The oceans are increasingly polluted, species are being driven into extinction, and climate change is threatening the livelihoods of a billion poor people.

 

To M. Sanjayan – the lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy and Abt’s 2012 Stellwagen lecturer – these are causes for alarm and opportunities.

 

Sanjayan learned as a child in his native Sri Lanka that fear can be an obstacle to progress. A Sri Lankan astrologer declared that Sanjayan would drown one day – a prediction based on the pattern of hair on his head. For several years his mother would not allow him in the ocean, even though they lived on the coast.

 

But when he was nine, his mother changed her perspective and taught him to swim. “My path changed completely,” he said. Since then he has dived in every ocean. This is where we are in the modern environmental movement, he said. Today’s environmental crises demand we dive in. Inaction is not an option.

 

Sanjayan delivered his lecture, “Awakening a Modern Global Environmental Movement: What it Means for Youth, Business, and the Rural Poor,” at Abt’s Bethesda office on Oct. 19. It was broadcast live to Abt’s Cambridge, Durham, and Atlanta offices and taped for viewing at other Abt offices.

 

We should be optimistic about trends in environmental conservation, Sanjayan said. Although government cooperation is lagging, companies such as Wal-Mart, Unilever, Levi Strauss, are all reducing their environmental footprint in part because it makes business sense. And his organization, The Nature Conservancy, is leading programs that have convinced poor coastal residents in Asia to abstain from fishing in new protected zones so that the fish population can rebound. This kind of local ownership is the only model that will work, he said.

 

While some people refuse to believe that climate change has been caused by people, Sanjayan said he senses that many people are realizing that we must live more environmentally sustainable lives. We are on the cusp of a group epiphany about our impact on the planet, he said.

 

“Nature is a really great social network…To be alive means to be connected,” he said.

 

The Stellwagen lecture was established in 1993 as a thought leadership seminar series in honor of the company’s second CEO, Walter Stellwagen (1986-1992).