When Sree Kancherla arrived in a remote village in India, she met an 83-year-old weaver. He had been making fabric for 70 cents a day since he was 12. 

In the supply chain, he was a faceless worker whose fabric would pass through multiple hands before being sold as a t-shirt by H&M. That weaver was so far removed from the end product that his voice and story were completely lost.   

It was then Kancherla realized: “I want to be a voice for the voiceless.”

Kancherla — the Global Director of Sustainability at Kearney, a top management consulting firm— has been interested in human rights ever since she was in high school. Starting her career working in law and policy for the UN, Kancherla eventually decided that she wanted to work face to face with the issues she was trying to solve: poverty and the lack of inclusivity in the workplace for women in developing countries.

While trying to plan that career transition, Kancherla read an article about social entrepreneurship — a business model that uses entrepreneurship to create positive social change — and she eventually found an organization not only specializing in this kind of social change but one that would allow her to get the hands-on experience she wanted. 

Living in India and then Sub-Saharan Africa, she worked directly with the men and especially the women creating the clothing we wear. It was there she understood that “at the end of the day, everybody wants to be able to feed themselves and educate their children”  

Utilizing her knack for networking, Kancherla got into consulting to bridge the gap between entrepreneurs and innovators and the corporations and governments looking for that innovation and improvement. She enjoyed the process of identifying problems and using her network and prior experience to solve them. 

In one instance, she was working with a beer company. They sourced the majority of their wheat from Ethiopia and were concerned about labor issues happening on the farms.

“Oh, I have been to your wheat. I’ve been to your farm,” Kancerla told them. “I know exactly what’s happening.”  

While Kancherla has worked in a variety of fields, she’s particularly interested in the fashion industry. “Where” she says, “we have a great influence on creating impact.”

From raw material to finished goods, there are multiple stages that materials go through to get to store shelves, each with their own set of potential human rights issues.  

When I asked to give specifics, Kancherla asked me what I liked to wear.

I responded with “skirts”. 

“So let’s say you’re buying a really cool skirt,” Kancherla said. “Who is the supplier that’s providing the buttons on it, or the zippers on it, or even the cloth for it?”  

Kancherla explained that it’s not human rights abuses in the main factories that put together the products that are the biggest problem. The problem is where those factories source their materials from and, even further down the supply chain, in the procurement of raw materials.

When thinking of human rights abuses, you might imagine a sweatshop where laborers are overworked and underpaid. While modern slave labor and child labor are both major problems in the fashion industry, so too are women’s rights in the creation of materials.

The issues women face in developing countries are driven by a multitude of intersecting factors. Primarily though, women get little consideration in the workplace. When Kancherla was in India, she noted the lack of toilets in the farms. While the male workers could relieve themselves anywhere, the female workers could not, being miles away from the nearest restroom. There are also no unions, so there are no protections if they need to take a day off to take care of their children or because of a bad menstrual day. 

To assess these conditions and make improvements in their supply chains, companies have begun to adopt a social responsibility framework called “ESG”—environmental, social, and governance. Each sector has its own metrics.  

The framework of ESG is used by companies to hit certain “KPIs” — key performance indicators. These are thresholds that they have to achieve to follow industry standards.

Kancherla explains that while other firms specialize in gathering data and assessing whether companies are hitting their ESG goals, her job is to review their goals and advise them on how to get there. While we might think of sustainability as just environmental, Kancherla specializes in “big S” Sustainability, which is defined by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as including both environmental sustainability and social impact.  

However, advising companies comes with challenges. When I asked if there are specific numerical goals companies are trying to hit, Kancherla explained it is different from assessing greenhouse gas emissions. For the fight for human rights, the hardest part is measuring progress.

“No one wants to admit to what they’re doing,” Kancherla told me. That makes numerical goals hard to establish. “It’s more qualitative and how you can change your policies and engage with the people within your supply chain.” 

Given these challenges, I asked Kancherla if there was a particular project she was proud of. After thinking for a minute about it, Kancherla smiled. 

“So a large part of what I focus on is human rights,” she says.  “[If] we are able to build business models that give individuals that skill set that they need, that it’s what really empowers them, but also gives them the wages that they can control. This is really where true change happens.” 

She went on to talk about a project in which she helped a company develop a model where the women workers were shareholders in the companies they were working for. These women collaborate directly with the company’s designers, get paid a fair wage, and can stay in their home villages.  

“That kind of a model is what eliminates human rights [abuses] and [is] innovative.” Kancherla explained. This is because it involves the women as an active part of the organization, as well as refine their skills, and overall empowering them.  

Throughout her work with companies and suppliers, Kancherla has also learned the importance of consumers’ voices in making a difference. 

“I work with these companies every single day,” Kancherla said, “And the very first question they ask me is, well, does Gen Z care? Like, do the consumers care?” 

She expressed the importances of transparency in the fashion industry. While companies love to greenwash, consumers don’t have to buy from them. There are websites like Good On You, which ranks fashion brands based on sustainability. Shopping second hand and thrifting are alternatives too.  

“Choke them where it hurts,” she says. “which is the financials” 

All of this is important because the end of the day, “We want to feel good about what we wear because of the style,” Kancherla notes, “but we also want to feel good [because of] what it means to other people that have been part of [the process] and the environment.”

