When we are scared, we are totally wired to be isolated, to be more selfish. So if we change the wire from fear to love or whole, we can make people more compassionate. I say to my team every day, they’re like science is saying to us that is that we still have time.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host. Got a great guest on the show, Kamila Camilo. Kamila is an amazing person. Has worked in Brazil. She is the founder and executive director of creators Academy Brazil. She’s a strategic advisor of Instituto Tenloa. I’m gonna have to pass on some of these Portuguese words, because I’m gonna butcher them too badly, so I’m gonna let you tell us about the names, but you’ve got an impressive resume. I’ve worked with all kinds of different NGOs down in Brazil and done work, amazing work. And tell us a little bit about that I would love to know more. Welcome to the program.

Thank you so much for having me here. Matt. So some of the Portuguese word, actually, Talanoa is a is from the Pacific Islands, words, I think it really means, like a big circle. So I mean, I’m serving the board of the Talanoa Institute, and also they got a Bay Institute. You gotta pay in support. Use words, it means it’s small rivers that runs before the big river.

So I started my journey few years ago, like, actually, I started working when I was 11, but my journey on climate starts five years ago when I went to my first cop. So I have been like finding my my way to reconnect with nature for almost 10 years. But five years ago, I had a chance to understand a little bit more of climate policy and the impact of decision making in my future, in the future of the people that I love.

And I was like, I was just like, kind of scared, how much has been talked and done or not done, and people like me wasn’t involved, like regular people just don’t know what decision makers are doing regarding their future. When I went to Glasgow for COP26 I was just questioning myself, why? Why took me so long to come here and understand that? Of course, there’s a lot of economic barriers. It’s not easy to understand, un systems, and back in the day,

I wasn’t like an English speaker. So also a language barrier that complicates everything, because climate conversations is almost every it’s almost all in English or other foreign languages that it’s just like 1% of Brazilians speak English, right? So it’s really, really hard to access those conversations as well. But I was fortunate to had a lot of support in the climate community and and I was so impressed with with everything that was being discussed, but feeling that I’m not part of this.

So how can I come back home and make something? And then creators Academy just started. I used to say that the creators economy is the last mile of education, and nowadays, sometimes for like Gen alpha and Jim, that will be actually the first step of education, they’ve been learning everything with Tiktok and other social media platforms before, even from their parents, right?

Like you see kids like one year old watching YouTube kids, so they’re learning something, and a lot of like it has, like this huge community of creators speaking, like influencing, especially the young people. But when we talk about, like, misinformation, we are fighting misinformation across elderly people, because, you know, over like, they are the targets for spreading misinformation because, like, lacking, affecting checks, all those, all the stuff.

And we are trying to work on how communication can actually serve the purpose of fight climate change and not support companies and markets that has been using for years communication to blindside people about climate issues and make them like sometimes feel guilty about their own behaviors.

Like, it’s not about my, my my piece of my plate of like my meat. It’s not about my 40 minute shower. It’s it’s not about like, my one time a year international travel with my family and loved ones. Yeah, but it’s also, but it’s about something more systemic, right?

And we, we’ve been using, for the best 30 years, 40 maybe more communication to make people feel guilty and just thinking about the individual and other system. So yeah, my work has been shaped on both stuffs.

It’s an amazing journey. And one of the pieces of it, which is impressive to me, is just learning English within five years. You know, I wish I could learn, you know, Portuguese within five years, but you know, so kudos to you for kind of just jumping in there and making a difference. And so tell us a little bit about the creators Academy and the work that you’re doing there,

Awesome. So the creators Academy has three main principles. We say that it’s necessary feel, reflect, and then have most of the content that we say online. It’s all about the action sharing, making other people share without reflect about it and without feeling what that thing means to them. I’ve been searching a lot how behavior changes relate to social media, news and content consumption, right?

And what I realized in some of my research was people that relate to some content actually change behavior. And I small part of them, or now it’s like a big part of them actually buy the lifestyles that the content creators sell in their platforms. So we have, like, influencers in Brazil that has like, 45% conversion rate for products.

