One of my main goals in my personal learning journey that I boldly aimed for at the start of #CISL10 was to learn from my peers in leadership roles across sustainability nonprofits in Trinidad and Tobago. While in many cases I have learnt through my interactions with them over the last year or so, I have pivoted a bit to centre much of this ambition on learning from my team at The Cropper Foundation.
As I would have described before, the Foundation is a very well-respected nonprofit based in Trinidad and Tobago, founded in 2000 and we work within sustainability…
On the 24th of August, 2020, the non-profit organisation at which I am the C.E.O., turned 20 years old.
Of course, in these COVID times, we were not able to have the types of commemoration we had planned even just a few months ago. However, luckily, we’ve had the chance to do quite a bit of press about the Foundation, its successes, its legacy and so on.
Of course, being a family foundation (the Cropper Foundation), much of the conversation kept going back around to the idea of legacy — what did the founders want when they started this foundation…
Development that is not just and equitable, cannot be sustainable
The richest 1% own 44% of the world’s wealth — in response to this the Occupy movement started in 2011. The top 10% of the world population, by wealth, produces more carbon emissions than the remaining 90% — in 2014 the People’s Climate March started, followed by the global School Strikes for Climate in 2018. In 2014, the Black Lives Matter movement started in reaction to the systemic racism faced by black people in the United States.
These movements, along with so many more, are almost always driven by a reaction to inequality and the unfairness and injustice of the…
Hint: it’s sometimes closer than you think
Oh no, it’s me!
In my last blog for CISL Master's I wrote about a burgeoning existential crisis regarding my work in civil society/nonprofit sector as a well-paid technical professional vs. the traditional notion of volunteer work in this sector.
Turns out this idea of ‘am I a fake’ is one that’s shared by many of my peers working within civil society, especially those of us who might be a bit (just a bit) younger than other persons in leadership positions within the sustainability field. …
International Day for Biological Diversity 2020
The theme of 2020’s International Day for Biological Diversity is ‘Our solutions are in nature.’ Today we are meant to reflect on and re-examine our relationship with nature — especially through the lens of the ongoing pandemic. When we do pause and reflect, the picture is bleak indeed. Globally we have caused almost 30% of all species to go extinct over the last 200 years and our actions will put almost 1 million species at risk of extinction over the next few decades. …
The choices we make today about our environment will define the future we want.
The stories we share as people, define how we see the world. We learn that the hero saves the day and good beats evil (usually). We frame romantic entanglements through Disney movie plots. We roil with teenage angst in parallel with our favourite television dramas. We gain empathy and camaraderie with people in places and time beyond our comprehension, through our favourite books and novels.
As we get older, these motifs and discourses shape the careers we choose and the ideologies to which we ascribe. Oftentimes…
Is bigger always better?
Unfortunately, economics has often been a men’s game, through the same patriarchal structures that still plague many fields of study (and the world let’s face it) today. Is it then any surprise that some evolutionary remnant of our male mind makes us need our bar chart to be bigger than the next guy’s? Do we whip our graphs out at the next G20 or WEF meeting to establish our dominance over the global locker room to show that our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the biggest?
While I am sure there are elements of the male ‘whose obelisk is bigger’…
How COVID-19 misinformation campaigns teach us lessons about communicating sustainability and climate change
If one more person sends me a forwarded message about 5G towers and COVID-19, I’ll move to the woods and live off the grid.
We’ve all been grappling with the flood of misinformation surrounding the pandemic, adding to the constant state of uncertainty that has marked the first quarter of the new decade. It’s become such an entrenched problem that the UN Secretary-General has called it ‘an enemy’ that needs to be overcome if countries are to arrest this pandemic.
From COVID-19 to climate change — there are many more curves that we need to bend
Maybe it’s coincidental, but I started to read Christiana Figueres’ new book, writing with Tom Rivett-Carnac: The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, just as the coronavirus crisis intensified in February. Of course, we would all know her from her leadership and steering of the Paris Agreement, but what aligned perfectly in my consciousness over what I was seeing on the news were her three mindsets for co-creating the world we want: Stubborn optimism; endless abundance; and radical regeneration. …
5 lessons to learn from the global Covid-19 response
I’ve never been a part of anything like this pandemic. I have become aware of an underlying constant buzz of uncertainty and anxiety somewhere in my subconscious that’s been manifesting itself in a whole lot of ways, from my sleep schedule to energy levels.
I’ve also started to get a bit angry, as I’ve seen many people become in fields of study, work or interests like mine. We’re wondering - where these efforts were over the last decade (and more) in response to our existential crisis of climate change.
When this is over and the old and worn-out climate change…
Omar Mohammed
Caribbean, Millennial, C.E.O. of The Cropper Foundation and Sustainability Leadership post-grad at #CISL10. Follow me on twitter @omarmohammed_tt
