Ernest Gibson wondered if it was a hoax when he was first contacted about joining the Earthshot Prize Council as it came completely out of the blue.
The Council, which includes Prince William, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, Brazilian footballer Dani Alves, naturalist Sir David Attenborough, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Colombian singer Shakira, and Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming, has the task of choosing the final winners of The Earthshot Prize.
That prize is a global environmental award which aims to discover and scale solutions to the world’s biggest environmental challenges around waste, oceans, air pollution, nature and climate. Five prizes will be awarded each year for the next 10 years.
After a series of consultations with the Earthshot Prize, Gibson found himself taking a call with Prince William to discuss climate change. His appointment to the Council, alongside young German climate activist Luisa Neubauer, was announced this month.
Given the diversity and experience of his fellow Council members, Gibson says he hopes to bring a level of equity to the process.
“When we’re making decisions about how to award solutions, it needs to be done in a way that is mindful of the fact that some countries have a population of 10,000 people and some countries have a population of 1 billion, and to ensure that there is a level of equity when we’re awarding prizes, that it’s not just about the sheer number of people that can benefit from something but also, the impact itself.”
As with all his work in climate advocacy, Gibson is clear he will not be co-opted into playing the role of climate victim.
“Everybody that sits in the Pacific knows this, we have constantly become like the human polar bears of the climate crisis; you know, ‘their homes are being washed away, their lives and their cultures are being washed away,’ and we’re painted as these helpless victims. And I vehemently detest that notion,” he says.
“I do not want to join something that gives currency to the idea of a notion that people that are at the frontlines are immediately victims and only victims.”
“I always think about that, how actually a lot of the climate movement has been paved by Pacific Islanders, and a lot of the changes that we’ve seen, from COP21, but even before that, have been as a direct result of Pacific Island communities working with other so-called small island states, to actually leverage off of our collective power that we have, and really change the way in which climate diplomacy works, the way climate decisions are made.”
Gibson is also a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. He says in all his work, he tries to make it as clear as possible from the beginning that he is talking about his own experience, “but I cannot provide you with a representative position…for an entire region that’s so diverse, that literally is the largest geographical space in the world. There’s no way that one individual is able to do that. But I think the importance of having young Pacific Islanders in the spaces is that we’re able to flag that and say, hang on, there is so much more to this picture than having one person speak on a panel or having one person make a decision on a prize council or having one person provide advice on the climate strategy to the Secretary General, there’s so much more to this picture. And the only way to do that is through genuine community engagement mechanisms that are circular.”
For Gibson, this is community engagement that not only hears from individuals and communities, but also communicates back to them, and actively connects them to decisions and actions that take place.
As a member of the UN Secretary-General’s advisory group since last July alongside six other young people from around the world, Gibson says it is the relationships he has developed with them that he is finding most valuable, “I have a great network of people that I can ring up and seek support from.”
However he says finding ways they can meaningfully engage and contribute to climate policy is still a work in progress. “For us, that’s been a little bit of a struggle, finding ways of making the engagement that we have with the Secretary-General as meaningful as possible.”
“We do engage with his Climate Action Team, as well as the Office of the Special Envoy on youth…and they’ve been great in finding us connections across some of the more technical agencies.”
