Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting an Awakin Call with Ramachandra Guha, moderated by the amazing Rajni Bakshi (herself a Gandhian scholar and activist).

Ramachandra (Ram) Guha is a world-class historian, biographer, journalist, and public intellectual. Among his works is a comprehensive two-volume biography on Gandhi: Gandhi Before India (2014) and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (2018). His earlier work, India after Gandhi, was selected a book of the year by The Economist, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and a book of the decade by the Times of London. Trained as an economist, Ram was deeply moved by leaders of the environmental movement who practiced Gandhian philosophy, which Ram came to see as a healthier alternative to certain Marxist views popular at the time. "It just emerged ... that Gandhi was with me everywhere,” he says. “And I finally decided I must settle accounts with him.”

The call was a deep dive into Gandhi's views of social change and nonviolence, the environmental movement, and much more. Some of the nuggets that stood out for me:

• Gandhi's four callings that he pursued simultaneously, like different notes of a piano: He was a freedom fighter struggling, nonviolently, for freedom from British government rule. He was a social reformer working for the abolishment of untouchability with limited emancipation of women. To some extent he was a religious pluralist – living, fasting, dying for Hindu-Muslim harmony. And he was a constructive worker, rebuilding societies and economies for a better future through seva.
• Top down and bottom up: No matter how much grassroots activism you have, the role of the state is important, because the legal framework has to allow it: “however much you may have commitment, idealism, service, community spirit at the local level, unless you have an enabling state or legislative environment, there are limits to what you can do.”
• Environmentalism of the global south: Chipko showed there’s an environmentalism of the poor, that respect for nature, sustainable use of natural resources is intrinsic for survival.” In some ways, because of higher population density, environmental responsibility is even more important in India/Africa than in the West. Ram describes Chipko as the first major environmental movement from the global south.
• Universalism of Gandhi: Many Indians find many aspects of his thoughts uncomfortable – in an India with rising Hindu majoritarianism, Gandhi's views on interfaith harmony not very popular; in an India focused on acquisition, greed, and where growth at all costs is the motto – there’s not a real focus on living peacefully with each other and respectfully, simply with nature. “India may throw him out, but the world will affirm him. I do think of Gandhi as the most universal figure since the Buddha. And we don’t know the Buddha’s flaws because he lived so long before, but he also must have had flaws."
• Critical role of his secretary Mahadev Desai: he was "more important to Gandhi than Nehru or Patel or Rajagopalachari" – but Desai was with Gandhi every day and "he wrote himself out of the narrative," and so his significance in Gandhi’s life is underappreciated. Gandhi trusted Desai more than anyone else, and Desai educated Gandhi (“Gandhi was not a particularly well-read man”; when Gandhi had to issue a statement on a world situation, Desai helped, as Desai “was a profoundly learned man who knew history, philosophy, politics; who translated Gandhi; and who was also a person of great love, compassion and humor”). “When I wrote those sections on Mahadev’s death, I was weeping – Mahadev was 50 when he died; he died in prison. If he had lived another 20 years, our country would have been a different place, because he was easily as great as Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel and he was much younger than them. What he could have done to mold independent India bedevils the imagination.”
• Pranjivan Mehta, a Gujarati merchant who supported Gandhi financially, was the first person to call him Mahatma, long before Tagore. In 1910 he wrote a letter to Gokhale, saying that "this man Gandhi is going to transform India, and that if he had been born in the 18th century, the British never would have colonized India."
• Gandhi's continual learning: He was always learning, interrogating himself, constantly self-questioning. For him, certitude was lacking about everything except about nonviolence. "When he finds that he is mistaken, he's wrong, and famously says, 'I am a bundle of contradictions, but take my last statement; don't look at what I wrote in 1890 if you want to understand my views on race'. For example, there's a flourishing industry among activist scholars debunking Gandhi because he was a racist in 1890s. But by the 1900s, he had outgrown his racism and by the 1920s and 30s, people like Howard Thurman, King's mentor, were going to Gandhi's ashram to learn from him. So, you know, I think this capacity to grow and to expand your mind and your moral vision rather than being stuck in the pieties and the certitudes of youth is also very important."
• What would Gandhi being doing right now during the pandemic? Pandemic has transformed everything. It is, according to Ram, “a health crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a moral crisis, a psychological crisis, a democratic crisis, a multilateral crisis – with these 6 or 7 crises, there’s also a modest environmental opportunity for us to reestablish some kind of harmony with species other than us humans. So it’s a profound thing; we don’t know how it will affect us.” Though Gandhi never had to deal with such a situation, Ram believes "he’d be walking, spinning, joking, making friends, building bridges, and above all telling the truth.” He’d continue to push for social transformation incrementally person by person, community by community. He’d be fighting xenophobia, the state powers, since the pandemic has strengthened forces of authoritarianism in most parts of world.

