‘I imagine a world in which we’re all thriving’

I imagine a world in which we’re all thriving, we all have similar opportunities for a good life, and nature itself is also thriving. 

I’ve been teased for having big, lofty ideas and engaging in world building, but my approach is to conceive of a better world while being very specific about the steps to get there. 

As a kid, I remember looking at the National Geographic from December of 1988. The cover was a hologram. There was a glass orb, which was Earth, and when you tilted the cover, shards of glass appeared on the surface. I remember thinking, “What’s going on?” I was quite young, and so making sense of that was difficult because it was scary. But that fear was also a reflection of how deeply I cared about the future of our communities and our planet. 

Growing up as an immigrant in New York City, I saw the impacts of inequalities at all scales. As much as I could get lost in a National Geographic issue, I also took the subway and multiple buses and had this crazy commute through the bowels of the city, and could see the different experiences people had in parts of the various boroughs as well as Manhattan’s Upper East Side by comparison. I noticed how varied environments were shaping how people lived their lives. 

I remember passionate conversations with friends who were like, “We don’t have time to care about the environment.” They’d say, “We’ve got jobs,” obviously – but also, “My cousin has asthma and my sibling is struggling at school.” At the same time, in the dominant environmental movement, the connections between one’s environment – often compromised or seriously degraded – and public health and personal well-being were not part of the conversation. Making those linkages visible to communities, governments, health practitioners, and advocacy groups alike struck me as critically important.

A good portion of my early scholarly career focused on loss of territory and loss of habitability of small island nations. It seemed like this far-off sci-fi scenario in which you imagine people becoming potentially stateless because they’ve lost their home country. In the interim, there are a number of failures that can happen, like loss of full access to your exclusive economic zones. And as the tightening of your physical land increases, the cultural and economic assaults are significant. 

During the Biden administration, I was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans, Fisheries, and Polar Affairs, and it became clear that even those seemingly improbable or far-off scenarios were relevant in the near term. I spoke with diplomats and representatives of small island nations who were already contemplating and preparing for those potential futures. While at the State Department, my team and I were able to provide a new interpretation of international law that would allow for small island countries and coastal states generally to maintain the full extent of their exclusive economic zones. 

It sounds very technical, not particularly romantic, but it led to other articulations of continuing statehood, irrespective of climate impacts. That, to me, proved the importance of rethinking international law and its boundaries for the circumstances of our time. It also proved to me that lofty ideas can lead to specific interventions that can benefit some of the most vulnerable.

There will be many people on the move within our country, across borders, and within other countries in connection with climate change. The human rights concerns this raises are significant, as are the logistical challenges of resettling people or allowing for their current places to remain habitable. 

All of these things mean there’s a ton that we need to figure out, which is one of the things I’m excited to do in the next phase of my research. I would like to continue to have my law and policy expertise inform what that future looks like, especially because I am always the most concerned about those who are on the front lines of climate and inequity. Ultimately, though, those front lines are dynamic and shifting, and they are moving toward populations that would consider themselves “safe” today. My work has always been about all of us thriving by focusing on those who are often experiencing the impacts of climate change first and worst.

– As told to Josie Garthwaite

Related: Maxine Burkett, Professor of Environmental Social Sciences