Science is a collaborative effort, multitudes of diverse people and organizations spanning thousands of years have led to our understanding of the world today. To address climate change, one of the biggest challenges of our generation, collaboration is critical now more than ever. Companies and environmentalists have turned towards nature to soak up greenhouse gasses by fostering ecosystems that effectively store carbon. In the scramble to find which ecosystems can capture the most carbon, a small number of scientists have devoted themselves to seagrasses. 

The Caribbean Carbon Accounting in Seagrass project (CariCAS) is an ongoing research effort funded by the Nature Conservancy. The CariCAS project’s biggest impact has been creating a layperson guide for studying carbon in seagrass. This allows Caribbean researchers to be consistent across all study sites, that way samples can be analyzed and compared accurately throughout the project. CariCAS was begun by Dr. Jim Fourqurean in 2018 and now spans 21 countries and 65 seagrass meadows in the Caribbean.

Jim didn’t always know that a biology major would take him into the underwater realm. But a chance encounter in an introductory oceanography course changed his life. His professor was offering a seagrass research internship.  The catch was that the intern had to know how to drive a boat and had the summer free. “I threw my hand up from the front of the class because I was that kind of student.” Fourqurean laughed. “I lied on both of the qualifications. I already had 2 summer jobs lined up, and I’d never driven a boat in my life.” Jim got the job.

That was in 1982. After this initial experience Fourqurean earned a PhD from the University of Virginia in 1992. Now, 32 years later, Dr. Fourqurean is the principal investigator for CariCAS and has been a professor and researcher at Florida International University in Miami since 1993. He’s stuck with studying seagrass for so long because of their importance as a model ecosystem. Because seagrasses grow under water, there are limits to the types of organisms that can live in them, which makes studying them less complicated.

  Fourqurean sees CariCAS as a way to raise awareness about the importance of seagrass. In addition to storing even more carbon than forests, seagrasses deliver many other vital ecosystem services. Seagrasses filter water, serve as nurseries for fish, and stabilize coastlines. And those services add up to real dollars. It’s estimated that it would take $19,000 per year to artificially perform the same services that a hectare, approximately the size of a baseball field, of seagrass does.

Ecological economics, which is an important part of CariCAS, puts a dollar value on these services. Dr. Forqurean explains “the goal of the field is to try to make people understand that healthy ecosystems are huge contributors to the economic systems of the world”. Seagrass is considered the third most valuable ecosystem in the world, while also being one of the most threatened. 

Humans harm seagrasses in many ways that degrade their ecological and therefore economic value. Resorts often “beautify” beaches by removing seagrasses. Boats sometimes  rip out swaths of seagrass when they anchor. A study published by Dr. Fourqurean and Bermudian researchers, surveying Bermuda’s seagrass beds, showed that all the studied sites declined from 2007 to 2017. The culprit, oddly enough, is sea turtle grazing!  As shark populations have declined, reducing predation, sea turtles have thrived. So countries, like Bermuda, have seen increased grazing leading to seagrass declines.

However, resorts, boats, and sea turtles aren’t the biggest threat that seagrasses face. Dr. Fourqurean believes that water pollution is the real killer. Everything from excess nutrients that drive algal blooms to increased silt and sand being introduced due to dredging can harm seagrasses. He explained “It’s usually not even in the water…everything in the Mississippi River catchment area flows into the Gulf of Mexico”. Dr. Fourqurean explains that the fight to protect seagrasses must go far beyond coastal waters. Ultimately, it means cleaning up the whole of the Mississippi watershed, which measures four times the size of Texas.

However, many countries with major seagrass meadows, like the Bahamas and the Philippines, don’t have the resources to protect these ecosystems against increasingly international pressures like pollution and climate change.

By focusing on the carbon storage potential of seagrass, the CariCAS team is drawing global attention to these critical local ecosystems. This can raise awareness and incentivize companies and governments to view seagrass protection and restoration as a way to earn carbon credits. These credits can then be sold on global carbon markets to help companies offset their emissions.  

The CariCAS project is also mobilizing passionate community members and researchers in Caribbean countries. There’s a growing concern about scientists from richer countries practicing “parachute science,” when foreign researchers gather their data, pack their bags, and leave without looking back. Some countries are combating this. The Bahamas have placed a moratorium on international researchers collecting samples. 

The CariCas project is different. It promises that everyone involved in the project will be credited for the work. Dr. Fourqurean predicts that “we’re looking at 50 or 60 authors on this 1st paper”.

CariCas aims to fight parachute science by supporting local community research involvement and giving that data back to communities to make policy and conservation decisions. An example of this support Dr. Fourqurean shared is his experience working with Haitians who were dedicated to the project. The first round of sampling in Haiti ended up being unusable because there was a language barrier — the sampling procedure was only written in English and Spanish, not Creole. Dr. Fourqurean explained “They immediately said: well give us another chance”. The second time was the charm. Faultless samples were sent from Haiti in the middle of a war within the country. 

