Ecosystems, women, and wildlife crime in Ethiopia

Greta Francesca Iori Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media, I'm Sabrina Merage Naim, with me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass, a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy. And their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. We're heading to London today to speak with Greta Francesca Iori, the beautiful exotic Greta who is Ethiopian and Italian. She lives in London, between London and Ethiopia. She for the last decade been building a career in the natural resource management field and human and wildlife conflict resolution and wildlife crime management. And we're talking to Greta about what it's like to be at the forefront of the wildlife crime industry, what it's like to be a woman, and bringing other women into the resolution of wildlife crime and why it's important.

Kassia Binkowski
Absolutely, Sabrina. I think what's really interesting about this is Greta really does pull back the curtains for us. She talks about the ways in which women are driving the industry as well as dismantling the industry. She talks about the women whose shoulders she's standing on, as she builds a reputation and carves out credibility for women in this industry at large. And she's talking about the fear that she has, as a woman in such a male dominated space, a male dominated and very violent industry that she's dedicated her career to. Take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Greta, thank you so much for joining us from London. We're so excited to have you with us.

Greta Francesca Iori
Thank you so much for having me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So we're gonna dive right in. You've spent the past 10 years building a career in natural resource management, human wildlife conflict resolution, and wildlife crime management. So in other words, illegal poaching. And your work has taken you from Ethiopia to South Africa. You've done a lot, a lot of your work is primarily in the Horn of Africa. And today, you're spearheading one of the first ever trans boundary public private partnerships to manage a protected area in Ethiopia. So before we get into that work, which is really interesting, and the gender roles of that work, we want to understand a little bit more about your childhood. You have a very diverse background. You're in London now, but you usually are between London and Ethiopia. But you're also Italian. Tell us a little bit about where you were born, about your family. Paint a picture for us.

Greta Francesca Iori
Thank you for having me, Sabrina. And you're very right. My life is very global. And I actually was born in the Netherlands, although I'm Ethiopian and Italian. But in fact, I was born there because my aunt was living there. My mom wanted to be close to her sister. But I spent a majority of my life in Ethiopia, growing up in Addis Ababa, the capital. My father is Italian, but he was also born in modern day Asmara, Eritrea, so former Ethiopia, and therefore our lives are very much rooted in that area of the world.

Kassia Binkowski
What did it look like for a little girl growing up in Ethiopia? I mean, clearly, you had global roots, and maybe a little bit of insight into those cultures. But paint a picture of what it looked like to be a little girl. What did you dream of being? What were the women around you doing your mothers, your aunts? What did that look like?

Greta Francesca Iori
I believe my childhood was so beautiful and was such a privilege. I come from such a privileged space to know that I was always loved and grew up in a family full of support. My mother, being a Ethiopian mother was very nurturing, very characteristic of an Ethiopian mother connecting me to my roots connecting me to my ancestry. But we came from a middle class privileged family. So I went to an international school, I really had the best of both worlds where I lived in this magical country that has vast landscapes, rich ethnicities, rich histories, but also really never forgot the importance of where my mother grew up, which was in poverty. And how she came to be such a privileged mother and be able to give that to me and my brother and my father, as well. Did she talk to you often about how she grew up and how it was different from how you grew up? Absolutely. My mother, in fact, it's her story that has really really inspired me to become a strong woman. And I think a lot of us women really are rooted in in our journeys and our mothers' journeys and our ancestors' journeys and difficulties and the challenges that they've overcome or faced. My mother lost her parents when she was only nine years old. So she was orphaned at nine. And she was with many siblings and so having that as the backdrop of who my mother was, was always very present in the forefront of who I wanted to become.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And your mother and father met where?

Greta Francesca Iori
They met in Addis. So my father was also working in the capital when he met my mother was in her 20s. And she was working as a secretary in a store, I think it was a carpet store. And he was gone into the store to buy a carpet and he met her and they fell in love.

Kassia Binkowski
How connected was your childhood in Addis - which is a huge city - how connected was it to natural spaces, to the outdoors, to wildlife? How much of that was present growing up?

