thought that humans and only humans used to make tools.

That changed everything.

Then National Geographic came in, they provided money for me to carry on with the research, they sent a documentary filmmaker, Hugo Van Lawick, but after one and a half years, I think it was, Leaky told me that I had to get a degree, that he wouldn't always be around to get money for me.

And he got me a place to study Ethology.

I didn't even know what it meant, I hadn't been to college, but now I have to get a PhD in Ethology in Cambridge University.

It was a top science university in the UK.

And I was really nervous, and imagine how I felt when I got there and these professors of whom I was really nervous, told me I had done everything wrong.

Giving the chimps names was not scientific, I should have numbered them.

I couldn't talk about them having personality, mind or emotion, because those were unique to us.

But I had learned from a wonderful teacher in my childhood, and that's the other way, here he is, Rusty my dog.

You can share your life in a meaningful way with any animal.

Well, you know, and not really, we're not the only beings, with personality mind and emotion.

We're part of, and not separated from the rest of the animal kingdom.

- Absolutely.

- And so I talk about the chimpanzees.

Well non-human beings, I talk about them as beings, as humans, as chimpanzees, as dogs, as dolphins, we all matter in this amazing diversity of life on this planet.

- And I'm curious, you went to Cambridge and you became sort of indoctrinated in the ways of science, but you have managed to keep and nurture this open, curious, wondering mind.

And I'm curious how you've done that over the years, Jane.

- Well, first of all, I did not become indoctrinated right from the beginning, I was quite a rebel.

I wouldn't let them indoctrinate me.

And then when they told me the difference between us and all other animals was when I kind of, I just knew it wasn't true.

So I kept that relationship with animals on that level that we are one of many species.

But there's a lot of talk these days about invasive species that come in, because come on ships or we brought them as pets, and let them go and how they're damaging our local flora and fauna, and they're treated in most cruel ways very often.

But the most invasive species ever is us.

We've invaded every ecosystem.

And because we have this crazy idea, that that can be unlimited economic development on a planet with finite natural resources, we're destroying the world.

And yet the biggest difference between us, chimpanzees and other animals is yes, they're way, way, way more intelligent than the science used to admit, but there's a difference.

I mean, you know, no animal living could design a rocket that goes up to Mars, with a little robot that can take photographs.

No animal living, other than the human animal could create a network which enables you in America and me in the UK speak to each other.

And you know, there are some webinars, where there's people from all over the world speaking to each other.

So isn't it bizarre that this most intellectual, any species ever is destroying it's only world.

It's as though we've lost wisdom.

You know, we don't make decisions based on how will this affect future generations but how will this affect me now, me and my family now, the next share holder meeting, all of these things, we've lost wisdom.

- It does feel like we have lost the basic wisdom of life that we are just so out of step with in dominant society.

And as you say, this very strange belief in the idea of infinity, that undergirds our entire economic system and has caused so much destruction.

And that actually leads into the question I wanted to ask you next, which is of course makes sense.

The world thinks about you as inextricably linked with chimpanzees and the work that you've done to raise our responsibility to respect and protect them.

But your work has come to expand really to all species and to a global scale.

And I'm curious, how did your focus ripple out from one species to ecosystems and the humans that share them?

- Well, first of all, it didn't begin with chimpanzees.

It began with a childhood of all animals.

Right here where I'm speaking to you from, I was out in the garden, there was no television when I was growing up.

I mean, there was none of this technology.

So it was nature and books.

Behind me are some of the books that I read as a child, Dr. Ethology and Tulsa, which gave me this passion to go and live with wild animals and write books about them.

And so it was Dr. Leakey who suggested chimpanzees.

I would have studied any animal after I got out to Africa and met him, but he chose me to study the one most like us, which was kind of amazing, was because the chimps are so like us biologically, as well as behaviorally, that I was able to finally convince science, that we're part of the animal kingdom and not separate from it.

And so how did this all evolve?

I was out in the forest with the chimpanzees, got my PhD in spite of the scientists, (both laugh) and then yes, and went back to Cambridge, built up a research team, and then went to a conference, which was really about how the chimps behave in different environments, safe behavior, different behavior.

But we had a session on conservation and it was shocking, absolutely shocking.

Like everywhere across Africa, chimpanzee numbers were dropping, forests were disappearing.

Chimpanzees were being sold in the markets for meat.

And I left that conference as an activist.

It just happened.

I didn't not make the decision.

And then going back and learning about what was happening to the chimps, but also learning about what was happening to the poor people, living in and around chimp habitat.

They had no good health or education facilities.

The land was overused and infertile.

They were struggling to survive.

And it came to my head when I flew over the tiny Gombe National Park, which had been part of the great equatorial forest belt, when I began in 1960.

By 19, the end of the 1980s, it was this little patch of isolated forest, surrounded by bear hills.

And this is when it hit me, there are more people living here than the land can support.

They're too poor to buy food elsewhere, they're destroying their environment in their desperation, to grow food, to feed their families.

And if we don't help them find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, then we can't save chimpanzees, forests or also anything else.

So that led to a program to improve their lives, so that now they become our partners in seven different African countries, and because all of that costs money, then what's the point of doing it, if you're not raising new generations to be better students than we'd be.

So that led to our Roots & Shoots program, which is helping young people to choose projects to make the world a better place.

So it all moved outwards like that in a very logical way, when you think about it.

- I think that's the nature of emergence, when we actually let ourselves be drawn by the work that needs doing.

