Greetings!
What does it mean to use one’s voice? Lately this question has been on the tip of my tongue. The Latin root of the word voice – voc – is embedded in so many English words, from provoke to advocate, from vocabulary to vociferous.
I wonder: how do I use my voice in my work as I seek to realign business and nature? How can I provoke and advocate, choosing the right vocabulary without being too vociferous? Or maybe: how can I make sure I’m vociferous enough?
Provocation
I was thinking about the potential of voice when I picked up my vociferous vocab pen the other day. I published a blog post about what is preventing us from addressing the ecological crisis we have created. I wrote it for the community of practice (of which I am part) that communicates to investors through environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. Using provocative (and unfortunate) wording which I believe is (unfortunately) accurate, the post “ESG Data is Like Less Wife Beating” illustrates how some of our celebrated solutions are in fact problems, and what we can do about it.
I was worried that I would get an earful in response. And indeed, never before have I had so much feedback about a blog post – it’s usually pretty quiet around here! Yet almost without exception, comments on Twitter, LinkedIn, the blog itself and direct messages were encouraging. In many cases people thanked me for saying something they had wanted to say but didn’t feel comfortable voicing. There was some pushback, though as one supportive tweeter noted, “no one loves the messenger who brought bad news”.
Invoking Collective Knowledge
Let me back up a step …
I was in Brazil for most of the month of June. I was invited to speak at a conference and I added on extra time to meet with people working in emergent businesses with regenerative characteristics, and with activists working in places where I wouldn’t normally have time to linger. This extra time allowed for this linger, as well as a personal side trip which of course turned out to be connected to everything else (more on that in a second).
The conference was in São Paulo – Conexão Carbono Zero (Zero Carbon Connection) – and served as a showcase for emergent climate solutions from across Latin America. My messages as a speaker were pretty simple:
everything is connected;
climate solutions will be diverse;
the situation is more grave than most businesses have been allowing for;
yet we have everything we need to go forward.
This all probably sounds familiar to you as I tend to repeat myself.
I was encouraged by the depth of the dialogue during the two-day event. There was broad familiarity with elements of the Deep Adaptation agenda among the audience. I have found it harder to get traction on this in the northern hemisphere (though I sense that’s changing, fast). This audience, comprised of business people from across Latin America as well as a trade delegation from Canada, was well versed in the seriousness of what lies ahead and was already rolling up its collective sleeves to get to work. Yet in spite of the challenge, it was an optimistic, solutions-focused two days.
One of the coordinators of the conference, Juliana Lopes of Pulsar, hosts a podcast and I enjoyed being a guest on an episode recorded during the event. We had a rich conversation about business models in the regenerative economy of the future (in Portuguese, which may sound impressive unless you speak it and then you will hear that I was really tongue-tied for that one! Ah well…) We discussed how, if the future economy is truly regenerative, some things that pass for leadership today will be simply unacceptable tomorrow. For example, a business that optimizes one species over all others to create a single-use product that goes into landfill or sewage – as is the case with tree plantations producing pulp for toilet paper today – will be seen as undermining biodiversity while missing many valuable opportunities from healthy forests and thriving waterways. I am implicated in the things I am critiquing as I have worked on a number of projects within the pulp and paper industry. Yet I feel increasingly inclined to voice both what’s needed and what’s possible.
Memories Given New Voice
I’ve been back to Brazil a few times for work, but this was the first trip where I had enough time to retrace the steps of the Rotary exchange I did back in 1989 in Brasília. I visited my host family which was an absolute joy. We invented a new Portuguese word that combines “sister” (irmã) and “friend” (amiga), to create irmiga since “exchange sister” really doesn’t do the connections justice. My irmigas’ children are now roughly the ages we were back then, so meeting them was a fun time-warping experience, and my host parents are as welcoming and kind as ever. This visit gave voice to some great stories that had lain dormant for 30 years.
I also had a chance to catch up with another friend from that time, someone I first met on the high school field trip that took 25 teenagers into the Amazon to learn about the forest, and about “the greenhouse effect” as we called climate change back then. I had written about this field trip on the blog a while back – in “The Ministry of Saudade” – but to catch up in real life with someone who was there at the start of this journey was unequivocally delightful.
