However today was the most engaged I’ve ever found myself when listening to the incredible work that individuals and organisations are doing to aid in the battle against climate change.

Firstly, I’d like to highlight Abraham Bugre who we first heard from yesterday when he shared the stage with his fellow Ghanian Youth group (which in itself was a great panel). However, today, he spoke with passion about a project that he and his brother had begun working on, and talked with pride about the great minds that he was collaborating with. Personally, I was so inspired after his talk that I immediately added him on LinkedIn, and hope to highlight more of his work in the near future.

I’d also like to talk about the amazing work that the Blue Marine Foundation has been doing as we heard from the brilliant mind of Clare Brook, one of the founders of the NGO. I had heard how bad the practice of bottom trawling was for the environment, however I didn’t realise the extent of the devastation that it causes to ecosystems (some take a lifetime to recover) as well as the sheer amount of CO2 released by this aggressive scraping of the seabed.

For context, the Ocean absorbs 25-30% of annual CO2 , through means such as seaweed, kelp and other oceanic plant life, as well as in fish and whale carbon. The Blue Marine foundation have a host of projects happening all around the world, including looking at protecting a biodiverse area of ocean off of the coast of Mexico, as well as partnering with the University of Exeter to conduct a $15million seascape survey to quantify the amount of carbon stored in coastal shelves.

Later in the day, I had the privilege of attending the ‘Think Local, Feed Global: Is it possible?’ panel, featuring Catherine Chong (C.L.E.A.R), Will Rolph (Two Fields Olive Oil) and the previously mentioned Abraham Bugre (also brilliantly moderated by Mark Shayler). This was an especially insightful discussion, which really put into question the global demand for imported ‘exotic’ foods, and the problems that come with this. Everyone on the panel appeared to agree that there should be more of a focus on “eating local” as a means of cutting down on emissions.

A particularly poignant moment was when Catherine recalled how her father had been forced to abandon his indigenous method of farming and told to use a more modern and westernised method (involving pesticides and GMOs) in order to achieve a higher yield of produce. In her words: “it f*cked everything up.”

In a sentiment similar to yesterday’s, she also said “if you live in the UK you pay a lot of tax. In this democratic society we live in, you elect politicians to be an age of change.” Vote, vote, vote!