In Conversation with Hannah Harrison: Climate Activist and COP27 delegate
Photo courtesy of Hannah Harrison.
Hannah Harrison graduated from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge in 2022. She now works in Cambridge for the Great St. Mary’s parish authority as their ‘Science in Faith Engagement Officer’, a new role created by the authority to promote climate education within faith communities.
At the moment, her work focuses on teaching school children about climate change and the intersections between climate change, human civilisations and cultures.
In November 2022, Hannah attended COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, as a member of the UK youth delegation with the Future Leaders’ Network. We sat down in a particularly noisy Starbucks on Regent Street to discuss her involvement in climate activism, COP27, and her thoughts on the effects of climate change on our mental health.
What was your first experience of climate activism? Was there a particular moment that inspired you?
It was actually at uni, in first year, just before the pandemic started, which (...) when I’ve been talking to my friends, they all started around a similar point. I had a supervision, (...) a book review of “On Fire” by Naomi Klein, a journalist who works on the intersection between politics and climate change.
I remember reading that book, and what she was saying about neoliberalism and austerity. I was reflecting on my life (...) I’m from Bolton, in Greater Manchester, and a lot of what she was saying about the impacts of austerity I found: “Oh, I experienced this”. I experienced boarded-up shops, not a lot of support from social security measures, very much “if you fail your fault” (...) [a] very independent kind of ethic throughout school that everybody had (...). How she related this to climate change I found really compelling, and from then I was sold.
I thought: “I have to work on climate”. So, really, it’s the connection that austerity has with our degrading climate that got me into the movement. From there I joined ClimaTalk and subsequently Generation Climate Europe. But since, my interests have grown a bit broader. I’m interested in climate change not just as anti-austerity policies, but also in the wider, ethical changes that need to happen. But yeah, a supervision by Bhaskar Vira (...) is the thing that I say started my journey!
What made you think “I want to take this further, I want to get more involved”?
A number of things. The first was the pandemic. We couldn’t go to protests because of social distancing, so (...) what was available at the time was probably one reason. The second reason was that I got very lucky.
At ClimaTalk, I started off as an editor, and then I got offered another role at ClimaTalk, which was coordinating the publications (...) and basically I got to work with lots of people across the organisation. That increased my confidence in an immeasurable way. At the time I was dealing with quite a lot of low self-esteem, anxiety, and so on, and from there, I had the courage to join Generation Climate Europe, which is the largest coalition of youth-led networks at the European level, working on more ambitious climate action.
I got more opportunities to appear on podcasts, to coordinate working groups, and from there, I found Future Leaders’ Network and was able to go to COP. So I would say a lot of it was down to luck, in terms of having these opportunities given to me, but also, not being able to do the protests at the time (...). I still haven’t been to a climate protest, because of one, COVID, and two, my exams and studies, but I hope to change that very soon!
Do you feel like climate activism remains the white, middle-class movement that it’s been criticised for being in the past?
I think the tide is turning slowly, it’s still becoming more diverse. I think, for me, one of the reasons why- I of course had imposter syndrome- but why I was compelled to keep going and keep getting involved in different groups and organisations was that I didn’t see myself represented. I didn’t see people from working class backgrounds in the movement at all, and so I felt, “I need to be there”, much like I think that a lot of my friends who are activists of colour feel compelled that they need to be in these spaces, because they do.
One thing that I want to do now that I’ve been to COP is really share knowledge: about the logistics of getting to a COP, what it’s like being there, beyond the policy, and how to best make the most of your time there with as many people as possible. It is obtainable for anybody, wherever you are in your environmentalism. If you want to go, and if you have something to say there, you can and should be able to get there.
With COP, what was it like? What was your favourite experience, what was your worst experience, was there anything you found particularly anxiety-inducing?
COP is a very intense space. There is everything happening all at once, all the time. One of the main memories that I will hold on to for a while is being in one of the plenary rooms [where] they conclude what they’ve discussed, nothing new should be brought up.
