Guest Post by Paul Nicklen | The Power of Stories
This is a guest post by WWSG exclusive speaker, Paul Nicklen.
I love what I do. Every day, I wake up to fight alongside my team at SeaLegacy to support and protect wildlife populations and their ecosystems. While I love seeing my pictures published in magazines or hanging on people’s walls, nothing feels as good as a conservation win.
My goal has always been to give voice to the voiceless – to protect our wild cousins. With just a few days left in the year, I want to ask you to join me in this work. Donate before 2022 ends to help SeaLegacy empower solutions to our world’s greatest challenges.
Since I began this journey over 20 years ago, the threats facing our planet have grown exponentially. We have lost 70% of all biodiversity on Earth in the past 50 years alone. Think about that. After millions of years of evolution, all it took was a handful of decades for our species to completely undermine the entire living world.
After a life spent surrounded by wild animals, I swore that I would spend the rest of my life fighting for nature. I loved shooting for National Geographic for 20 years, but I wanted to do more to fulfill that promise. So in 2014, my partner Cristina Mittermeier and I launched SeaLegacy, a 501c3 non-profit working to help restore health and abundance to our oceans. We had a vision and access to a global network of renowned experts ready to get behind our fight. However, we were nervous because we knew it would be a heavy lift and endless work.
Of all the Sustainable Development Goals listed by the UN to tackle the world’s greatest challenges, SDG 14- ‘Life Below Water,’ remains the most underfunded. This means that despite being the largest ecosystem in the world, the ocean receives very little support or funds. We also knew that it would be sad and difficult to be immersed in some of the most serious and stressful situations facing our planet, like climate change, overfishing, and ocean acidification. Yet, despite all of this, we knew we had to persevere.
Over the last 30 years, the one thing I have learned is that governments are not willing to take the necessary steps to ensure the survival of the planet. That responsibility has fallen to us. And while scientific data is crucial to creating effective solutions, it certainly will not succeed in rallying people to action on its own. This is where storytelling becomes the catalyst for change, a way of communicating the truth about what we are up against and empowering people to act.
At the end of the day, the math is simple: the power of the people is greater than the people in power. We are the ones who will build a better future.
SeaLegacy is incredibly lucky to have a team of scientists, storytellers, and conservationists with the expertise and knowledge to solve our ocean’s greatest challenges. But, unfortunately, we spend much of our time fundraising when we should be on the ground conducting ocean diplomacy, fighting for conservation wins with our partners, and creating powerful stories to rally people to action for our planet. If we do not come together to fight countless and consecutive conservation wins, then I fear all is lost. I am not saying this to be dramatic or an alarmist; I am simply stating the unflinching, science-backed fact that our planet is in trouble.
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