What’s the big deal about nature? Experts say that if people can just hear it, feel it, live it, the answer would be obvious, and youngsters, in whose hands the future of nature rests, will get the message quickly.

Animal behaviourist Aliza le Roux, speaking on a “Tipping Points” webinar hosted by Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation “OGRC” on the subject of “Making young blood run green” which addressed how to get South Africa’s youth energised about climate change and enthused about the environment, said that, for starters, we might expose them to Mother Nature, “in all her glory”. 

Take baboons, for instance. With a single, “Whahoo!”, they speak volumes, says Le Roux, punctuating her observations with a throaty bark. “Everybody in the immediate vicinity will know exactly who said what and what to watch out for now.”

Unlike baboons, humans tend to the garrulous. “We need to give hour-long addresses, wearing tuxedos and whatnot,” she says.

The contrast first struck her as a youngster.

“I was always wondering, why do animals use so few words to say what takes us entire speeches.”

A professor in Zoology at the University of Free State in QwaQwa, Le Roux attributes her interest in animal behaviour to more than intellectual curiosity. It was “being out there in nature” that really inspired her.

She recalled childhood hikes, including a particularly memorable one at the age of eight, when a snake slithered across her foot. “That’s what fired me up and got me excited and it’s the same still, despite the fact that this is the digital age.”

Le Roux reckons it’s close encounters and immersion in nature that provide the necessary transfusion.

And this was something technology and social media, for all its undeniable usefulness and addictiveness, could not do.

An alumna of the South African Young Academy of Science, Le Roux, advised lecturers to “teach naked”, if they wished to help young people forge tangible connections with nature and spark an interest and passion for pressing environmental concerns, including climate change.

By this she meant they should shelter less behind their PowerPoint presentations and quit plodding through textbook material that could better be shared online. Educators needed to risk their dignity and the chance that something may go wrong by engaging with their students, tackling complex case studies and exposing them to more fieldwork (even something easy to hand, like the feral cats on her university’s Qwaqwa campus).

While technology was immensely valuable as a research and teaching tool (and we must allow young people their social media fix) tech wizardry, including artificial intelligence, should be used to “do the boring stuff”, not for supplanting creativity or substituting seeing and feeling in the field, said Le Roux.

Also speaking during the 23^rd Tipping Points webinar were Otsile Nkadimeng, Co-Founder of Sundial Movement, a youth network that campaigns against climate change, and Zama Ngomane, National Coordinator for the Jane Goodall Institute’s Roots & Shoots community programme.

The online seminar was facilitated by Pumla Dlamini, a Research Associate with OGRC.

The Jane Goodall Institute is named for its founder Jane Goodall, the pioneering chimpanzee expert and anthropologist, and although Ngomane confessed to being no behavioural ecologist, he had clearly learned a thing or two about the great apes.

“I do know how to say hello in Chimp,” he offered in his opening remarks, “Who-whoo, whoooo, whooooo! whoooooo! whoooooooo!”

Primate pleasantries aside, Ngomane presented his formula for winning over young hearts and minds to the green cause.

Environmental knowledge must be made accessible, he said, stressing the need to break down often “complex concepts into relatable everyday experiences “that were “understandable to the context in which the youth live”.

Young people are forever being told about things like global warming. They read about it in their textbooks, or see on TV “big men making their policies and signing their papers”, but it is not something they can readily relate to.

They struggle to focus in their stuffy or freezing township classrooms. When it rains on the tin roof, they can’t hear the teacher.

The answer, said Ngomane, lies in engaging young people through action, which is what Roots & Shoots seeks to do.

“It … gives them all the knowledge available about a particular topic and makes it relatable to their community, their school, to their group. Then we take it further and say, ‘Great. Now that we understand how all of this impacts us, what are we going to do about it? What are the next steps?’.”

It is important to make sure young people engage with and lead these processes from an early age as hands-on action unlocks curiosity and develops a sense of community.

Teachers and facilitators should assist as groups are formed, to put ideas and initiatives into practice. But we need to remember the influence of peers and harness this powerful force.

Ngomane recalled an experience from when he first started as a coordinator with The Jane Goodall Institute, to drive home the point.

“We were with a group of young schoolgirls, and we were talking about Dr Jane Goodall and her work, and a young girl put up her hand and she said: ‘I love Dr Jane Goodall, I love her work with chimps. I love the Roots & Shoot programme. I know it very well. But I also love Gretha Thunberg. I think she is really cool and she is just like me.”

At the time Thunberg, the Swedish environmental activist, was in her teens and apart from challenging world leaders on climate change, inspired many young people to action and protest.

“So the greatest influence you can have on youth is other youth. Other peers and seeing them being involved and seeing them participate. That’s what makes the big difference and that’s what we try to achieve,” said Ngomane.

Nkadimeng was concerned that few young people had grappled with environmental matters sufficiently to have a “very real understanding of the crisis that is unfolding”.

