Name

Anna Vickerstaff

Location

London, UK

What was your ‘eureka’ moment for getting into sustainability?

My Eureka moment was actually probably listening to Thom Yorke from Radiohead speaking about Friends of the Earth’s Big Ask campaign in about 2008. I’d always been interested in Climate Change but often felt powerless to do anything about it. Having someone I really admired front a campaign that was enabling everyday people to impact on policy meant that was the first time I ever felt empowered to actually make change. It inspired me to talk to people more about Climate Change, to start my own campaigning and to gear myself towards making sure that fighting for social and climate justice was at the core of my future.

What have you been doing on sustainability since?

I now work for Friends of the Earth as part of the anti-fracking movement where I focus on campaigning around energy extraction in the UK. I am Co Director of the UK Youth Climate Coalition where we work on lobbying the UK government of climate policy, grass roots mobilisation of young people and each year send a delegation of young people to the UN climate talks. I’m also involved in grass roots campaigns groups working on creative actions for climate justice. One of my main interests is education on sustainability and climate change and I was selected as one of 50 ‘young leaders’ for UNESCO on education for Sustainable Development and attended the Youth and World Conferences on ESD in Japan in 2014 as well as the UN Climate talks in Paris in December 2015.

What’s your vision for reaching a sustainable future?

A sustainable future would be one where we live in an equal, democratic society, where climate change is at the core of education and where fossil fuels are a thing of the past. There are many obstacles around governance and corporate greed that we have to overcome to get to that future, however, I think the main challenges we have to overcome are in representation and empowerment. At the moment the groups and communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are not given the platforms to speak out about their struggles or given the ability or resources to take action. More work needs to be done to ensure those people are at the forefront of the fight and are given the support and infrastructure to make change for climate justice.

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