Fourqurean sees this as an example of how “People are driven by their love for these ecosystems, and they’re looking for ways to understand them better and to reach out”

Overall, the CariCAS project isn’t just accounting for the carbon in seagrass ecosystems. It’s bridging gaps in research, connecting countries with a common goal, and empowering communities to bring awareness to their valuable resources. There is no science without people and there are no people without nature.

Americans may think the only significant place in the Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota is Mount Rushmore, where former U.S. presidents’ faces are carved into the mountainside. Americans may also think of the Crazy Horse memorial monument in the Black Hills National Forest, dedicated to an iconic Lakota warrior who stood up against the white settler encroachment of Native American territory. But for the Lakota themselves, the Black Hills are more than its monuments and its stunning landscape: It is their sacred place, their creation story.

For Quanah Yellow Cloud, a member of the Oglala Sioux Nation,  the Black Hills are both home  his sacred place. He is also a researcher and activist whose current focus is sacred places. Most recently- he released an article describing how indigenous knowledge has been historically marginalized in places like the Black Hills. 

Quanah was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation South Dakota. Pine Ridge is characterized by its prairie, Badlands and the Black Hills. The reservation measures 2.1 million acres, making it larger than both the state of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Right now, Quanah lives in Albany, New York, where he is a graduate student at the University of New England, pursuing his master’s in social work. 

A bright green flash of color took over my screen as he joined our virtual meeting.  Quanah used a picture of the Black Hills as his zoom background, as even in his everyday life, he is tied back to his homeland of spruce, pine, and aspen dispersed across a lush hilly green landscape. He has a calm aura, featuring a small smile.

His passion directly ties into his Lakota background and native culture. Quanah explained,  “as somebody who grew up, who was born and raised on the reservation, the way that we see, the world, ways of knowing, [and the] ways of viewing things are that everything is connected.”

Quanah fell into his love for  the intersection of planetary systems in environmental health by accident. Before entering college as an undergrad, he thought he’d go into climate change or environmental work. However, two things changed his academic path.

First, growing up, Quanah watched his mother spend her career in the environmental health field, inadvertently growing his attachment to the environment. Second, in his academic discovery, prior to college, he went on a vast search to find what truly captivated him. By looking for the research published around environmental health, he realized the conventional understanding of environmental health, such as research on how the thick smoke from Canadian wildfires last year would impact the human body, was not what excited him. At the time, his mother’s career and the current research available focused more on biomedical science, which he realized was the inverse of his true passion. Quanah’s interest aligned more with how humans were affecting the environment, rather than how the environment is impacting humans.

Like other indigenous places, the Black Hills are both sacred places and environmentally significant to Indigenous nations around the world. For example, Many sacred places are located in large tourist attractions and, needless to say, Tourists do not value the Black Hills through the same underlying cultural context and belief systems like the Lakota: They may just see the Black Hills as just a tourist photo op, or just a good hiking area with stunning views.  Quanah uses his knowledge of sacred places to bridge that gap between the non-Native visitors and Indigenous people’s understanding of the environment and sacred places .

With a light chuckle and infectious smile, his eyes lit up when asked to describe an Indigenous sacred place in his own words.

Quanah thinks about sacred places in three ways:—As he explains, “how I see it, versus how my family sees it, versus how the tribe sees it.” These levels, which in his academic research he names “micro, meso, and macro” model the multiple different levels of perspectives and interpretations of the world. This model is then applied to indigenous spiritual and relational understandings of the world.  

Sacred places vary from tribal nation to tribal nation, band to band, and village to village. Quanah explained that it even varies person to person, as indigenous people have their own individual ideas of what is sacred and is not sacred.

For Quanah, “an indigenous sacred place for me would be a place that I designate personally as a place where that is holy to myself, a place where I can go to pray, a place where I can go to a practice ceremony by myself.” It can be anywhere in his homeland, it could even be in New York state, as long as he can find solitude in it. 

However, for the Oglala Sioux Nation, there are designated sacred places, such as the Black Hills and the Pipestone Quarries in southeastern South Dakota, that are essential to the cultural practices that endure.  They use red stone from the Pipestone Quarries to make pipes for prayer and ceremony. Quanah’s family has their own specific locations designated as a sacred place to them personally. One of these is “Holy Mountain”—not an official name of the mountain, but one that Quanah’s maternal side of the family declared for themselves. He said, if you were to travel to the reservation and ask where Holy Mountain is,  no one except Quanah’s family would know what you are talking about.

Tourism is booming in the Black Hills. In 2023, tourists spent $1.9 billion in the Black Hills, another $1.73 billion on gaming in Deadwood Casinos in South Dakota , and helped support 20,840 tourism jobs. A growing part of this tourism market is Indigenous-led. Quanah’s eyes brightened when he defined Indigenous-led  tourism in his own words: “I would define it as Indigenous peoples being directly involved in tourism, whether that’s by allowing them to manage a site, making culture the focus of destinations and opportunities for them as well to showcase their culture, nature, traditions, ceremonies, and really highlighting their achievements and ongoing work that’s going on there that Indigenous people are actively doing.”  

The annual Black Hills Pow Wow is a great example. The annual pow wow lasts for four days in the month of October. Visitors from all over the United States and Lakota tribes, and other Native American tribes participate. It keeps their culture alive. The Black Hills Pow Wow’s  President, board, and main staff are from Native American tribes.

