Cheong Suk-Wai Straits Times 30 Jun 11;
ON A recent flight, pioneering British primatologist Jane Goodall found herself seated next to a mother who told her how she had been kept awake by her five-year-old daughter fretting that a dripping tap in their house was wasting water.
Dr Goodall, 77, recalls: 'So Mum went to check and gosh, it was because of a broken washer, so she started stuffing things up it. But she was later woken up at 3am by her sobbing daughter. She had to go out with a torch to turn the water mains off before the child would sleep.'
It turned out that the girl belonged to Roots & Shoots, a youth movement which Dr Goodall founded in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1991. It promotes mindful and sustainable living, and today has 8,000 members in 128 countries.
This plucky woman made her name in Tanzania in the 1960s, as the first researcher to observe chimpanzees eating flesh and fashioning tools such as spoons from blades of grass to slurp up termites.
Up till then, scientists had thought that only humans knew how to make tools. In the late 1980s, she lobbied for the ethical treatment of animals. She went on to advocate sustainable living through her Jane Goodall Institutes in 27 countries, including Singapore.
The twice-married mother of one and grandmother of three arrived here over the weekend to grace a host of events - including a forum following the screening of last year's biopic Jane's Journey at the National Museum - and is in town until today. Over coffee on Sunday, she told me more about her life and calling:
Why did you agree to German film-maker Lorenz Knauer making your intensely personal biopic, Jane's Journey?
I met Lorenz about six years ago when he came to one of my lectures. There were many children there and he was watching the children watch me. And he'd never seen children so attentive at a lecture. So he wanted to find out who I was and what my secret was. He first had to persuade me to let him make the film because I get tired of these films, you know. National Geographic, Discovery Channel and even my first husband (Hugo van Lawick) had done them. Lorenz persuaded me because of the children bit... it's been very worthwhile but very hard work.
What was so hard about it?
Well, there were very tough interviews, especially those going back into my marriages, which nobody else had tackled before - or I hadn't let them do so!
Was it worth baring your soul that much?
I don't know. Somebody else will have to answer that. I just did it because Lorenz's vision for it seemed good.
What have you learnt from working with children, whom you say are your reason for hope?
That they gravitate to an understanding that they have to care for the environment, and they get very passionate about what we're doing that's bad for it. When they grow up, they have to get a job and they may be able to do so only in a company (whose indifference to sustainable living) they have been criticising. And so they say, 'there's nothing we can do'.
That's where the Roots & Shoots network, if it works, is going to support them and say: 'Look, you say ABC Fast Food is a bad company because it's harming the environment. Which it is. But that does not mean that everyone working in it is bad. In fact, maybe not one of them is bad. So don't give up your concern for the environment or animals. Work on the people around you and learn.'
And many young people cry when I tell them that; they say: 'That's the first time I've been able to live with myself.'
What works in getting others to live mindfully?
With governments, the key is getting Roots & Shoots into the education system so that it is an accepted part of the curriculum. With the kids, it's about getting them to choose what they want to do. But first, let them understand what's happening around them because they can't choose what to do if they don't know what to do. In a group of, say, 10 young people, at least one will be passionate about animals, another will be passionate about community service and there's usually a bunch that cares about the environment because, come on, it's fun to go and clean up, put up recycling bins and get all your schoolmates to do recycling!
When CNN was going to film one of our first projects in China at a big Beijing primary school and the plan was to clean up one of the stinking, filthy rivers there, some people said we'd never get Chinese children to pick garbage out of a river. Guess what? They were just as excited as could be to do so and the more disgusting it was - eeurgh! - the more eager they were to get at it to outdo each other, wooden tongs and plastic gloves and all.
There are hundreds of adults who've said to me: 'Of course I recycle now because the kids make me.'
When people tell me that a politician or businessman won't even listen to them and just puts blinkers on, I say: 'OK, find me the school to which his children go and I will start Roots & Shoots there!'
But what can you really change when the global economy relies on conspicuous consumption to keep everyone afloat?
I don't think we can have any hope unless we get Roots & Shoots and similar youth organisations to create a critical number of youth who understand the impossibility of this dream of unlimited economic development because in a world with finite resources, that isn't possible. We have to find a different kind of economy where a product is valued on its harm or benefit to nature. Every time we take something from nature, there's a cost. Most people would be horrified to know that when they eat something with palm oil from a plantation that replaced a tropical forest, that is killing orang utans.
Maybe I move in the wrong circles, but I can't think of anyone who would be horrified about losing orang utans.
That's because they don't understand them. If they went into a forest and had an orang utan with big eyes reach out to them, most of them would melt.
Would they? Hasn't progress sharpened man's mind but hardened his heart?
I've sat at the tables of chief executives of, say, petrochemical companies and in their homes. They love their children and yet can make business decisions that would release vast amounts of pesticides into the environment. It's like we've become schizophrenic. There are two sides to us: one is this economic growth and me-me-me. The other is something left of the heart. We have to join the two.
Where would you propose we begin?
I'm beginning with youth. They're infected with this way of living. They're not going to be perfect but they understand and they're helping others to understand.
Aren't they just rolling boulders uphill?
Yes, but more are rolling the boulders.
Did you start championing sustainability because you found championing chimpanzees just like rolling boulders uphill?
Nothing has changed. There's no point killing yourself to save chimpanzees, orang utans, dolphins or whatever if you're not raising new generations to be better stewards of the planet. Also, we're working with poor communities in Africa because if people are living around a wilderness area and are in absolute poverty, conservation efforts cannot work. You have to get the locals on your side and you can do that only if the poor creatures have a slightly better life!
Why do you persist in pursuing such difficult causes?
Because I'm flipping obstinate about the things I care about. You know that children's toy which, when you knock it down, springs back up again? Well, that's me.
She's glad animals can't talk
CALM, considered and very candid, primatologist and conservation activist Jane Goodall travels a total of 300 days a year to coax and cajole - but never coerce - people to live mindfully to save resource-stripped Earth. Here she is on:
Her first thoughts upon waking every morning
'Where am I? Do I have to give a lecture? Do I have a plane to catch?'
The punishing pace she sets herself
'When I'm in England writing and there's another lecture tour coming up, I hate it. I hate it until I get there.'
Why she doesn't believe in self-analysis
'Well, what's the point? I seem to be doing okay!'
What she would say to animals if they could talk back to her
'Well, I'm glad they can't talk back because otherwise they'd say to me, 'Get off the planet. Leave us alone. Let us get on with our lives.''
Singapore not having many areas of natural interest
'I don't know what I would turn out like if I could not play in a garden or be on a cliff.'
How to motivate those who don't care about the environment
'I get asked this everywhere and I don't know how to answer it. Most of these people have too much and so for them, life is fine, thank you very much.'
Shopping
'I try not to do it. My colleagues say, 'We can't have Jane wearing the same clothes year after year.' And I say, 'What's wrong with that? If I like something, why shouldn't I go on wearing it?''
Her Roots & Shoots mantra
'Begin with knowledge and understanding. Move on to hard work and persistence, then love and compassion that leads to respect for all life.'
CHEONG SUK-WAI
