When I talk to Dr. Jane Goodall, she’s sitting in her childhood home in Bournemouth, on the south coast of England, where four generations of her family have lived. The 86-year-old environmentalist is wearing a Patagonia jacket and sitting in front of a bookshelf displaying black-and-white pictures of her mother.
It’s an appropriate setting. Goodall credits her parents with laying the foundation for her illustrious career. When she was a child, Goodall received a plush chimpanzee she called Jubilee from her father. This sparked her lifelong fascination with chimpanzees. When Goodall decided to go to Tanzania to begin her research on primates, her mother went with her.
Here, Goodall talks about her first base camp, why she decided to collaborate with Crate & Barrel, and why kids are our best hope for saving the planet.
Jane Goodall: Jubilee is locked up in the Becoming Jane exhibit in the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. He was around (this house) until then. I almost didn’t let National Geographic take him, but the curators said they would make a bulletproof glass case, and they wouldn’t send him over with the rest of the exhibit, but hand carry him.
FC: What made you decide to do this collaboration with Crate & Barrel?
JG: It seemed like such a good idea to bring the outside world into a child’s bedroom. I think that the children who get these products are very lucky. I hope that they’ll appreciate these things because billions of children in the world couldn’t possibly enjoy anything like this. The children who get these things are privileged. I hope they realize this, and get the feeling that they want to go into the big wide world and make it a better place.
JG: There are many programs that help teach children about sustainability, including ours, Roots & Shoots, which starts with preschool. Our whole ethic is for children to better understand the environment and their place in society. We’re finding that little tiny children are changing their parents, saying, “Mummy, why are you using plastic? Mummy, this is supposed to be recycled.” My niece had to stop taking my grandnephew to the store because he had just learned to read and would go to every single product and say, “You mustn’t buy this it has palm oil in it” and “We shouldn’t eat animals, we should love them.” Once they understand, they care.
FC: What do you think happens to kids as they grow up that causes their wonder in nature to fade? And how can we stop this from happening?
JG: Sometimes its parents who push their kids to think about pursuing careers that allow them to make more and more money. One thing this pandemic is teaching us is that we’ve got to stop disrespecting nature and animals. We need to move to a different kind of economy and get away from this crazy idea that we can have unlimited economic development on a planet with finite natural resources. It’s not possible, especially with a growing human population.
JG: It was so primitive. The camp was one old secondhand ex-Army tent, without a proper ground sheet or mosquito netting. Snakes and scorpions came under the air flaps. The kitchen was four poles with a grass roof and an open fire. We used charcoal because back then we didn’t know that charcoal could destroy forests because that destruction hadn’t happened yet. There hadn’t yet been a population explosion in the area.
FC: Your mother has played such a pivotal role in your life and career. What can we learn from her?
JG: My mother came for the first four months (in the base camp in Gombe, Tanzania) because I wasn’t allowed to be on my own. She didn’t come in the forest with me, but she stayed in the camp. Children like me who have supportive mothers are so lucky. There were mothers I knew who were more focused on their next hair appointment than romping around the wild with their child.
There are millions of parents who don’t care about the environment, and then we must hope that the child has a good teacher who can teach them about the planet, so they can in turn teach their parents. It can work both ways.
FC: It sounds like you have some optimism that we can turn things around, when it comes to the destruction of our planet.
JG: We have a window of time. The important thing is that we get together now to make a change. Unless we move together toward a new, greener economy and a more sustainable lifestyle, we’re doomed. If we’re privileged—like you and I are—we can think about our daily choices. We can be conscious about what we buy: Did making it harm the environment? Did it harm animals? Is it cheap because of child slave labor? If millions of people move toward ethical choices, then we make change.