Adventure of a lifetime

An expedition to the Antarctic as part of a team of women who are aiming to turn around attitudes to climate change was a dream come true for Epping sustainability scientist Harriet Bartlett

- Nicky Adams

There can be nowhere more dramatic than the stark, frozen landscapes of the Antarctic to consider the effect of climate change on our planet.

‘When you’re standing on the glacier, in sub-zero temperatures, seeing clear blue skies turn to vicious storms in minutes, it hits you very hard that our world is changing − and not for the better,’ says Epping’s Harriet Bartlett, who is now in the third year of her Ph.D. in Sustainable Food Systems at Cambridge University.

‘We really are on the brink of global catastrophes,’ says Harriet. ‘Climate change is causing more extreme weather, wild species are going extinct at alarming rates and antibiotic resistance is threatening the effectiveness of life-saving medicines. People are beginning to realise that we absolutely have to do something about it.’

To that end, Harriet was chosen as one of 1,000 women from across the world, including only a few from the UK, to drive the change necessary to protect our planet from further devastation by climate change.

‘It’s called the Homeward Bound initiative and its objective is to develop in women who are involved in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine a new way of leading, which is better suited to solving global challenges,’ she explains. ‘Women are seriously underrepresented in leadership positions (especially in STEMM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, and Medicine) and largely absent when it comes to decisionmaking, which means that at the moment we are excluding 50% of all our best minds. But we are needed to be part of the solution and to drive change for the benefit of the world’s population.’