Welcome to the Education for Climate Talks,

the podcast where we explore how green careers can drive climate action.

I am Petra and we are here today to focus on green careers, especially

how professionals can bridge the gap between science and public understanding.

Our guest today is Théophile Lienhardt...correct?

Absolutely...correct. Yes.

A scientific advisor who has made it his mission to popularise and disseminate environmental topics

both to the general public and professional sectors.

For a while, he was also involved in the hospitality industry

trying to improve the environmental impact of restaurants.

And he has a particular interest in scientific communication

and how the media treats environmental challenges.

We will be exploring what it takes to build a multifaceted green career.

What are the essential skills sets to meet

and how young professionals can break into environmental communication.

Whether you're a student considering your career path or a young professional,

trying to break into sustainability or an educator,

helping others

navigate career options.

This episode is for you.

So welcome, Théophile!

Welcome to our episode.

We are very happy to have you on board with us.

So let's start with your journey.

So you wear multiple hats.

Scientific advisor, product manager, chef in the hospitality industry and consulting.

What are you working on now?

So I work at Good Planet Belgium.

It's a non-profit organisation based in Belgium,

only working on Belgian territory.

It's been active for the past 26, 27 years

inspiring people to take action for a just and ecologically balanced world.

We do this through ESD mainly.

Education for Sustainable Development.

We work with various publics but we focus a lot on schools.

So primary, secondary schools, we work with universities as well,

the general public and also some companies.

So my more recent work in Good Planet Belgium is as a scientific adviser.

So like I said, it's an advisory role where I mainly support colleagues in popularising

scientific subjects around environmental topics, trying to keep

them up to date on the research that is going on in various fields,

finding the right references.

It's quite difficult today to know which are good sources to trust.

And as well as being very critical about some of the things that we see or read in the news.

And sometimes, I work with them to dive into some

of the misconceptions on topics like energy, climate, food, biodiversity, etc,

To enable me to do this work,

I work with the pedagogical team made up of pedagogical experts

to make the link between educational science, social dynamics and environmental science.

I also work, as you asked me what I'm working on right now,

I also work on two projects.

One of them, quite simply, I'm writing a big literature review on the impacts of ICT.

So Information and Communication Technology basically everything to do with digitalisation.

Also AI, blockchain, the impacts that it has on ecosystems, the environment but also human health.

And the other big project I work on, is Young Reporters for the Environment.

And because you said I was interested in scientific communication

and how the media treats environmental topics.

So this is a big - well, important -

It's not big at the moment, but it's an important project for me.

So "YRE", that's

"Young Reporters for the Environment" is an international initiative from the Foundation

for Environmental Education,

which is implemented in Belgium by Good Planet.

The goal of this programme is to empower young people to report on local and global issues,

give them a sense of action and help them express what they are inspired or revolted by,

using various mediums such as writing, photography, podcasts, videos, reels,

for social media format. And all the participating countries worldwide,

about 40 at the moment, organise a national competition every year.

And usually the winners of that national competition can then participate in the international competition.

But one of the specificities is that every country that implements such programmes have their own little twists.

I wouldn't say that ours in Belgium is unique, but, being a very young project here,

It's quite small at the moment.

We're actually looking to make it bigger.

We based ourselves on the fact that youth - and we tend to focus

in Belgium on youth between 16 and 25- are exposed on a daily basis to various types of news,

whether it's catastrophism, naive optimism, short term thinking, techno optimism,

and something that is called - I don't know if you know what "Bothsideism" is?

Can you explain? Yes!

So it's a new word

to just say that, sometimes on the same programme,

for example, they will invite - let's just talk about climate,

as an example - they will invite a climate expert

and next to the climate expert, they'll invite a climate skeptic.

So it could be at the same time or for example

if you look at a specific channel, you will have a programme that will run

for 30 minutes that will completely criticise how policy is treating the climate issue

at the moment.

