The Chronicle Interview
Jane Goodall was appointed a United Nations Messenger of Peace on 16 April 2002. As such, she joins a group of nine prominent people that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed to the role since 1997. Messengers of Peace help mobilize the public to get involved in work that makes the world a better place, serving as advocates in a variety of areas. She is also a member of the advisory panel named by the Secretary-General to discuss new approaches to sustainable development and promote the goals of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg in September 2002. Although known primarily for her groundbreaking study of chimpanzees, Dr. Goodall today works primarily as an activist, speaking about the threats facing chimpanzees, other environmental crises, and her reasons for hope that humankind will solve the problems it has imposed on the earth. She spoke with the UN Chronicle's Russell Taylor on 16 April in New York. |
You first went to Africa when you were 23 and you met up with Louis Leakey.
I heard about him. So I called and made an appointment. There I was - no degree, fresh from England. What faith we had!
What brought him to suggest you study a group of living primates as opposed to pursuing paleontology?
He was very far ahead in his thinking. He felt that learning about chimps, who were our closest relatives in the natural habitat, would give him a better understanding of how early humans might have behaved. If we found behaviour that was more or less the same in humans and chimpanzees today, it was possible that it had been inherited from a common ancestor millions of years ago. In which place, the Stone Age man and woman would also have behaved in those ways: kissing, embracing, holding hands, patting on the back, swaggering, forming long-term family relationships. Those things indeed are the same, and are found in the same context.
When you went back to Tanzania in 1960 and began your research, which has made you certainly among the most widely-recognized primatologists today, it must have been a different world. At the turn of the last century, there were possibly two million chimpanzees in western and central Africa; today, there is only an eighth of that left.
Why?
Habitat destruction. Growth of human populations. The great, great threat right now is the bushmeat trade - that's the commercial trade in the flesh of wild animals. And it's made possible by the logging companies going in and opening up the forest. So, even if they practise sustainable logging - and in the Congo Basin most of the big European companies do practise sustainable logging and are not clear cutting - they are still opening up the forest. That means the hunters from the towns are going in on trucks, camping at the end of the road where there are still a few animals left, and shooting gorillas, chimps, antelopes, birds, bats, etc.
Is there still anything to learn from higher primates that could be of benefit to the human race?
I think the main lesson we've learned is a little humility - that we are unique but we're not just as different as we used to think. Between chimps and humans, there is only about a 1-per-cent difference in DNA. The brain - they're capable of doing so many intellectual feats that we used to think unique to us. They clearly have emotions and they have their personalities, as do dogs and cats. We're indeed different, and our biggest difference is our spoken language, which has enabled us to develop culturally in ways that a chimp couldn't. It has taught us to respect more not only chimps but also other animals. We've so much to learn from animals in general. We know but half of the surface of the earth. What of whales and dolphins? We're killing them all. War can have a very devastating effect on the environment. I found that people were reluctant to admit to their concern for the environment after September 11, as if they were not patriotic. And I just assure people that if it mattered to them before, it should matter even more now. It's we who have to care for the future, for our children.
Can you tell us a bit about the bushmeat trade?
This is a trade; it is not to feed starving people. So it is very different from the hunting in East Africa by very poor people who really are hunting as they have for hundreds of years. This bushmeat trade is a cultural preference - many people in the Central African countries prefer bushmeat. Great loads of it are going into towns and sometimes from country to country. And a lot of it is illegal because the animals are endangered. Who's going to check these pieces of dried and cut-up meat? In addition, the big logging camps deep in the forest have as many as 2,000 people - the loggers and their families and the indigenous people are given guns and weapons to shoot the animals. None of this is sustainable. And when the logging camp goes, the trees will stand. But what's left for the indigenous people? Their culture is destroyed and their livelihood has been destroyed. The trade is mostly within countries, but bushmeat from Africa also finds its way to exotic restaurants all around the world.
Can you tell us about your organization's project called TACARE?