Greta Francesca Iori
So that's interesting, you say that, because it's true, that Addis is so big. And I've always felt like it's such a bubble of its own, that it almost doesn't feel like the rest of the country. But again, I was very lucky that my parents really prioritized our connection to the broader realities of the country, that they wanted to really make us know that Addis wasn't Ethiopia. And my mother and father were both adamant about this. So when we had holidays, any weekends, long weekends away, we would always be in rural landscapes to get to know a more realistic view, or a more diverse view of what other Ethiopians might be living, like what other realities might be in that our reality was not the only reality. And that it was a very privileged way of life.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So when you decided you wanted to go into this field of wildlife crime? It's a very dangerous area, it's highly politicized. There's a lot of politics and bureaucracy involved here. Were your parents supportive of that path?

Greta Francesca Iori
To be honest, at the beginning, no, because they always thought it was a phase. You know, when I also myself, when I first got into the wildlife crime world, I had kind of stumbled into it without really planning. I was studying the broader conservation nexus. But at the time of my studies, the illegal wildlife trade of the rhino horn was really at the height of its peak, and it was being spoken about by major media, and in the past, that had never happened. So I got drawn to that. But I never thought that that would become my career if you can see what I mean.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Can you paint a picture for us a little bit for the people who, you know, are maybe outside of Africa who don't know the realities of what's really going on on the ground? Both Kassia and I have been to Africa as tourists and have gone on safari. And it's incredible. But it's a different world than what is happening behind the scenes. Please tell us what is going on.

Greta Francesca Iori
So before I even delve into, like wildlife crime, we need to really understand where that stems from. And that really comes from the broader challenges of wildlife conservation, and protected area management, and poverty and all the social markers that really define natural spaces. So that means the social-political situation, the economic situation, the cultural and traditional situation. And government and conservation models are rooted in Neo colonial models, which are what really undermines all of the challenges that we're currently facing. So it's really important for people to understand that wildlife crime is really just a symptom of a bigger problem, of something that started a long time ago, and now is kind of manifesting as the illegal wildlife trade, or poaching, or trafficking. Any illicit industry usually has a bigger picture problem, right?

Sabrina Merage Naim
When we hear wildlife crime so many of us jumped straight to the assumption that we're talking about poaching, about ivory - rhinoceros horns, elephant tusks. Can you tell us a little bit about what else is going on in wildlife crime?

Greta Francesca Iori
Absolutely. So when you take, like you take the view of seeing the broader picture of environmental crime, then there's many things that you can define as crime like land grabbing, lack of governance, corruption, toxic norms of society, or hierarchies that really marginalized specific community members such as women and children, or the expansion of the Western capitalist model, without consideration of traditional models that might have thrived better in that landscape, in that ecosystem. These are all part of like the environmental justice movement, that really underpins a lot of what we're seeing even now in the global, like the broader world. With regards to climate change. It's about really bringing that intersectionality that it isn't about you humans against nature. Oh, all humans are creating the same crimes? No, it's really you really have to break it down and see, is it overconsumption from certain humans that is driving a lot of crime in other areas? Is it putting people and wild animals, dangerous animals such as elephants into very small spaces and making them compete for that habitat where then you have human elephant conflict? So really, it is such a complex arena, that that's why it's been so overlooked. And really trying to stereotype something that is so complex is why we haven't figured out how to fix it yet.

Kassia Binkowski
It makes perfect sense. I mean, the complexity that you're talking, you're talking politics, you're talking power dynamics, you're talking clashes of culture. And I want to bring this back to gender, because there's a role of women here in all of this and I know that's become a recent project of yours, really studying those gender dynamics across all of the different hierarchies within the industry. So tell us about that work. I mean, what is the gender breakdown among perpetrators among enforcement? What role are women playing on all sides of the industry right now?