He explained how the Sundial Movement and the Fridays for Future South Africa initiative, which he helps organise, provided a platform and a network for high school pupils.

The aim was “to engage on climate change and conservation on their level” and to help the youth “conscientise the public and their peers so we can ultimately mobilise lots of young people to take action”.

He said the “very complex, nuanced language that exists around climate change” was a headwind to action. “You find the young people who are interested, but are unable to think where we should start, to understand what is the actual scope of the problem. That language is totally inaccessible to them,” said Nkadimeng.

Other barriers to youth interest and action were gate-keeping “within the space of policy and environmental activism” and a lack of resources.

He felt the answer lay in seeking insights from young people, drawing directly on “their lived experiences”.

“If we can successfully merge information with networks that are open and accessible with well-resourced organisations that exist to help mobilise at a grassroots level… we can have… individuals and structures that can help to turn young people’s blood green.”

Drawing on questions submitted from the floor before and during the webinar, Dlamini asked Nkadimeng to suggest activities “with a zero budget” that could be used to mobilise the youth.

He suggested collaborating with organisations that were already interested in climate or environment activities. Sundial, for example, got involved in “artivism”, teaming up with four schools in September 2022, shortly after the network was established, to make climate- and environment-themed paintings and posters.

He said this created an opportunity for conversations and creative expressions by young people.

Social media was a powerful tool for “catalysing serious conversations”.

“We need to get people conscious about what is happening and we can do that through social media. TikTok, Instagram, those are the most valuable platforms for Gen Z to engage us on climate,” he said.

Social media posts were free and once young people were conscientised they could be organised. And once brought together – be it at a school hall or a public park – a basic understanding of their circumstances would emerge and they could be mobilised.

Nkadimeng mentioned cheap-and-cheerful initiatives like community cleanups of local rivers, parks of infrastructure that “makes a day-to-day difference in people’s lives that is related to the environment”.

Dlamini asked Le Roux how activities might be made fun and interesting for youth participants.

The academic said she placed great store in humour, but as she has grown older it was harder to get right. Young people weren’t getting her jokes: “I can’t reference the right pop culture; it’s just not there.”

Fortunately, Le Roux had no qualms about embarrassing herself and advised others that when they “let go”, connections would develop, people would relate to them better and “fun started to happen”.

“If you want to have fun, engage people, you cannot have the barrier of saying: I’m the professor and professors act in a certain way.”

Drawing on her knowledge as a behaviourist, she pointed out that our species was “inherently competitive since we are animals… survival of the fittest”, so fun competitions, even where the prizes might be a few Smarties from her snack drawer, worked wonders.

“It instinctively engages people,” she said.

As much as Le Roux believed technology should be used to “do the proverbial dishes”, rather than creative work, she was happy to go to Google and other technological resources when she’s looking for ways to teach people about a particular topic.

“I have stolen so many fantastic ideas from other educators. And then I just adapt it slightly to make it work,” she said, noting that Google tended to provide answers from a Western perspective and that there was room for “creating some local resources”.

Le Roux advises educators and people trying to connect with young people to try different things out with some lightness of heart.

“It might fail miserably the first time, but I view it as an experiment. If X doesn’t work then try the next time around. I don’t beat myself up about it.”

Was she finding that her students’ attention spans were becoming shorter and shorter, a fallout of the digital age, asked Dlamini. “Do you find you have to be more and more creative in your teaching to engage your students?”

Le Roux answered yes to both questions, but said what really bothered her was when her own lectures, what came out of her own mouth, bored her.

“Then I know, holy cow! These kids are just polite. So yes, you need to be creative but you put the onus on the students to do something. To try to figure something out.”

This might involve making them run around the classroom, perhaps pretending they were foragers in the wild.

“It works; it sometimes fails. Failure is scary.”

What sparked the interest of young people in sustainable environmental action?

Ngomane said people respond strongly when they see the effects of their own efforts, be it a food garden they were creating or a cleanup they were helping with. And this inspired others, bystanders, into action.

Yes, we were glued to our smartphone screens, he said, “but a lot of youth are inward-focused and we need to leverage that and ensure that the personal relevance sparks them”.

He described interactive learning as amazing – “It always wins” – and agreed with Le Roux on the value of recognition and rewards as motivators.

Nkadimeng felt environmentalism would emerge as a more mainstream political topic in South Africa. It would become less of an expert-level conversation and more one that related directly to people who could see firsthand how climate change was affecting them, he said, citing storms and floods in KwaZulu-Natal in recent years.

Le Roux reminded activists that climate change was a “long game” and that while youth have stamina and a sense of urgency – “I remember the feeling” – they must remember they will have to keep at it, “to push the boulder up that hill, push the door open”.

What was Ngomane’s advice for the young who want to do their bit?

He advised ingenuity and called on young people to be brave, shrug off failure and get involved. “You don’t need what you think you need to get started. You can just start. It’s what we tell our groups all the time.

“You can make a difference. It’s that simple.”