We have an amazing project in the villages around the Gombe National Park, which is called TACARE (The Lake Tanganyika Catchment Basin Reforestation and Education Project). There are 33 villages with tree nurseries and programmes to prevent or control soil erosion to further farming methods most suitable for that kind of soil conservation, and provide education programmes to help women get credit guidance based on the Grameen Bank system. And we've worked with regional medical people so that when a car or a truck goes in with seedlings, for example, along also goes a doctor or nurse to provide primary health care, particularly for the little children, family planning and children's education.
I wanted to ask you more about TACARE, as well as the Roots and Shoots programme, but some of what you've described are frightening signals of what might happen!
Yes! First of all, TACARE - we have been told by all sorts of people, including the World Bank, that it's the best of its kind; it's into its sixth year. The project manager was the only European. Now he's gone and we've got it to the stage where it's totally Tanzanian. We're ready to replicate that, so next it's going to the Cross River region in Nigeria, and we also want to start something similar in Congo (Brazzaville). Officially, our efforts are to help preserve chimps in the forest, because that's our mission. But we want to set up a centre where people from all over can come and see how this particular programme works. And I think the reason that it has worked so well is that we don't go into a village and say, "I know you need help. This is what we're going to do." Which is what has happened with some well-meaning aid agencies. We just have a list, like a shopping list, and go and talk about the things we can help with. Initially, the village elders may say, "we've got women to go and get the wood; we've got women to get the water", etc. But then they see, through a video, a village that's growing fruit trees, for example, and they want it. Then we say, "we're not giving it to you, but we'll show you how to do it". They buy into it right from the start, and they love it.
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UN Chronicle Photo/Russell Taylor |
Considering all the man-made environmental devastation and wars you've witnessed, how do you stay so hopeful?
September 11 was a perfect example. We saw the worst we're capable of - using innocent people to kill innocent people. We also saw the best - the human heroism and outpouring of love and compassion. People gave their everything - blood, money, opened up their houses. And then there was a questioning of values: have we spent too much time running about for money and not enough time with our family? People were making contact with people they had not seen for some time just to say "I still think about you". I was afraid it's dying off a little bit, but it came out very, very strongly.
I was meant to be here, I am sure, that day. I remember the Second World War and a time when it was inevitable that Germany would invade England. There was this little strip of English Channel. We were right there. And all the preparation we had was some scaffolding in the sea - little bits of barbed wire and old men with pitch forks, the amazing air force, and Churchill's boys telling us that we wouldn't be defeated. We survived the bombs in London and came out of it. And then there is Nelson Mandela - so unbitter after years of imprisonment that he could lead the nation out of apartheid. Kofi Annan himself is an amazing force for hope, a very inspirational person.
The hope is also up to us, and that's why I'm working with kids and giving lectures 300 days a year. Without hope, people fall into apathy. The best thing that people tell me after my lectures is, "you have taught me that my life is more valuable than I thought". Or "I am committing now to rededicating myself to trying to make the world a better place." So when you see this kind of response, adults and children determined and excited! I just love being with kids; they're very inspirational, energizing. And they know they can do it.
A little girl whose name is India came by to meet me in a big office building in Seattle, Washington and somebody said: "This girl has flown in with her mother from Los Angeles. She wants to give you her life's savings. Can she do it?" I thought it was $100 or something like that, but she had more than $2,000 laid out. An adorable child, bright as they come, she started saving when she was five. She and her friends think of projects, and they earn money and ask people if they'll match the money by their parents and friends. India said to me, "Dr. Jane, I'm sorry I'm not giving you all the money that I've saved for you, but I have to keep some of it because I'm using it to make more." And she's just seven! I had a big talk that night - 2,000 people - and I brought little India up on the platform, and I told that story and you could see there wasn't a dry eye in the room. I think Kofi Annan senses some of this. I think we share this to a large extent. That's my guess.
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So you have been able to tie in with TACARE primary health care, education, etc.?