And I love the focus that you have on young people, through Roots & Shoots.

And it strikes me that these days, some of the hardest work is making science and conservation accessible and inviting for adults.

Young people seem to get it almost intuitively, but these topics have been so politicized.

And I'm curious how you approach that part of the challenge of bringing adults along on the journey.

- Well, I've always tried to work from the top and the bottom, always.

And you know, it's no good just addressing the youth because it's going to be a while for some of them to get up there in decision-making positions.

Some of them already are, but also because we have so little time left to change things before we get total collapse, it's really been important for me to talk to business leaders, politicians and so on.

So we work at the top, we work at the bottom.

And I found amazingly that young people are playing such an important role, because they are changing the way their parents think, the way their grandparents think.

And the Roots & Shoots program began because I was approached by 12 high school students in Tanzania from eight schools.

And they were concerned about, some of them about poaching in the national parks.

Some of them about illegal dynamite fishing, destroying the coral reefs.

Some of them about the bad treatment of stray dogs, some of them about the homeless children sniffing glue with nobody to care for them.

And they wanted me to help.

What could they do?

So we got a big gathering together, them and their friends.

And we created this program, Roots & Shoots.

The main message, every single one of us on this planet makes a difference every day.

We get to choose what sorts of difference we make.

And because I learned about the interconnection of everything out in the rain forest, we decided that every group would choose, itself, they would choose three projects to make the world better.

One to help people, one to help animals, one to help the environment.

And so that's how it began.

12 high school students now in 65 countries and growing and hundreds of thousands of young people, many of them are now up in decision-making positions.

And then 1991, it's my greatest hope for the future.

These young people are passionate, they're changing environments, they're changing their parents changing their grandparents, they're changing the world.

- Yeah.

I spend most of my days thinking about the climate crisis and how we address it, the solutions we have and how we move forward in ways that are just inequitable to a livable future, and I think we need to be learning more from people who have spent most of their days in conservation and biodiversity.

And I'm curious, what has your lifetime of conservation work taught you about solving the climate crisis?

What lessons should the climate movement be learning?

- Well, I think there are three major things that have to change, if we care about the future.

One of them is our unsustainable lifestyles, many people in the Western world.

We have so much more than we need.

And we're just not living in a way that is sustainable in the long run.

And we're putting too much value on material things but I could talk for hours about that, but I wouldn't.

So one of them is reducing our ecological footprint on the planet, the wealthy people.

And then secondly, there's poverty.

Poor people are going to destroy the environment, cut down the forest like they did at Gombe in order to survive.

And so we have to work with them as we have to help them to find a way of living that is more sustainable.

And that is a really key key component for everything we do, helping the poor people live in such a way that they can rise out of poverty.

And then of course, when they rise out of poverty, they want to introduce the very unsustainable ways that give us the lifestyle that we shouldn't be ascribing to, but do.

So they want to as well.

So that's something that we have to address.

So often when you solve one problem, it creates another.

And then finally, there's our growing human population and the growing numbers of our livestock.

And, you know, right now there's 7.2 billion of us on the planet and already in some areas we're using more natural resources than nature can replenish.

And it's estimated by 2050, there'll be close to 10 billion of us.

So what's going to happen?

Unless we can somehow address this the way that we're living and create a new standard of living and interacting with the environment, because otherwise what's going to happen to our children.

I don't know.

So these three things, the population, the unsustainable lifestyles that we live, and elevating people out of poverty, where they're destroying the environment because that's the only way they can live.

- I think these are great examples also of the fundamental shift in values that needs to happen particularly in the global North and the ways in which we can multi solve, right?

That the fundamental human rights of access to education and healthcare have planetary ripple effects.

And we can think about these things in layered and interconnected ways.

And then the challenges that we face are, they're frankly huge.

We try to simplify these things in the way that we talk but they are quite daunting.

And where we are today, Jane, do you believe that we can build a life-giving future?

And what gives you courage right now?

- Well, I believe that we can do it.

If, you know, we need to wake up.

One of the big problems is apathy.

One of the big problems is that so many people feel helpless and hopeless.

There's nothing they can do about it.

And you keep hearing, think globally act locally, but it's the wrong way around.

If you think globally, you get very depressed because we have made a mess.

We've made a right mess around the planet.

But if you think locally, well, there are things that I can do.

I look around me and see what's wrong here.

And I can get a group together and I can take action.

That's what Roots & Shoots is about.

And then when you take action, like clean up a river or you can clear litter from the streets, or you can, you know, do whatever it takes and you see it's made a difference.

And then you realize that there are Roots & Shoots groups growing around the world.

And they're all making a difference, so that gives you hope, absolutely gives you hope.

And without hope, I don't know what's going to happen.

And you have to be always aware that when you solve one problem, you may very well create another.

You got to be prepared for that.

You got to think ahead and think I solve this one, how am I going to solve that one?

And there's so many amazing brains now around the world working on new solutions to this climate crisis and loss of biodiversity.

And, you know, we do have an amazing brain, that's one of our attributes.

So we need to be using it in the right way.

- And if we can connect our heads and our hearts with the biggest possible we, doing this work I think that is absolutely where possibility lives.

Jane, I wish we could keep talking but we are sadly out of time.

Thank you for a wonderful and nourishing conversation for being such a trailblazer and a force for hope.

- Thank you.

- Thank you all for joining us at the Crosscut Festival.

I am so glad to have had a chance to be part of this event.

Have a wonderful day.

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