Ever since I was a child, I’ve always loved being in nature. I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who encouraged me to spend time outdoors, surrounding me with forests, coasts, and mountains throughout my childhood. This led on to a love of physical geography at school, and in sixth form I had a module called: sustainable food, water, cities, and energy. Despite having learnt about climate change briefly at GCSE level, I was shocked and outraged to discover the extent of the climate crisis, the destruction of our natural environment, and the global inactivity in combating it. I thought, if it was that important, then surely I would have heard more about it before, yet here I was fully appreciating the magnitude of the issue for the first time, at the age of 17. 

I decided something needed to be done. I began by cutting beef from my diet, and then applied to study Architecture at University, a career I had identified as an area in which I could make a real difference in my adult life. I knew that tacking the climate crisis was something that I wanted to commit my life to. 

In my year out between school and University, I travelled to Nepal where I worked and lived in a small community for three months, helping to rebuild people’s lives, businesses, and homes after the 2015 earthquake. Although it was not the purpose of my work, I was curious about the villagers’ knowledge and experience of climate change, if they even knew what it was or how it worked. Given how isolated and under-developed this small community was (only around 40 homes, up in the Himalayas in an area that barely exists on maps and where they had never seen white people before), I was fully expecting them to say they had no idea about climate change. That was not the answer I got. Despite not understanding the science of climate change, they told me how 5 years ago they had reliable harvests, but now they have droughts followed by storms and floods that destroy crops and cause landslides that kill their livestock. They told me how some of the men from the village have had to leave their families to go and work for the Indian army and send money home, in order that they can afford to buy food. They told me how nearby villages have had to move further down the Himalayas because the land is no longer fertile enough for them to grow crops. They pointed to the mountains on the horizon and said “See those? They used to be covered in snow”. Even whilst I was there, we had a drought so bad that we completely ran out of running water for a few days. I was there at the start of the monsoon season, and it didn’t rain at all for the first 28 days. I remember thinking ‘What are we going to do when this last jerry can of water is finished? It’s okay, the organisation will bring us more water from the city. But what will the villagers do? How would they cope if we weren’t here?’ And then it really hit me. The climate refugees that we see images of so frequently across social media and the news, that we perhaps can’t truly empathise with because they are so far removed from ourselves, were no longer distant from my own life. Now they were real people who I had relationships with, who I knew personally and cared about. I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Just because the worst we are seeing of climate change in the UK right now is a more stormy winter followed by a hotter, earlier summer, doesn’t mean that in some places the climate crisis isn’t happening RIGHT NOW. People are already suffering because of the implications of climate change, and worse, they are the people who have contributed to it the least. I have recently received the news that one of our host mothers in Nepal, as well as a goat, died in a landslide after heavy rains, potentially as a result of climate change. 

I realised that this is not something that I can put on hold and wait until I’m qualified to start fighting for. This is not something to address in my adult career, I need to address it now. It is happening now. And no longer just to a distant group of strangers on the other side of the world but to people I know and care about. This isn’t something we can afford to ignore any longer, we need to take action now.