This is the antithesis of another well-known Pow Wow Native American gathering, called the Gathering of Nations in Arizona. The Gathering of Nations is both a Pow Wow and expo, with horse parades, the Indian Traders Market, and the Miss Indian World competition as its main events. It is run and led by a non indigenous man, Derek Matthews. Quanah sighed, shifting his tone of voice to a more serious tone when talking about the controversial Gathering of Nations. He explained that Matthews collects all the money from the entrance fees, even charging the indigenous people to set up booths to sell their art, and charging them for the profits they make from that too. To Quanah “it seems to me outside tour operators [are] benefiting rather than the actual people.”

Beyond large scale Pow Wows, even on the Pine Ridge Reservation there are issues with visitors. If you go walking in the Black Hills, you will likely see ribbons tied to the trees, or unique rock formations. These are for ritual prayers. Quanah pushes up his glasses as he explains that tourists often take or disturb these rock formations and prayer ties, which the Lakota would never do, as they understand the cultural significance. 

 When Quanah was younger, he frequently attended council meetings and was an activist. One instance of his activism is at Standing Rock in 2016.  He said with a light laugh recounting his youth “ That was definitely when I had more of that impulsive, fiery spirit within me,” he said with a light laugh, recounting his youth “I was all about going to the riots.” At that time, he reveled in the commotion and the tension as he and many others were fighting the Dakota Access oil pipeline, an underground pipeline that transports crude oil. Tension was thick, and it was apparent that fights could break out, and get ugly, real quick. But the young Quanah reveled in this tension. In retrospect,  he wonders he should have been there at all — it was risky.

Quanah reminds me that the Black Hills for the Oglala Sioux are considered a sacred place but also their creation story. He said to them they view it “to be the heart of where creation started.” 

Despite ongoing struggles to keep sacred places sacred, Quanah believes the work his people and other tribes have accomplished are a form of resiliency among their people.

For someone so busy, Susanne Rasmussen’s office is surprisingly tranquil. A single lamp casts a soft yellow glow, blending with the natural light streaming through the window. The cozy atmosphere quickly eases my nerves as we start the interview. Sensing my anxiety, Susanne shares a cheering anecdote: her best paper in graduate school, she says with a warm smile, was also an interview-based profile.

“When I’ve been asked to come and talk to students about job prospects,” Suzanne explains, “I always say, ‘Don’t think you can plan it all out because serendipity will arrive’” Her career path is a case in point. Susanne holds a master’s degree in Civil Engineering and Planning from the University of Aalborg in Denmark, as well as another in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating from MIT, she began working for the City of Boston, focusing on environmental issues and land use. Though her expertise was in planning for developing countries, she was always deeply interested in environmental work. Three years later, she transitioned to a nonprofit energy service and efficiency company.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, as climate change was emerging as a significant topic and community activists were pressuring the city to act, the City of Cambridge received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to remove lead paint from affordable housing units. The local government sought someone to design and implement the program, and this pivotal opportunity marked the beginning of Susanne’s focus on sustainability in her role with Cambridge’s government.

“It is interesting…If you look at the energy efficiency work and lead paint removal, they don’t seem to have much in common…[but] actually the processes are the same.” While working at the energy efficiency company, Susanne managed tasks involved in securing new contracts with utility companies every six months, including hiring staff, setting up budgets, figuring out how to generate revenue, and ensuring quality control. These procedures closely mirrored the work she did for the lead paint removal project, highlighting the transferable skills that shaped her career.

After a year and a half working on the project, Susanne was reassigned to Cambridge’s Environmental and Transportation Division. By 2002, she and her colleagues had completed the city’s first Climate Action Plan. Their efforts contributed to the City of Cambridge reducing its energy consumption by over 25% compared to the 2008 baseline by 2016.

Since July of this year, Susanne has served as the Director of Climate Initiatives in the newly restructured Office of Sustainability. She oversees sustainable transportation planning and climate strategy. The office plays a key part in helping the city achieve its energy, greenhouse gas reduction, and sustainability goals—such as transitioning all buildings in Cambridge off fossil fuels within the next 25 years—to help meet the city’s target of carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner. This effort is crucial, as buildings currently account for 80% of Cambridge’s greenhouse gas emissions.

While technology plays a role in achieving these goals, Susanne is more concerned about economic challenges. “Who is going to finance that?” she asks. “You can’t just tell people to rebuild their homes.” She emphasizes that the city must address financial barriers. “How do you actually make this energy transition in a way that doesn’t harm people?”

That is a question she is working to answer. 

Cambridge is taking several pathways toward renewable energy: reducing greenhouse gas emissions in non-residential buildings, implementing the community electricity program, and expanding solar power.

The city mandates that large non-residential buildings significantly reduce emissions by 2035, with the ultimate goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Starting in 2030, businesses will have the option to use carbon credits and cap-and-trade systems within specified limits to meet their emissions targets. This approach could encourage companies to invest in local communities, such as funding the rebuilding of Cambridge’s triple-deckers—residential homes whose owners may lack the resources—instead of retrofitting their own office buildings to achieve net-zero emissions. These investments may offer a more cost-effective way for businesses to meet their goals while simultaneously supporting community-wide improvements. Although this program is still in development, Susanne remains optimistic: “We have five years to figure out how carbon credits are going to work.”