Greta Francesca Iori
Yes, so women, you know, especially on the ground in Africa, where I come from, in Ethiopia, as well, they're seen as the caretakers, as the nurturers. And they play such a defining role in the environmental landscape as well, because in the rural landscape, they're considered kind of the the invisible administrators of daily life. They take care of children, they collect firewood, they prepare meals, they tend to livestock, they cultivate food, and then they're also partners for the male counterparts, which might be employed and bringing in the actual income. But you really undermine how influential a woman is just because she's not bringing in money, but she's really upholding the entire system of the household. So when I started working in trying to end the illegal wildlife trade through the Horn of Africa, and in my home country of Ethiopia, I started recognizing how much the woman plays such a key role in day to day life that it was weird to me that in all of my studies, and all my academia and all of the illegal wildlife trade conferences I had attended all over the world, the role of the woman was completely ignored. It just didn't exist. And even if you look online, only recently have we started really identifying that criminals can be men and women, and that at the end of the day, we make up half of the population of the entire planet as women. So we are also half accountable to committing crimes as we are to try and resolving them.

Sabrina Merage Naim
When we spoke with Dr. Winnie Kiiru, she pinpointed the fact that a lot of you know the people who are in the industry in the wildlife tourism industry, it's mostly driven by white, wealthy men. And I'm curious in terms of the finding solutions for wildlife crime, who are the big players right now?

Greta Francesca Iori
Well, absolutely, the big players are definitely still old white men. And Dr. Winnie Kiiru is really like a big sister to me, and has been such a defining woman in my career. Because it's very rare for a woman of color, first of all, to be in a position of influence and power, but also to use her platform to help other young women, and to also challenge the, you know, the white capitalist society that we live in, and trying and really change that by talking about it. And by bringing diversity into the picture across the illegal wildlife trade, but also conservation arena, which is very, very white, in general.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah. And so for, for those who are listening, just as a reminder that Dr. Winnie Kiiru is one of the only black women in wildlife conservation in Kenya, which is shocking. And she has had such you know, incredible success and is doing incredible work. And now speaking with Greta, who is taking a different path towards the same solution, hopefully, but through the wildlife crime industry. And it sounds like also one of the only women of color in that field.

Greta Francesca Iori
There's, you know, there are many women of color, that's the surprising thing that it especially that are trying to fight this in their own areas, but we just are not known. And we are you know, we I've been very, very lucky almost because I have had the, the right links to become better known. But my my goals through understanding the role of women in these crimes is to really also amplify and, and put on the radar. The women that have been doing this work for years before me even, you know, and trying to give them the platform to get the funding they required to bring about change rather than just fund the image that everything is going well, and what we've always seen, which is larger organizations and led by old white men that don't even live in the countries where the the crisis is happening, right.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I think what you're saying is really important. And we need to kind of acknowledge that investing in women has universally become something that people are acknowledging is where the, you know, your investment returns exponentially. Because when women are taken seriously, in any field, they really step up. So what are the barriers that exist to more women becoming involved, and to the women who are already involved becoming known and acknowledged for their work?

Greta Francesca Iori
So that's such a good question. In Ethiopia, one of the major barriers is not even the racist scenario where it's white or black, it's really a man or woman thing. So if you trigger exactly the patriarchy, the cultural acceptance that the man is the one to lead it is such a crippling factor in your career. When you earlier asked me how my parents felt about me entering into the wildlife crime world, they were very supportive, but they were more scared for me because they know that it was an illegal. And it was an illegal trafficking issue that could put me in danger. But every other man in the industry that I met, would literally laugh in my face when I said that I wanted to help. And this kind of rejection, from the moment that you want to step in, for a lot of women is the very reason why they will not step in, because they feel undermined, they feel ridiculed, and they just don't feel good enough. And we're really kind of reinforcing these gender roles. And therefore you're like, you doubt yourself as a woman, you say, "You know what, I better not do this. What was I thinking?" And I had that thought myself so much. So that's a major challenge, challenging the patriarchy, really finding a space that allows for women to have a voice, but also more importantly, to be respected, and given the chance to, to figure it out to you know, give a woman a chance to find a solution. But often before we even given a chance, we're told that our solution is not good enough.