Below are some more extensive notes from the call.

Ram’s Early Influences

• Connecting with nature: Ram was born in 1958 in what was then a small sub-Himalayan town of Dehradun, then no more than a million in population. It was “utterly gorgeous, bordered on the west by the Yamuna river, on the east by the Ganges river, with a view of Himalayas, and 400 species of birds.” He grew up with a love of nature which came with the territory/landscape. Dehradun was also on a migratory zone between the plains and the hills. “So it has great bird diversity. And the greatest of all Indian ornithologists, Salim Ali, wrote the first volume of his famous book of Indian birds doing research in my home valley Dehradun, because that's where he found the most bird diversity.” So it was really birds that were his entry point into studying the environmental movement later.
• Aware of privilege as male, upper-caste Hindu, educated and English-speaking: Although his family lived in the north, he was born into a family of South Indians. Father was a scientist. Ram recognizes that he was privileged because he was male, privileged because he was part of the Hindu from majority community (and part of the upper caste), and privileged because he was English-speaking which gave social cache. At the same time, he is grateful to his parents “because there was not a sectarian bone in their body.” His father was a scientist who refused to have caste rituals (eg, Brahmin thread). His mother “had no feelings of religious pride”; she was a schoolteacher who would travel to school with a Muslim neighbor “who was like a sister to her.” His parents “taught me to transcend upper caste Hindu majoritarian status.” At the same time, Ram conceded that “one area of social privilege I didn’t try to combat was my patriarchal side – that stayed with me until I had a daughter who has directly and brutally confronted me on my patriarchy.” He notes that patriarchy is a deeply ingrained aspect of life in India, and even women have internalized it. And yet, at least, he is grateful that his “parents gave me no pride for being an upper caste Hindu.”
• No real spiritual background. Despite growing up in foothills of Himalayas, Ram didn’t have much of a spiritual background or bent growing up. As a scientist, his father was not atheist, but agnostic. Ram calls himself “religiously unmusical” (drawing from Max Weber). He did meet 2 or 3 “remarkable spiritually inclined people”, including the Dalai Lama. He also had a notable experience in 1977 where he went on “a magical, beautiful journey” to visit Swami Sunderanand in Gangotri (near the source of the Ganges), whose passion was photography and who had the “most fabulous portraits of nature” (flowers, musk deer, sunlight on peaks) – “a monk with an extraordinary aesthetic passion for photography” made a great impact on Ram in this regard. “I am not a very spiritual person, and I suppose my works on Gandhi suffer – that side of Gandhi, perhaps, I don’t appreciate or understand adequately. I may get the politics and the social reform and the abolition of untouchability, but I probably don’t get his spiritual side adequately.” But this visit to the aesthetic monk made a mark on Ram.
• From failed cricketer to scholar. Til age 22, Ram had no quest except to be an amazing cricketer who could play for India. “I was a jock.” His maternal uncle was a great cricketer and encouraged him to go to university in Delhi to play for the best college sports team. He did so, and two of his teammates went on to play for India, but Ram says “I just wasn’t good enough.” He didn’t think he was a writer until he was kicked out of cricket team for not being good enough, and then went to a library where he discovered the works of Verrier Elwin, a British anthropologist who worked with Gandhi, left Gandhi to work with tribal people, and married tribal lady, and who Ram says “wrote one of the most beautiful evocative ethnographies of forest people in central India. After reading Elwin, I thought there was chance I could become a scholar.” He then started meeting scholars, and Delhi sociologist Shiv Visvanathan encouraged him to study sociology and history in Calcutta under Anjan Ghosh, who Ram says was an amazing teacher.
• Studying Gandhian environmentalism amid Marxists. After getting his B.A. and M.A. in Delhi in economics, Ram began his Ph.D. studies (social history of forestry) in Calcutta, which “was probably the center of world Marxism in 1980.” According to Ram, “I still believe that Marx was a profoundly original thinker. Every student of history must know Marx, plus must be able to transcend Marx, you know? So I'm grateful for the Marx I studied, but I was dismayed by the dogmatism of the Marxists around me, particularly after I started my doctoral research” on the Chipko movement (“the forest protection movement of the Himalayas; Chipko means ‘to hug’ and the Chipko peasants were the first tree huggers, you could say”) led by Gandhians. His Marxist colleagues would say to him, “why are you wasting your time studying the Chipko movement? Environmentalism is a bourgeois deviation from the class struggle. That's the kind of classic term that the Marxists used for environmentalism in the 1980s.” About his interest in Gandhian movements at this time, Ram says: “it's almost as if you had to be downstairs, like in the famous British serials, the butlers and the house keepers and the mates were downstairs [Gandhian thinkers] and the bosses [Marxists] upstairs.”