With conservation education. We've actually been asked to make a curriculum. It's been inspiring children to do something about their environment and to respect it. Until we can live at peace with the natural world, it's not enough just to stop fighting each other. If you think from the point of view of the animals living in the woodland, forest, wetlands or wherever - and then you think of developers going in - that's terrorism. We have to learn how to be more gentle and more respectful, and more thoughtful. And do we want to go on sprawling out through more and more of the countryside? It's one problem in the developing world and it's another in the developed world. They're equally bad. And the sad thing is that the developed world is so greedy and so consumer-driven, so determined to acquire money and stock, and it's coming from the developing world; it's stealing the last of their resources, and they're not even getting rich from it.
Can you tell us a little about your "Roots and Shoots" environmental and humanitarian programme for young people?
Well, the Roots and Shoots programme right now is primarily to give kids hope. Every group tackles three areas of care: their community, the environment and animals. Take domestic animals - it's basically teaching peace. Teaching love and respect, and love and compassion for all life is about teaching peace. After September 11, we also put together a whole series of programmes to help teachers teach about tolerance, to help kids understand the different ethnic groups in their areas.
You were here in New York during September 11, and you've brought this particular tragedy into the Roots and Shoots programme.
Yes. It's helping children understand some pretty grim facts while, at the same time, giving them the tools to do something about it. We've just had a festival at the Museum of Natural History in New York - fourteen groups of different ages. And the day before that, we had another in New Jersey with children from urban schools.
If you see how excited the kids are, they become empowered because they take hold of something, develop it themselves and choose what to do. From the middle school on upwards, it's the kids who decide. And the teachers and the parents are happy to support them.
What do you feel the United Nations should and is able to do in sustainable development and in your particular area of preserving habitat for higher primates and other animals? What can the Secretary-General do?
I talked to Secretary-General Kofi Annan about Roots and Shoots as a way of sowing seeds for global peace, because its central message is the value of the individual to make a difference and to change attitudes through knowledge and understanding, hard work and assistance, love and compassion. It's about breaking down the barriers between the different cultures and ethnic groups in countries. Imagine taking this philosophy and putting it in a seed. Take the General Assembly, where we've got representatives from practically all countries. Give each one of those a seed and say, "take this home to your country and give it to somebody and tell them to care for it". If that grows and fruits come, those fruits will belong there, because that's their soil and those are the people who cared for it. The philosophy will then be shared all around the world.
I think that this vision of empowering youth appealed to the Secretary-General. It grew from youth upwards, and not from the authority downwards, from inner city to rural area. We have 70 countries, and while I was here we found somebody who will get one going in Morocco. That'll make 71. It's happening all the time because people "get it"; it's so simple. We've got groups in prisons; we've got groups in old people's homes.
Peace will never really come without learning how to live more in harmony with the natural world. Peace isn't just about not fighting. And the kids understand about changes. They are not set in their ways.
Can people struggling to live on just a few dollars a day afford to worry about the broader issues of environment and biological diversity?
You'd be surprised: they do. I can imagine that it would be really tough in some of the urban parts, in places like India. They probably don't even know what "the environment" is. But it does work in inner cities, in places like New York or Los Angeles. Interestingly, some of the best work was done in Chicago. There, they took some eight areas of high crime, with about similar rates of crime, and they "greened" four of those areas. They did plantings in building sites, made window boxes, etc., and the crime rate dropped dramatically. There is something about our psyche - making a connection with the natural world.
One thing I didn't say about TACARE is that we have this main concentration on women. You know, it's been shown again and again that when women's education increases, family size drops. We have been able to give some scholarships to the gifted girls to go to secondary school. It doesn't happen in their lives very often. The people now don't resent us; they don't resent a bunch of white people running around with chimps. In fact, we mostly employed Tanzanians. Not many white people at all-maybe 4 or 5 compared to a total of nearly 30 Tanzanians if you include the ones cutting the trails.
Links:
The Jane Goodall Institute: TACARE
The Jane Goodall Institute: Roots and Shoots
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