The Cambridge Community Electricity Program leverages the community’s collective purchasing power to negotiate stable electricity rates with the supplier, offering residents an accessible way to contribute to renewable energy goals. Residents are automatically enrolled in the Standard Green plan, which sources 50% of their electricity from renewable energy projects in New England. They can also adjust their plans or opt out entirely based on their financial circumstances and needs. Currently, 66% of low-income residents and 76% of non-low-income residents participate in the aggregation program.

Why do some residents choose to opt out?

“Because of marketing,” Susanne says bitterly. Private electricity suppliers, often using exaggerated or temporary claims, lure customers away by promising greener and cheaper electricity options.

To provide the public with more options and encourage participation in government renewable energy programs, Cambridge has partnered with organizations like Sunwealth and Energysage. Sunwealth targets low- and moderate-income households, offering eligible residents annual electricity savings of 20% or more through community solar programs. EnergySage, available to all residents, provides both rooftop and community solar options with potential savings of up to 22%. These partnerships exemplify Cambridge’s commitment to making renewable energy more inclusive and accessible to a diverse range of residents.

Why solar? Cambridge’s geography limits its onsite renewable energy options. The area lacks sufficient wind for turbines, and installing them would disrupt the densely populated urban environment with constant noise.“There’re great limitations to what you can do with renewable energy in Cambridge. The only thing you can really do is solar,” Susanne explains. 

In order to meet the city’s full energy needs, Cambridge invests in external projects to earn renewable energy certificates. Currently, the city has focused its investments in the Midwest, supporting a solar farm and a wind farm, both of which are still under development.

By leveraging those environmental attributes, the city will be able to get 100% renewable electricity for all municipal operations by 2026. Soon, Susanne’s office, along with the surrounding workspaces bathed in soft, dim light, will be fully powered by renewable energy. Stepping outside, I walk past the modern buildings lining Kendall Square. I can’t help but look forward to seeing these structures running entirely on renewable energy one day. Though challenges remain, I’m optimistic for the bright, sustainable future Susanne is helping to build.

For Jane Marynik, farming was not a childhood dream.  

Attending college in her 30s while juggling  four kids at home, Jane Marynik’s goal was to get a physical therapy degree. It wasn’t until she joined the sustainability club and cared for a rain garden that her interest in farming budded. At the same  time, her youngest son developed a soy allergy, and in her words “soy is in everything!” Her solution? Start  farming.

Currently, Marynik manages a 240-acre organic farm in Minnesota, 20 miles south of Lake Superior. A couple years ago, she started her own bean operation. Marynik joined me for an interview on a rainy day in the midst of a snow storm. After the interview, she’d be headed out to crawl “through a wet field harvesting beets by hand” before the freeze set in. “It’s going to be great” she chuckled, before settling into the couch for our interview. 

As an organic farmer, Marynik is passionate about environmental stewardship. Making sure her operation fits within the existing ecosystem is the first step. That starts with soil management.  Whatever goes into the soil on Marynik’s farm will eventually runoff downstream into Lake Superior. Instead of synthetic fertilizers, Marynik  uses compost for soil microbes, which are microscopic life forms, such as bacteria, that cycle nutrients and purify pollutants. Microbes keep the soil healthy naturally, without altering the environment and changing local ecology like pesticides.

The soil on Marynik’s farm is alive. Bugs and worms and critters are everywhere. On a bigger farm” she argues, “where they overtill and overspray, it’s just dirt. Soil is a living thing, dirt is just dirt.”

Such soil management policies make all the difference in a warming world. Minnesota has a water problem. As climate change makes droughts more frequent and longer lasting, soil quality can make the difference between turning a profit or taking a loss. 

Marynik’s microbe-rich soil retains moisture. During droughts, the soil stays healthy. Conventional farm soil becomes a hard crust during droughts, so when it does rain, the soil is unable to absorb all the water, leaving farmers to watch as their land washes away. Unlike these farms, Marynik’s nutrient -rich soil is able to soak up the influx of water. 

Farmers are taking more and more steps to make sustainable changes, both on their farms and in legislation. Marynik has met “a lot more people that are trying to do some sort of sustainable farming.” Marynik believes farmers can be leaders in addressing climate change. This is why Marynik likes farming. ”It allows you to work on some of these big issues that are affecting everyone,” she says with a smile. “I’d like to think that amounts to something.”

Sustainability looks different depending on who you’re talking to. In the Minnesota area, smaller farm operations, like those of Native Americans or the Hmong, focus on food sovereignty and growing culturally important foods. Native Americans practice seed saving. Hmong groups have huge community gardens where each family can grow their food. “In farming”, Marynik explains, “there are a lot of opportunities to do things to take care of the environment.”