On the role of seva (service) in Gandhi’s life – is he unique in bringing these qualities to public/political life? Gandhi’s many callings:

“Gandhi had four callings and not professions. … He was a freedom fighter struggling, nonviolently, for freedom from British government rule. He was a social reformer working for the abolishment of untouchability with limited emancipation of women. To some extent he was a religious pluralist – living, fasting, dying for Hindu-Muslim harmony, and he was a constructive worker, rebuilding societies and economies for a better future. So there are four callings in Gandhi’s life, and Gandhi says in a letter to his great British friend C.F. Andrews that it's like playing a piano with different notes – at one stage is this and one stage is that, but all four are part of my life. And of course, I would say, and I say this humorously in my book, apart from these four callings, there's a fifth. Because he's also a writer. I mean, his collected works are 90 volumes, which is many times yours or mine or anyone else's combined. So despite that, he was an extraordinarily multifaceted figure and all four are equally important – whether freedom from British rule, or abolishing untouchability, or promoting Hindu-Muslim harmony, or seva and constructive work to build a better society and a better relationship between human beings and nature. … After Gandhi died, the tradition of seva, service, constructive work, rural reconstruction continued by his disciples. The tradition of the abolishment of untouchability did not. The Indian constitution abolished untouchability in 1950, but although it was abolished by law, it continued in everyday life and the Gandhians after Gandhi's death, in my view, neglected this question and of course, only much later in the seventies and eighties did social activists take this up seriously.”

What is the dynamic between our individual commitment to compassion and broader systemic change? Can individual compassion shift caste, or does it require big shifts in political power?

“I think you need individual action, collective bottom up grassroots action, but also systemic political change, including legal change and in putting a voice in the highest offices of the land. …. Social change takes place in my view, when there's pressure from below and pressure from above. … So I think we need both and we always had often unfortunately in periods of history, we have one without the other. You may have an enlightened reformer who is Prime Minister or President, but no grassroots mobilization. Or you may have grassroots mobilization, but you have a completely arrogant, racist person in power. The route to reform is a rocky one. It needs many hands, many forms of action. The only bottom line is none of those forms or actions should be violent. They can use civil disobedience, but they should not pick up guns to blow the hell out of your adversary.”

No matter how much grassroots activism you have, the role of the state is important, because the legal framework has to allow it: “however much you may have commitment, idealism, service, community spirit at the local level, unless you have an enabling state or legislative environment, there are limits to what you can do.”

What is the role of individual compassion in shifting collective consciousness? Gandhi on appealing to individual conscience of rulers, including temple priests, Viceroy, and Hitler:

“I think some amount of compassion is needed in a leader but is it not enough. You really need grassroots pressure from below. One of Gandhi’s great movements, which is sadly forgotten but I have written about in second volume of biography, is the temple entry movement of 1920’s and 30’s where Hindu temples were barred to low castes, particularly untouchable castes. Followers of Gandhi organized a series of civil disobedience protests. Of course, he would first appeal to the temple priests on compassionate grounds, that they are also human and they have the same Gods as you so let the low caste come in. If the priest did not listen then these three men – one high caste, one middle caste, and one low caste walking hand in hand – would quietly, peacefully walk into the temple, be pushed back by the police, and three other men would go, and so on. This is of course the model for Freedom Riders in the American South in the sixties where whites and blacks collectively breached laws.

