[Music]
today in the world we face many
existential threats nuclear warheads
artificial intelligence robots
antimicrobial resistance climate change
and we have no way of predicting
actually how we’re going to face these
challenges some of the solutions lie in
laboratories in offices but answers to
climate change to antimicrobial
resistance these lie in nature and
amongst people over the past four
decades I’ve been studying indigenous
peoples because in the vast array of all
the things that they experience these
are the people’s who confront vast
changes in social and economic aspects
of their lives some survive and do very
well and thrive and some disappear so my
thinking is that if some of these
peoples have got the seeds of resilience
to confront some of the major challenges
that they see in their world what is it
that we can learn from indigenous
peoples that will help us not predict
but maybe understand how we better can
develop the the resilience that we need
to face the challenges of today so let
me first introduce you to Dennis Dennis
Mickelson
he’s an inner it fun Hunter he lives in
Tasya
on the island of Amar celac which is on
the east coast of Greenland he is a
hunter and throughout his life he’s been
brought up to work very very close to
nature what he sees in his world is a
climate that is changing melting
glaciers opening up of sea ways but as
he very nicely puts it five years ago we
didn’t have flies in Greenland and now
we have them and they’re arriving a
month earlier
every year in the village he sees that
the number of hunters has really
decreased rapidly maybe down to a half
and that’s because of the uncertainty of
ice the way in which the dogs can move
around and also the uncertainty in the
seal populations because this is what
they do and what is forcing them across
the whole of this community is to take
stock and to say if we want to survive
and stay where we’re living in a world
that we understand and know then we have
to do something different we open up our
doors to tourists and we really have to
see how we’re going to adapt on the day
that I went out with him he had some
tourists in the boat and he went hunting
seal hunting on his third shot he hit a
seal the tourists in the boat was
shocked it’s really what they came to
see but still they didn’t really like
the reality but what happened next I
think is perhaps the difference between
a Western view of thinking and an
indigenous people because what he did
was he got out of the boat knelt next to
the seal and offered up thanks to the
spirits for the good luck of having hit
a seal before he then brought it onto
the boat to take it home for food the
skin for clothing and the blubber for
lubricants and oil everything to him was
valuable to their families and for their
survival so the real question then is
how our peoples all around the world
confronting climate change and what’s
really coming at us well there are no
surprises we do see that the world is
warming and 2016 was a year of
superlatives it was the hottest record
in terms of overall temperature 1.1
degrees centigrade on average compared
to pre-industrial times some of you may
know that we’re worrying about 2 degrees
and 1.5 degrees we are perilously close
to a world view which is going to change
before our very eyes we had the highest
recorded levels of carbon dioxide
equivalence in the atmosphere
we had the largest amount of sea ice
melting four million square kilometers
we had all around sea level rising 15
millimeters in less than a year and a
half and coral reefs being wiped out we
had heat waves 54 degrees in Kuwait some
of the hottest temperatures ever
recorded on land and we had that
compounded with floods with droughts
which meant that thousands of people
have been on the move and more than that
we now have 18 million people in nine
countries in Africa exposed potentially
to famine and malnutrition it’s not
going to get any different what we see
then is a kind of dissonance a cultural
dissonance between what the real world
is doing and changing and how it’s
actually affecting people and in a sense
what we’re willing to do to change it
and this cultural dissonance is never
more extreme than when we look at the
kind of technologies that we hope will
fix the problem before we have to change
ourselves so when we look out into the
world of let’s say food shortages we can
see that yes we have possibilities to
overcome food sources bringing it into
our cities the ideas of vertical
gardening we have the possibility of
very imaginative energy systems bringing
in and harnessing energy from all
different kinds we have floating islands
and floating cities and floating houses
and we have a kind of urban Fantasia
where everything is possibly controlled
but you know there’s a deeper problem
because at the very root of it we go to
how we choose to live those of you
living in a small country and of which
there are quite some in the world can
naturally congratulate yourselves on
keeping some kind of identity some
community spirit but in many parts of
the world that is disappearing so some
landmark work done by a man called
Michael Marmot tells us rather
worryingly that if you live in isolation
if you live in a flat on your own even
if you have money