Kassia Binkowski
Is it fair to say that on the management side, on the intervention side, is it still a male dominated industry?

Greta Francesca Iori
Absolutely. It's still a male dominated industry. And that's especially, okay, so in ending the illegal wildlife trade, the the biggest intervention is through anti-poaching units, which are usually heavily militarized. They're male scouts and rangers very often, up until five years ago, when the first all female anti-poaching unit was established in South Africa. And they're called the Black Mambas.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I love that!

Greta Francesca Iori
Yes. And they're one of the most incredible anti-poaching units because they're non militarized. And they're also one of the most successful in reducing poaching.

Kassia Binkowski
So tell us more about that. That's amazing. Absolutely. They're, I mean, they're like my heroes. And I feel very lucky that I was there when they were just beginning I was spending a lot of time in South Africa because of the rhino horn trade. And so the father of the Black Mambas is Craig Spencer. And he's a South African, white male that really recognized how dangerous the militarization of anti-poaching units was becoming, because it was really kind of creating these poaching wars, essentially, against communities within themselves. And creating a very resentful atmosphere towards conservation. And after all, a poacher, no matter how bad it is what they do, they're very much the least problematic of the entire trade. They do the biggest crime essentially killing the animal, but they're not the ones driving the entire trade. So there's 100 poachers for every poacher put behind bars, you know.

Sabrina Merage Naim
How can they the anti-poachers be demilitarized when the poachers themselves are very often armed?

Greta Francesca Iori
That's a very good question. So this is where the Black Mambas come in. Craig recognized the value of women in their communities that not only are the wives, mothers, sisters of potential poachers, they have a huge influence on the next generation as mothers, right? So he said if I hired the very women that these poachers are married to, living with, sons of, would they actually go in and kill them? Or would they threaten them with their weapons? So it took a major risk, but it showed that indeed, they didn't. They weren't going to go and fight their own mothers, their own sisters, their own family members, and therefore they stopped poaching in that reserve, which is where the Balule Nature Reserve which is where the Black Mambas are. So this was his understanding. That if you integrate women into the intervention, you are already dealing with a much more impactful community-led solution.

Kassia Binkowski
So it was really this fascinating gender dynamic that Craig tapped into that they weren't going to harm a woman, that was going to prevent the crime?

Greta Francesca Iori
Not a woman that will care about exactly. And they weren't going to steal an income that all of a sudden was being brought into the community through the work of the Black Mambas. Because the black man was employed, they were making money for their community for their families. So he tapped into a psychology aspect that was never thought of which is you need to, it's like, it makes so much sense that actually now it's common sense. You want to deal with a problem, deal with the women that have influence over the problem children, which are the poachers, you know, the ones that are being coerced or convinced to do crimes for short term gain. While these mothers, these wives, these daughters, were saying, hey, long term, we lose out when you poach everything. If we lose the value of this national park, if we lose the value of this animal, if it goes extinct, our children and their children will not have nothing to develop a business from to gain from tourism to benefit from the nature that we have always lived. So it's very, very powerful.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And so the Black Mambas are kind of the resistance at the very end of the line. What about earlier on, you're talking about how the real criminals are not necessarily the poachers, per se, but the people that they are benefiting? Who are they? And what is what is the resistance like look like earlier on in that.

Greta Francesca Iori
So this is where it gets interesting with wildlife crime. There's been a long time where, like I said earlier, it was very gender blind. So there's definitely women defenders that we're way more aware of, such as myself, such as Dr. Winnie Kiiru, such as so many women in the communities, but there's also women that are criminals, and that are using the power of being a woman to create crime and to marginalize people and exploit people. So one of the famous ones is Yang Feng Glan, which was known as the "Ivory Queen," and has now received something like 30 years in jail in Tanzania, but she was a Chinese businesswoman that set herself up in Tanzania, and managed to smuggle over 400 Elephant tusks, which are worth about 2.5 million US dollars, over 20 years, but she sat she was even the Secretary General of the China Tanzania Business Council. And through that image was able to get away with all of that crime, commit such a huge crime to the environment by killing, commissioning the killing of 400 elephants, but also really exploited and undermined so many communities, created conflict and so on. So you can't undermine the power of a woman in any sphere, whether it's good or bad. You know, because she exploited that in a way, it's so shocking how easy it was for her to do that for so long, and use the card of herself as a woman to get away with it.

