Transcript

[Darren Walker, a Black man wearing glasses and a blue suit, President, Ford Foundation.]

DARREN WALKER: Imagine the world today without this moment.

[The Berlin Wall is torn down as elated spectators cheer.]

DARREN WALKER: Or without this moment.

[Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie, walk among a crowd of excited citizens on the day of his release from prison.]

DARREN WALKER: Or this moment.

[Greta Thunbeg, at 16 years old, challenges politicians about climate change.]

GRETA THUNBERG: We children are doing this to wake the adults up.

DARREN WALKER: So what connects these moments, these movements, these transformations? A thriving and open civic space: a space to advocate for ideas and to hold leaders, institutions, and the private sector accountable.

[Rosa Parks addresses U.S. television audiences during the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, followed by footage of other major historical events when human rights have been enhanced.]

ROSA PARKS: Well, we hope to achieve equal rights.

DARREN WALKER: Throughout history, the only way we’ve expanded rights is through collective action, through people power. Today, movements around the world are asking hard questions about sustainability, inequality, and the violence and oppression that still exists.

[Women around the world protest for their rights.]

Protesters [in Spanish and then English]: Patriarchy is our judge. 

DARREN WALKER: At the Ford Foundation, as part of our long-term commitment to protecting and expanding civic space and democracy, we are listening.

[A Black woman at a protest holds up a sign with the text “I can’t breathe.”]

DARREN WALKER: We all create civic space. Together we can keep it alive and vibrant and ensure an equitable, democratic, and prosperous future for us all.

[For more information, visit Ford Foundation.Org]

End of transcript.

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

FAYE GINSBURG: Judith Heumann, you are an amazing and unrepentant badass. [applause]

NARRATOR: Judy, known as the mother of the disability rights movement, is introduced as NYU’s 2021 Commencement speaker.

FAYE GINSBURG: And I’m not the first person to tell you that. [applause]

NARRATOR: 1988, Judy addresses a joint House-Senate hearing on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

JUDY HEUMANN: People in our society have been raised with prejudicial attitudes that have resulted in extreme discrimination.

[Footage from one of Judy’s YouTube videos.]

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: Judy, what do you think is your biggest strength?

JUDY HEUMANN: That I’m a networker, I like to speak with people, and I like to help people.

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: And what’s your biggest weakness?

JUDY HEUMANN: That I’m a networker, I like to speak with people, and I like to help people.

JUDY HEUMANN: I’m Judy Heumann. I’m a white, disabled, motorized wheelchair user. I wear glasses.

[Photos of Judy as a child with leg braces. An adult Judy rolls onto stage at Tedx Mid- Atlantic.]

JUDY HEUMANN: When I was 18 months old, I had polio. This was a time when my family really began to realize what disability meant to some people: fear.

NARRATOR: When Judy’s family enrolled her in school, education officials claimed she was a fire hazard.

JUDY HEUMANN: They told us not to worry because the Board of Education, in fact, would send a teacher to my house. And they did. For a total of two and a half hours a week. But for good behavior, they threw in an occupational therapist who taught me that very essential skill of cross-stitching.

[applause]

NARRATOR: Despite this, Judy went on to graduate from college, and, at 22, she applied for a license to teach in New York City. The Board of Education denied Judy specifically because she used a wheelchair.

[Young Judy to a news reporter.]

JUDY HEUMANN: I’m really tired of having to be a second class citizen.

NARRATOR: And so, Judy Heumann sued the Board of Education.

JUDY HEUMANN: This is a really important time in my life because it would be the first time that I really would be challenging the system.

NARRATOR: And Judy Heumann won! She became the first wheelchair user to teach in New York City, and Heumann versus the Board of Education was the first disability civil rights case ever brought to federal court. Judy went on to found Disabled in Action and advocate for the Independent Living Movement globally. In 1972, when President Nixon vetoed the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs funded by federal agencies, Judy set out to claim her rights.

JUDY HEUMANN: Disabled in Action decided to have a demonstration in New York City in front of Nixon Headquarters.

[Film strips show people with different disabilities gathering.]

JUDY HEUMANN: We decided that we were going to sit down in the street, and we were gonna stop traffic.

[Footage and photos show traffic gridlock.]

JUDY HEUMANN: There were only 50 of us. But basically, with the one street, we were able to shut the city down. We protested. Nixon signed it. Then the regulations that needed to be promulgated to implement that law had not, in fact, been signed. And so, we demonstrated.

ACTIVISTS (chanting): 504, 504!

NARRATOR: Judy was one of the leaders of the historic 504 Sit-In in San Francisco. A diverse group of people, with and without disabilities, take over the federal building.

[Judy speaks to government officials.]

JUDY HEUMANN: We want the law enforced. We want no more segregation. And I would appreciate it if you would stop shaking your head like you understand what we are talking about.

NARRATOR: After almost a month—the longest occupation of a federal building in history—504 was signed.

[clapping and cheering]

NARRATOR: It was the first federal civil rights protection for people with disabilities. Judy went on to influence global disability rights policy, impacting millions of lives. She worked in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, the World Bank, and with various sectors, including philanthropy.

[Judy, during her time as a Senior Ford Fellow addresses foundation staff.]

JUDY HEUMANN: They’ve been a lot of efforts over the last 30 years to really get the donor community to acknowledge that you can’t address social injustice without including disabled people.

[One of Judy’s YouTube videos.]

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: Judy, where are we?

JUDY HEUMANN: We’re in our apartment. Jorge’s and my apartment. OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: Which photo makes you smile the most? JUDY HEUMANN: The photo of Jorge and myself, the day we got married.

NARRATOR: Judy and Jorge Pineda, also a wheelchair user, kiss at their wedding ceremony in 1992.

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: What would you like to be remembered for?

JUDY HEUMANN: My compassion and fight for change.

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: And Judy, what would you like people to know about the disability movement?

JUDY HEUMANN: It’s becoming more powerful. Disabled people are feeling prouder and speaking up—recognizing that disability is a part of who they are.

[One of Judy’s YouTube videos.]

JUDY HEUMANN: You know, what I love about New York? The crowds! [Judy addresses the crowd at the NYU commencement.]

JUDY HEUMANN:This movement is made up of thousands of people. And you are many of them. No one person ever creates a movement.

[applause]

[Images that show Judy’s activism throughout her lifetime with fellow activists and government officials all over the world.]

[In her apartment, Judy dances, spinning in her wheelchair while holding hands with a friend.]

JUDY HEUMANN: There you go! You learned it here.

[Text on screen: Judy Heumann, December 18, 1947 to March 4, 2023.]

Director, Writer, and Executive Producer

Jessica Reynolds

Editor

Renee Forbes

Archival Producer

Claire Kinnen

Voice Over

Elizabeth Hull

Copy Editor

Megan Quitkin

Sound Design and Re-Recording Mixer

Nicholas Montgomery, AudioNiche

Special Thanks Jackie Berkowitz Sara Bolder Rebecca Cokley Chelsea Dare James Devitt Bridget Hayman James LeBrecht Kylie Miller Nicole Newnham Beverly Ornstein Trusten O’Malley

Elizabeth Pasquariello Katherine Salinas Beth Sheckler

Maeve Sheridan Catherine Hyde Townsend Anthony Tusler

Allison Walker Chi-hui Yang

Archival

Access Living Associated Press

Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) Getty Images

HolLynn D’Lil Howard Schwartz

Judy Heumann’s Personal Collection

NBC

Netflix

New York University Tari Hartman Squire TED Talks

US Embassy London

World Institute on Disability (WID)

[The video ends with the Ford Foundation logo.]

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

HILARY PENNINGTON: Hi, I’m Hilary Pennington. Welcome to the sixth conversation in the live series, “On What Matters.” I am so excited today to be talking with Saliem Fakir, who leads the African Climate Foundation. And we’re going to get into the conversation, but first, let us bo th introduce ourselves. I serve as the executive vice president of programs for the Ford Foundation. I’m a middle-aged white woman with very short blond hair. I’m wearing a navy sweater and sitting in front of a white wall. And Saliem, let’s turn to you to introduce yourself.

SALIEM FAKIR: I’m Saliem Fakir, the executive director of the African Climate Foundation. I have black hair, I’m middle-aged, and a person of color. I have a white wall behind me, and I’m wearing a black jacket. And it’s really wonderful, again, to be on the show. So thanks.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, we have a lot to talk about, but we’re going to start out with just a short video that will give people who are listening a sense of the work that you do, Saliem. So let’s roll that video, and then we’ll start.

[The African Climate Foundation. Simple animated graphics support the narrative throughout this video.]

NARRATOR: The African Climate Foundation is the first and only African-led climate change regranting organization on the continent. As an African-led, African-based, and fully African-run organization, we support local solutions to Africa’s climate change and development challenges. We envision a vibrant and climate-resilient Africa, in which inclusive socioeconomic development delivers sustainable and equitable growth. And we work to support interventions at the nexus of climate change and development that will deliver long term socioeconomic transformation and inclusive development on the African continent. We focus on supporting transitions in three key sectors, namely: energy, land use and agriculture, and cities. We also work on interventions that traverse these sectors, such as finance, digitization, infrastructure, industrialization, geopolitics, climate diplomacy, human rights, climate justice, gender, youth, health, and education. Through a combination of grantmaking, fellowships, research, technical assistance, coalition building, and targeted advocacy and multi-stakeholder convenings, we support a range of interventions across our programs. We believe that change cannot be brought about by one party acting alone. We actively pursue, support, and foster strong partnerships and platforms for collaboration. Our work seeks to confront and respond to the disconnect between climate change and development planning in Africa and demonstrate the alternatives to existing practices that can avoid long-term economic risks, through new climate resilient development pathways. And support the development of robust multidisciplinary evidence to inform better decision-making by social partners, regional institutions, and governments. Our goal is to support African agency at all levels, from government to civil society to communities. We have built strong capacity, which has enabled us to significantly increase our grantmaking throughout Africa. A key priority for the ACF is to ensure that our work has reach across the African continent. To achieve this, we seek to ensure that African countries are covered by either our grants, or by staff representation. And we work to maintain strong relationships with key regional institutions. Our work seeks to bring real economic solutions and to strengthen African agency. The work of the ACF would not be possible without generous support from—and partnerships with—philanthropies.

[The African Climate Foundation. To learn more about our work, visit our website. www.africanclimatefoundation.org]

HILARY PENNINGTON: Saliem, one reason I love talking to you is that you are hopeful that we actually can secure the future of the planet. And you have so many ideas about sustainable development. And another thing I love is that you don’t talk about a clean energy transition. You talk about a just energy transition. So, can we start with that? Can you talk a little bit about what just energy transition means to you and what it should mean to others. And in particular, the justice aspect of it, and how it connects to broader justice aspirations for society.