“So individual conscience can only take you so far. It needs collective grassroots action. But always appeal to the conscience first and if the conscience of the temple priest … and if you can strike the conscience of the individual temple priest and he says that ‘I was wrong to bar the temple to low castes and they are also human beings and they must come in and it belongs to everyone.’ There may be some temple priests like that in some progressive parts of India who would listen to that message. So give the person a chance. Even if you look at Gandhi’s movements against the British Imperial order, he would first appeal. Before starting a salt march he would write a letter to the Viceroy and say ‘I don’t want to start the march but I want you to know that salt tax is iniquitous,’ and in fact before he started the salt march, he wrote this letter to the British Viceroy, the most powerful individual in India. He sent the letter through a young English man who was his emissary: ‘As a matter I don’t have any hatred for white people. I dislike the fact of empire and I am still giving you a chance; the salt tax is iniquitous so please remove it then I don’t have to launch a mass movement and we won’t have to go to jail.’

“The one time Gandhi was wrong in this technique of appealing to consciousness was when he wrote a letter to Hitler. Hitler had no conscience but Gandhi wrote to Hitler saying, ‘don’t go to war,’ and it was an appeal that would go nowhere. But most human beings are a mixture of good and evil, except for Hitler and certain autocrats like Stalin, Pol Pot. Most rulers are largely brutal but there is a human element hidden somewhere that you might be able to stoke, but if you can’t stoke or if they are impervious to the call of conscience, then, of course, civil disobedience is what Gandhi would recommend.”

World historic role of Chipko movement as first major environmental movement of the global south:

Until Chipko, “just as Marxists thought that environmentalism is a bourgeois deviation from the class struggle, economists also thought that it was only when you get rich or reach prosperity that you could clean up the environment” (so it was only for western nations). You could think about saving canals, water, nature for aesthetic reasons only after reaching a level of material prosperity. “Chipko showed there’s an environmentalism of the poor, that respect for nature, sustainable use of natural resources is intrinsic for survival.” In some ways, because of higher population density, environmental responsibility is even more important in India/Africa than in the West. Ram describes Chipko as the first major environmental movement from the global south, followed by many others eventually (in Brazil, Kenya, Thailand later), but it was a trailblazer globally.

How did your work on Gandhi change you?

“There’s nothing Gandhian about me except that I’m always on time. Gandhi always had a watch and he was always on time. … I’m a scholar of Gandhi. I’m not an activist, I’m not a Gandhian. I think he was a flawed person” (how he treated his wife, elder son), “we can go on and on discussing his flaws – but he as an extraordinary figure, a great global figure (not just Indian). Many Indians find many aspects of his thoughts uncomfortable” – in an India with rising Hindu majoritarianism, his views on interfaith harmony not very popular; in an India focused on acquisition, greed, and where growth at all costs is the motto – there’s not a real focus on living peacefully with each other and respectfully, simply with nature. “India may throw him out, but the world will affirm him. I do think of Gandhi as the most universal figure since the Buddha. And we don’t know the Buddha’s flaws because he lived so long before, but he also must have had flaws. So I’m fascinated by Gandhi – by his profound influence, by the range of his ideas, his thought, even his eccentricities. As a historian, as a biographer, I’m happy to spend my whole life with Gandhi without becoming any kind of Gandhian myself and while recognizing that there were many other great Indians at the same time – Ambedkar, Tagore, Kamala Devi, Narayana Guru. But Gandhi as a historian kind of consumed my interest, and I think he’ll always be with me as a subject of study, inquiry, fascination, enchantment. But I’m just a writer, I’m no kind of activist. I don’t think Gandhi has made me a better person. I’m irritable, I still get angry, but I’m still always on time. That’s the only thing I’ve learned from him.”

Anything that surprised you in your 15-year study of Gandhi?

Ram said he found surprises in some of the human relationships Gandhi had among associates which were vitally important to him (some of these people “made Gandhi”), which for one reason or other earlier biographers had underplayed or ignored.

