Beyond Fear: Why Hope Is a Strategic Imperative
“Hope is about taking action in spite of it all. It’s about saying: I will do my bit. And when we join together, those bits become a movement.”
Trailblazer and indomitable optimist Jane Goodall spoke at NY Climate Week mere days before her passing. Her message of hope permeated Climate Week at a time when it couldn’t be needed more. The Peace Department felt this yearning during our fourth Climate and Conflict Convening held at Foundation House. Though panelists and attendees alike confronted harsh and unavoidable realities about the state of sustainability at the federal level, we also explored innovative pathways of promise. Openings ripe for action and collaboration, where talents and networks could be synergistically leveraged to continue to move the needle during these challenging times. We ended the day feeling that, indeed, our collective “bits” could reinvigorate this movement committed to a better and safer world where all people and our shared planet can thrive.
“We don’t want to be stagnant, we want to be challenged”
“We don’t want to be stagnant, we want to be challenged,” one panelist proclaimed, pushing all in the room to reframe what’s going on at the federal level as an opportunity. Coming from a leader of a national coalition of frontline groups directly targeted by growing nationalism and climate rollbacks, this eagerness to adapt, stretch, and expand in the face of what many have experienced as crushing loss is incredibly poignant and inspiring. If our country’s most underserved and underestimated are finding energy in the challenge, then so must we all.
What Climate and Conflict exposed this year is real, concrete ways organizations, thought leaders, coalitions, philanthropists, and funders are pushing back against herculean hurdles to hold the line and continue the good fight, both for our planet and our fundamental values.
The strategies we need are already here and being implemented, to both preserve progress and bolster communities – helping them to feel more safe, supported, and heard. Not in several years when the proverbial pendulum swings, but NOW.
Through their strategic litigation advocacy, amazing organizations like Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center are using the law in innovative and proactive ways, finding pockets of opportunity to maintain the rule of law, the lifeblood of our democracy, and claw back what has been unjustly taken.
And, people are organizing and coming together in creative and robust ways. Subnational and broad coalitions like America Is All In and Elected Officials to Protect America are gap-filling and replacing the federal government on the global stage, signaling to both Americans and the rest of the world that we will not be deterred. They have paved the way for a strategic shift to subnational activism and coordination, showing that we can band together in new ways to preserve our climate future and safety.
Complementing these efforts to elevate and link up elected officials on the subnational level are hyperlocal efforts, represented at Climate and Conflict by Sustainable CT and the Climate Justice Alliance. These organizations, committed to equity and resilience, translate climate justice into things that matter to everyday people – protecting their homes, their dignity, their hope. Recognizing that sometimes incremental progress or local gestures hold the promise of systemic shifts.
Communication experts and cultural strategists from Project Drawdown and the Center for Cultural Power pushed us to think about and talk about the climate movement in new, audacious, and resonant ways. Using culture and storytelling to catalyze attitudinal shifts in how we look at planetary preservation and each other. To make us all feel more connected, more safe, more hopeful in a time of seismic shifts.
Climate and Conflict this year called upon everyone in the room to meet the moment in the way our incredible panelists and presenters are doing every day:
To refocus attention on subnational and place-based initiatives resilient to federal shocks
To give generously to fill critical gaps, dip into endowments, and have wiggle room with returns in order to unlock new possibilities
To deploy radical imagination to visualize the future we all want
To unite around shared narratives that will invite more people, more sectors into the fold and create the groundswell necessary to counter the weaponization of fear and enable people to find safety and community in each other
Hope is the only thing stronger than fear. Climate and Conflict this year breathed life into this, leaving participants energized for all that we can continue to do together. It challenged everyone in the room to be multipliers of messages, taking what they’ve learned and felt back to their respective networks and continuing to recalibrate how they approach, advance, resource, and talk about climate action to meet the challenges (and opportunities) of today.