SALIEM FAKIR: So, Hilary, before I answer your question, I thought maybe I’ll explain a little bit about the African Climate Foundation. It’s a very new foundation that was set up on the 1st of April, 2020, and I’m very glad to say that since last week, the 1st of April, this is our third year. And we’ve taken a conscious decision when we started to say that the narrative around climate has largely been not really filtered through the right lens. And what we wanted to build is sort of a conclusion of our strategic focus, around what we call a “climate and development nexus.” And embedded in that, we are very interested in aspects such as social justice. We are arguing that climate risk—ultimately, even climate opportunities or investment, ultimately—their success is not so much determined by how much we only just deal with the effects of climate change, or for that matter, how much greenhouse gas we reduce, but really about how we build a more wholesome, economic, resilient model on the back of these climate risk interventions that we want to mitigate against, and also the opportunities in investment in climate space. And I will come to some of that later. And why we say economic resilience—because that is really the core at the heart of what is needed on the continent. We need the right type of growth, with the right distributional effects, and we will only know if we succeeded with economic resilience and economic development and growth; if there is a strong feature of social justice and social benefits to communities at large and individuals at large. And that is really what we think should be the bedrock of all the climate solutions that we are seeking on the continent. It’s not the other way around.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I love that. Well, so let’s stay with that for a minute. You know, if the aspiration is for development that can also produce inclusion—and the thriving of communities on the continent—what are some of the critical building blocks that you see, I mean, in terms of policy or technology or development priorities, that would help produce this equitable growth?

SALIEM FAKIR: For example, in South Africa, we are faced with a situation of whether the route towards dependency on coal will produce the best social and economic outcomes for the country. So on the one hand, South Africa’s coal dependency is very high. We have one rank, somewhere around in the 20th highest emitters in the world. We will be faced with challenges around our carbon intensity in the future, especially if countries adopt more punitive measures against imports that are coming from coal-intensive, coal-dependent economies. And coal, in general, is on a decline. And if we look at the performance of our coal plants, particularly the new coal plants, the energy cost from coal electrification is very high. So they are going up, because the true cost cannot be transferred to consumers. So there are certain cost recoveries that cannot be made, because the whole system itself requires reform, and we need to widen the energy mix. South Africa also has the energy crisis, which is hammering the economy, and the quickest way to solve that is to set objectives—around our emissions, our lowering the price of electricity in the future, and also reducing energy security, which is affecting livelihoods and it’s affecting jobs. And it’s also costing consumers, not only through load-shedding, which is the term we use, but also through higher prices that they have to pay from their salaries, particularly poorer communities. If we can find solutions, such as new technologies, particularly renewables, wind and solar, that are mature at a much cheaper cost, if we can diversify from coal and reduce coal, for example, generate electricity from coal from 90% to, let’s say, even half that, or even much lower than that, with cheaper cost energy, we will, effectively—what technically is called bring the price path much lower in the future, rather than going up. So we are protecting jobs in the long run through a number of mechanisms. One, through less inflationary energy costs. And you can see that, for example, in Europe with the Ukraine war: Energy prices have gone up because of the high cost of gas. That has major social effects and also affects jobs. The second part is that the second way to protect our economy is by ensuring that any goods that we manufacture, in a country that is highly industrialized and very export-dependent, that we are not, in the future, penalized by carbon border tariffs that would be imposed on goods that are imported from South Africa. That could be steel, it could be cement, it could be all kinds of things. That is dependent on electricity or energy sources that are carbon-intense.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I love that you refuse that kind of false trade-off, that, you know, you can’t have jobs and development, and at the same time, protect the environment. But I’m curious, you know, because that is a very well established sort of narrative. Right? Who is it harder to convince to change their minds on that subject: policymakers or the public?

SALIEM FAKIR: For example, in South Africa, the case is very clear. We need to diversify, because we’ve got absolutely no option. But you find that even in the policy-making setting, there are these divisions in the decision-making space. One view is that we must go in the direction towards cheaper energy sources and cleaner energy sources, if you want to put it that way. Others are saying, well, you know, we’ve just handed a lot of coal interests to new economic interests in the economy. They have a lifespan of 20, 30 years. It’s an indigenous resource. If you have renewables, you have to import the technology. Why not use our coal and keep going? On consumers, I don’t think that argument should be made just on the basis of climate. It should be made on the basis of how much they will save in income if we made the right decision in terms of our diversification of energy mix. And we are able to prove to them that this is not only a way to protect their income, because inflation eats away income, it destroys income, which means that people who are affected by inflation are actually getting poorer. Secondly, it says to them that through rapidly mobilizing more suitable technologies that are sort of aligned to less constraints and can be built as we need, we are reducing energy, we are improving energy security and, with that, we can actually grow the economy. And thirdly, I think we are saying that by making the South African economy, or any economy that is fossil fuel dependent,—we can also look at Nigeria and other countries—by making them fit for purpose for where the world is moving, in terms of decarbonization, we are providing political leadership and economic leadership to respond to changes in the world that in the long run will affect us. So, for example, if you took high gas dependency in Europe—particularly Germany, that was highly dependent on piped gas from Russia—suddenly the geopolitical relationship changes. Germany has to spend a lot more money to look for new sources of gas from elsewhere, which means that it has not tailored its economy strategically to respond to a crisis like it just had about two years ago with the Ukraine crisis. So we must be able to be agile economies. And the only way we can do that is building more resilient energy systems that can respond to a number of things. In this case, the cost of energy, energy security, and penalties that we could face because the world is increasingly being decarbonized. And, you know, if we don’t adjust to that, there’s impacts on the economy down the line.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes, huge impacts. Well, I love that you make the connection to people’s pocketbooks, right? Not just their jobs, but the everyday average consumer who may not work in the energy industry, who clearly is affected by all of these kinds of costs. And that does seem to be something that is beginning to shift and may, in the end, build the kind of political pressure that’s necessary to support the sorts of policies that you’re talking about. And, you know, just staying with this, because I think one of the great benefits of having a dedicated, only three-year-old African Climate Foundation, is that you are able to put new ideas out into this space, and to get people thinking and working in a different way. Let’s talk a little bit about just a couple of things that you’re the most proud of, that you have been able to do in your very, very short history.

SALIEM FAKIR: One of the things that we did, and it’s now becoming a model for linking nationally determined ambition, which is around, in this case, emission reduction to a stronger investment program, and new kinds of infrastructure, and being able to then gain global support through cheaper sources of finance. In this case, climate finance is the achievement of the Just Energy Transition Partnership deal that was agreed to by South Africa in the COP26 in Glasgow, where philanthropies like ourselves, and others as well, played a big role in developing, I think, a very pioneering model, which has never been done before anywhere in the world, grown and developed indigenously within South Africa. A prime to post-recovery program that is part of the economic development agenda of South Africa. But at the same time, solving South Africa’s climate ambitions and being able to unlock huge amounts of funding. In this case, $8.5 billion dollars..

HILARY PENNINGTON: Say the amount again?

SALIEM FAKIR: $8.5 billion dollars.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes.

SALIEM FAKIR: That was raised. And it’s a deal that is now—basically—the pledges and the agreements have been secured. Some of the money is flowing, and the rest will come, based on the role out and execution and operationalization of an investment plan. We’re finding that countries like Indonesia have just adopted a similar thing. And Vietnam and Nigeria and Senegal are looking into this and, potentially, what they call a kind of mini JETP in Egypt. It doesn’t have to—most of these are aimed at displacing fossil fuels with a program of investment into clean energy solutions that are supported by the international community. But one element of it that I think is unique to South Africa, which we would like to see work in Indonesia and Vietnam, is a very strong feature of the just aspect of those energy transitions. It’s very germane in South Africa. In fact, the concept of the just transition comes from the workers movement, particularly the International Labor Organization. And in the 1970s, the US workers recognized that new environmental standards and programs and new environmental enforcements—would lead to potential job losses in sectors that were polluting chemical industries and so on. And they were proactive in looking at ways in which to support workers that could be affected by this. So if we’re looking at, for example, displacing coal, or oil, or gas, anywhere else in the world, there are lots of people that are highly dependent on those industries, not for direct jobs only, but also indirect. And remember, those industries are located in particular geographies that are critical to those local municipalities and local economies. So whole communities are affected by it. It’s a bit like mining, I know the Ford Foundation is doing a lot of work on mining. If you took out the mining and you didn’t replace it with something more viable in the long term, you know, you do a lot of harm to people that have been dependent on those industries for 20, 30, maybe even 50 years, and suddenly you’ve just created a vacuum. So these transitions have to be more. So one of the purposes of the just transition is to look at energy transitions without just being fixated on the finance and investment side, and also just the technology solutions, but also the just aspects. What does it mean for local economies? What does it mean for household incomes? What does it mean for the development models, future development models? But even in South Africa, for the coal mining areas, where coal has been the pivot and the anchor of those economies, now you’re taking it out, you’re creating a vacuum; what would you replace it with? So there’s a responsibility. Remember, a lot of extractive industries, often there is some local benefit, but the larger portion of the benefit actually happens in the global sphere and the national sphere. Much of the royalties and the financial benefits of many other things—they happen in the economic hubs, not necessarily in local areas. So we have a national responsibility, moral, ethical responsibility, to make sure those—what we’re displacing is replaced with something better and improves the wellbeing of those people. This is where, I think, the just aspects of the transition, actually for a long time, that has been missing from the climate debate, brings the development aspects much closer than they were before. And it’s becoming less of just an environmental issue, but it’s becoming an issue about the future of economic development, the future of economic models, new kinds of inclusive economies. That’s the debate that we are steering outstate as a result of the work we’re doing on the just transition.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I think that’s such a hugely important addition. You know, I mean, these industries are not—they are extractive in many, many ways, right? And I think until there are concrete ideas and examples, where we can see that communities that everyone thinks stand to lose, can actually be protected, and help to make the transition, that’s essential to get where we want to go. And you know you have, Saliem—we’re going to go to audience questions, because we have so many people who want to hear more from you. But before we do that, I just want to ask you the question I always close with. And you almost, in a way, have begun to answer it. But just, you know, if you were to say one thing that gives you hope, given the complexity of what you work on, what would that one thing be?