• For example, in South Africa, he had 3 Jewish associates who were very important to him – including Kallenbach, Pollock and Sonya Schlesing.
• In the Indian period, Mahadev Desai (his secretary) was more important to Gandhi than Nehru or Patel or Rajagopalachari – but Desai was with Gandhi every day and he "wrote himself out of the narrative," and so his significance in Gandhi’s life is underappreciated. Gandhi trusted Desai more than anyone else, and Desai educated Gandhi (“Gandhi was not a particularly well-read man”; when Gandhi had to issue a statement on a world situation, Desai helped, as Desai “was a profoundly learned man who knew history, philosophy, politics; who translated Gandhi; and who was also a person of great love, compassion and humor”). “When I wrote those sections on Mahadev’s death, I was weeping – Mahadev was 50 when he died; he died in prison. If he had lived another 20 years, our country would have been a different place, because he was easily as great as Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel and he was much younger than them. What he could have done to mold independent India bedevils the imagination.” ​​​​​​
• Pranjivan Mehta, a Gujarati merchant who supported Gandhi financially, was the first person to call him Mahatma, long before Tagore. In 1910 he wrote a letter to Gokhale, saying that "this man Gandhi is going to transform India, and that if he had been born in 18th century, the British never would have colonized India."

Ram was also surprised by the range of influence that Gandhi had. African Americans were following his work in the 1920s and 30s. So were people in Eastern Europe, Latin America. “A man who never travelled yet was profoundly reshaping how people were thinking.”

Gandhi’s role in the global spread of nonviolence, and the limits of nonviolence: how much is Gandhi’s influence directly responsible for global spread of nonviolence, and how much is happening on its own momentum?

“A lot is his influence, sometimes his direct and sometimes his indirect influence.” Ram cited one of the lesser known figures who disseminated Gandhi, an American scholar named Gene Sharp, who passed just a few years ago. Sharp came to do his PhD in Gandhi in 50s and then became an expert on techniques of nonviolence through history – he wrote a 50-page handbook followed in Tibet, Brazil, the Ukraine, Poland. It was Sharp’s distillation, handbook of Gandhian ideas in a pragmatic sense. “This is Gandhi’s influence.”

Ram believes there may be extreme cases in which nonviolence cannot work (eg Hitler). He recounted a story of Ho Chi Minh visiting Delhi in 1957, after Vietnam got independence from France. Ho Chi Minh goes to Raj Ghat (the memorial to Gandhi). There he says that if Gandhi had been fighting French, he’d have given up nonviolence within a week. “It is true that the French were much more brutal colonizers than the British. The British had sense of compassion – you could make them feel guilty about awful things that they did.” General Dyer, after all, was dismissed finally by the British, whereas much more horrible stuff happened in Algeria by the French (Algerian resistors were thrown into the River Seine as late as 1950s and 1960s). “In most democracies or quasi-democracies or dictatorships where dictator has some kind of conscience, nonviolence is always a better means, more efficacious, more moral, moral sustainable, leads to more harmonious outcomes, and leads to much less loss of life. But unlike Gandhi, I’m not an absolute purist. In the case of Hitler’s Germany, there are no alternatives to armed resistance, but these are few cases; these are limiting cases.”

That said, the fact that nonviolence seems to be failing in some contexts (eg, Tibetans and indigenous rights in the face of oil pipelines in North America), does not mean that in those contexts, violence would have worked. “In these two cases I really don’t think so. It’s tragic that it’s happening, but I don’t think terrorism can stop it, or push it back.”

Nonviolence as a tactic v. as a moral strategy to transform the other: Do we even theoretically concede that the “other” can at least change if not completely be transformed? In that sense, Gene Sharp is very different from the original Gandhian nonviolence. Sharp, in his project to make nonviolence more practicable, doesn’t he tone down the moral demands and the attempt to transform the other?

Gene Sharp is really looking at efficacy, what will succeed; the moral dimension is not there. It’s a practical handbook. Sharp is not the leader; he’s not the head of the movement. The moral dimension is for the Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi (“in her better days”), who advocate this kind of moral tolerance, and clarity and empathy. Sharp is really giving you a toolkit. But the moral element is understated in his writing, and Ram believes that can be understand because Sharp was not Gandhi, Dalai Lama or MLK. Ram also believes that with nonviolence (even as a strategy), the “moral dimension is always there, even if not explicitly stated.” The fact that you’re using persuasion and not force to shame your adversary means that the moral element is there. It’s when you pick up a gun that the moral dimension disappears. If something is nonviolent, it has a moral element already, even if it is not predicated on a transformation of the opponent.

