How I learned as a professional climber (and amateur mom) that we’re doing conservation wrong

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I started Legado in 2011 with $11,000 cobbled together from outdoor companies like Patagonia and Clif Bar, who sponsored me as a climber. My vision was quite simple: to host a first ascent of the 2,000 foot face of Mount Namuli (Mozambique’s second highest mountain), get scientists on that climb to find new species, and create a conservation program by working with the communities of Namuli start and Mozambican non-profit organizations.

We largely achieved our goals and within a few years Legado was receiving funding from global names such as the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund and the World Wildlife Fund. But then two things happened: The Lomwe people of Mount Namuli, the ancestors of the mountain, asked me when I would understand that protecting their forest was not enough and that they needed better support for their communities focused on education, Health and Agriculture Focused , Infrastructure and more. And I got pregnant… with twins.

At the end of pregnancy, sleeping sucks. My huge belly has been wracked with labor these past few weeks, especially when I had to lift myself out of bed during my six to eight night trips to the bathroom. At 2am one night I looked to see how many other women might have been in the same situation. It turns out that, according to United Nations estimates, almost 400,000 women worldwide give birth every day. Using quick, non-empirical logic in the middle of the night, I calculated that in any two-week period, 5.6 million women were about to give birth and also likely lost all circulation in their arms while sleeping.

During my 40+ hours of work, I reflected on this expanded global birth group, sustained by a conceptual camaraderie at one of the most difficult moments of my life. But just a few hours after holding my twins in my arms, I began thinking about the women and families of Namuli.

While I was in labor, I received word that Legado had a year of our annual budget within reach if I just wrote a proposal. As a social entrepreneur without the option of maternity leave, I saw this email less than six hours after it was sent. So over the course of the first day, the four of us and my family kept thinking about what I wanted to achieve in my life and for my family. I also thought about what families on Namuli had told me over and over again, that they wished for themselves – that they both put their health first And the health of their forest, not to mention the legal rights to their land, additional teachers and educational opportunities, and much more. How was I supposed to reconcile all this with the new potential funder who only wanted to support the protection of the Namuli rainforest? That’s when I realized I had built Legado wrong.

Conservation, as traditionally practiced, focuses on protecting a natural resource, often to the exclusion of the actual owners and managers of that resource. As a climber who has witnessed climate change in the mountains firsthand and cares about the health of our planet, I chose conservation. But now I realized that this road was too narrow for the people of Namuli. It didn’t take into account their priorities: their livelihood, their education, their health, their culture and more.

We had to move away from providing solutions We I thought the Lomwe people needed support to reach them her Instead, own goals. That is the difference between pure nature conservation and climate justice. Legado shouldn’t be a conservation organization, but one focused on advancing climate justice.

Climate justice ensures that those most affected are at the decision-making table when ideas to address the impacts of climate change are translated into funded plans. It ensures those who are most impacted find the best outcome for their needs.

Before I became a mother, I had a plan for parenthood. Twins weren’t there. Like all parents, the fact that I have to raise one tiny human in the world means I learn and fail and try every day – just twice as much. My family’s needs are constantly evolving. And as I’ve learned to be responsive to parents in response to that reality, I’ve also recalibrated Legado to adapt to the complexities described by communities like Namuli’s and the delivery of top-down -Solutions to support the solutions that communities identify themselves. This approach has also quadrupled the size of the organization and expanded our work to Kenya and Peru.

Communities come to us because they see an organization that first listens to them and then helps them achieve their priorities. However, we do not have a patent solution for nature conservation. What we have is a people-centric method of supporting indigenous peoples and local communities on the frontlines of climate change in pursuing their multiple priorities for their people and their land.

Today, our community partners in Mozambique, Kenya and Peru have improved access to local education and healthcare, secured land rights, adapted livelihoods to climate change and integrated community-led priorities into local government plans and budgets. And there’s more to come.

To truly advance climate justice, we must recognize that the issues people face are complex, chaotic, and transcend sectoral boundaries and strategic cycles that any grant can cover. As a mother, I have learned how to support this work primarily through human action.

Majka Burhardt is a professional climber, founder and managing director of LegadoMother of twins and author of the new book Morea series of real-time letters to her twins as she raised them from birth to the age of five as she walked and grew legado.

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