Sustainable soil practices that smaller farmers are utilizing are not just a matter of combining organic farming and commodity crops. For one thing, organic farms and commodity farms can’t be in the same area. Organic farmers grow specialty crops, primarily for consumption. Commodity farmers grow commodity crops like corn and soybeans primarily for processing. Commodity crops are sprayed aggressively with pesticides. As these pesticides are sprayed, overspray can  drift onto neighboring farms. Organic farming does not allow for unchecked pesticide use, so there must be a buffer between farms to avoid this drift. 

But that’s only the start- there’s “also a bit of a cultural issue,” according to Marynik. Farmers who grow commodity crops have huge operations and often look down on organic farmers, whose operations are small because of the more rigorous standards concerning pesticides and harvesting. Commodity farmers tend to be older and stuck in their ways. They aren’t really open to doing things in a new way. While some commodity farmers get their organic seal, “they spend a lot of time trying to prove it makes financial sense to their neighbors.” 

Marynik hopes to one day buy her own land. But land is expensive.  Marynik credits young farmer lobbyists, who advocate for land to be more affordable and for young farmers to get student loan forgiveness, for progress. “Farming is a public service,” says Marynik.  Without us, “people wouldn’t be able to eat.” It’s essential to support farmers as we would any other public servant.”

Having a smaller operation allows Marynik to be more intentional with what happens to her product and meaningfully engage with the community. In addition to local stores and restaurants, Marynik sells her product in a local  REKO ring (Reko is a Finnish word for “fair consumption”)- each week, farmers post what they have to sell, and then consumers can contact them directly and arrange a pick up. For many farmers, this arrangement gives  them agency. Small farmers may have young kids, so sitting at a farmer’s market all weekend isn’t possible. 

However, Marynik is  aware of the disadvantages low-income communities in the area faced when accessing fresh produce. Organic farming is expensive. “I’m growing these small scale beans and I’m charging $7 a pound, which is ridiculous,” she exclaims, “but it’s what it costs.” She also participates in a  farmers market that helps lower income people access fresh, organic food by SNAP benefits. Essentially, if they put $7 towards a pound of beans, they will receive $7 to put towards more groceries. Her goal, she asserts, is to ensure that “locally-grown organic produce isn’t just available to people that can afford it on their own.” 

Proximity gives you power. Marynik was adamant that “given the choice between choosing organic far away or non-organic local, I’d still choose local.” Seeing the food you eat being grown and forming a relationship with the farmer who grows it is the best way to gain transparency. Farmers with local networks are able to make an impact in their communities.

“The globe is overbooked,” said Elizabeth Becker. That is her way of saying that the tourism industry is getting out of hand. In 2023, tourism made up almost 10% of global GDP, which equates to about $9.9 trillion USD. Despite its success as a business industry, tourism drives overcrowding with disruptive and even destructive consequences. For Becker, the key is in raising awareness.

Elizabeth Becker is a seasoned journalist. She started as a war correspondent and later shifted to national security, international economics, and foreign policy. She is also the author of five books, including Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, a book on the beginnings of tourism and its impacts on eight different countries. 

Becker had initially intended to write about tourism as part of her regular job as a journalist, but was faced with a hurdle. “[M]y editors at the time said that tourism is not an industry—it’s what we do, you know, for pleasure.” Rather than give up, Becker decided to take a break from journalism. She was in her 60s, which she said was “the right time,” and got a fellowship at Harvard to start her research. 

When she started, she encountered a second hurdle: information was limited. “When I looked for a book about the basic history of [the] tourism industry, it didn’t exist,” said Becker. That led her to write Overbooked, which was officially published in 2013.

Eleven years have passed since the book’s publication and I was curious to know what she thought of the industry now. “[T]here’s a huge difference in recognition of the power of tourism and the problems of tourism,” she said. “Huge recognition.” 

The main goal she saw countries pursuing was to get as many people as possible. The assumption was that tourists bring in money and benefits. However, the influx of travelers had an impact on housing markets. One of the causes of such problems is Airbnb. The platform is meant to be used by homeowners looking to “host” guests for a fee, and by travelers as a way to find more affordable or unique lodging options. 

You may wonder why this would be a problem for locals. Becker highlighted that Airbnb often do not follow regulations: “They have no guardrails. They do whatever they want.” She spoke about how apartment buildings were also being rented out. This is particularly bad in places such as New York where the housing market is expensive and limited in availability. With more homeowners opting for short-term rentals, rents on long-term accommodations go up, placing a burden on residents looking for long-term housing.

I asked Becker if she had any suggestions on how to travel more sustainably and avoid such issues. She immediately said, “Oh, I’m not, that’s not my shtick.” Becker explained that she is more interested in the local perspective and helping her audience gain awareness of how the tourism industry affects their country of residence. 

One way is to bring tourism into more conversations. For a recent talk, Becker spoke about legislative action that is being taken to minimize the expansion of Airbnb. She pointed to an island community off the coast of Savannah where laws were passed to restrict Airbnbs to a small part of the island. By having more of these conversations, Becker hopes that similar legislative measures will be implemented elsewhere.

“I would like people to see how tourism really does affect you,” Becker urged. “Be brutally honest about whether it helps your community and if it doesn’t, how do you correct it?”

New York is one such place where such questions need to be asked. In 2022, New York City implemented Local Law 18—a law that mandates the registration of short-term rental properties and places strict restrictions in their operation. The main goal was to address the impacts of platforms such as Airbnb on the housing market and give residents more equal opportunity in pricing and availability. 