access to health care you will not live
as long as perhaps an orderly lady who’s
sitting in a knitting club meeting her
friends every day and actually being
part of a community in fact if we think
about humans we were never designed to
live on our own we were designed to live
in communities and it’s that very heart
of being part of a community that really
tells us where some of the answers lie
as to our future and whether we will
survive the accidents were challenges
ahead of us when I first entered the
Rift Valley you cannot imagine the size
of it it is just a vast enormous
landscape and when you get into it you
recall that this is where humans evolved
now five to ten million years ago when
the temperature changed and it became
much cooler the tropical rainforests
retreated and the woodlands spread and
with that the early hominins got up on
two legs so to speak became bipedal they
had to use less energy and they could
walk much further to get their dinner
and it is the seeds and roots of the
hominin at that time that tell us that
we can be ultimately how innovative and
we can find solutions to a rapidly
changing world if you think about the
Rift Valley some of you may know and
recognize the most iconic of the tribes
the Masai tribe known for their bravery
their jumping competitions but really in
a sense these are the closest to
Paleolithic that you can get they roam
the countryside they’re able to live in
very very extreme conditions and to
thrive so what is it that the mass I
have that makes them feared across
Africa and yet totemic ly iconic of a
future well it is about community and
it’s about the way in which at one level
everybody has their own job to do but
another level they actually work
together now a year ago I entered the
village to watch a ceremony which was to
make
new chief the man in the middle who’s
got the cup is the oldest man in the
village he’s about a hundred and seven
as far as I can estimate 108 maybe but
he’s surrounded by many others of about
the same age and he’d been the chief for
70 years and he was basically fed up
with it he wanted to retire he’d been
doing it for too long in the same job 70
years my goodness you know so he decided
that he was going to get his son his
firstborn son to become the chief
so they a masked the Messiah from all
over from Samburu to in Tanzania people
traveled for days to come it was a huge
ceremony and my part of it is about
dancing and singing and jumping and
having fun much of it is about the
preparation of food and here the men who
always eat separately from the women
during these ceremonies are actually
consuming a very special soup made of
meat and fat and fantastic herbs awesome
blood by the way I’ll come to that in a
moment anyway
the ceremony goes on there’s much milk
being splashed about and for another
time I will tell you what happened but
anyway I found myself betrothed to the
chief sort of thing that might happen on
a Saturday afternoon but anyway
off we go and I became part of the Masai
tribe with a new name by the way in
Assyrian Latura within two months we had
to move because this is a semi-nomadic
tribe so when you mean move you mean
move so you dismantle the houses you
keep the roofs because they’re very
valuable you essentially then burn
everything else and off you go and you
walk across the countryside and you find
another place to live and then you start
putting up houses and you build them in
earring hangs a big circle well life
being what it is and people seeing that
the strong are going to be there to
protect them many many many poor people
come so we went from a small village of
say 80 people to 400 overnight a lot of
house building but in two months we
build a village and we did many things
we called it the village of light a
wagon and we created houses where we
didn’t have internal
fires so no more indoor air pollution we
had clean cookstoves we put in solar
lighting and water one of the most
amazing things you can do is give clean
water to people along with that we
decided we would have all the children
in school no more female circumcision
that was the bride price and
fantastically new livelihoods beekeeping
making honey jewelry making and so on
everybody essentially had a job to do
they were very happy but they’re happy
not because of the material things or
they very much like having clean houses
but they’re happy because they’ve
continued to keep the traditions and
what are these traditions and why do I
think they’re so important for our
future well first of all everybody has a
job to do and in the language it’s
captured when you go to bed at night you
say and coatis did I sleep well and why
do you sleep well because these guys are
going to protect you they’re out there
with poison arrows with spears to keep
the animals away and there are really
animals out there lions hyenas they’re
all out there and in the morning you say
Oh drag us apart did you sleep well did
you survive yes I survived another day
fantastic
so forget the past don’t worry too much
about the future just enjoy the day and
that’s really the key the burdens that
we place upon ourselves in modern
society just melt away there’s also the
big five and I don’t mean the wildlife I
don’t mean the elephants the giraffes
the lions no no there’s a big five in
