The voice for collective youth action
Bella Lack is 18, and works with organisations including the Born Free Foundation and Reserva: The Youth Land Trust, of which she is Youth Director. Her 2018 petition to ban the use of wild animals in circuses contributed to a change in the law a year later. Her book, The Children of the Anthropocene, which focuses on the youth response to the climate crisis, will be published in 2022.
During the week I live with my dad in Sussex, where I love to spend time by the sea. At weekends, I’m with my mum in London, I go to Richmond Park; it’s so wild, full of red and roe deer. I love swimming in the ponds at Hampstead Heath, too. I like being immersed in nature and am lucky that I have these places – many don’t, and that has to change. Shockingly, 75% of young people spend less time outside than prison inmates. There’s no way we can get people to care about nature if they don’t know what they’re trying to protect.
I’ve always been fascinated by the natural world and by animals. Aged four, I would set up snail sanctuaries, but I got into protecting nature when I learned about the link between palm oil and deforestation. I’d always loved orangutans and, being the naïve 11 year old that I was, I thought I could solve the whole palm oil crisis by putting up posters around the house.
During the pandemic, people had the realisation that we’re not exempt from nature – three quarters of emerging diseases are zoonotic: coming from animals to humans – but it also acted as a portal. Everything slowed down and those who could stay at home saw nature returning to cities, had time to go birdwatching and look at the stars. I think it’s important for us, as humans, to have a story. If we can imagine a future, then we can move towards it. At the moment, our story is one of growth and consumption, but in some cases that’s changing. At the Knepp estate in Sussex, they’re recreating what UK wildlife would have been if it hadn’t been destroyed by intensive agriculture. It’s incredible: a wild and almost savannah-like area in West Sussex.
Individually, people are aware of what they can do, but now we’re in a place where everyone should be helping with the systemic side, joining campaigns and making sure they’re not supporting unethical brands. For COP26 [the UN climate change conference taking place next month], politicians are making lots of ambitious pledges, which means nothing unless they’re followed through. One of the most important roles people can play is as watchdogs and holding them to account – through social media, campaigns or protests.
Young people are not the future, but we are taking action today. The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report is stating terrifying things, yet those statistics haven’t been met with a proportionate response. People don’t react as effectively to statistics as they do to stories, so in my book I’ll highlight the stories of young people who are already facing the effects of the environmental crisis.
Environmentalism shouldn’t be all about sacrifices – otherwise you’re going to burn out quickly. Find a passion. As part of my work with Reserva, I take part in conservation expeditions: for example, in Ecuador, where we’re discovering and scientifically describing new species, and helping to expand the world’s first youth-funded nature reserve [in the Chocó rainforest, Colombia]. For Born Free, I spread awareness through social media, and speak at events or protests.
We’re currently at such a critical period that there shouldn’t be ‘activists’ or ‘environmentalists’, because that stresses that some people are taking action and others can put their feet up – now, everyone has to mobilise.