Then 30 minutes or an hour later, they invite another person that will completely discredit

what the other person said.

So it's the "Bothsideism" effect.

And people are constantly exposed to such things.

And so our goal is to not only promote communication and journalism,

but mainly to have a long term programme that helps youth

navigate in this ocean of information and disinformation

to develop useful skills for their future career, develop critical analytical thinking,

develop something which is quite important in our world today,

storytelling and imagination and also just participate in public debate,

because as soon as you write a piece, or you talk to someone

about something that is quite political.

you participate in a public debate and all of it,

whilst taking action and promoting their views and their analysis on the system issues that we are facing.

And finally, I also give training and workshops for teachers and company employees on various topics.

So this is what I do with Good Planet Belgium.

Outside of Good Planet Belgium, I also do other things.

So I work specifically on popularising misconceptions

on food and agricultural practices.

I also write a bit on various societal issues.

And more recently I've been working on substitution effects,

which is an effect that occurs when we tend to implement weak sustainability

in various sectors.

I can give an example.

For example, you substitute single use plastic with bioplastic.

You substitute, for example...

let's say you are a company that works

clearing forests - if you want to be politically correct-

You want to become a bit more green.

So you use bulldozers -

You used to use bulldozers that ran on diesel,

but then you start to work with bulldozers that run on electric -

electricity that comes from, I don't know, a solar panel farm that you installed.

Well, you substituted the type of bulldozer,

but your action remains the same, which is to deforest.

So it's this idea where when you implement what we call in our jargon, weak sustainability.

So it's like you want to implement sustainability,

but you don't think about the deep issues.

You only think about this product or this service has a problem.

I'm just going to substitute it with something that's a bit less bad and - business as usual.

We have the same thing with chemicals such as BPA-free labels that you see in shops.

Well, they actually substitute other types of BP which are as bad sometimes.

But it's this, again, this substitution effect.

And if you allow me, I'll give one of my favourite examples.

This will illustrate the idea well.

There was a big thing about palm oil.

Thanks to environmental organisations, we now understood

that the industry and the plantation of palm oil caused deforestation

and was one of the root causes for the disappearance of big primates, for example.

And palm oil was usually

associated with various type of candies and chocolates and spreads, etc.

Yeah!

The favourite ones.

Our favourite things. Exactly.

Without saying any potential,brands!

But a lot of the ideas then were

how can we substitute this type of oil with another type of oil,

which is a good way to say this type of oil creates deforestation.

Let's substitute with something else.

And then a lot of people have managed to work on - what is palm oil?

How is it produced?

I'm going to cut short.

They realised that if we were to use the same amount of oil as we do with palm oil today,

but we substituted it with, let's just say,

for example, coconut oil or cottonseed or sesame or even, I don't know,

another type of sunflower oil.

We would need between 2 to 15 times more land than what palm oil is using today.

The reason is very simple.

Palm oil is very efficient in terms of yield.

So what people would say is Oh, great!

So let's just continue to use palm oil.

Well, that's just like a linear and very short term and narrow way of thinking

When you look at what palm oil is used for,

today, nearly 70% of palm oil is used for junk food in our world.

So I eat junk food as well.

On a weekly basis, but it's not part of my main diet.

But also it's foods that are not meant to, let's say to increase your health.

So the idea is not to say palm oil is better than any type of other oil.

for substitution.

The idea is to say, OK why do we need those type of products?

And if we do need them, what is the quantity,

that would be OK for a society.

So the idea of substitution is to think ahead.

What is the utility of a product or service.

And if we think it's actually useful then think about how much do we need to use

and how do we actually need to use it.

So it's really about thinking of the usefulness of products

and services before we want to substitute between green and non green parts of it.

So I don't know if I was quite clear, but this is the idea of the substitution effect.

Yes. You were very clear.

And I wonder, how do you have time to sleep wearing these multiple very interesting hats?

I can also mention the youth part.