the Masai it’s community bravery courage
loyalty protection and this is actually
what is at the core of not just survival
but of thriving all of these are
embedded to look after the children
everybody looks after the children
everyone looks out for each other yes
it’s a hierarchical Society but it is
open to individual abilities everybody
knows what they have to do and they get
on with it they can suffer pain and
never cry out but it’s all done as a
communal possibility of how we work
together
we share food when there are shortages
we make sure that nobody is left behind
so this sounds like the paragon of the
sustainable development goals but it is
real it is the everyday life and when it
comes to decision making it is quite an
extraordinary thing
so faced with the most extreme drought
with the cattle dying which is like a
bank account on legs we decided to talk
about the future the future of the whole
of the mass site we talked about well we
can’t afford to have so many cows if all
they’re going to do is die so overnight
everyone went back to their houses they
talked amongst the men amongst the women
and what they came back the next morning
was with five five to five cows five
children two wives not nine wives as it
used to be because then they could
afford to feed everyone then they can
afford to put everybody in school but it
was a communal decision it was a
community decision that spread across
the whole of the Maasai within a day so
for nearly three-quarters of a million
people this is potentially how we’re
going to be working in the future to
survive now can you imagine having that
kind of a conversation in Portugal in
Porto I don’t think so so it’s about
identity it’s about the strength of
identity the strength of community and
really being able to look out on the
world and saying we’re proud of who we
are we know we have to adapt we know we
have to change but actually our
indigenous culture is so much part of
our blood of our streaming life of the
bravery and of the courage that we want
to project that we actually will do
everything that we can to remain on this
world and to actually live a world and
live a life that is fulfilling it’s the
same whether you’re in the Arctic no
matter where you are you find indigenous
peoples who’ve never lost that deep
sense of understanding of nature and who
actually bring it in to their everyday
lives there is no word for I in the
Maher language and I think that’s a very
important understanding there’s the word
we there’s the word us but there is no
word
I thank you a shilling and goodbye
Alistair
[Applause]
[Music]
today in the world we face many
existential threats nuclear warheads
artificial intelligence robots
antimicrobial resistance climate change
and we have no way of predicting
actually how we’re going to face these
challenges some of the solutions lie in
laboratories in offices but answers to
climate change to antimicrobial
resistance these lie in nature and
amongst people over the past four
decades I’ve been studying indigenous
peoples because in the vast array of all
the things that they experience these
are the people’s who confront vast
changes in social and economic aspects
of their lives some survive and do very
well and thrive and some disappear so my
thinking is that if some of these
peoples have got the seeds of resilience
to confront some of the major challenges
that they see in their world what is it
that we can learn from indigenous
peoples that will help us not predict
but maybe understand how we better can
develop the the resilience that we need
to face the challenges of today so let
me first introduce you to Dennis Dennis
Mickelson
he’s an inner it fun Hunter he lives in
Tasya
on the island of Amar celac which is on
the east coast of Greenland he is a
hunter and throughout his life he’s been
brought up to work very very close to
nature what he sees in his world is a
climate that is changing melting
glaciers opening up of sea ways but as
he very nicely puts it five years ago we
didn’t have flies in Greenland and now
we have them and they’re arriving a
month earlier
every year in the village he sees that
the number of hunters has really
decreased rapidly maybe down to a half
and that’s because of the uncertainty of
ice the way in which the dogs can move
around and also the uncertainty in the
seal populations because this is what
they do and what is forcing them across
the whole of this community is to take
stock and to say if we want to survive
and stay where we’re living in a world
that we understand and know then we have
to do something different we open up our
doors to tourists and we really have to
see how we’re going to adapt on the day
that I went out with him he had some
tourists in the boat and he went hunting
seal hunting on his third shot he hit a
seal the tourists in the boat was
shocked it’s really what they came to
see but still they didn’t really like
the reality but what happened next I
think is perhaps the difference between
a Western view of thinking and an
indigenous people because what he did
was he got out of the boat knelt next to
the seal and offered up thanks to the
spirits for the good luck of having hit
a seal before he then brought it onto
the boat to take it home for food the