That’s more than, like, some of the biggest TV campaigns that we see, right? So it’s like, it’s profitable in Brazil. It’s a 5 billion industry a year, at least, like to say the last because we lack a lot of data on this industry in Brazil. So content creation is something big, and it’s growing very fast. Brazil is a country where social media platforms used to test like interactions and new features, because Brazilians are heavy users.

So like we used to say that we are chronically online. So Brazilians spend, I think, average, five hours a day on social media. So it’s a lot. And because of that, when I went to COP, what I was doing was I was creating content about about cop, and I received a lot of like messages saying, What is this? Because, like, I never heard about, how can I engage?

And then I come back home and I say, I I’ve been doing trips to the Amazon and other Brazilian biomes at that point for a while. And it was like, well, actually, traveled to the Amazon chain had changed my perspective about climate issues, if I invite people that has the influence to change other people’s behavior to experience like the bare minimum that the forest can offer, and that person change, maybe I don’t have millions of followers to talk to, but I can reach people who speak with millions of people.

And then I just put together a proposal to welcome our first group of 50 content creators in a bold trip to the Amazon and our first trip was, like, amazing. We got, like, more than 10 million people engaged with the content that we produced. Our network now is like 120 content creators and journalists. So creators Academy is a tool to amplify local community voices using content creators about forms, and we do that by them experiencing the violence, so they go to the Amazon.

Now we are planning travel to the Chicago, which is kind of our Savannah, and actually the source of most of the water that we have, the water sources most consume, consume in Brazil came from the Saha. So like we are bringing those voices to these places so they can support raise awareness about it. And we believe that the creators Academy goes to a place that it’s not it’s not about showing the problem and what it’s lost.

It’s showing the state of our it’s showing how beautiful, how like, how much prosperity there they have, how those people live and have well, like how they how their lives are good, and why that way of living should be preserved because most of the creation, the content that we see online, it’s all about trauma, right? I was to say that.

So our mission is shifted from trauma based approach communication to emotional based approach communication. But when I talk about emotion, I’m saying positive emotion. I want to show you not a animal burning in the wildfire, but actually a reserve that has been taken care of for local communities and a true partnership between companies, governments and local communities. Because, you know, we just use media to make people more more concerned and scared.

And when we are scared, we are totally wired to be. How can I say, isolate it to be like more we we just go to a place we are more like, we became more kind of selfish. You know, when we are scared, it’s all about like, How can I preserve myself? It’s all about self-preservation, right?

So if we change the wire from fear to love or whole. We can make people more compassionate. We can support them and supporting others. So we we really want to use creators Academy as a way to train people to teach their audiences that they can be more compassion and they can be better humans, that they don’t need to be scared.

Of course, this scenario is not good, but it’s a shoe hole. I say to my team every day, they’re like science is saying to us that is that we still have time. So if, if we still have time, we’re going to work with hope and not disappear and and trauma. This is the floor that we are coaching right now.

I think that’s brilliant, and kudos to you for the great work that you’re doing. I mean, it’s brilliant kind of bringing these content creators into the Amazon and other places to have them get the experience and then share with their audiences that this experience which is educational and empowering and and a chance for everybody to learn, as well as inspire action to preserve this amazing environment that we all share and, and I agree with you and a number of kind of professional communicating experts that I’ve had on the show, they’ve also said, Hey, you’ve got to have two thirds hope to maybe 1/3 fear.

You’ve got to have more hope that we can turn this around than fear. As if we’re all in fear, we’re kind of paralyzed, or, as you said, get selfish and or just like, hey, what’s the point? We’re going to die. We might as well not do anything. But as you said, we we can turn this around, and with concerted action, we will. So tell us more about the other organizations that you’re working with and and how they are affecting change. Awesome.