It's very interesting to involve youth as change makers as they are the adults of tomorrow,

so if they already have this on their minds, they can make better changes.

And now you are moving to my next question.

What motivates you to pursue all of these environmental topics?

What is the motivation behind it?

Oof, that's a tough one.

Because your career is in a green career direction, so...?

Yeah. I guess it always was, in a way,

Even when I worked in the hospitality industry, my goal was to

like you said, to try to understand the value chains of the hospitality industry,

whether it's hotels, restaurants, etc and how could we make them a bit shorter.

How do you inspire chefs or entrepreneurs to do things differently?

Unfortunately, it's quite difficult, especially today,

to be green in the restaurant industry, for example, unless you bump up the prices.

But I always wanted to work...

...I wouldn't be able to say for sure exactly why or how.

I guess it's an accumulation of events through my childhood, adulthood,

on top of an education that gave me a sensitivity to these topics.

So it also helped me that I had an education, where I lived,

all of these values that I had helped me to move quicker in this direction.

I wouldn't say that there is one event or specific training.

All I know is I always wanted to work with nature.

Now, going more practical,

based on your various experiences, can you please enlighten our listeners

about what competencies and skills you consider essentials

for someone that wants to pursue a green career?

I would say...

But this is just me.

I have an idea of a few, but my favourite one would be curiosity.

I think this is one of my top ones, but then you have patience.

Of course. Not to be afraid of what you don't understand.

The more complex ones such as, you know, developing critical and analytical thinking.

You need to be able to - you need to like to work with people because you will cooperate

with a lot of people as opposed to other sectors where there's a lot of competition.

So your goal will be to cooperate with others

for something better.

I guess you need to also work on yourself,

develop some values around equity,

about injustice.

You need to be able to develop a way to think ahead.

So develop your long term view,

which unfortunately, our current democracies are not really based on.

It's always a very short term view ahead

So it's thinking ahead.

To try to have a perception of what things are going on,

around yourself, but also be able to switch to a perspective in the future.

And then it might be a bit weird for me to say this, but a bit of humility.

Like people skills. And how could this be achieved?

Well, a lot is about asking questions, reading a lot.

That's what worked for me.

But I'm not saying that it works for everyone, but all of these are quite a given.

Now, where I think it can make a difference is,

to have this empathetic listening, debating.

Debating is probably one of the most important ways to develop such skills.

You need to be able to confront people that think completely differently to you,

and try to understand where they come from.

Do not hesitate to question things

that seem too perfect.

We live in a society where there is always this magic bullet

or OK, this is a 'quick fix'.

Don't hesitate to question when things seem to be too perfect,

but also you need to enjoy what you are doing and exchange with others.

So we need to feel this connection, to other people and feel the need to work as a group,

as a team, to move forward together, to be able to do something better

rather than surpassing others to make a career. It might be a bit classic what I'm saying,

but I think these are interesting and important things.

Yes. It's always better together than solo because, brainstorming, as you said, is very important.

So you can expand an idea just like this.

You mentioned you were reading a lot to acquire your skills,

but, how did you obtain it?

Was it in university?

Did you attend workshops?

How did this start?

Like I said, I always wanted to work in nature,

and specifically, I wanted to work underwater for a while.

And I studied for it.

So I did a bachelors in marine biology in the UK.

But when I was at university, even though my passion to be on the ocean

or under the ocean was still there, I discovered other topics,

amazing topics such as evolutionary biology, evolutionary ecology, the impacts of climate change.

Even though I knew it existed,

I didn't know the complexity of it and how climate change impacted ecosystem organisms.

And when I did my master's in research, after I had a brief experience,

but not so great, experience in research.

So I decided to give up the idea of a PhD.

I then went on to work for a few years.

I this is when I went to work in the food system.

Mainly because on the side was my other passion to work with food

and farmers, etc.

But I decided to go back to university when I was 28

And studied the land side of things and did

a master's in agriculture and climate change.

