The Change Makers

Four Explorers Discuss How They Use Their Expeditions To Promote Environmental Consciousness, Inspiring Public Action To Mitigate Climate Change

- Alex Campbell

Explorer Tim Jarvis recalls getting lost in the bush in Malaysia at the age of 12, and finding his way home by walking east towards the coast. “I always carried a compass with me. I remember finding my way through a section of jungle in Johor, and it gave me a real sense of satisfaction having done that. That feeling of resourcefulness that you can negotiate the outdoors with a bit of skill and self-reliance really stuck with me.”

Jarvis describes his expeditions as being an extension of this inquisitiveness, and attributes his environmental activism to a love of the outdoors, and the increasing realisation that we need to protect it. This led him to study environmental science and environmental law. “I now find that my expeditions, and the books and films I do, give me a wonderful vehicle to communicate environmentalism to people, when they might otherwise not listen,” he says.

Jarvis conducted his first major expedition in 1996, walking 500 kilometres across the ice sheet of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic, unsupported. The early 1990s was in the infancy of the GPS, so he navigated with paper maps and compasses. “Polar bears were stalking us, so I had to learn to use a gun, and navigate very accurately. There’s not much margin for error,” he shares.

Three years later, he was joined by fellow adventurer Peter Treseder, completing the fastest unsupported journey to the South Pole, covering 1,580 kilometres in 47 days.

He then completed an unsupported crossing of the Great Victoria Desert in 2001, walking 1,100 kilometres. The next year he set offf or the North Pole, crossing 400 kilometres of frozen Arctic ocean.