So I had found the OI institute a few years ago to work with other organizations and also companies, to train their leaders, to engage them with the climate issues and understanding. How can I say that? So for me, it’s like it’s more about working with people than the organizations I’ve been I’ve been working on climate for a while, and everyone’s like is pointing figure fingers to to brands, right?

Which is important. We need to name the the responsible organizations that are responsible for the climate issues. But most of those brands has people behind them. So our strategy and boy Institute and the other organizations that have been part of it’s like, how can we work with the leaders and shape their minds to build a better future in the companies that they are influencing?

So with the employee Institute, we work on events campaigns. Now we are planning a kind of we are planning now, like communication products, like podcasts or other ways to relate to those people. We also do like the treats, like creators Academy but but we do like companies, like off site events for companies where we invite those corporate leaders to be to walk barefoot again? I’ve been inviting a group of managers and a retail company here in Brazil, and I invite them to close their eyes walk barefoot a little bit.

One of them turn to me and say, I don’t remember when I I have watched bear food like in the in the previous 10 years. We are so, like, disconnected from nature, and this is really, really part of most of the corporate lives. You know, people just they. Just awake and go straight to shower and then to work, and then it’s like they, they are kind of confining this in this vicious cycle. A

nd we, I really believe that, like, as soon as we when support people, to remember that they are part of nature, and the human beings are actually crucial for biodiversity. We can learn their behavior in something that is better. They will do better choices. They will develop new processes or review the process that you working with.

So we’ve been doing that. We are really, really focused on support organizations, developing their people and and making them close to nature. I like to say that our mission is bringing organizations and people close to nature, and if we do that, like, by talking to them, it’s like, it’s one conversation at a time, right? Like, I don’t believe that I can change the world, or like, just by myself.

But if I can support one person, will be a whole entire planet in one person, because that person can, might be able to change so much more. So it’s kind of this, this type of work, I’ve been serving some boards, a organization that works more on climate policies for the Brazilian legislation.

So they are very focused on Brazilian climate policy, because I want to be close to that. I really want to support my nation to be the bio stage that we can be. We are not doing that right now. Actually. We are actually, like, more, we are more allied to other, to the other side, but we can be better. So, like, I want to be close to that change.

It’s great that you’re getting people out into nature. And one thing I was kind of struck by when I was in Brazil was how few people that I spoke to who are native Brazilians had actually been to the Amazon. They were like, Oh, I’ve never been to the Amazon, no.

So it’s maybe kind of striking to them to go there and experience nature and and certainly I’ve talked to other environmentalists and leaders feeling, hey, it is so important for us to go out and personally experience nature, and it brings us back to our humanity and why this is important, and it is inspirational.

So again, kudos to you for bringing business leaders out there to experience this. I wanted to kind of ask you about, can you elaborate how climate justice plays a central role in your work with, you know, various organizations, particularly in relationship to marginalized communities.

So climate justice is a lens for me, like it goes to being like having fairness as a principle, but above all, it’s it’s about like our work is supporting people that are marginalized to thrive, not just survive, to the climate crisis. So for example, when we plan group trip to the Amazon, we work to develop the whole supply chain locally to you know, hire more women, hire more queer people, try to understand how those communities are organized, paying them fairly.

One thing that it’s like, crucial in this sometimes it’s just talking about like, being fair on paying people, but climate justice goes to understand those people when I arrive is everything good when I left, the place will be good, will be worse.

So for us, like climate justice is a lens, we cannot do something that will left people in the worst condition after we left a place or we interact with them, we don’t want to kind of perpetuate the extractivism that creates all the inequalities that we see nowadays. And climate justice goes to understand it’s necessary adaptation.

It’s necessary create strategies for adaptation here what this community really needs. Because when we bring, for example, a group of creators, they can bring a lot of visibility to a place, but if we don’t prepare the community to work with the visitants that can be there afterwards, or we are now offering a way to work and continue to do the work, they will be in the worst condition.

One thing that one project that we’ve been working in partnership with the Swiss based organization called Game forest, is inclusion of ipoc. Use, which is thanks for indigenous people and local communities and the digital economy and how we can do that. They are collectors already, right?