And then I worked a bit more in research.

I worked in lifecycle assessments.

But every time I thought about working in research and thinking of a career,

I realized that it meant being specialised and becoming an expert in a specific field.

And this is not me being critical to all of the specialists and the experts, mainly non-specialists,

but the experts in the specific field.

We need those experts.

But when your passion is just to think more generally...

When you are an expert, you don't always have the time to be a generalist.

And it means you have to limit your time spent on trying to understand

existential questions, like how the world really works,

how everything fits together.

And believe me, the more you read and try to understand on these topics,

you more you want to understand.

So at that point, I just dived into the rabbit hole

I decided that the best way for me would be to work on disseminating those topics.

Because we were facing this emergency, so popularise, make it accessible to everyone,

because sometimes it's easy science, but sometimes it's very complex science,

and to be able to create that sense of urgency in people and all of it,

while specialising myself in various domains

without ever becoming an expert in the classical sense of the word.

And so I worked in this field of popularising and communicating about it.

And education seems like one of the best ways to do it as well.

Yes, because education is the key to changing the world,

I believe, since we are little.

Yes. So one of the keys.

Definitely. Yes.

So you also mentioned that, you do workshops for teachers,

What are the biggest gaps that you see in the current education system?

Do you...

Do you think they are providing what is needed out in the real world?

Do you think they need to change?

I guess my following answer will not be directed at teachers,

because I think that they do what they can and they do the best job that they can.

I agree. Yes.

Education systems themselves, are made by the government.

So again, that's a tough one.

So just before I answer this one, I need to be very specific and precise

that even though I decided to specialise in popularising those topics and working in education,

I am not an educational expert.

So what I am about to tell you is based on what I've seen, what I've read,

but mainly about, you know, what I've discussed

and how and what we worked on with colleagues in my organisation at Good Planet

and some of them

are educational experts.

So this is just my view on it.

Thanks to them as well.

I guess one of the biggest challenges...

There's many, of course, but one of the big ones today

you know, we often fail to truly spark curiosity in students.

So, again, with curiosity

and here's the thing, stimulating curiosity does not necessarily mean

switching to alternative or active pedagogies.

It's more about being intentional,

and choosing content and methods that start from the child's own perspective.

Their questions and concerns.

Too often in the classical educational system today, we assume

that delivering tons of knowledge will lead to

critical thinking or reflection.

But we tend to overload sometimes.

I'm not saying it's for every student,

but we overload some students with information before they've had the chance to wonder or question about it.

We might actually, end up shutting down their curiosity.

They don't get the opportunity to feel that gap in understanding, that itch,

to know more.

And curiosity is not just a nice to have.

It's essential, nowadays.

It's what drives us to keep trying to understand things, seeking truth,

challenging the standardised narratives to stay open to perspectives beyond your own.

It helps us to understand complex issues.

But, you know, it's quite complex to push for these things today.

And let's be honest,

if we want to truly transform education it's not just about what happens in the classroom.

It requires bold decisions at the policy level,

It covers everything from what you decide to teach,

the teacher's salary, the size of classes, the school buildings...

It's completely systemic and it's complex.

Yeah, it's a complex problem that, we will need to address sometime, somehow.

But nowadays, it still doesn't reflect what are really the bases that we need in the real world.

And I could just say a lot of stuff now,

but this is about you and your experience.

So now, before we...

If I may add...

If you don't mind, I will add something because I think an important part is also

that when we talk about education, we tend to forget that it's

about formal and non-formal education,

non-formal education being what a lot of organisations like the one I work in do,

We work in company with the formal educational system,

and they are two sides of the same coin.

Formal education, unfortunately,

And I will say this is my perception.

A lot of it today is about performance.

It's about KPIs.

It's about optimisation.

You know, school is a lot about diplomas, grades and having good statistics.

It should work more on the foundation of education.

One example is to help people remain active thinking individuals in a system that often tends to objectify,

You know, that means nurturing reflection, self-awareness, cooperation.