Kassia Binkowski
So you mentioned earlier that in all of your years in the industry, nobody was talking about women, nobody was talking about why they weren't showing up in the conversation, at the conferences around the world that you were participating in. Why not? If it became so clear to you both in terms of ways women were driving as well as dismantling the industry, why weren't they part of the conversation?

Greta Francesca Iori
I still don't know why they weren't part of the conversation. I think women are just always silenced. And I think this gender blind way of considering women as inadequate or unnecessary, you just don't talk about women, because they're not considered valuable in the conversation. I think that was a huge part of it. I think also just, it's like this conditioning that oh, well, a woman wouldn't be able to do that, you know, she's not going to be a successful illegal criminal. You know, it's actually quite funny in a way that men that were leading this work for many years before women got involved, and never even thought a woman could be doing this stuff. And it's when women came in that we actually recognize, hey, wait, there's many women that are either leading on these crimes or are being coerced into it, which is even worse, because a lot of women are actually their position is being exploited. So there is no doubt that it is men that are leading with regards to the legal wildlife crime in general, as they are in all crime globally. And we know this because we apprehend men more easily. It's almost like women are better criminals anyway, because we don't find them as often in the chain. It's very rare. But when I started conducting interception work, to try and end the illegal ivory trade I was shocked by the amount of women that I encountered. When I was posing as a buyer, when I was literally risking my skin to try and better understand the gender dynamics of the illegal wildlife trade to the Horn, a lot of times there was women that were facilitating. So they were the ones that the men would only come at the very end when I was either willing to pay, or when it was like the the sale was done. But the women were the ones taking care of me, showing me the goods, making sure that nobody was following us. It was women. And in a way, this is men exploiting women's roles for the their benefits, because after all, the woman will never gain what the men did, even if she committed more work towards the crime.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I'd love to hear more of the specifics of how how you're working. So you're talking about posing as a buyer, in order to identify the sellers, then you you find the people who are trying to sell. Are you buying it from them? And then you're on your way, or you now have a face and a name and put them on a list? What what happens after that?

Greta Francesca Iori
Yes, so I work with the Ethiopian wildlife conservation authorities. So I work directly with government and police authorities and federal institutions that are trying to apprehend criminals that are working and undermining society. And so we conduct these interceptions together. A lot of times, I do not look like I do now or they would never be able to recognize me as who I am. But I would never do this by myself. Because it's far too dangerous. If anything goes wrong, essentially, it is such a dangerous industry. And because there's so much to lose for the criminals, and they have also so much to gain when it goes well.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And when you are seeing these criminals, how often are they Ethiopian?

Greta Francesca Iori
So the criminals on the ground? So far, they've always been Ethiopian.

Sabrina Merage Naim
But who they are representing?

Greta Francesca Iori
Oh, yeah, they're absolutely just middlemen. They're just traffickers. And they're not really only dealing in wildlife products. Traffickers a lot of times are trafficking everything from weapons, drugs, people, organs. I mean, it's one of the scariest industries because the illegal wildlife trade is like this, this dark place that is constantly happening in our day to day, we just don't know it. But it's happening all around us all the time. And which is why I'm fascinated by it. And I want to end it and try and find ways to protect individuals that are exploited because of these trades.

Kassia Binkowski
So working in such a dangerous industry, and quite literally putting yourself in the middle of some of these interceptions. Are women being taken seriously, have you been taken seriously? What is the gender dynamic for you in your career and among your colleagues? How have you been received?