But now they are collectors of raw materials, like bio bio products, we’d say. But they can be data collectors. The difference between you being a collector of ASAE and being a data collector is that you don’t have a ascension perspective being an SRE collector, but the cause to you goes from data collector to data analyst to data scientist, and how you can be paid in the digital economy.

It’s like, as a big difference we were talking about, we were piloting this last year, and for data collectors, we were paying something around $400 which is, it’s like, it’s a little money if you are us, citizen, but multiply for six, if you’re a Brazilian, five and a half or six. So it’s a lot of money for a riverside little boy that don’t have access to, like internet technology or like all the goodies that has in big cities, right?

And then in the community, they can have this salary, which is a lot, but they if they becoming six months a data analyst, or in one year, this can jump for $400 to $4,000 which is like more than any person in their family has made in like the entire life per month, and we were piloting for six months, and we say like he has hope it’s possible to do that. It’s not in the interest of a lot of people, because as soon as the communities know what they have, because when you become a data collector, you you will start to understand the value of your territory, right?

You understand the value of biodiversity. No one can tell you that your carbon credit, like will be sell for less than than what we you know that really is valued. That’s why a lot of organizations don’t do a real work with communities, because if they know what they are actually selling, they probably won’t sell.

So it’s like so our our works like we want to support you, to understand what you have and use technology to protect biodiversity in without you need to live in your home, we just noticed how girls stay longer and isolated communities, and this is totally connected to care economy. They stay because they are responsible for the little ones, and they they stay longer because they are responsible for the elders and the boys.

They just left the communities because they need to find a way to provide, and there’s no money the community now, because they don’t have, they don’t have, like the cycles as they had before. I was like a small parenthesis here. I was living in Nebraska last year for two months and and I was visiting a lot of of corn farms, right?

And talking to to the farmers they were, they were saying to me, like, you know, I’ve been seeing early seasons every year, each after year, the seasons are changing. So it’s in Nebraska where they have access to technology, a like a massive access to water, they are feeling the difficulty like now. Nebraska is a fire state, like every year, 1000s of acres, has born because responsibility, like people just don’t know, and the wind, actually, the wind patterns change, and it and has, like increasing the wildfires there. It happened the same here in Brazil year after year.

So people in the communities don’t have the access that the cities has. So we try to balance and offer when we are with them, kind of bridge the gap. We are still starting right like my organization has two years. So we had a lot of plans, big ideas, and it’s more time to try to put everything in practice.

You made a lot of progress, and I love the stories of hope that you’re bringing opportunities, economic opportunities, to people in indigenous areas and giving them a chance to kind of move up the ladder economically and and that kind of sings to my heart as as an employment attorney, I’m fighting for the rights of people who’ve been never paid properly or treated poorly.

And so I know that those you know, those are civil rights, and those are, you know, going back. Back to the to the Bible, you know, talking about people denied their wages, and paying wages timely is is so important, you know, just taking care of yourself.

But, you know, I wanted to kind of pivot back to the work that you were doing in the Brazilian government, or with the legislature, with laws there. And what are you seeing, kind of on the ground and in terms of enacting legislation that will help really shift the debate, or shift the community and the state and the nation in ways that will help protect the amazing environment in Brazil?

Well, I mean, our biggest achievement will be putting place our climate plan, which is like a national plan, a national policy that will be kind of, how can I say that in English? Oh, my God, but it’s like each state need to, kind of after the federal legislation they implement locally.

So we are now, for the first time, having something that will drive this Brazil plan of being a bio state naturally. We rely a lot on our natural natural resources, and we’ve been selling that to the global community, but we also rely a lot on our oil reserves or fossil fuel reserves. So the thing that is the biggest challenge for us right now is the Brazilian government understand that it’s not possible being the two things at the same time that we need to choose a path.

So we were kind of like it’s not possible have it all, right? So our government understands now that they can have it all. And the climate movement is fighting on the on the policy and like advocacy part, on saying to the government, no, it’s not possible, but we have a chance to stop deforestation. So first ray, like movement from our government now was like they were, they are really engaged on stop deforestation.

