Carol Devine, MSc

What’s the work that you do?

I work mainly on climate change and health for a medical humanitarian organization and am a community scholar at a global health research institute looking particularly at climate adaptation and also planetary health advocacy respectively. Also, my polar work and interest continues to be on plastic pollution, climate policy (also on black carbon) and mapping women of the Arctic and Antarctic to collect and share their little-known or untold stories. I also collaborate with Women of the Arctic and other amazing academics, do-ers and makers.

What keeps you going?

What keeps me going is people and planet – my children, family, friends, colleagues and also strangers and non-human species. We’re in an extremely serious climate crisis cascading with other crises (COVID, biodiversity loss, structural racism & sexism etc.) putting our survival in question and making already vulnerable and made-vulnerable people at more risk. My job inspires me because I get to work with and meet incredible individuals with such diverse experiences and skills around the globe daily. We have work to do, there’s hardship and joy in it too, and there’s no choice. Let’s live life to the maximum, but responsibly and knowing our interconnections, for us and future generations. I so appreciate my job, my colleagues and those also working on these topics of health, climate, community and political solutions. We need new thinking guided by our ancestors’ and also Indigenous wisdom.

What’s your message to the world?

If we have equity in the world, human rights, and we treat the planet better, there’s hope. In Antarctica, moss grows incredibly slowly and glaciers devastatingly retreat like never before. Antarctica is our bellwether, like the Arctic. I keep doing polar work because these extraordinary places regulate the world’s temperatures, we owe them to care about fellow humans and non-human species in peril. We need the ecosystem, the biosphere – it doesn’t need us. We humans have survived other massive crises by action, including for the greater good. We’re made to regenerate and adapt. Let’s do it like never before! Special shout out to the young people working on polar science, art, diplomacy and more.