I sat there with my friends for maybe an hour, an hour and a half. They were saying opening remarks, they weren’t necessarily concluding anything, they were just saying what their country thought about what had been negotiated previously. It seemed like there was- I don’t want to say there was no haste (...) but they were stuck within the bureaucracy, within the tradition of “we have to go through this stage to begin rounding off what we’ve discussed previously”. I could’ve sat in that room for hours. I had to go to a meeting, but I could’ve honestly sat in the plenary room for hours and hours and hours just taking in the world leaders sitting with their delegations and people taking notes.
One of my favourite things away from the policy side was being with the delegation. On week two, there were five of us, and being with them all day every day, and experiencing Egypt and the UN space was one of the highlights, because not many young people get to be sent on a plane to Egypt and be at the UN for a week!
Are conferences like COP genuinely helpful for finding long-term, sustainable solutions to climate change, or do you feel like they have more of a performative purpose?
I went to an event by Cambridge Climate Society this week where this was discussed, and I’m of the view at the moment (and this could change) that COPs are the only multilateral way of negotiating climate change that we have. They’re the only mechanism that we have to solve climate change on an international level. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need reform, because I think it does- some of the ways negotiations happen (...) they can roll on hours, even days past the estimated deadlines- but it’s the only way that we have at the minute.
So I don’t think we should just say that they’re completely worthless and entirely performative, but I think we’d be right to say that there needs to be some changes. We’ve had these COPs for (...) thirty years and twenty seven COPs (...). It needs changing slightly in order to make it a bit more efficient and to have quicker and more radical progress on things like loss and damage. As much as we’ve agreed to a fund, we’ve still not agreed how much is gonna be in that fund, who’s gonna contribute to it, and where it’s going, and that won’t be agreed until COP28 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Pakistan remains underwater, Australia is on fire, flooding, and people are losing their lives, their homes, their livelihoods, and places that they’ve lived in for millenia, every single day.
Do you find that getting so actively engaged in climate activism helps you with warding off any eco anxiety that you feel, or do you think that it actually makes it worse?
That’s a good question…
Because a lot of the time the solution is “oh, you need to do something about it [climate change]”! And do you think that is a good solution?
I think that the community that I’ve found within climate work is the one thing that wards off my climate anxiety, because I’ve talked to my friends and they feel similarly. We share our emotions about the ecological breakdown that we see on the news and what we don’t see on the news that should be on the news. It’s that sense of belonging, but also a sense of “this needs to change” and when we get in power, or when they finally listen to us, that’s gonna be one of the first things that we ask for. So that gives me hope for the future. I know that work needs to be done as of now, but it’s the one thing that keeps me going, I would say, my friends that I’ve made.
I’d say one thing that I’ve found increasingly important is to kind of step away from climate work from time to time. During COP we chatted to Katie White- she’s the CEO of WWF- and she was saying that one of her tips to us as young people is to dip into your climate activism. Do what you have to do: work on your non-profits, your projects, your protests, what have you, and then step away. Let other people do that. And whilst you’re away, have a break, completely disconnect from the work that you do for a while. Stay engaged as far as your health will allow you, and then when you’re ready go back in, at which point your friends might need to step away.
So there’s always someone working, and the work never ends, but you need to take some time for yourself- especially whilst we’re young- the things that you enjoy. So for me, I like musicals, I like escape rooms, I like reading- those kinds of things.
What are your thoughts on “climate burnout” among young people who get involved in climate activism and then it consumes their whole lives? I guess the answer is you just have to step away from it?
There was a point last year that I was doing a lot. I adored all of what I was doing, I don’t think words can express how much I loved it, but I think what was needed was a break. It coincided with me graduating as well, which (...) was quite an emotional time, and so I needed that complete break. I didn’t completely detox, because I didn’t feel a need to completely step away, but the work that I was doing, I lessened. Then when I felt ready to step back in, I saw the advertisement for Future Leaders Network and I thought, “OK, this is a good opportunity for me to re-engage and start up again.”
If you’d like to find out more about the organisations Hannah and I were discussing, follow these links:
ClimaTalk: https://climatalk.org/about/
Future Leaders Network: https://www.futureleaders.network/