Arron Wood - Interview

1. Can you introduce yourself, describe the work you do and some recent examples of how and where it has been put into action?

My name is Arron Wood and I'm an environmental educator working primarily with school children to bring about a cultural change in the way we interact with our natural environment.

I designed a program called ‘Kids Teaching Kids' which is a peer teaching methodology that promotes student centred learning as the highest form of understanding. Kids Teaching Kids allows students to select a locally important environmental issue and work towards presenting a workshop on that issue at either a state, national or international Kids Conference. Our team appoints an adult expert environmental industry mentor for each student group to work with and learn from.

We've now had over 10,000 students through the program and we run 7 kids conferences each year. We worked with a New Zealand team to run the first Kids Teaching Kids event in Rotorua (north island New Zealand) in 2007 and the Kids Teaching Kids methodology is being translated into Korean for use in their school system.

I have a dream that Kids Teaching Kids will provide a global solution to ownership of our environmental crisis. Each student group presents their workshop 5 times pre and 5 times post conference which has resulted in close to 2,500 workshops being delivered to community groups such as Rotary, state and local government, private business and major corporations.

2. What do you consider to be the most important environmental issues facing the planet?

I believe the single biggest issue facing our planet is apathy. I have quickly realised that the environment is not a natural science, it is a people science. We need to generate a cultural change in where we see ourselves. We are part of that natural system and must live within our environmental skin.

Just about every environmental issue today, whether that be climate change, biodiversity loss or lack of water is a result of us seeing ourselves as more important than the system itself.

3. What sort of actions do you believe need to occur to address these issues?

I may be a little biased, but I have to say that education is absolutely key to us owning the issue, understanding what is needed to secure a bright environmental future and taking action. We also need to ensure that we allow passion and emotion to be part of the solution because without the heart we will never get the widespread involvement that we so vitally need right now.

Further to this we require strong leadership. Individual actions are really important, but without bold and visionary leaders it is very difficult for us to make the type of significant impact to address global issues such as climate change.

The wonderful opportunity provided by our environmental crisis is the chance to come together around a common challenge. It doesn't matter how young or old you are, whether you are rich or poor, from the country or the city, it doesn't even matter what religion, culture or language you speak because we all need to breathe clean air and drink fresh water.

The environment is a great leveller.

4. How important a role do you believe the community plays in conserving and improving the environment?

Community ownership of your place is ultimately what can either save or condemn a patch of land, river or ocean. Without this local ownership it becomes no ones problem. The other part of this equation is that many small actions multiplied by many millions of times can have a huge impact - be that positive or negative.

I really like the saying that no one of us can do everything for the environment, but we can all do something. I have seen local communities save river systems, campaign for endangered animals, protect our oceans and make their homes as green as they can be. Each day we have the ability to lead through inspiration.

Our friends, work colleagues, school mates and even people in the street are people we can positively influence. Another really important ingredient in this fight for a bright and compelling future is hope. We shouldn't underestimate how powerful hope can be when faced with the looming environmental crisis.

5. What attracted you to the Clean Up the World campaign?

Clean Up the World is such a simple and tangible concept, but it also really sums up exactly what is needed right now. It promotes the message that every little bit helps and that if we come together across the world we can achieve some pretty amazing results.

The campaign causes us to think about what we are doing to the planet and more importantly to take action. It's all well and good to feel passionate and understand the issue, but without genuine action we are left with hollow rhetoric.

Clean Up the World is all about empowerment of local communities couched in the much bigger global outcomes of what can be achieved when we work together around a common vision for a brighter future.

6. How do you see your role as an Ambassador for Clean Up the World?

Firstly having grown up with Clean Up Australia and now Clean Up the World I'm just honoured to have been invited to participate as an ambassador and I really hope that I can support the great work already being done. I think it is really nice that Clean Up the World has seen fit to choose a country boy from what was a small town as an ambassador for a global program.

I really hope this shows people that Clean Up the World is about ordinary people striving to do extraordinary things...with a little help from friends across the world of course!

7. What do you hope to achieve or contribute towards by taking on this role?

I hope to reinforce the fantastic profile that Clean Up the World has already achieved and I hope to simply be part of the action to save our planet. In a selfish way I'm also going to get great motivation from the stories and people I hear and meet through the campaign.

Hearing from people that are giving selflessly back to their communities is really invigorating and gives me hope that we can address the significant environmental problems facing our planet.

8. What sort of activities have you got planned this year and how do you think these can complement the Clean Up the World campaign?

This year we have 7 of our kids conferences that will see another 3000 students pass through our program and so I plan to promote Clean Up the World to this group of highly motivated students and teachers.

I also present close to 50 speaking engagements each year to a wide variety of big name organisations and I have already included getting involved in the Clean Up the World campaign as one of the calls to action.

9. Clean Up the World's theme for 2008 is "Start today... Save Tomorrow. Clean Up Our Climate" - please tell us what this suggests to you?

To me the theme represents how quickly we have to act.

Many people our now understanding that despite this being a long term investment in our future we require immediate action today. We have to hit peak CO2 emissions by 2015 which is a very, very short time frame.

I also think the theme represents the fact that we really have an obligation to provide the next generation with a world that is in a better state than we inherited it and clearly cleaning up our climate or tackling climate change is one of our biggest environmental challenges.

People often fail to make the link between waste and climate change, but waste is one of the key reasons we use so much energy, water and virgin materials each year.

Reduce, reuse and recycle is an old adage, but it rings true to this day and Clean Up the World certainly provides one answer to our rising environmental woes.

10. How do you think individual and communities can make a difference to an issue such as climate change?

There are so many things we can do, but the number one thing is to believe we can win. To hope for a brighter environmental future and know that there are people all around the world who share the same dream.

It is really easy to feel insignificant when faced with global issues, but every little action multiplied by millions of times is what a sense of place and belonging to our patch is ultimately all about.