SALIEM FAKIR: My view on climate is that you must take a more enlightened view, a more eclectic view. Use the debate to open up new avenues and vistas of discussion around what the nature of our economies are in Africa. And many of them are enclave economies with very little interconnection with the rest of the economy. In fact, if you analyze a lot of economic literature, they will show you maps of Africa, in which it’s basically, you know, infrastructure built around the mine. Go to a port and everywhere else there’s very little other types of infrastructure developed. So I think what we are saying in our work is: Those enclave economies are not viable. They’re actually responsible for a lack of economic resilience. They are, actually, the root cause of why we have such high levels of climate vulnerability on the part of the continent. And secondly, they are forfeiting our ability to invest in new technologies that would modernize, at the same time, both decarbonize our economy and take us away from an enclave model to investing in other components of the economy in order to diversify. We need a lot more manufacturing. We need a lot more tradable services. Not just services, which are just based on consumption, but services that require integration of electricity, digitization, and the better use of our human talent on the continent. That this talent is better integrated into the regional and global economy. For now, regional trade is very poor on the continent. We take a lot of raw material. We export it. We bring it back at a higher cost. This is not a very sustainable way to deal with our economies in the long term, and we maintain at ACF, if we can build more inclusive, diversified economies, we will also make our economies more resilient to climate change, because we’ll have the resources in government and elsewhere in society through higher income. And secondly, we are able to take opportunities like new technology waves—whether it’s electric vehicles, renewables, battery technologies, green hydrogen—and build these into our economies. That they make us far more healthier and resilient in the longer term and improve human wellbeing. The last thing I want to say is, because we have enclave economies, we don’t put enough emphasis on human talent and capital on the continent. And the way to unlock that is through improving electricity access and cheaper sources of electrification, because it will enable a lot of other things in the urban sector, you know, integration of digital and other forms of entrepreneurship to be built around improved electrification. That’s the vision we have.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Thank you for that. That is such a strategic and coherent vision. So we have time for only a couple of audience questions. The first one we have is from Aguil, and the question reads, “We know there’s misinformation/disinformation about South Africa’s JETP Just Energy Transition Plan, especially in the midst of increased rolling blackouts.” And that’s what you mean when you say load-sharing. And actually the result of that is blackouts across South Africa. “What can be done to counter this misinformation and ensure that the just part of the transition plan is centered?”

SALIEM FAKIR: The thing is that there’s a number of levels. One is, I think, the government needs to communicate its decisions on the JETP and its information and engagement needs to improve. And I can tell you, they’re fully aware of this. In fact, the new project management unit has been set up to implement the JETP, and through the Presidential Climate Commission, are looking to improve engagement with different stakeholders. They started that process early last year, but it needs to work. We ourselves as ACF, we’re investing strategically in a lot of key media to improve communication, not only on the just transition, and not only JETP, but also look to increase accountability and transparency on what companies are doing. Not just coal companies, by the way, but also green energy companies that are investing. They also need to do a lot more around the just transition. They are benefiting hugely from this new policy shift, but are not actually improving the just transition dividend, and we are seeing lots of gaps there that we need to address.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, I think that that kind of communication is so important to keep the public with you. You know, when they are suffering blackouts on a weekly basis. So I’m going to turn to the next question, which is from Liz M., and that is, “What is philanthropy’s role in achieving a just transition, given the competing priorities and agendas of stakeholders. Are the current commitments from philanthropy enough, and what more is needed?”

SALIEM FAKIR: I would say, you know, to Liz that we have very low investment from philanthropy on climate and development issues. In fact, the figure that was put up by Climate Works Foundation is around 2%. It might have increased because of ACF, but probably not very high, probably 3 to 4%. But philanthropy has a huge role, and we’ve shown that if you take a more holistic, integrated model of linking climate with development, you can make the relevance a lot more clear. And the power of philanthropy is that it doesn’t have the billions of dollars, but it has the sufficient resources to create the enabling conditions for those billions of dollars to be used in ways that can mold, deal with climate risk, and climate vulnerability, and climate investments, and create new opportunities. But you have to take an integrated approach, build the right ecosystem that can drive that, and use our money, which is highly flexible, fairly easy to access if you make the right arguments and alignment with the right strategies, and be able to move it at much greater speed than usual development finance institution and bilateral funders.

HILARY PENNINGTON: That’s a huge asset. So our last question is from Stefan, “How does South Africa’s JETP think about addressing inequalities that might emerge in coal-producing geographies as a result of transitions to renewable energy? For example, might inequalities emerge between the coal-producing east and the renewable-producing west of South Africa? And if so, are there strategies to minimize the effects of deindustrialization in the affected communities?”

SALIEM FAKIR: So the best way to think of the just energy transition is two levels: One is very specifically focused on the just aspects of the energy transition, particularly the coal mining areas. And we have to align that with a much broader development model that goes beyond just the energy sector. The energy sector alone won’t solve the broader development needs and there are some really big challenges there. We shouldn’t just focus on renewables but actually look at other development opportunities, particularly in land use, agriculture, and do some really novel stuff. And the second part is to hold a bigger picture that the just aspect is much broader than just a particular geography and an energy technology or energy carrier. In this case, coal was switching to renewables. It is the just transition out of coal into clean energy. But we must take a more macroeconomic view and say, “How do we ensure distribution, redistribution, and the kind of fiscal support that is necessary to develop broadly our economy as a whole?” And also ensure that geographies that are going to benefit that we have—we can also ensure in the coal mining areas that, even though it’s not linked to the energy sector, we can at least substitute with jobs or better economic opportunities. Ensuring fair wages, decent jobs, and more holistic livelihoods and welfare in those areas. I do think that South Africa is an unequal society. So when we look at just transition, we have to locate it within the broader spectrum of inequality, and say that we have a duty to fix not only the broader macroeconomic issues, but also, within specific localities that are going to be impacted by energy transitions as we switch to new technologies.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, you know, I love that you joined back where you began with the relationship between workers rights, workers visions, and a broader and more inclusive economy, with what it means to move towards a just energy transition. Saliem, you know, thank you for your really visionary and practical work and for a wonderful and inspiring conversation. And thank you to everyone who has joined us to hear it. We are really grateful for your time and your attention. Thank you.

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

HILARY PENNINGTON: Hi, I’m Hilary Pennington. Thank you for joining us for the fifth conversation in our live series, “On What Matters.” I’m executive vice president of programs for the Ford Foundation. I’m a white woman, middle-aged with short hair, sitting in a brownish dress against a white wall. And I’m really excited today to talk to Dr. Timnit Gebru, who is an expert on artificial intelligence and technology, and especially on how to reduce the harm and the uneven benefits that it brings to society. And Timnit, over to you, to introduce yourself.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us. My name is Timnit Gebru, and I am founder and executive director of DAIR, which stands for the Distributed AI Research Institute. I am a light-skinned Black woman sitting in front of a white wall background, and I’m wearing a maroon sweater.

HILARY PENNINGTON: So we’re going to start by showing a video that just frames the issue that we’re talking about, and, in particular, talks a little bit about the potential harms of algorithmic bias. So here’s to the video.

[Kade Crockford, Director, Tech for Liberty Program, ACLU Massachusetts. A white gender nonconforming person wearing business clothing.]

KADE CROCKFORD: Digital technologies, the information age, have changed the way that we live in ways that are really obvious—like, the fact that we all carry tracking devices with us everywhere we go—and in ways that are really opaque—like the various black box algorithms that every single day make decisions for us.

[An animated 3-D black box spins as chains made up of ones and zeros flow into it on all sides.]

A black box algorithm is a mathematical formula that companies like Google and Facebook, as well as even governments, use to process large quantities of information and make decisions about what you’ll see when you open up your web browser. They determine what price an airline will try to sell you a plane ticket for, and they can even determine how much your car loan will cost. That matters because it may very well be the case that someone in a rich, white neighborhood gets charged substantially less for auto lending than someone who lives in a largely poor, Black neighborhood—despite the fact that those people have pretty much identical driving records. This also happens in the employment context, where employers are using black box algorithms to sort through large quantities of data about applicants.

[An animated 3-D black box floats above three separate stacks of resumes, scanning each stack with a laser beam.]

The algorithm will automatically sort and dispose of many, many applicants before any human being even enters the process to decide who’s going to get the job or who will get an interview. And those types of systems are in use in almost every industry today. Right now, there’s a major information asymmetry, right, between folks who work at Google and Facebook, about exactly what these tools are capable of, and what they’re currently doing, and the vast majority of the public. We need to bridge that gap. And we need technologists alongside us in that fight. Fifty years ago, when there was no public interest pathway for law students, really, besides working for the ACLU, we were not doing all we could as a society, frankly, to maximize what it means to be a lawyer, to maximize the benefits of a legal education as far as, you know, impacting the society in general in a positive way. It’s equally important now for technologists to also come to the table and tell lawmakers exactly what these tools are doing, you know, what the future looks like, and how to ensure that we don’t, you know, magnify exponentially the existing inequalities in our society. If we don’t bring those technologists into the public interest fold, I think we’re really looking at a very dangerous world in which technology does exacerbate and exponentially increase those inequalities.

[This is tech at work for the public! Hashtag Public Interest Tech. Ford Foundation dot org forward slash tech. Ford Foundation logo: a globe made up of a series of small, varied circles.]