Airbnb’s listing in New York dropped by 15,000 rentals, but not all local residents were happy with the outcome. Some homeowners rely on short-term rentals as additional sources of income. However, with requirements for the accommodation to be registered with the city and for homeowners to be living in the dwelling while guests are present, many were forced to stop.

Countries are experiencing “overbooking,” which impacts the residents. Becker continues to cover the industry not only to raise awareness of such issues but to also encourage action. Whether that is voting or voicing the realities of a situation, residents have the responsibility to help create a better tourism environment for all.

Foodies are famous, often parodied, and notorious for their desire to always be trying new foods. But are they dangerous? According to Russ Cohen, they might be. 

Russ Cohen is a professional forager living in Massachusetts where he teaches classes to groups on how to forage. When he sat down to talk with me, he was making black birch twig tea for a class he would teach the next morning to a gardening club. He described the tea as like “drinking Wintergreen flavored life savers.”

Starting as a kid in the 1960s, he has spent the majority of his life foraging. First taught by his parents, who he clarified “weren’t hippies or anything,” he really grew into it after taking a high school course on foraging. Since then, Cohen has traveled the globe, from New Zealand to Norway, eating wild foods- including once where he illegally harvested mushrooms in Switzerland. 

He is chatty and willing to share his love of foraging with anyone who asks. Our chat quickly ended up being over an hour long as he told me about his life and foraging. When I asked him what he likes to forage, he whipped out a jar of hickory nuts. He told me that they’re great in cereal and for snacking, and even easier to forage than acorns.

Cohen shares similar information in the 40 programs he teachers a year, each to different groups. He travels around Massachusetts and educates people in clubs, the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the Wild Seed Project, and more on how to forage responsibly. This includes showing people what is safe to harvest, how to take enough without depleting an area (for example, taking one leaf per plant), and where foraging is allowed. 

In the 40 years he’s been foraging and teaching others, the biggest problem Cohen has noticed is not climate change, social media, or even foraging laws- its foodies and the chefs that cater to them by overharvesting. 

In the past, chefs in high end restaurants have focused on local produce and farm to table food- now they have expanded to foraging. Foodies – people who eat as a hobby by trying different cuisines – are eating it up. There are dozens of restaurants that specialize in this around the world, like Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York who offer food from the Hudson Valley year round. 

Adventurous young eaters have influenced food trends for decades with their desire for new and exciting experiences. In the 80s, young American professionals  focused on food from far away countries and continents. In the 2020s, there has been a complete reversal. Now, foodies want hyper local food. 

And, according to Cohen, chefs have turned to foraging to fulfill foodie’s desires. Fiddleheads (a sweet vegetable from ferns) and ramps (a wild plant with a garlicky taste) are exceedingly popular, as are mushrooms. They provide nutrient-dense, delicious food that is not going to be found in grocery stores. 

But foragers hired by restaurants often pick entire patches and leave nothing behind. Harvesting sustainably means causing no permanent damage to an ecosystem. There must be enough plants left for others, animals, and the future. This is not the method restaurant foragers use. Cohen has “seen places where the plants used to grow, where every single plant was dug up and they’re gone. They’ve been extirpated from that habitat” in the name of foodies having something new to try.

This leaves sustenance and hobbyist foragers in the lurch. Cohen has noticed this especially in areas such as Camden, Maine where wild food restaurants are popular. Wild plants may have all been harvested before anyone else can even touch them. 

Cohen is concerned about this consumption, especially when it means that the only way locals can try foraged food is when they pay for it and have someone else do the actual harvesting for them. With restaurants like Blue Hill at Stone Barns charging a whopping price of $398 – $448 a person, this is not possible for the average person. Cohen believes in the value of connecting with nature while foraging, describing it as a religious experience for himself. But this hobby has become a tool to bring consumers in and push locals out. 

People who are hired to forage for restaurants are often locals who rely on this work, even if they don’t get to try what they harvest. Foraging for high-end restaurants provides them an alternative income that can be the difference between making rent or not. Russ Cohen is aware of this, and says that he tries not to be sanctimonious about it since “it could make a significant contribution to their overall financial situation by, you know, doing some picking fiddleheads in the spring or something like that.” 

It is a necessary harm for many who rely on these restaurants for income. But when this trend fades, as all trends do, the problem will remain. Patches can’t recover when there are no seeds or roots left to grow back from. 

When this trend started, Cohen was so concerned he thought about quitting teaching entirely. He questioned if he was one of the people allowing this to happen through his lessons. He asked himself, “Am I part of the problem for sharing information about these plants and should I shut the hell up?” 

Thankfully, he decided to teach with a focus on conservation instead. He preaches sustainable, ethical foraging to all of his students. He also shares an idea on how to satisfy the desire for foraged food without endangering ecosystems: invasive species. 