skin for clothing and the blubber for
lubricants and oil everything to him was
valuable to their families and for their
survival so the real question then is
how our peoples all around the world
confronting climate change and what’s
really coming at us well there are no
surprises we do see that the world is
warming and 2016 was a year of
superlatives it was the hottest record
in terms of overall temperature 1.1
degrees centigrade on average compared
to pre-industrial times some of you may
know that we’re worrying about 2 degrees
and 1.5 degrees we are perilously close
to a world view which is going to change
before our very eyes we had the highest
recorded levels of carbon dioxide
equivalence in the atmosphere
we had the largest amount of sea ice
melting four million square kilometers
we had all around sea level rising 15
millimeters in less than a year and a
half and coral reefs being wiped out we
had heat waves 54 degrees in Kuwait some
of the hottest temperatures ever
recorded on land and we had that
compounded with floods with droughts
which meant that thousands of people
have been on the move and more than that
we now have 18 million people in nine
countries in Africa exposed potentially
to famine and malnutrition it’s not
going to get any different what we see
then is a kind of dissonance a cultural
dissonance between what the real world
is doing and changing and how it’s
actually affecting people and in a sense
what we’re willing to do to change it
and this cultural dissonance is never
more extreme than when we look at the
kind of technologies that we hope will
fix the problem before we have to change
ourselves so when we look out into the
world of let’s say food shortages we can
see that yes we have possibilities to
overcome food sources bringing it into
our cities the ideas of vertical
gardening we have the possibility of
very imaginative energy systems bringing
in and harnessing energy from all
different kinds we have floating islands
and floating cities and floating houses
and we have a kind of urban Fantasia
where everything is possibly controlled
but you know there’s a deeper problem
because at the very root of it we go to
how we choose to live those of you
living in a small country and of which
there are quite some in the world can
naturally congratulate yourselves on
keeping some kind of identity some
community spirit but in many parts of
the world that is disappearing so some
landmark work done by a man called
Michael Marmot tells us rather
worryingly that if you live in isolation
if you live in a flat on your own even
if you have money
access to health care you will not live
as long as perhaps an orderly lady who’s
sitting in a knitting club meeting her
friends every day and actually being
part of a community in fact if we think
about humans we were never designed to
live on our own we were designed to live
in communities and it’s that very heart
of being part of a community that really
tells us where some of the answers lie
as to our future and whether we will
survive the accidents were challenges
ahead of us when I first entered the
Rift Valley you cannot imagine the size
of it it is just a vast enormous
landscape and when you get into it you
recall that this is where humans evolved
now five to ten million years ago when
the temperature changed and it became
much cooler the tropical rainforests
retreated and the woodlands spread and
with that the early hominins got up on
two legs so to speak became bipedal they
had to use less energy and they could
walk much further to get their dinner
and it is the seeds and roots of the
hominin at that time that tell us that
we can be ultimately how innovative and
we can find solutions to a rapidly
changing world if you think about the
Rift Valley some of you may know and
recognize the most iconic of the tribes
the Masai tribe known for their bravery
their jumping competitions but really in
a sense these are the closest to
Paleolithic that you can get they roam
the countryside they’re able to live in
very very extreme conditions and to
thrive so what is it that the mass I
have that makes them feared across
Africa and yet totemic ly iconic of a
future well it is about community and
it’s about the way in which at one level
everybody has their own job to do but
another level they actually work
together now a year ago I entered the
village to watch a ceremony which was to
make
new chief the man in the middle who’s
got the cup is the oldest man in the
village he’s about a hundred and seven
as far as I can estimate 108 maybe but
he’s surrounded by many others of about
the same age and he’d been the chief for
70 years and he was basically fed up
with it he wanted to retire he’d been
doing it for too long in the same job 70
years my goodness you know so he decided
that he was going to get his son his
firstborn son to become the chief
so they a masked the Messiah from all
over from Samburu to in Tanzania people
traveled for days to come it was a huge
ceremony and my part of it is about
dancing and singing and jumping and
having fun much of it is about the
preparation of food and here the men who
always eat separately from the women
during these ceremonies are actually
consuming a very special soup made of
meat and fat and fantastic herbs awesome