HILARY PENNINGTON: So Timnit, let’s get started. At Google, where you led cutting-edge research on the ethical implications of AI, can you talk a little bit about how your experience there, and your scholarship, led you to leave Google and made you decide to start DAIR?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: I, famously, also got fired from Google and, you know, when I started working at Google, I was co-leading a small research team called the “Ethical AI Team,” with my then co-lead Margaret Mitchell. She had actually started the team. So I had been hired, to my knowledge, to do exactly what I did when I got fired, which is alert the research world and the public as to the harms of some of the AI systems and mitigate their harms. So at the end, I wrote a paper called “Stochastic Parrots” on the dangers of large language models, which led to my firing, and that really clarified that I couldn’t really do that kind of work in a setting like Google. And so I started a nonprofit called the Distributed AI Research Institute to do this work.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, it’s really important work that you’re doing there. And I think–let’s talk a little bit about why you’ve called it that. You know, I think for all of us who are reading the newspaper these days or watching anything on social media, we have heard about ChatGPT, and also just the headlines about the potential harms of technology. So talk to us a little bit about why you’ve structured DAIR the way you have. Why is it called the Distributed AI Research Institute, and why is it so important to you to put people at the center of the work and the research?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: Yeah, it’s really interesting because the first word that came to my mind when I wanted to–when I was thinking about starting a research institute was “distributed,” and I actually called Eric Sears of MacArthur Foundation, and I was like, “Does this sound fine to you?” You might, you know, might sound wild, but I really want an institute where there are people distributed around the world, who don’t have to leave their communities, that are embedded in their own communities, impacting the trajectory of AI development, right? I think that that is really a counterpoint to the centralization of power that we are currently seeing right now. So you mentioned ChatGPT, right? Even if the claims by these companies that, for instance, things like ChatGPT could replace lawyers or doctors were true, which I don’t believe are true, what they would want is, you replace all the lawyers in the world and all the doctors in the world, and pay one company located in one location for all the services that you want in the world. What I want is something that is the complete opposite. Have a distributed group of people around the world, impacting tech and other societal development.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, I love that you talk about and you imagine not only what you don’t want but what you want from technology. And so, let’s dig a little bit deeper into some of the concerns that have animated you. And can you talk some more about some of your ethical concerns about AI? And, you know, specifically, its impact on the environment? I think in a way, most people don’t know that it’s an incredibly carbon intensive industry but more broadly than that.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: So, you know, you mentioned, for example, the news on ChatGPT, right? And some of the news is people speculating about whether these systems are sentient or they feel things. And I think the reason that this happens is because there is an intentional obfuscation of all of the things that are involved in creating these systems, whether it is exploited workers who are providing data and labeling data and suffering from PTSD while looking at toxic words and images, or the amount of compute power that is required to train some of these models, right? We often talk about things like, we say the cloud, where, you know, things are not actually being processed in a cloud. They’re being processed in large data centers that take lots of water, for instance, from local communities and that require lots of energy. And even if it is, quote unquote, “from carbon neutral sources,” which some companies claim, it’s not free, right? There are resources that are needed—minerals that are needed to create some of these even renewable energy sources. Trees that are cut to build these data centers. So our concern, especially with large language model based systems like ChatGPT, when I wrote even my paper, was that the people who are benefiting from these kinds of systems, like, for instance, predominantly English-speaking people, let’s say living in the U.S., are not necessarily the people paying the costs of the ensuing climate catastrophe because of the energy consumption of these models, whether it is within countries like the U.S., for instance, or across countries.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Timnit, just for a minute, can you explain how AI actually is made?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: This is a really good question because, how the sausage is made, as people say, is really an important aspect of actually some of the issues that are important to put forth as well. And for the audience who might be interested, we wrote a paper called–actually an article called, “The Exploited Workers Behind AI,” just so that people know how many people are involved in this process. So many–most of the systems that people call “AI” right now, are based on what we call machine learning. And these types of systems, and specifically deep learning–I don’t want to get into a lot of jargon–but the important point to note is that many of these systems require a lot of data and a lot of compute. So you first have input data–many times that is labeled according to a particular type. So, for instance, let’s say what you want to do is classify whether there is a cat in a photo, right? So you, many times, need lots and lots of photos with cats and maybe without cats, and people to label whether there are cats in those photos, or not. And of course, people that supply those photos as well, right? And then, these models are trained on lots of those kinds of photos. And finally, you have a model that has sort of learned how to classify a new photo with a cat or not with a cat. This is just kind of like a simplified example. Now, at all ends of those spectrum, you have a lot of humans involved, right? Humans supplying the data, oftentimes, without their consent, especially nowadays, we’re seeing artists fighting back. We have humans labeling the data. Oftentimes, if the data is actually toxic or disturbing, you have–similar to content moderators–you have these humans sifting through lots and lots of data and having to see all of this horrible content, giving them PTSD. And you have, of course, the compute that, as we talked about, has a lot of environmental footprint because we have all these data centers that are required to train many of these models.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Let’s go back for a minute to one of the things you said. You talked about language models and the predominance of the English language being used to build these models. And you also talked about the word sentient, as in feelings. Do these, you know, does the model have a feeling? Talk a little bit more about the ways in which these systems get constructed, and why and how it is that they cannot actually be sentient.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: So we actually dubbed the term “stochastic parrots.” Actually, I say we—I can’t take credit for it—it was my colleague, Emily Bender. And what that means, you know, we’re trying to show that when you see a parrot speaking, supposedly coherently, grammatically correct sentences, you don’t think that it’s extremely intelligent or that it’s understanding what it’s saying, but you think, “oh, it’s cute,” right? And so these systems are, in a similar way, have learned to stitch together words to create the most likely sequences of words, according to what they see on the internet. So they’ve been trained on lots and lots of data and text from the internet and have been trained to, again, output the most likely sequences of words. So when we see the outputs–these outputs–we as humans can attribute intent to these outputs and feel like it might be coming from another human and forget things that are even as complicated as large language models, right? In the sixties, there was a system called Eliza, a chatbot called Eliza that was much, much simpler, right? This is in the sixties, and people still talked about it like it was some sort of person, and its creator actually was very distressed by the ethical concerns raised by such systems, even at that time.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yeah, even at that time. Well, you know, sometimes when you look at what we’re up against, right, and you look at the black box, as it was referred to in that video, you look at the size of the companies that are developing the AI, it’s easy to feel that even you, and even DAIR, and all the other amazing and smart activists are a little bit like David up against Goliath. You know, it just seems so big–the forces that you are fighting against. And yet, on the other hand, of course, we know, David won. David defeated Goliath. So tell me a little bit about some of the progress that you’ve made at DAIR that you are proud and excited about.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: So I think that, yes, sometimes it does feel that way. I mean, we don’t have the $10 billion that OpenAI just received from Microsoft, but I have to remember that it is people. A collective power is the biggest form of power, right? And when society decides that they don’t want something or they’ve had enough, they’ve been able to move forward in the past. So that’s really what I draw inspiration from. And for DAIR, I think the fact–just even our continued existence–and that I find that most of my team members really want this organization to exist, that’s our first win. You know, we have not only researchers in computer science, and sociologists, and engineers, but labor organizers and refugee advocates working together to chart the future of this technology. And we’ve been able to, already, work on projects that actually put data in the hands of people in marginalized groups. So one of our early projects that we’re still working on is on understanding the continued legacy of spatial apartheid. So this is the legacy of apartheid South Africa, right? And so we use computer vision techniques and satellite images to draw the boundaries of townships so that people in townships can actually have firm evidence that their quality of life is not as good as those of suburbs that were delineated during apartheid. And this work was also led by Raesetje Sefala, who is someone who grew up–who was born and raised in a township. So to me, these kinds of projects are–they’re what give me hope and they’re what, I think, you know, move me forward in believing in people’s power and people’s collective power.

HILARY PENNINGTON: That the people are the stone that fells the giant. I love that. Well, we’ve gotten a lot of questions from the audience, and I’m going to turn to some of those now. And I’m going to start with a question from Crystal, who wants to know, “What are the biggest factors making AI regulation complicated? What will privacy look like with AI and what will machine learning in the private sector and government look like?”

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: That’s a really good question. There are a number of factors complicating AI regulation. One of them is that regulators feel like they’re not well-equipped to regulate because they don’t necessarily know how these systems work. But, you know, I always remind them, they don’t have to know how these systems work in order to regulate. They only need to understand the impacts, right? So the people who know how to build something are not necessarily the best people who know how to evaluate societal impact. So that’s one. The other one–the biggest one to me, I think, is the imbalance in resources. We’re many times in a situation where the people who are harmed–the onus is put on them to show–to prove harm. Even in the cases where regulation is present, like, the general data regulation protection–the GDPR–in the EU, right? A lot of times the onus is on the individuals who are harmed to prove that they are harmed, rather than putting the onus on tech companies before they put out products, proving to us that they are not harmful. And finally, the agencies themselves that we expect to work on regulation are very understaffed, and they also have a hard time enforcing regulation, even once you have the actual regulation in place. And of course, we can’t forget all the lobbying that–speaking of imbalance of power and resources–that biotech companies have to sway the interest in their favor.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, what you describe is really sobering, too, because even if we had better regulation, how can it be enforced? What do you think about that?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: I think honestly, it’s really about, kind of, we need to have even regulation that we have right now–that I’m sure is being broken–like worker exploitation, or union busting, right? That could do a lot if we really enforced and punished companies who break these laws. That can move us forward, even when we’re talking about AI. But the problem is, again, there is a lot of lobbying, right? And then, there is also, you have agencies that are understaffed and under-resourced, where we are expecting to go up against these companies. So we need to–at even the agencies that we have right now and the laws that we have right now–we need to ensure that they have adequate resources and staff to enforce existing laws. And we need the punishment to have teeth, so that it actually forms as a deterrent.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes. All right. Well, let’s go to the second question, which is from Monica, who says, “Data can be biased because people are biased. How will the inputs to AI be, quote ‘corrected,’ as to avoid biased assessments, recommendations, or actions? And who is deciding what ‘corrections’ will be made? How will we ever reach an equitable application of this technology?”

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: This is such a great question because many people in the field of AI want to make people think that there is such a thing as a neutral technology. In fact, Sam Altman, who is the CEO of OpenAI, even tweeted saying that ChatGPT should not have any political inclinations or should be, quote unquote, “neutral”. And a whole bunch of people were like, “What about, you know, so fascism will be okay? Or Nazism?” You know, you can’t be neutral. There is no such thing as being neutral. And this question, I think, gets to that, right? There is no such thing as a neutral or unbiased data set. So, what we need to do is make those biases and make those values that are encoded in it, clear. I wrote a paper called “Lessons from Archives” with a historian, whose name is Unso Jo, and we were talking about how archivists, right, they have curators when they’re curating data, and we know that the curator’s point of view is going to be encoded in there. Whereas in this case, people think that just because they’re putting data from the internet, that everybody’s point of view is represented. And that’s just not true, right? So what we need to do is make those values explicit, and those values are often decided by society. We have laws already, existing laws, saying what’s okay and what’s not okay. So I think that’s what I want people to know is, like, there is no such thing as a completely unbiased data set.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, and I love the emphasis you’re putting on making it transparent, making it visible. So I’m going to go to our last question, which comes from Erin, and that’s turning to action that all of us could take. So Erin says, “How should those of us with influence in the corporate social impact space be steering our companies in relation to AI, especially technology companies whose philanthropic strategy is tied to making a charitable digital impact? Where should we be putting our efforts?”

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: So this is a great question. I think that if you’re at a company that is trying to invest in philanthropic ventures, I would say that you should ensure that they’re not doing it in order to then go back and skirt regulation and show, see, these are all the places that we’re investing in. And so you shouldn’t regulate us. So I think that’s really important to make sure that they’re investing in grassroots organizations and other organizations. But we need to make sure that the net impact is positive, rather than resulting in not regulating, holding them accountable. The second thing I would say is that, if you’re inside a company, you know, you can always–a collective action is really important–you can always have partnerships with people outside of the organization and kind of funnel information because often people inside companies know what’s going on before the rest of us do. And third, it’s really important to move resources to people who are very much impacted by this technology and know firsthand what is needed to counter these negative impacts. But they’re not legible to, let’s say, philanthropists, they’re not legible to funders, so they don’t get all these resources, right? And so it’s really important to build connections and networks with groups of people that you generally wouldn’t see in your day-to-day. Find those people, follow them, whether it’s on social media or conferences or wherever. You might find people like that. Build relationships and personal connections and invest in those people and organizations. So for instance, of course, DAIR–I have to plug my own organization–but there’s organizations like Mijente that I love, and there’s organizations like AGL, AINow, Data and Society, etc. And so, yeah, this is my recommendation.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I love those examples. They give me hope. And I want to close with just a final question, which I always ask, which has to do with what gives you hope, especially given such a challenging area that you work on, with so much change, and so much uncertainty, and so many aspects of it, that are frankly, really scary. What gives you hope? What keeps you going?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: I think it’s going back to what I said earlier, that even though there’s all this money and centralization of power, I always try to remember that it is collective action and people power that is the biggest form of power. And so, oftentimes, when I see the next generation, when I talk to students, when I talk to other people organizing, I see how passionate they are, and how optimistic they are, about building a different path and a better future. So these are the things that give me hope, talking to these people and seeing the next generation.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Thank you. Thank you so much for just a wonderful conversation and thank you to everyone who has joined us to listen to it. And please be ready to join us for the next conversation in the series, which is with Saliem Fakir. And stay tuned for some details about that. Thank you so much, Timnit.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: Thank you.