The numbers are dropping in the Amazon, there is kind rocket in the other biomes, I’m not gonna lie. But in the Amazon, the numbers has dropped, which is awesome, but we need, we need our governments to understand how natural ecosystems are intertwined, and it doesn’t matter if you stop deforestation in the Amazon, but there’s no sejado to support the Amazon and care the water that is producing the Amazon otherwise the water will stay there.

So it’s kind of, it’s kind of, now we are finding a fight that to make policy makers understand the science behind ecological ecosystems, like natural ecosystems, because they are working more on the economic aspects. So I think this is kind of kind of hard part for everybody, right when we’re talking about policy making on climate, it’s aligned science and economics.

We’ve been advancing in some states, for example, the state of like spirit to center, they’ve they’ve been a lot like they they were facing, few years ago, we had, like, a huge accident with a mining company, and I have a whole river had died because of the accident and and the state of spirit to center, They’ve been working very hard to treat the river and support the families, and they’ve been an example for other states to develop like policies regarding, like the precautions with mining companies, so like mining projects and pipeline so kind of these kind of policies are advancing right now.

We still face a challenge of like, understand that we need to phase out from fossil fuel. Brazil is the I think now. I think we are in fourth place as like the largest, the largest emitter of like greenhouse gas emissions. I think Brazil is the fourth or fifth one right right now, and we should pay our part in this right like, you know,

I didn’t see a whole lot of solar or wind or electric cars while I was in Brazil. And, of course, I would think that, you know, you have tremendous solar potential in Brazil, because it’s such a sunny place and, and I would assume wind as well. What? Why is it that I’m not seeing that, and are there plans to change that?

Yeah, I would say that for two main reasons. First, our energy were developed mostly upon hydraulic power, and then our matrix and. And like, in the last 20 years, has increased in the wind and solar, but it’s still for, like, I think it’s less than 15% of our matrix goals for wind and solar. It’s mostly hydraulic energy.

So, like, we’ve been building this structures all over the country for the hydroelectric ones. So which has a negative impact, is considered a clean source, but the side effects of a hydroelectric being being put in place, it’s a lot we don’t have to be honest with you, just like my perspective and some that I’ve been reading about, regarding we, we’re not adopting a lot of EVs right now goes because we don’t have infrastructure to have, like, long distance travels by car.

So that’s a lot of like infrastructures for the EVS, because our country is Continental, right? And most of the logistics are doing by trucks. For example, how can we, like, bring more electrical truck trucks, and we don’t have infrastructure for them to to do the long distance trips?

One thing that I believe that for Brazil, it’s a little bit different than other countries, is that we can combine different sources. We can have ethanol, for example, and like hybrid cars, it’s more something for Brazil than full EV vehicles right now. It’s just like one perspective for us. I I’ve been like, listening some some companies that are saying, like, we’re we’re not gonna bring full electrical vehicles to Brazil for us.

We’ll be like, we’re gonna work on the hybrids. But there’s like, Chinese companies coming all in to the Brazil market. For EVs, right now, I believe that in five years from now, you’re probably gonna come back to Brazil and see more. Yeah, I think it’s more like, on the long distance is because of that. Like, we travel a lot, and we don’t have this chill, like, infrastructure for the EVS say that.

Yeah, they Brazil is such a ginormous country, I would look at it like, Oh, I could go here, and I’d look on the map, it’s only an inch and a half, and they’re like, oh, it’s 1500 miles. It’s, yeah, it’s huge. But I was also struck by the lack of commuter trains. Like, you know, it tried to, you know, hey, could I take a train from here to there? And it was like, No, there’s not a train. They go. So is there any plan to connect the cities?

You know, this is our biggest fight on logistics. So back in the 70s, I think maybe a little bit earlier than that, was like a massive movement in Brazil to having trails, and then it was stopped by the lobbying of of car companies, and has been there so far since, like, since then, has been like, everything is about highways and trails.