Forest Advocates
From Brasília I headed south to a small town called Atalanta in the state of Santa Catarina to visit the couple behind Apremavi, an environmental NGO that was founded over 30 years ago, before all my memories of Brasília even existed. And ever since then, while I was busy growing up, Miriam Prochnow and her husband Wigold Schaffer have been raising their voices as activists to protect and restore the biodiverse Atlantic Forest in the states of Santa Catarina and Paraná. They have planted over 8.5 million trees including 200 native species, through a growing organization now staffed by 30 people who tend large greenhouses, manage reforestation events, and create future generations of forests and environmental stewards. While the twittersphere hollers about the state of our troubles, these folks tirelessly make sure the voices of the forests and local communities are heard, barely noticed by social media yet nonetheless heard. (I captured hints of what Apremavi is up to in a story on Instagram, here.)
Convocating Locals
I then travelled back to São Paulo for a few more days of visiting and catching up with friends old and new. One such new friend works at one of a growing number of employee-owned organic grocery stores selling a deep range of goods from small, local suppliers. This is an emergent model that – if we’re lucky – will be the norm in food markets of the future. I volunteered to help out in one of these shops for the day, Instituto Feira Livre, which was founded in late 2017 and sits in the city’s Centro neighbourhood. By “volunteered” I mean that I had to work very hard at eating delicious food at the lunch counter while gabbing with staff and customers, dreaming about how good life could be if more grocery stores functioned this way. I captured some of the story on Instagram, and here are a few more hints of that dreamy future:
The prices on display are the actual prices paid to producers – amounts set by producers themselves. Customers have the option to add a recommended 35% and even with this addition it amounts to the best value for organic produce in the city. These shops also have policies to ensure customers living in poverty can access quality food at low or no cost. To explain to customers how the money is flowing, they post a monthly tally on a large chalk board above the till, as well as on their Instagram feed. This accounting shows the total revenue of the previous month, producer payments, staff wages, facilities costs, taxes, etc.
They also make every effort to ensure that no food is wasted. For example, at Feira Livre there is a tiered approach to reducing food waste. First, staff inform the cooks who prepare fresh meals at the store’s cafe about which foods will soon not be fit for sale, so they can incorporate them into their menus. Second, they sell “less-than-prime” food by the kilo or at no cost to communities in need and the institutions that serve them. Third, boxes of produce that are no longer suitable for people are shipped to the chickens of an inner city animal adoption farm (minus lettuce and citrus which the chickens don’t like). Finally, about 70% of what remains is picked up by produce suppliers in a kind of reverse logistics, to be composted.
I didn’t know at the time that a week later I would write a blog post voicing the importance of meaningful disclosures that help investors fund companies that are contributing to the future we want. But looking back now, I see that this visit set the stage. Enjoying the food, colourful local art and vibrant conversations, I saw how every aspect of this tiny yet growing company is designed to support the suppliers, employees and customers as well as the land from which this is all drawn. The whole enterprise points to the kind of regeneration we need and yet the team has to work against the odds just to survive. This took hold in the back of my mind, on the heels of time with Apremavi’s activists in the forest, and before that in a room full of highly motivated climate innovators at the conference.
Vocal Power
On my last night in town I went with three local women friends to see a musical, Elza, about the Brazilian singer Elza Soares. The first three quarters of the show were gripping – a beautifully executed biography about a woman with a vocal gift and a life full of tragedy and resilience. But the last quarter was where the idea of “voice” rose to new status for me. The cast did a rendition of A Carne which, if you aren’t familiar with, I recommend you take a moment to give it a watch/listen. The singing and dancing in the video are phenomenal and when combined with the powerful message – “the black meat is the cheapest meat in the market” – the provocation is irrevocable.
The songs of Elza lift up the voices of black, poor and marginalized people in her native Brazil. And as the sound moved through me I felt as if these voices were raised on behalf of all oppressed people, including the Indigenous, LGBTQ and other communities challenging norms just by asking for dignity and respect, or being threatened by so-called development – in Brazil, in my home of Canada and in many places on Earth. The artists in Elza came together through hard work and vision to reach an audience that was ready to hear it, and these voices speak for many all around us and inside each of us.
Voice It
Marginalization and oppression cause harm to people, and this is connected to the deep harm we’re doing to the rivers and oceans, forests and soils that keep us all alive. We can see and understand these issues, although it requires an openness to see ourselves as part of the existing systems that need to change. We can talk about this, we can even sing about it! We can make the truth clear and visible, and encourage the exchange of ideas and information. And we can, and must, give voice to new and better possibilities in whatever way we have the power to do so.
I went to Brazil, in other words, to give voice to some ideas as a speaker at a conference. But I returned with a whole new understanding of what “voice” means. And I plan to vociferate more than usual. I hope you’ll stay with me, perhaps adding your voice, too.
Yours in connectedness,
Lorraine