The Pandemic, and what would Gandhi be doing right now?

Pandemic has transformed everything. It is “a health crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a moral crisis, a psychological crisis, a democratic crisis, a multilateral crisis – with these 6 or 7 crises, there’s also a modest environmental opportunity for us to reestablish some kind of harmony with species other than us humans. So it’s a profound thing; we don’t know how it will affect us.”

The pandemic will lead to a disruption of global supply chains; “it’ll have to lead on an emphasis on local production and local consumption, and that’s certainly more ecologically sustainable. Gandhi recognized it intuitively, and one of his followers, who was a Columbia-trained economist called J.C. Kumarappa wrote a lot about this. He coined the phrase ‘economy of permanence’ and there’s some good literature by the way on Kumarappa. Kumarappa was a great influence on EF Schumacher in Small is Beautiful. I think the pandemic may revive Gandhi’s economic ideas in, I think, productive and fruitful ways”.

What would Gandhi be doing right now? “He’d be walking, spinning, joking, making friends, building bridges, and above all telling the truth.” He’d continue to push for social transformation incrementally person by person, community by community. He’d be fighting xenophobia, the state powers, since the pandemic has strengthened forces of authoritarianism in most parts of world.

How Ram seems himself in the next 10 years

“My work is to continue reading and writing. I’m working on a book on 7 foreigners who joined the Indian freedom movement nonviolently, and who went to jail – eg., Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn), Annie Besant.” They were “boundary crossers” (like Elwin), “those who use their powerful racial, national, imperial origins to identify with the oppressed and often do interesting work in India” (marry Indians, have relations with Indians). Ram believes the book “will speak to the world of Modi’s India, Trump’s America, Boris’s Brexit – a world in which we are told that we are great and that we can learn from no other country. These foreigners taught us Indians that we can learn from others.”

What made Gandhi the Mahatma/a great soul, from his background as a meek lawyer and mediocre student?

His moral centeredness; openness to debate, dialogue and listening; also luck (he was the only lawyer for 150,000 Indians in South Africa). He was always learning (for example, he was more patriarchal and caste-ist early in his life than later – he “treats his first son awfully but 3rd and 4th sons much better”. He was always learning, interrogating himself, constant self-questioning. For him. certitude was lacking about everything except about nonviolence. "When he finds that he is mistaken, he's wrong, and famously says, 'I am a bundle of contradictions, but take my last statement; don't look at what I wrote in 1890 if you want to understand my views on race'. For example, there's a flourishing industry among activist scholars debunking Gandhi because he was a racist in 1890s. But by the 1900s, he had outgrown his racism and by the 1920s and 30s, people like Howard Thurman, King's mentor, were going to Gandhi's ashram to learn from him. So, you know, I think this capacity to grow and to expand your mind and your moral vision rather than being stuck in the pieties and the certitudes of youth is also very important." He also had tremendous physical courage (given the many fasts he undertook).

Was Gandhi more focused on self-purification in his quest, or on political/social strategies?

"His quest for self-purification was a more important aspect of his political campaigns than for most politicians." He got this from Tolstoy (who was always ravaged by doubt, guilt, sense of privilege).

His views on the environmental movement today

Ram thinks the problem with the hardcore climate change activist is they don’t recognize the range or spectrum of environmental problems; they subsume everything under climate change only.

“Climate change is real and it’s important, but the danger is it becomes the only problem that environmentalists are asked to fix. We have many local environmental problems. If you look at India today, even if there was no climate change, India today would be an environmental basket case. Before the pandemic, Delhi was the most polluted city in the world. Our rivers are biologically dead. Our groundwater aquifers are depleted by tens of meters – below where you have to dig for water. Local chemical contamination of soil. These are independent of climate change. And somehow the whole climate change, climate justice movement says all you have to do is cut greenhouse gas emissions, all you have to do is to have a global treaty whereas you think the environmental predicament requires attention at the regional level, at the state level, at the level of the watershed, at the level of the landscape, and I think, somehow, as I just said, climate change is very important, but somehow it tends to override all other environmental debates, that have much more relevance at a local or regional context.”

Lots of gratitude to all the behind-the-scenes volunteers that made this call happen!