Invasive plants take over an area they are not native to and smother indigenous species. These invasive plants cannot be overharvested and provide plenty of cooking inspiration. Kudzu, Japanese knotweed, stinging nettles, and dandelions are all perfectly edible, perfectly delicious invasive alternatives to fiddleheads and ostrich ferns and could replace the drive for unsustainable foraging. Cohen explains that if a “restaurant puts Japanese knotweed on the menu, it’s hard for me to get, you know, worried about, because we’ll never wipe out Japanese knotweed.”

Eating local isn’t inherently bad – in fact, it’s a suggested behavior by environmental scientists.  Foodies don’t have to give up their cravings, but neither do foragers. Foraging sustainably (and invasively) is a happy medium that keeps the planet – and foodies- happy.

“It’s difficult to research death,” Dr. Suzanne Agan admitted, regarding wildlife deaths. Even when the focus is on wildlife survival, “People are not going to choose something that is hard to digest.” 

The scientists and individuals who were concerned about wildlife loss found success in Yellowstone National Park. When Yellowstone was first established in 1872, the Grey Wolf population was abundant, but the Wolves soon found themselves face to face with humans who wanted them gone. The consequences of eliminating a top predator from an ecosystem were unknown, so the wolves were progressively wiped  out without a second thought. That changed in 1973, once the Grey Wolf was listed as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The USFWS had recognized that this extirpation did, in fact, have environmental consequences. The creation of the Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan in 1987 aimed to establish Grey Wolf populations in Yellowstone once more. The plan was able to successfully bring back 300 Grey Wolfs. This program, along with others made to establish Wolf populations throughout the states became increasingly popular, hoping to have the same success as Yellowstone. 

  Her lasting passion for wolves also made it easy for Dr. Agan to pursue Red Wolf research while pursuing her PhD in Antioch University New England. Dr. Agan now works with the Red Wolf Recovery Team (RWRT) in North Carolina to study how Red Wolves are being affected by poaching and what can be done to stop this. 

The RWRT was created alongside the Red Wolf Recovery Area (RWRA) in 1987 by the U.S Fisheries and Wildlife Services (USFWS) in order to protect and bring back the Red Wolf population in North Carolina. North Carolina, like much of the United States, used to have thousands of wolves roaming the land. Similar to what happened in Yellowstone, Red Wolves were essentially wiped out in North Carolina. Red Wolves are now considered the world’s most endangered wolf. The RWRA has dedicated itself to designating the recovery area and reintroducing the species.]

“There’s only about 20 in the wild right now,” Dr. Agan explains. She hopes that by reducing poaching, the population will bounce back. 

Dr. Agan clarified what poaching means, she knew that the word had a relatively negative association. Poaching is often associated with an unlawful individual who illegally kills hundreds of deer or turkey for money. She explained that “Poaching is the sole action of killing the animal, not the intent. A hunter can be out hunting deer, shoot what he thinks is a coyote, and it turns out to be a wolf, that’s still poaching.” Since the Red Wolf is currently listed as an endangered species by the U.S Government, killing one is illegal. Dr. Agan also pointed out that hunters target bears and deer, not Red Wolves. Moreover, Red Wolves are scared of people and have no interest in being around them, which means they are not really considered a threat to human life. There was no good reason for landowners to kill  Red Wolves.

Dr. Agan heavily emphasized that the main reason for Red Wolf poaching was that landowners “don’t want government intrusion on their property.” Even though the RWRA is nearly 6,000 km2, that did not stop the Red Wolves from going beyond its boundaries. The RWRA program was put back into action in 2021 after being put on pause due to program technicalities that had to be addressed. Red Wolves started showing up on landowners’ property outside of the RWRA,  leaving landowners confused and angry since the FWS had not said that the Wolves were being reintroduced. 

  The FWS then attempted to give landowners ways to co-exist with the Red Wolves. Dr. Agan told me that if a Red Wolf ever wanders onto their property, they could call the FWS to remove it and take it back to the RWRA. But the landowners are reluctant. They were already upset and since a call to the FWS meant the government would be on their property. To avoid both, landowners would kill  the Red Wolves. If there were no Red Wolves present, there would be no reason for the FWS to come onto their property. 

 “You won’t be able to protect wolves if landowners are not on board, you can’t just slap high fines on people and throw em’ in jail,” Dr. Agan chuckled wearily. Despite the fact that it may seem like a good idea to appropriately punish landowners for poaching, that only makes local residents more  resistant to the recovery program.  

Dr. Agan noticed that having someone who was able to make the landowners feel heard and included greatly aided in recovery efforts.  “One of the older biologists who worked on the project – they had so much respect for him and liked him so much.”  In that case, when he told people not to shoot a wolf, they wouldn’t out their respect for him.   they said they would not shoot a Red Wolf on their property, because they had too much respect for the biologist they were working with.” She continued to say that including landowners in the RWRT was essential if they wanted to work towards a solution and have actually bought them in to be a part of the team. 

Dr. Agan believes it is possible to reduce Red Wolf poaching and increase the species odds of recovery. As long as the RWRA and FWS include every stakeholder, most importantly landowners, to get to that solution. Dr. Agan is optimistic about working with the hunters, noting that they may be the key to bringing back the Red Wolf population.  “They need to get hunting orgs to be on board with protecting Red Wolves…The hunting community is the one that poaches the most…they have the ability and they have access – they are out where the wolves are with the gun in their hand.”