And yes, these are very long term investments.

But just like education is long term.

And we are talking about education.

We're not talking about quick fixes.

We are talking about deep, lasting changes.

And this is what often can be frustrating for finance or policymakers is, education is not a quick fix.

It's a long term process.

And of course, even the best designed programmes and intentions can run

into massive bottlenecks and roadblocks.

And you will have lack of motivation,

You will be confronted with false beliefs or deeply rooted stereotypes.

And these quotes that I like from, French educator and pedagogue,

Philippe Meirieu that says that education is a constant act of resistance,

and resistance to reflexes,

to labels, to the weight of assumption and perception and preconceived ideas.

So that would be my last statement on what is quite missing today.

Thank you very much.

Your question was very complete.

Before we end the talk, we'd like to go more in depth,

to the person that we are interviewing.

And if you want to give a piece of advice

to someone, a young professional who is looking to build a green career or make a change,

what would you like to tell them?

Am I allowed two?

Two pieces of advice. Yes!

I guess the first one is not going to be a very positive one

if we think about how we love positivity today.

But I would say just go for it.

But don't be afraid of frustration.

Unfortunately, I'm only kidding a little bit.

Real systemic changes that are needed to face

multiple challenges are unfortunately not on the table right now.

Our society still works in a very linear way.

We jump way too quickly to solutions without having really understood the problem at hand

and its complexity.

A lot of the mainstream solutions that are proposed today are the right solutions,

but sometimes the right solutions to the wrong problem.

So questions you need if you go into this field,

you need to be able also sometimes to question the pertinence of solutions that are proposed.

It doesn't mean that you should remove them, but you need to be able to question the pertinence.

Does it actually answer the real problem at hand?

And like I said, we are very linear and too quick to finding a quick fix

without having taken the time to understand what the problem really is.

But now, if I'm allowed to have more positive advice,

It would be a bit more classic advice.

But, you know, classics die hard and they are classics for a reason,

It's to be open to other perspectives and perceptions.

And like I said earlier, to show humility in the face of our own opinions and realities.

It doesn't have to happen, with a lot of people,

sometimes we want and we need to be able to be with ourselves and to work alone.

But one, you know, doesn't exclude the other.

What matters is seeing how, we work as part of a larger whole,

something that will influence other initiatives, other projects, other careers, other people.

And that itself, influences, is itself influenced by others' work.

So we shouldn't think of our work as an end in itself,

but rather as a means to co-construct,

a future, a society or a reality together.

Yes, those are very good pieces of advice.

And also in my opinion, if I can give it, nowadays,

we are not prepared for frustration because we want everything to be perfect.

And second, we want everything yesterday.

So we don't wait to build a foundation.

We arrive at a place and we want it to be done.

So we are...

We are big victims of FOMO.

Yeah. Fear of missing out.

Yes. So I think, I hope and I believe that our generation is trying to deconstruct it a bit

and let's see if the next ones will be more relaxed and calm,

or if they will be the generation of the mobile phones and the reels and everything in one minute.

So let's see what happens.

I don't know if it's a good way to end, but I like this quote,

I can't remember who it's from, but it's a famous one that says

They often say, what planet are we going to leave to our children?

But, also, what children are we going to leave to our planet?

Exactly. Because we are facing major challenges,

also in terms of education and the ability be able to be frustrated today, like you said,

and I completely agree.

It's good to hope that we will make things better,

but we need to be also very aware that things are not always going in the right direction

at the moment for certain topics.

Yeah, and even for adults, sometimes they - me! - we don't know...

We don't know what to do.

But in the defense of youth, adults tend to put pressure on youth to do things

that themselves cannot actually achieve.

Yes that's true. That's also something to work on,

how adults conceive the world.

True. Thank you very much for your time, and thank you very much for this talk.

It was very interesting.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

It was a pleasure.

And, hopefully, next time!