I don’t see right now, and I had this conversation last week. I don’t see right now, any political willing to pay the price to fight those companies and try to invest and trails for Brazil would be a massive victory for logistics and way less impact on nature.

But I think the the bottom line here is that the investment up front for for trails is larger than the highways, but the highways is like, it’s kind of like, cheaper to do at the beginning, and then you spend a lot of money on maintenance right to make sure that the that that it’s good, it’s safe still. So it’s kind of, they use this kind of argument to delay things like that, and has been working for 50 years so far, right?

Well, certainly I could see the challenges of having a rail system in Brazil because it is so large. But, you know, there are rail systems in other large countries and and they seem to kind of operate, so hopefully that will, you know, take hold at some point in time. So how can grassroots, community led initiative play a crucial role in advancing climate justice, especially in vulnerable regions like Brazilian biomes?

I think like three main ways. The first one is community awareness, the grassroots movement. They can support local education, and then can support, literally, people survive to the climate crisis, just raising awareness. The second aspect is grassroots initiatives.

They bring what is happening on the ground to public policy, and if we. Be as like, if a governments are wired to actually listen those movements, the policies can be more precise and more like effective. So I think there’s this component of CO design of policies, projects, everything. And the third aspect, for me is is actually like engagement and building movement for a long for the longer, for the long run, grassroots movements, they are all about collective action. It’s about collective responsibility.

So when we empower communities to work together, to co design solutions, they can actually work for the solutions last longer. Like that’s tons of studies saying that there’s no policy or projects like that is implemented without community participation the last so grassroots movements, they can support climate projects should go longer and stay for for more time in place and actually has impact, you know.

And I really believe that when we support grassroots movements, we make sure that the voices of those that are more impacted without being the cause of the problem will be hard and will be supported to not just survive, but thrive bring this crisis. There’s a persuasive argument for grassroots, organization and grassroots.

I would say that, like a lot of the vision that is, I don’t know, I think we choose to picture grassroots movements as disorganized, just these screamers. You know, it’s all about the the protests. But what I’ve been seeing is that they actually do the protest, but they are more community organizers than protesters. You know, sometimes we picture the protester as the only builder of a grassroots movement, and it’s not that way.

Things are combined. We need people on streets screaming. Definitely we need because those voices are also important to make sure that more people are listening, but the like the larger group of doers, they are moderate people working silently, right? So that’s why, like, I took the river lesson.

So movement in river, it starts way, way below, like at six o’clock, you look to the river, and it’s a mirror. There’s no movement and the surface, but below, there’s a lot of things happening. Right? If you stay there and you observe the changes in two hours from that, you’re gonna see waves all over the river.

So it’s like, I do believe that grassroots movements are empowered that way. Most of the time, we are looking to the surface and maybe listening some groups screaming, and we are not paying attention to that, because as humans, we are now wired to respond to screaming. Actually, when we hear screaming, our inner child just turn off the noise, you know, and think about other stuffs, but there’s a lot of working happening below the surface.

And I think we, we should, as any organization or corporate leader or like, if you know that you have influence in any aspect of your life, look below the surface to understand the the grassroots movements and how they are actually working. Because, you know, the campaigns are just a small part of a large work that has been done before.

Well said, tell our listeners how they can stay in touch with you and check out your social media and follow you and contribute to what you’re doing.

Yeah, you you can find me on all social media as Kamila. Kamila with K, and I’ll be more than happy to talk to you. I’ve been doing content and bilingual, so if you’re an English speaker, you’re gonna understand what I’m saying. There are subtitles in English and yeah, let’s stay connected. I think we can fight climate change together. This is a collective issue that requires collective action. Thank you so much, Matt for having me.

Thank you Kamil,a and great work, and good luck to you going forward, we’ll look forward to collaborating with you as we go forward to learn more about our work at a climate change and how you can help us reach our goal, planting 30,000 trees in the Amazon this year.

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