blood by the way I’ll come to that in a
moment anyway
the ceremony goes on there’s much milk
being splashed about and for another
time I will tell you what happened but
anyway I found myself betrothed to the
chief sort of thing that might happen on
a Saturday afternoon but anyway
off we go and I became part of the Masai
tribe with a new name by the way in
Assyrian Latura within two months we had
to move because this is a semi-nomadic
tribe so when you mean move you mean
move so you dismantle the houses you
keep the roofs because they’re very
valuable you essentially then burn
everything else and off you go and you
walk across the countryside and you find
another place to live and then you start
putting up houses and you build them in
earring hangs a big circle well life
being what it is and people seeing that
the strong are going to be there to
protect them many many many poor people
come so we went from a small village of
say 80 people to 400 overnight a lot of
house building but in two months we
build a village and we did many things
we called it the village of light a
wagon and we created houses where we
didn’t have internal
fires so no more indoor air pollution we
had clean cookstoves we put in solar
lighting and water one of the most
amazing things you can do is give clean
water to people along with that we
decided we would have all the children
in school no more female circumcision
that was the bride price and
fantastically new livelihoods beekeeping
making honey jewelry making and so on
everybody essentially had a job to do
they were very happy but they’re happy
not because of the material things or
they very much like having clean houses
but they’re happy because they’ve
continued to keep the traditions and
what are these traditions and why do I
think they’re so important for our
future well first of all everybody has a
job to do and in the language it’s
captured when you go to bed at night you
say and coatis did I sleep well and why
do you sleep well because these guys are
going to protect you they’re out there
with poison arrows with spears to keep
the animals away and there are really
animals out there lions hyenas they’re
all out there and in the morning you say
Oh drag us apart did you sleep well did
you survive yes I survived another day
fantastic
so forget the past don’t worry too much
about the future just enjoy the day and
that’s really the key the burdens that
we place upon ourselves in modern
society just melt away there’s also the
big five and I don’t mean the wildlife I
don’t mean the elephants the giraffes
the lions no no there’s a big five in
the Masai it’s community bravery courage
loyalty protection and this is actually
what is at the core of not just survival
but of thriving all of these are
embedded to look after the children
everybody looks after the children
everyone looks out for each other yes
it’s a hierarchical Society but it is
open to individual abilities everybody
knows what they have to do and they get
on with it they can suffer pain and
never cry out but it’s all done as a
communal possibility of how we work
together
we share food when there are shortages
we make sure that nobody is left behind
so this sounds like the paragon of the
sustainable development goals but it is
real it is the everyday life and when it
comes to decision making it is quite an
extraordinary thing
so faced with the most extreme drought
with the cattle dying which is like a
bank account on legs we decided to talk
about the future the future of the whole
of the mass site we talked about well we
can’t afford to have so many cows if all
they’re going to do is die so overnight
everyone went back to their houses they
talked amongst the men amongst the women
and what they came back the next morning
was with five five to five cows five
children two wives not nine wives as it
used to be because then they could
afford to feed everyone then they can
afford to put everybody in school but it
was a communal decision it was a
community decision that spread across
the whole of the Maasai within a day so
for nearly three-quarters of a million
people this is potentially how we’re
going to be working in the future to
survive now can you imagine having that
kind of a conversation in Portugal in
Porto I don’t think so so it’s about
identity it’s about the strength of
identity the strength of community and
really being able to look out on the
world and saying we’re proud of who we
are we know we have to adapt we know we
have to change but actually our
indigenous culture is so much part of
our blood of our streaming life of the
bravery and of the courage that we want
to project that we actually will do
everything that we can to remain on this
world and to actually live a world and
live a life that is fulfilling it’s the
same whether you’re in the Arctic no
matter where you are you find indigenous
peoples who’ve never lost that deep
sense of understanding of nature and who
actually bring it in to their everyday
lives there is no word for I in the
Maher language and I think that’s a very
important understanding there’s the word
we there’s the word us but there is no
word
I thank you a shilling and goodbye
Alistair
[Applause]
[Music]
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