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

HILARY PENNINGTON: Hi! Welcome and thank you for joining us for the fourth conversation in our live “On What Matters” series. I’m Hilary Pennington. I am a small, middle-aged white woman with very short hair sitting in a brown chair against a white wall, and I’m wearing a bright orange sweater. And my guest today is Fernanda Hopenhaym, a fierce advocate for human rights and a good friend. Fernanda, over to you. Do you want to just give a brief description?

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: Hi, Hilary, and thank you so much for the invitation and also to the Ford Foundation. I’m Fernanda Hopenhaym Carrera. I’m a Latin American woman. I’m pale, I wear glasses, I have long black hair, and I’m wearing a black outfit and I’m sitting against a wall with a clock and a colorful scarf behind me.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Thank you. Fernanda is a very powerful advocate for the importance of corporate transparency and corporate accountability and a very strong believer that civil society has a major role to play in advancing better business practices. And we’re going to start with a short video about her work.

[On August 6, 2014, a Grupo México mine spilled 40 million liters of acidified copper sulfate into the Sonora and Bacanuchi rivers.]

Patricia Velarde, CCRS / Baviácora: We are here because of Grupo Mexico’s impunity, who in 2014 caused a mega toxic spill in the Sonora River, which was classified as the worst environmental disaster of mining in Mexico.

[Spill cost: 10 billion pesos, five times the allocated amount for the failed fund for remediation.]

Patricia Velarde: These polluted waters cause all these metals to accumulate and cause serious illnesses, cancer, organic damage to the liver and kidneys. And that is what we are going through both in my community and in the rest of the basin.

Activist: You’ve damaged our lives. The people are suffering. We are all suffering.

Ramón Miranda, CCRS / Aconchi: Here I bring my studies. I bring lead, arsenic, cadmium at levels much higher than Mexican standards. I am diabetic. I can no longer walk very much.

[The spill affected at least 24,000 people in eight municipalities: Arizpe, Banámichi, Huepac, San Felipe de Jesús, Aconchi, Baviácora, Ures and rural Hermosillo.]

Patricia Velarde: The mine has expanded, tripled, and quintupled its production. It continues to take away our wealth, it continues to poison our waters, it continues to affect our health and there is no power that can stop it.

[Authorities confirmed the presence of lead in the urine of more than 95% of the population, arsenic in more than 50%, and cadmium in more than 79%. In addition, the percentages of the population where “high risk” and “very high risk” were detected range from 1% to 10% in each municipality, in which the risk of developing arsenic poisoning and neuropathy is recognized.]

Ramón Miranda: Please get closer to the truth, come close to the truth.

Activist: At the expense of how many children? You are ending the childhood and future of children who aren’t even born yet. You should be responsible.

Patricia Velarde: We want the 36 water plants, plus any other that might be necessary, to give us specialized health care centers, to repair the environment, and to pay for the damage.

Ramón Miranda: It’s not possible that the government—that our taxes are used to repair the damage this company has committed.

Activists: Grupo México should be made accountable for this disaster.

[#SonoraRiver. #EightYearsOfImpunity. Basin Committee, Sonora River logo. Poder logo.]

HILARY PENNINGTON: What a powerful video. So let’s talk about the connection between corporate accountability and human rights. Tell me a little bit about how you see that connection, how it’s working today, and whether you feel we’re making progress.

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: Well, that video makes me emotional and really hopeful because, you know, these are affected peoples that were just impacted by, let’s say, corporate sponsored disaster, and now they are, you know, a strong, fully-fledged social movement. And that’s the type of accompaniment that PODER is doing, the type of initiatives we’re pushing, and that’s where I see the connect between, you know, human rights and corporate accountability. We can only achieve accountability if we are organized and if we have strong social human rights movements pushing and demanding that accountability to businesses and to states. So I think that’s where the connection lies, you know: in building collective power, in really working together and bringing all the forces and all the voices to the table. So for PODER, you know, building knowledge, providing information, conducting research, developing information-based tools that then communities and rights holders can use to push for that accountability, to sit down with state actors, to advocate vis-à-vis companies for them to remedy the damage or to prevent damage is an essential part of what we do, and it’s where we see a clear connection between the human rights agenda and the corporate sector. You know, I think the days where we only demanded accountability and transparency to state actors are way behind and now we really need to consider corporations as, you know, also responsible for, you know, preventing harm or abstaining from doing harm and also providing remedy when they do so.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, I think it’s so important because many of those corporate practices are very, very opaque to the people who are impacted by them, and the role you play in helping to translate and connect is essential. So I want to ask you, just building on the theme of human rights, and you’ve talked about this a little bit, but talk more about why you feel a human rights approach is so essential in the organizing that you do—and just, basically, what is a human rights approach?

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: Yeah. So I mean, we have all the human rights instruments and all this complex body of work, knowledge, and a community of practice working on human rights. But it’s, to put it simply, it’s just about human dignity: what makes us human, what makes us who we are, what allows us to live a dignified life, access to basic provisions, living our life freely with our identities, understanding how all this intersects. So for me, of course, there is a complexity and a technical approach to it, but it’s also about, again, the basic dignity that all human beings deserve and should be entitled to from the day they are born, and so it’s also about reducing inequality. It’s also about opening access for these affected communities to be on the table, to sit on the table. It’s also about analyzing privilege. This is an essential component of the work we do. We work from a power analysis and a privilege analysis perspective so that we can use that power and that privilege to push for justice and to support people that are actually affected by corporate practices to, again, sit on the table and use their own voice. We’re not giving voice to anyone. These people have their own voice; we’re just trying to bring that perspective to the table. So that’s where I see the human rights elements to play in practice. But then, of course, we have human rights due diligence, we have many other concrete instruments that are based on the different instruments we have on human rights, including our national constitutions, that should protect their human rights to work on corporate accountability. So that’s a very technical connection, but it’s also there and it’s part of the work we’re doing.

HILARY PENNINGTON: No, what you’re really talking about, braiding together different strands, I mean, constitutions together with human voice in a way that is necessary not only to create the world that we want, but to call it out when there’s transgression. So I want to shift the subject for a little bit to talk about a topic that you and I have talked about before, which is you, as a woman leader and a feminist leader of an NGO in Latin America, and maybe to just get you to talk a little bit about what your experiences have been as a leader. And then, you know, moving from your experience as an individual to comment, if you would, about why and how feminist approaches matter in the pursuit of corporate accountability and human dignity.

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: I think that, yeah, I learned it firsthand before even being able to name it and put it on the table and incorporated it into the work we do. So, you know, corporate accountability and, generally speaking, anything related to business, finance, money, as you know, generally speaking, has been historically male-dominated. So I think for women, since our upbringing to be honest, we are not taught how to, you know, relate in a healthy way with money on economic issues, again, broadly speaking. So I think that when I started working on this issue, even before I joined PODER, I was pretty much alone in many spaces or with a small group of fellow feminists trying to push for this agenda. And I mean, you and I have discussed how, generally speaking, also the kind of human rights community of practice was male-dominated not that long ago. So I think, of course, a lot of challenges in trying to be, you know, bold to push for things, to call it out to colleagues when they were having, you know, sexist behaviors, to acknowledge that we needed to join forces with other women and kind of stick together and push for change, that there was work to be done internally in our organizations and with our teams as well as externally with colleagues from other NGOs, with donors, with the stakeholders we were engaging with, with local communities we’re accompanying, and how do we approach that in a non-colonialist way? So it’s, you know, like a lot of thoughts and lessons learned throughout the years that I think made me the person I am now as a leader. I tried to exercise, you know—I shared leadership with a co-director, of course—I try to mentor my colleagues and open doors for younger women to join. I try to be mindful whenever I organize, let’s say, an event or anything to bring a diversity of voices and of identities to the table. And that, for me, is feminism in practice, right? It’s a feminist way of living and leading. So I’ve faced a lot of challenges, you know, from people silencing me, to not taking me too seriously because I was younger or because I wore certain clothes, or used a lot of the hands and the humor, the sense of humor. But then I think, you know, bit by bit, a group of us has been able to push and we’re more, we’re more, that have joined the party. And now we see a lot of female leadership. And, I mean, not only in feminist organizations, but everywhere in the human rights community. So I hope, you know, I have contributed to that a little bit.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Oh, I think you have. And then what do you see on the corporate side? On the corporate accountability side, do you see a rising group of women leaders? You know, what is it like to take who you are and these feminist approaches into the work on corporate accountability?

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: Well, I think there are a lot more women now in corporate accountability and, you know, business and human rights than 10 years ago, for sure. And we still face a lot of, you know, resistance a little bit from our colleagues, some sexist, you know, like this kind of hidden machismo that we call in Spanish, you know, like the micro, micro behaviors that really are still trying to hold, you know, the privileges and the power and the spaces. It’s difficult, and I understand if you’ve been there forever and you’re an expert, now that you need to, you know, leave that seat for another person to join the table. People don’t want to lose that, and I understand it. But it’s the work that we need to do collectively as a community of practice. And I have a lot of great, strong feminist colleagues in the corporate accountability world everywhere, in all regions, trying to push for that change. And that also implies incorporating a feminist lens to the work we do. So it’s about our relationships, it’s about sharing power and spaces. It’s about respecting the knowledge that we have as women, but it’s also bringing that lens to the policy proposals we develop or, you know, the advocacy efforts with that. So I think it has a lot of elements in it.

HILARY PENNINGTON: One of the things I really appreciate about the work is the ways in which I think that kind of approach, that feminist approach and that diagnosis of power and how power works in the world, can actually help us imagine what’s going to be the impact of a policy proposal. You know, they’re not always neutral and things that sound good in the abstract actually land in very different ways on different populations, and I think that’s, you know, that’s one among many of the assets that you and these approaches bring to the work. So, civil society, we live at a time when it’s become almost easy to talk about the shrinking space for civil society. But I think it is true that civic space is transforming, has been transforming over recent years, and I would love it if you would talk a little bit about how you see those changes: what you see as the threats but also what you see as forms of resilience, persistence, and pushing back.

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: Well I think, I always try to think, you know, about the backlashes or the conservative forces that are trying to, you know, silence the public participation by civil society, as you know, because, as a backlash, because there’s a back. Because there’s a lash, we’re advancing. So I think that, I don’t know, in the over 20 years I’ve been around, working on these issues, I’ve seen a lot of advances, actually: transparency laws, public participation, opening of spaces. So it’s not all that bad. But I do think that we’re at a very challenging moment in time where we need to hold the line because, again, these forces are there, they’re trying to maintain the status quo and maintain privilege and silence certain voices, because they don’t want to lose power. Bottom line. So I think that we need to continue to organize, and I think one way of holding the line is collective organizing and, you know, having a collective voice, and that means to sometimes negotiate with our fellow civil society partners, you know, and agree on certain points that we have in common and defend those. Because if we get too much into the differences, we won’t advance or hold the line.

