Prof Phoebe Barnard
@phoebebarnard
The world doesn't have to be this way. Climate & biodiversity science, risk, resilience, Earth-repairing societal/planetary futures. Prof U Washington; RA African Climate & Development Initiative/ Fitztitute, UCapeTown, SEI Oxford, LC Nature Recovery.
7. #JohnBowey and #SvitlanaKrakovska - coproducer of our forthcoming film “Climate in a Time of Conflict” who is Ukraine’s best known climate scientist, an indefatigable soldier for Ukraine - are safe, or at least were last night. I am awake most nights following their travels along risk landscapes.
6. The Russian invasion of Ukraine began nearly four and a half years ago. Putin is doing his best to avoid admitting defeat. He’s in a corner, outsmarted and out-innovated if not outgunned. It’s increasingly nasty and exhausting. This is two nights ago, 31 July 2026, in Kyiv.
5. Hundreds of thousands of destroyed lives and futures. These wars poison the future. Tribalism, horror and resentment put down deeper roots. We do not get better as a species when war is involved - particularly on a crowded planet.
4. …schools, hospitals, nuclear power plants, playgrounds. They conjure up genocidal impulses like malevolent brutal wizards. And Trump and Hegseth frankly admire these men - with Trump so malignantly sociopathic that he and his son in law imagine real estate deals from the rubble of misery.
3. Putin does not give a damn that a million young Russian boys and men have been killed or maimed since 2022. Let that figure sink in. And he, Netanyahu and the Sudanese generals certainly don’t care about bombing civilian targets: homes while children and their parents try to sleep;
2. Women rarely start wars. And they usually lead for the future, for society, for the planet- for the benefit of all. Conventional diplomacy is lame with such men as Putin, Netanyahu or Trump. Or Hemedti or Fattah (generals of the RSF/former Janjaweed and government respectively in Sudan)./3
Dr Gabrielle Naomi on feminine, masculine, nurturing, providing, and what we should remember as things around us begin to shift with #civilization. Both #yin and #yang are needed to bring about a more nurturing, wise set of conditions for the biosphere and humanity. www.facebook.com/share/v/1NHC...
2. Namibia & South Africa are two of many countries which fairly successfully navigated their crossroads of history - colonialism & apartheid to democratic independence. Let governments recognise this moment and step up to the plate without timidity or corruption. We are all now at a #crossroads.
For the 20 yrs I worked in governments - Namibia, South Africa - I was surrounded by those who said that things were “not politically possible.” But political possibility needs, and sometimes starts, in governments. #GretaThunberg & all of us are precious years older - years we squandered. A 🧵 1/2
There are many great ways to repurpose abandoned shopping malls. In Washington’s Skagit Valley, students formulated plans for walkable communities in a local mall (abandoned after a mass shooting, and with local stores starved by Bezos). @petebuttigieg.bsky.social @obamafoundation.bsky.social
Sometimes i almost feel that the magic of #astronomy serves just to remind us of the ephemerality of human vanities or political machinations. NSF-DOE’s @vrubinobs.bsky.social Rubin Observatory initiative is of extraordinary breadth. 😟 If only we had endless time 🧘🏼♀️ www.washington.edu/news/2026/06...
10. ... social and informational conditions on which societal resilience depends. The world is heavily invested in the security of the last century while remaining underprepared for the kinds of insecurity that define this one.
8. Any serious rethinking of security must start from that reality, not from the vantage point of those most insulated from it. (!!) Insecurity is also increasingly shaped by the digital environments through which people interpret the world. Platforms and algorithms reward outrage and division.
7. These are examples of #systemicrisks, where shocks in one area can trigger instability across others. For much of the world, these are not abstract future risks: whether Africa, South Asia, Europe or Small Island Developing States, the consequences of cascading insecurity are already lived daily.
6. ...COVID‑19 killed over 7 million people and cost the global economy roughly 12.5 tn dollars. These risks are especially dangerous because they do not occur in isolation. They interact and cascade across connected systems, turning localised shocks into national or global crises.
5. ...as primary drivers of instability. Climate change is intensifying extreme weather, food insecurity and displacement. In 2022 alone, climate‑related disasters displaced around 32 million people, more than conflict. Pandemics and cyberattacks can spread across borders with extraordinary speed:
4. This has created a dangerous mismatch between the way global security is commonly imagined and the way insecurity is actually experienced. Global military expenditure exceeded 2.7 trillion USD in 2024 – the highest level on record – even as climate shocks, pandemics and digital risks emerge... /5
3. In the 21st C, global security is increasingly shaped by risks still too often treated as peripheral, including climate change, pandemics, artificial intelligence, biodiversity loss and cyber risk.
2. It's time to rethink our approach to #globalsecurity, too often considered simply a matter of military strength: bigger defence budgets, stronger deterrence, harder borders. Those things can matter. But they no longer describe the full reality of what makes societies safe, prosperous, resilient
"...with the problems & the lessons that they should be learning. I found that really satisfying to work on. But also we interviewed soil scientists like a woman at the University of California system called Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, an Eritrean-American scientist who'd worked in the White House...
"We drew some parallels, but also some contrasts between the North American Dust Bowl, and the degradation over centuries of the Loess Plateau in China. And we went and interviewed John D Liu, such a champion of ecosystem restoration, and looked at how governments were engaging or not engaging...
"It's so much less expensive than throwing billions $$ at direct air capture plants of huge size & probably no significant future. We're looking at those kinds of things, but also the mindset shift, the system shift that's required to bring us into a better, humbler, kinder, wiser civilization..."
"We concluded that Nature is still the only real game in town - we need to conserve, to rewild, to restore Nature because we already have a lot to work with." - a 🧵 on #TheClimateRestorers documentaries in my conversation w @julespretty.bsky.social on his great new podcast, Heat! Camera! Action!
What do we do as #biodiversity #conservation & #globalchange scientists when events are overtaking us? Tomorrow I'll talk with my friend Prof Fatsuma Olaleru+the Young Women in Conservation Biology network, which I started 2005. 28 May 2026, 4pm UTC; 8am PST; 11am EST us02web.zoom.us/j/8500472754...
Could someone please identify this man on the Environmental Audit Committee for me? In question time, he tried unsuccessfully to dismiss the UK intelligence report as wildly uncertain and worthy of being discredited. I'm still trying to figure out who's who here. Others' Qs were very thoughtful.
3. The framing of biodiversity and ecosystem loss in the context of climate destabilization, ecological overshoot and societal instability and collapse needs to continue to be the global discussion as raised by #BorisJohnson & #SirDavidAttenborough at the UN Security Council when Johnson was UK PM.
For those interested in conservation triage, triple whammy crises and the breakdown of the old world order - what’s our role as conservation and global change science leaders in times of geopolitical crises? 28 May, 16:00 London/Lagos time. Please note, talk especially for women conservationists.
This seems like an appropriate day to remember that these are NOT times for backlash-focused partisan policymaking during times of a climate and nature emergency. actuaries.org.uk/beyond-the-n... @actuaries.blog.gov.uk.web.brid.gy actuaries.org.uk/news-and-med...
4. It pains millions of us to see the haphazard reactivity of human leadership at such moments. Of course it’s understandable: leaders need to keep the tiller steady on the ship of humanity during unstable times. Some countries playing the long and proactive game will be alright. Others will fall.