HILARY PENNINGTON: So you’re really describing that there are threats outside of civil society and there are threats inside civil society, and both of them require care and attention. So we have time for one more question before we return to some of the questions that we’ve gotten from the audience. And I want to just close with a question that I ask everyone, and it’s a little bit related to this idea of persisting against backlash, but it’s just the question: What gives you hope?

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: Well, young people, particularly young feminists give me a lot of hope. I have two kids. You know, my kids are hitting the teenage moment. Their friends are amazing; the kind of conversations they have are really, really, I mean, hopeful. And I think they don’t see, like, a future that it’s not bright. So kind of being in touch with them, that connection, really it’s contagious, makes me hopeful. And also like, you know, young people’s movements, young people fighting climate change. You know, young people, young feminists fighting for rights. You know, LGBTI young people that are pushing for their identities to be recognized and respected, young Indigenous people. So I think that we should engage much more with the youth because there is a lot of hope that lies there and we don’t want to leave a mess for these people. So I hope we can do a good job. And that hope really, you know, it’s contagious for us that we’re in, you know, our 40’s or 50’s or whatever, and we can work together with them in an intergenerational fashion. That, I think, would be great.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I love that. That does give hope. Well, we’re going to turn to our questions from the audience. We have time to take two of them. And the first one, actually, It keys a little bit off of what you have just been talking about. So it’s a question from Kevin, who wants to know your thoughts about what’s the business case for eliminating poverty among young people?

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: Well, it touches a little bit about my final thoughts further from the previous question, because I think that, I mean, we shouldn’t be doing a case for businesses right on young people and how they are, you know, they have the future in their hands because we’re not going to be there eventually. And I think that one of the challenges with the businesses is that they have a short-term, you know, way of operating because they need to create wealth and create profit for their shareholders. So that’s kind of the original sin of many of the problems that we are facing, including in the corporate accountability world. So I think that when we think about young people and opportunities for young people, we’re thinking about sustainability, also, and long-term plans by corporations. And I think that that is a challenge due to these short-term obligations they have, to fiduciary duties, and so on. So I mean, having conversations also with some private sector actors that are pushing for, let’s say, human rights approaches and opening new opportunities. This comes up a lot. It’s difficult for them to conciliate internally those two visions. So I hope that we can make the case for businesses that this is the only way for them to thrive in the long term.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes. And to broaden the notion of shareholder to stakeholder. Right? Which is an essential piece of what you just are saying. All right. We’re going to go to a question from Cesar. And that question is: What role does online organizing play for civil society in advocating for better business practices?

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: So I think online organizing is really useful and helpful. We’ve seen it a lot in, you know, political campaigns and other ways of organizing. And I think that for, let’s say, corporate accountability and human rights organizing, it has become a very important tool. It cannot be a substitute for, you know, community organizing or in-person collective work, but I think as a tool, it connects many people around the world. It speaks a lot to younger people going back to this element, you know, this new generation that uses, you know, social media that I can’t even manage like TikTok and those things. And, you know, using those tools and acknowledging that we can speak to certain people by using those tools, it’s very important. And again, I think it’s a compliment to the work we’re doing on the ground with actual people because we can’t forget that we are bodies, mind, souls, and a screen is not enough to kind of come together as a whole and build collective power. But I think it’s an interesting tool that we should continue to use and even exploit or explore a little bit more.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes. Well, thank you for holding those two together. Right? The online and the embodiedness of what it means to create community and connection. And I want to just thank you so much for a wonderful, wonderful conversation, for the work you do, and to everyone who has joined in. Thank you, too, for joining us. And we have two more conversations coming up with activists in South Africa and in the U.S. And if you stay tuned, we’ll show you how to tune in for those. Thank you, Fernanda.

FERNANDA HOPENHAYM: Thank you very much, Hilary. It’s been my pleasure and my privilege. I really, really appreciate this opportunity.

End of transcript.

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

HILARY PENNINGTON: Welcome, and thank you for joining us for the second conversation in the live “On What Matters” series. I’m Hilary Pennington, executive vice president of the Ford Foundation. I’m a white woman with short blond hair in a blue dress, and I’m sitting before a white wall in a brown chair. My guest today is an amazing environmental activist, Gita Syahrani. And, Gita, let me turn to you to introduce yourself.

GITA SYAHRANI: Hi, everyone. Hi, Hilary. My name is Gita Syahrani. You can call me Gita. I come from Indonesia. I’m an Indonesian woman. I am the head of the Secretariat for Sustainable Districts Association. Or, in Indonesia, we say Lingkar Temu Kabupaten Lestari, or LTKL. I am, right now, sitting in our office in Jakarta and I’m wearing a deforestation-free dress, sitting against a back wall entitled with our slogan, which is how to work collaboratively as a multi-stakeholder coalition.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Let’s get started. We’re going to see a brief video that will give people a sense of the work you do.

LTKL VIDEO: Peat is a global treasure. It has the potential to become the world’s greatest carbon storage. But if you don’t take care of it, it might also become the world’s greatest threat, especially when it’s caught on fire. An immune system has also become one of the world’s most pressing needs, especially during the pandemic and even afterwards. Alam Siak Lestari is a local company located in Siak, Indonesia, home to the second-largest peat area of the world. We are discovering new ways to link peat conservation and community-based business to boost the world’s immune system. Inspired by local tradition for a post-surgery remedy, ASL have discovered the potential to use low-temperature distillation methods and create albumin extract from snakehead fish that is cultivated directly in peat conservation and fire-prone areas. Now, this is an innovative way to actually use existing technology combined with local tradition, allowing village communities living within and surrounding the peat area to access the technology and use the technology to actually build business and produce high-quality, value-added product. Globally, the market value of albumin has reached $6.5 billion in 2026. Now, ASL is on track to prove our business model by securing pre-investment, including directly from the village community, and have also secured a long-term contract with a health supplement company. Now, we invite you to become our collaborator in research and development, as well as opening up the global market access. By doing so, you are joining us on a journey to answer the world’s greatest question: “Can you really earn money by protecting the environment?” The answer is definitely “yes.”

HILARY PENNINGTON: Oh, thank you for that, and let’s get started with the first question. You know, I think it’s fair to say that most people understand that there is climate change. They don’t have very clear ideas about what to do to address it, and you have a very, very particular and strategic approach. Can you talk a little bit about how you come at this work, why you do it, and how you do it?

GITA SYAHRANI: So, in Indonesia, we have this principle that is actually based on our founding fathers, which is called “gotong royong.” And gotong royong means working collaboratively across different backgrounds, across different cultures, across different religious affiliations, and across different races for one shared goal. And gotong royong has fundamentally shifted the way that we are doing things in the Districts Association. We start from addressing complex problems. For example, the peat fire that was explained in the video through a silo manner. The private sector would be doing one thing, the government would be doing another thing, the community would be doing another thing. Everybody is pushing towards betterment of the current condition. However, if we were united and practiced this essence of Indonesia, which is gotong royong, actually, the impact can be greater. So our main focus in LTKL, in the Sustainable Districts Association, is to prove that Indonesians, especially at the district level, are still practicing the value of gotong royong actively every day to combat and address complex problems such as sustainable land use and fighting the climate crisis. This is the essence of what we are trying to conduct, and we are trying to also build a recipe, so to speak, so that the way to do this gotong royong, or collective actions in English, are replicable, not only within the district, but also nationwide. And hopefully, it can also influence people outside of Indonesia to try to practice the same thing, as well.

HILARY PENNINGTON: When you approach that, how do you shape the invitation to the different actors in a way that helps them see how much they have to benefit by doing things together? And what’s hardest about that approach?

GITA SYAHRANI: I think a lot of the process that we do with our district members is identifying the common narrative. That’s the goal first. So, even before we share this invite of, like, let’s work together, we have to figure out—and usually we use, like, different tools, including an empathy map, for example, to figure out what’s in it for each of the stakeholders, because everybody has different type of interests and everybody would need a value proposition for them to actually push towards something. So, usually, the first three to six months, what we do within our districts is identifying the common narrative. For example, in the district of Siak in Riau, we tried to talk to all of the stakeholders and figure it out. Actually, the common narrative that everybody wants to do is to prevent fire from happening. So that’s one. The second one is they also want to uplift the welfare of people within the district itself through sustainable business. And using those two common narratives, we ended up getting together with all of the stakeholders and inviting them into a process where, at the end of the day, leads to innovation center, an actual sustainable business that’s supported by different stakeholders, and we also are providing support to the government-led initiative, the Green Siak vision. I guess when it comes to process, you start from identifying the common narrative and then you start building value proposition for different stakeholders. Once you have that mapped out, then you try to convene the process. If you do it backwards, you run the risk of making conflict and tension even worse than before, because you’re forcing everybody to work together without them realizing that, actually, this is something that they should automatically do, because it’s beneficial. And the third, to close it out, usually we would try to figure out some concrete examples that they can use to compare. What does it mean to work separately? What are the results? And if you were to work together, then what are the results and how is it better than the one that you did before?

HILARY PENNINGTON: I love that close-out loop that you do. That’s really a brilliant approach. And, you know, part of what you are talking about is, of course, the importance of understanding the context and relationships. And I think that’s one reason why you’ve chosen to focus at the district level. But can you talk a little bit about how and why focusing in a place also lets you have impact beyond that place?

GITA SYAHRANI: Just to give a bit of context, the districts have provided me with the opportunity because they were the ones that created this association in the spirit of actually getting together and agreeing on a pathway that they can use to transform their jurisdictions into a place where they can answer this mystery question, which is, “Can you actually have a development pathway that balances protecting important ecosystems versus eradicating poverty and uplifting welfare of their people?” Because right now, the statistic is showing that in areas where forests and peat and important ecosystems are protected, poverty levels are also high. So they want to prove the theory backwards. They want to prove that, actually, if you choose this type of development pathway, you can have more people prosper in your jurisdictions but, at the same time, guard your forest and peat as well. So it started from their initiative, and I was fortunate enough to be provided this opportunity to become a convener and support them in this mission. And the reason why a district becomes an exciting thing for me personally, my background is legal, and I was involved in public policy at the national level before. The national level would always need implementation at the subnational for any type of policy and regulatory framework that gets issued. And in Indonesia, the district level becomes very fundamental, especially when you talk about deforestation and land use because it’s happening within that territory and a lot of the licenses for plantations, for mining, that get issued are located within this jurisdiction. So any type of impact, be it environmental, social, or economic, is felt, first and foremost, by people within that jurisdiction. So I feel very blessed to be provided with this opportunity to work with the district governments that are already committed. And I believe if we focus on one particular place and actually showcase how collective action can really be tangible, people would go automatically to this mindset of “seeing is believing.” You need to see something that is very tangible. How is this gotong royong, or this collective action, translated? We can showcase that one district at a time, but if we manage to get it right, then this can influence nationwide movement and hopefully inspire more districts to influence their provinces and, at the end, actually say to the national government, “We are your warriors to implement your national targets and your national programs. We are here to contribute to the way that you want to achieve low carbon development or reduce emission. We are here to serve you, and we have proof that this can work, actually.” That’s why it’s exciting for me.

HILARY PENNINGTON: You know, I think that—I understand why that’s exciting for you. And let’s just double-click on that because you have just described a solution to, I think, one of the big barriers that gets politics around this issue stuck, which is that it is so easy to create a narrative that puts, you know, people’s livelihoods and their jobs against protecting the environment. And that is—that’s everywhere. It’s really easy for people to believe that, and it’s really hard to combat it. So you’re really talking about how, from the bottom up, to create a political will and also an evidence base. What will it take for the story of that to kind of go viral? What do you think?

GITA SYAHRANI: So, the way that we are conducting our support at the Secretariat Association is actually in parallel. Yes, we are helping districts build models that can be an inspiration. We have this theory called success stories-based policymaking, which is you create a success story that inspires better policymaking because then you know that it works. But that’s, as you mentioned, that’s coming from the bottom up. The way that the video was playing, we managed to help youth from Siak District create the first community-based enterprise that is actually providing nature-based solutions and sustainable products that got international recognition. They just won an award at M.I.T., for example. And that’s the reason why policymakers think that this is something that is worth pursuing, and they want to replicate it so that there’s more companies like that within their district. But in parallel, we also work with multiple national line ministries. We work with the Ministry of Home Affairs. We work with also—fundamentally link ministries with district governance. For example, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Planning, Ministry of Investment. And the reason why we work with the national stakeholders is within the process itself, is the same thing as your first question. How can we also identify the common narrative from their side and how can we start showcasing to them that what we’re doing at the bottom up is actually answering the stuff that they’re looking for as a solution and as a showcase that the national policy can actually be done. So we can do one thing, but we can frame it differently so that at the end of the day, it answers a different narrative for each of the stakeholders so they feel that this is also their journey.

HILARY PENNINGTON: It is so inspiring, the way that you work. And I want to ask you a question I’m going to try to ask everyone, which is, you know, you are up against huge forces, you know? A world which does not take climate change seriously enough, a dominant model of the economy, you know, that favors extraction over all of the kinds of things you’re talking about. So, just in our last minute together, before we go to Q&A, what gives you hope?

GITA SYAHRANI: I think the interaction day in and day out. We cannot only be fixated with the long-term goal that we’re chasing, which is, at the end of the day, sustainable land use and creating districts that are able to showcase this model of collective actions. That’s the long-term game. But my reason to be hopeful is that every day I wake up and I go to work and I see progress within each of the stakeholders. Policymakers that before were not open to working with youth are now partnering intensively, for example. We have instances where district leaders that didn’t talk about sustainable forest management start talking about it publicly. So we do have this type of, like, you can call “small wins,” if you look at it in relative terms. But, for us, it’s actually big wins because we’re working in a behavior-change kind of mindset, which requires a long-term marathon. So we have to celebrate everyday progress, and this is something that we do in our office, as well, practicing gratitude. So we would write down things that we think are progress every week, and then we take turns to discuss so that at the end, we don’t forget that even if the journey is long, we do have progress every single day.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Thank you for that. And I think that’s a practice that everyone who’s listening to this could do well to do individually, but also together. I love that you do that together as a community of changemakers. So we’re going to go to Q&A, and we probably have time for about three questions. We have so many more that have come in. So we’ll try to figure out a way to be responsive to people through social media. But the first question comes from the Kayunga Community Club: “How do you generate climate change awareness in rural areas?”

GITA SYAHRANI: So, for example, our recent work in several of the districts that work directly with small and medium-scale enterprises—most likely, it’s ultra micro to micro, this also in collaboration with the Ford Foundation and Climate and Land Use Alliance. We don’t talk about climate change using the words “climate change.” Instead, we focus on what they think and consider as risks for their business, which are disaster and also health reasons. So a lot of the entrepreneurs are women.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Of course.

GITA SYAHRANI: Every time we talk about something—yeah! [laughs] Something that is good or bad for their kids, for example, the way that the waters that are being polluted, or the way that the air quality is bad, and the way that the soil is not absorbing as much nutrients as it should, and it affects the growth of the kids. They get really passionate about it. So instead of being fixated on the terminology of “climate change,” we can say that we are here to help you build a more disaster-resilient business. We are here to get you to be part of a solution for something, because you are guarding the quality of soil, guarding the quality of water, guarding the quality of air. So, in rural areas, what needs to be done is making sure that you are addressing what is it that they need, what is it that they consider as risk? Because, for rural communities, at least the ones that we are working with, usually it’s a matter of life and death, literally, and what do they eat tomorrow. And it’s immediate, concrete things that they want to work on. So you also have to really be providing tangible solutions that are relatable for them and not only theoretical.

HILARY PENNINGTON: And our next question comes from another Gita, Gita Putri: “Does the current status of civic space provide the necessary environment for LTKL to reach their objectives?”

GITA SYAHRANI: So, Gita Putri is also one of our partners that is helping us out a lot with policy works under her PSHK organization. So one of the core components, actually, when it comes to the solution that LTKL is trying to convene—again, the Secretariat does not come up with the solution. It’s actually the community of partners that comes up with the solution. And the majority of those partners are actually civil society organizations and development partners, and they are very critical when it comes to actually providing a solution, a real solution, and also technical assistance. But at the same time, they’re also very productive when it comes to doing their function in terms of monitoring and making sure that the districts are doing a good job, so to speak, making sure that this is something that they can also be accountable for. So, right now, what we see is that if we look at collective actions and we want to improve sustainable land use within a district or within a jurisdiction in Indonesia, at least, there is no way that we can achieve that without the support of civil society organizations and development partners. Right now, we are experiencing, at least at the national level, a shrinking space for civil society to actually provide solutions. But I would say that there is still room to actually start proving the business case of having civil society and development partners as a core solution at the jurisdiction level. So we work with several partners to actually showcase how this collective action that is driven by civil society and facilitated by government is actually the success story that we are looking for in terms of climate resiliency. The journey now is how to communicate that almost loud enough so that this resonates also to decisionmakers across the country, including the national level.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, so now—thank you.. And we have time for one last question, a short period of time for a huge and really interesting question: “How does LTKL involve any religious actors in environmental efforts given their importance to peace-building and to sustainability?”

GITA SYAHRANI: Thank you, Janie. In a lot of the districts that we’re working with, religious actors play a very huge role. I’m going to give you one example that is interconnecting environmental effort, emergency effort, and religious actors, which is the collaborative vaccination program that we did as a rapid response for COVID in collaboration, also, with partners of the Ford Foundation. And the vaccine is actually targeting a marginal community, including Indigenous community farmers and smallholders, as well as people with disability. And for one particular vaccine site that are targeted for a community that is actually the Guardians of the Forests because they’re part of Indigenous groups, this type of vaccine is actually still being questioned due to the new type of innovation that it uses. So, what we did, was to work with the local church organizations and also local Islamic organizations to make sure that we encapsulate their testimony so that they start also promoting the need to take care of others. So you vaccinate yourself not only to take care of you, but also to take care of each other, because that is what your religion is telling you to do. And based on this testimony, we actually managed to vaccinate a lot of the community that wasn’t open to it before. And at the same time, we enabled them to keep their current role to being this buffer community and keep protecting the forest and the peat that’s very important also to their livelihood by keeping themselves healthy. So everything is interlinked and intertwined. Thank you for the question.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, thank you. It has been such a privilege and a pleasure to get to speak with you and to hear about your work and, most importantly, just the philosophy that runs through everything that you do. I want to thank you. We’re at the end of our time. I want to thank those of you who have joined to listen to this. There will be more conversations coming up with other amazing social justice leaders. Gita, I cannot thank you enough for today.

GITA SYAHRANI: Thank you so much for having me. And hopefully, you get to visit Indonesia soon. Help us spread the word even more on collective actions to protect our important ecosystems while uplifting the welfare of everyone.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you.

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

HILARY PENNINGTON: Hi, I’m Hilary Pennington. Welcome to the third conversation in our live “On What Matters” series. I am a middle-aged white woman wearing a flower dress, sitting in front of a white wall. I have very short hair and I am going to be talking today about advancing reproductive health and justice in the United States and globally with Dr. Herminia Palacio. And Herminia, would you please introduce yourself?

DR. HERMINIA PALACIO: Thank you very much, Hilary, for welcoming me to this conversation. I am Dr. Herminia Palacio. I am an internist by training, although I don’t see patients anymore. I’ve had the good fortune of being a clinician for many years and then working in governmental public health, and now really the tremendous opportunity and privilege to serve as a president and CEO for the Guttmacher Institute, which is a think tank that really focuses on research for impact for policy impact on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Thank you so much for that. And we’re going to just start out with a very short video about the work of the Guttmacher Institute.

DR. HERMINIA IN VIDEO: The time is now. We can’t wait. We need you. We are in the middle of a global pandemic, an economic crisis, and racial reckoning. Here at Guttmacher, we do science. We study how laws affect people’s abilities to get reproductive care, to get contraceptive care. We provide the evidence that policymakers need to make good decisions. We provide the evidence that advocates use to mobilize communities to fight for justice. We provide the evidence. Facts to dismantle all of the misinformation. Facts you can trust. Access to abortion care can’t wait. Access to contraception can’t wait. Our youth having access to essential sex ed can’t wait. You’re the critical link. We can’t do this work without you. Will you make a donation today? This just can’t wait.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Thank you. So let’s get started, and let’s get started with the obvious question. You know, the overturning of Roe is a loss for all of us, but it is going to have a particular impact on specific communities; people of color, people with disabilities, gender non-conforming people, and Indigenous communities. And could you talk a little bit about what that impact is likely to be and also why community-centered research can help us document the impact?

DR. HERMINIA PALACIO: Thank you, Hilary. That is such an important observation and an important question, and I really welcome the chance to talk about it a little bit. I’m going to begin by talking about it from a personal perspective because, as you’ve highlighted, there are particular communities that will be impacted more than others, and this is not accidental. It is the same communities that suffer multiple oppressions by both policy and practice. And it’s my communities. It’s, you know, people of color. As an Afro-Latina daughter, first-generation daughter of immigrants, I understand how this plays out in my own family. And I’ll begin with an anecdote, because as Roe fell in the Supreme Court decision, I recognized that I was sort of sandwiched in between my mother and my adult daughter and my mother, a new immigrant, newly married here from Cuba, became pregnant. She was a peace worker in the New York City Garment District. Really, you know, the immigrant story, trying to make a living. And with that pregnancy, she experienced a medical condition, hyperemesis. She was really vomiting all the time. It was debilitating and she just couldn’t afford not to work. She couldn’t afford it. Her family couldn’t afford it. And she got an abortion because an abortion is what she needed to do to survive. It’s what she needed to do to make sure that her family survived. But she had to do it at a time before Roe. She had to do it at a time where she, in many ways, had to risk her life to survive. And now fast-forward, and while I enjoyed the legal protection of Roe throughout my reproductive years, I now have a 30-year-old daughter for whom that legal protection at the federal level has been stripped. And it’s very sobering to think about those impacts, for so many. We forget that, number one, abortion is a really common experience. It’s part of health care. It’s part of the normal life of women, of people, and families. It’s part of the most intimate decisions that people make about how to move forward, whether to have children, when to have children, how many children to have, how to be a parent. And our legal structures can either oppress or they can protect. And unfortunately, we see a lot of oppression happening right now.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yeah. It’s really scary. And, you know, I am so struck by the fact that while the U.S. is moving backwards on reproductive rights, many, many other countries, including culturally conservative countries around the world, are moving forward. You think about in Argentina or Colombia or Mexico or Ireland. And so I’m curious, you know, as you look and you work globally, what lessons do you think we can learn from them about how they organized and framed those issues? And then, you know, conversely, it’s one thing to win a legal right and it’s another thing for that right to actually be real for people in how they experience healthcare services. So I’m also interested in what cautionary lessons and advice you would give to them about what it means to make a legal right real. But maybe let’s start with what we could learn from them.

DR. HERMINIA PALACIO: Sure. You know, I think one of the things you began with, what we can learn from them, which is that, in fact, progress can be made and that there can be liberalization of these laws, really through incredible combination of grassroots on-the-ground activism with powerful social movement, changing of sort of societal norms, and with the tools of legislation and litigation. Right. It takes all things. There’s not a single magic bullet. And I think one of the things, one of the lessons is being particularly attentive to sort of what the geopolitical environment that you’re in and being both strategic but also being opportunistic in terms of being able to secure some wins, even when it’s unexpected and, in fact, being relentless. So I think that there are, there are lessons learned. One of the things that we have to learn is that we can’t take these rights as a forever thing. Right. I think there are many communities who saw the fragility of the Roe decision and were disappointed and shocked, but in some ways not surprised. Right. There was the writing on the wall in many ways. There was a long effort, both at state legislatures and federal, at a federal level to sort of rescind this right. But your second point is critically important, which is that the right in and of itself doesn’t guarantee access, right? And that there are ways to constrain access even in the face of a right. And thinking about the Hyde Amendment here in the United States as a way to legislatively constrain access for people of low economic means, mostly Black and Brown people who theoretically had the right to secure a legal abortion but didn’t have the means. Legal abortion is expensive. We had laws that specifically prevented the use of Medicaid to support those abortions so we can constrain people’s realities in practice, both by legislation, by regulation, and just by societal practice.

HILARY PENNINGTON: You know, I think that’s so, so important, too, as you were saying before, like playing the long game and understanding how hard it is to secure these rights. And it leads me to another question for you, which is, you know, for me, one of the things that’s very inspiring right now about the reproductive rights movement here and elsewhere is the ways in which organizers are linking it to other movements, other justice movements, whether it’s racial justice or immigration and, you know, trans rights. So, and I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about why you think that’s happening and, also, you know, just what the implications are for the long game.

DR. HERMINIA PALACIO: It’s a critically important question, and I think it’s important to recognize the history of how that came, how that’s happening, and why it’s happening, because it’s not happening overnight. And I think we can credit a number of Black women who gathered together in the early 1990s to really put forward a framework, a reproductive justice framework, which wasn’t just about abortion as a right. It was really a framework that was about the humanity and the dignity of people to choose when and if to become a parent, when and if to become pregnant, when and if to give birth, and to be able to parent with dignity, and parenting with dignity meant to have the economic ability to parent with dignity. It meant having the social structures and the social support, it meant having the job security, having the healthcare access, having the education for your kids. It was very much as, you know, as I think about sort of my career in public health, it was very much a framework that incorporated those principles of the social determinants of health without using that terminology. But it was very much a justice model, not just a health model, not just the rights model. And inherent in that justice model is an understanding that the oppression of reproductive care has roots in racism. Right. Think about slavery. It has roots in controlling women’s bodies. It has roots in seeing women as vehicles to produce children for free labor. It has roots in the way that we separated Indigenous children and sent them to, quote unquote, “Christian” schools against the will of the community. It has roots in the way we did forced sterilization of people that we decided were not competent to have children. So again, we can’t begin as if the failure of Roe was day one. Right. We have a long history in this country of oppressing people of color around all manner of issues, including their reproductive decisions.

HILARY PENNINGTON: And their fundamental dignities, as you were just describing.
You know, I want to shift a little bit and just ask you a question that brings it a little bit more personally to you, which is just to talk a little bit about your own journey. You have had such an amazing professional and personal story. How did you come to the Guttmacher Institute?

DR. HERMINIA PALACIO: I would say that in many ways I came to Guttmacher in full circle, in terms of my professional career. So I really am a little girl from the Bronx who really, in one generation, as I said, my parents came over from Cuba, they did not have the opportunity for education. So in one generation, you know, they have a daughter who is a physician and a daughter who is a lawyer and unfortunately, a son who died at age 12 when he was hit by a car. So all of the family joys and sorrows that are, that are so much part of the human condition. As a young physician, I began my work in the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I’m a primary care physician by training, but I ended up working with HIV/AIDS patients for the overwhelming majority of my years of clinical practice. And in those early days, they were formative years for me, personally and professionally, and I had the sobering, extraordinarily sad but formative experience of having to sit with mostly young men, but some young women who transitioned from life to death because I had very little to offer them but the art of medicine, because there wasn’t much science of medicine available at that time. And the science caught up with the art over time. But it allowed me to see how stigma got translated into people’s lives. Stigma around the most intimate decisions people were making about who they loved, stigma around who they had sex with, how policies could create fear and ostracize people who were just human beings trying to get through life the way the rest of us was and how laws could be fashioned in a way that was cruel and punitive, such as trying to criminalize women who got pregnant while they were HIV positive. These are things that we’ve seen before. We’ve seen the labeling of people as “other” before. And so while my career took me through many things, including, as I said, you know, being, really working, changing from being just the physician on a one-on-one basis to being a public health practitioner in which really, I was a doctor for entire communities in some ways. Coming to the Guttmacher Institute, where we’re, again, sort of facing a stigmatization and an assault and an otherizing of people making the most intimate human decisions possible. It feels familiar. It feels like coming home. And it certainly inspires my passion to be all-in in this fight.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Our conversations about your experiences, and you were really there at the front line in San Francisco, you know, early, early years. I think your trajectory across all of those makes me want to ask you a final question before we go to the questions we’ve gotten from the audience. And that just is: What gives you hope?

DR. HERMINIA PALACIO: I would say that really, what gives me hope in those moments where, you know, it can feel, it can feel difficult when you look around and you see so many things being rolled back is, I have to remind myself, we began talking about some of the history of—especially in this country—of oppression. And it reminds me that progress is never linear, that people have actually bled and died to make even some of the advances that we have and that it’s our obligation, it’s our privilege to stand on their shoulders. But it’s our obligation to stand tall on their shoulders, to stand tall and continue the fight. And the fact that progress is always met by backlash. And so sometimes, I remind myself that the fierceness, the toxicity of this particular backlash is actually a reflection of how much progress we had been making. And it gives me hope that we can once again sort of regain that momentum, that we must regain that momentum and that, you know, we have to be here for the long game, the people coming up behind us.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes. Thank you for that. And we’ve got just a little time more and we’re going to turn to questions that we’ve got. We’ve gotten a lot of questions from the audience, and I’m going to just go to two and I’m going to start with one from Vivian, who wants to know: How will the rising use of medication abortion play out in the face of increasing and severe restrictions?

DR. HERMINIA PALACIO: Well, you know, I appreciate that question from Vivian, and the answer is that it’s complicated, right. So I think that medication abortion is another critically important tool to allow folks to do, you know, self-managed abortion. It expands the number of options that people have. But we also need to make sure that access is only as good as access to other services, right? If you’re talking about immigrant populations or other populations that may historically already have limited access to routine health care, medication abortion may not be a panacea because, number one, they may not even be aware that it’s available. And number two, they may have limited access as they have limited access to other instances. Three is it’s not going to be the only choice. There are many people who actually will want to have surgical abortion. And we need to make sure that eliminating surgical abortion does take off options off the table for people for whom medication abortion may not be the answer. And we can’t take our eyes off the ball because the same legislators who are trying to render access to surgical abortion all but impossible are busy trying to change state pharmacy laws to make it much more difficult to access medication abortion. So I think it’s an opportunity, but it’s not a silver—it’s not a magic bullet.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yeah. Well, and I think that just goes back to what you have been talking so eloquently about: a holistic access to care and dignity. So we have one more question. Time for one more from Elizabeth, who wants to to hear you talk about the potential impact of extradition laws that seek to criminalize medical professionals like you, and abortion seekers who leave their states to provide or to get access to care.

DR. HERMINIA PALACIO: Well, you know, I’m not going to speak to the legal aspects of the laws, but I can certainly speak to being a clinician and being a clinician in an environment where some of the things that we were recommending could have risk. So number one is, I would say that there are physicians who have been at the forefront of social justice movements. In fact, you know, if you think about some of the history of public health internationally, really it has, many have been led by physicians who understood that the social determinants of health, the conditions in which people live, are what allow people to be healthy, what allow communities to be healthy or not. So I think that there will be physicians who are in the fight, but the legal risks are real. And I think that the consequences aren’t just that somebody might choose to relocate to another state if they’re a practicing OB/GYN, for example, who performs abortion. I think we’re going to see downstream consequences that some of the writers of this legislation did not anticipate, because I think some of the writers of this legislation will not be crying if abortion providers leave the state. I’m not sure that they understand that there are some other universities in their states may risk accreditation if they can’t sort of provide the full spectrum of training, that there are medical students and residents who may be making choices about where to practice, even if they’re not going to be abortion providers. They may be making principled choices about what states they’re going to move into or not, because either ideologically or because they themselves don’t want to live in a state that has restricted access. So I think that we may be seeing long-term consequences in terms of a real shift in where nurses, physicians, pharmacists and a host of medical providers aren’t. And I’m not sure that some of the hasty passing of these criminalization laws really foresaw what I think is going to be potentially coming down the pike.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Such a powerful way of also thinking about what it means for the law in the long game, the long-term. I just want to thank you so much for making the time for a conversation like this. It’s been fantastic to talk with you. And I also want to thank everyone who tuned in to listen to the conversation. And just to remind you, there will be future conversations coming up with social justice leaders from South Africa and Mexico and the U.S., and you can stay tuned for more information about how to tune in to them. But most especially, Herminia, to you, thank you so, so much.

Accessibility Statement