Greta Francesca Iori
So again, it took me so long to be able to get the right people that have the power to make decisions to take me seriously, to the point that it's almost because they didn't take me seriously. And they undermined and downplayed the vital information I was providing them that I had to end up risking my life to show them what I could do. Because it was like nobody cared. It couldn't be true. Or why was this young woman in her late 20s telling me stuff that I as a person in this industry for the last 20 years in law enforcement have never found you know. So it was rejection after rejection after rejection. But it is really, when you're so passionate about bringing about change when you're so passionate about, you know, driving justice, you're willing to do everything. And I mean, my mother now knows. But when she found out I was doing this, she literally herself wanted to chop off my head.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I'm sure.

Kassia Binkowski
I can only imagine.

Sabrina Merage Naim
What about when you're in the field and you're posing as a buyer? Is it a benefit that you're a woman?

Greta Francesca Iori
To be honest, not at all. It's usually difficult for the sellers to trust the woman.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So even the sellers in that case don't always take you seriously right away?

Greta Francesca Iori
Yes, because they think, hey, a woman can't afford this. And what's a woman going to do with that she doesn't have the network that men usually do. It's, again, it's these stereotypes that are ingrained in every person in society about a woman's role. And so I've had to build that. And with the help of my team, and the informants that I work with, we usually pose as a group of buyers or there has to be men there.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to paint the picture a little bit more, you're talking about the sellers, who you see are often the middlemen. They're Ethiopian, but representing sellers from other places. Who is that usually?

Greta Francesca Iori
So with regards to the illegal wildlife trade? It's been defined that the biggest buyers are the end the consumers and so on are from the far East. So China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, but with regards to ivory, the other major ivory buyers that we know illegally are European countries, the US and the UK. So those are still very prominent. They're just way better at at covering up their tracks.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah. So it because of the novelty of having owning an elephant task. Is that why?

Greta Francesca Iori
No, it's not novel at all. So, in fact, in the past, when it was legally allowed to trade in Ivory up until 1989, it was just another commodity, just like wood and anything else, steel. So the biggest buyers were the post colonial countries. So Europe and the US were the major buyers of ivory to this day, most of the prestigious institutions in in the UK in the US have ivory in their buildings, in their on their keyboard. So keyboards used to be made of ivory. Everything. I was shocked. Chopsticks, little trinkets. So many things. And I mean, I've been to some events here in the UK, where there's still so much ivory on display that it's shocking to me that in the time we were living in, that you're not ashamed to have it out like that, because essentially, we're condemning this on a global scale, but yet we're still showcasing it as a luxury good.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Tell us some of the wins that you had. And also I want to understand a little bit more about how you are focusing on the women as part of the solution. You know, we know that the problem is widespread. It's been so long that this has been an issue. The the populations of elephants and rhinos are suffering have suffered of other animals for so so many years. So we know the problem, you painted a very good picture for us of the problem. Now tell us some of your wins.

Greta Francesca Iori
I would say one of my greatest wins is a few years ago, I was tasked to develop Ethiopia's first community conservation strategy, which essentially stemmed from the fact that I wanted for local communities, including women, men, children to have more power over how the resources around them were being developed. Because in Ethiopia, it was never colonized. Although it has the Neo colonial models of conservation, where we have protected areas, they're very much paper parks. And what that means is that they're just parks on paper. When you go on the ground, they're incredibly underfunded, mismanaged, there's crippling, crippling poverty in the communities around them. So they're not really national parks that are benefiting the communities, and they're not benefiting the economy. So I started realizing that in order to change this, we need to include the communities that really, their livelihoods depend on these resources, including the dwindling wildlife populations. But more than anything, but the real core basic necessities such as access to water, and access to their customary ways of life, that if we change the way protected areas are implemented, and we make it more restrictive, will obviously have a very negative impact on the people that I don't want to get caught up in that. Because as much as I am a passionate wildlife conservation, because I love nature, my driving force is because I believe we are part of nature, you can't separate humans from nature. And so a lot of times people can confuse that when I fight for wildlife, I'm really fighting for our livelihoods. Because when we decimate wildlife, we're really killing ourselves. And that's where people need to understand the importance of that. So with my biggest win was when Ethiopia allowed me to develop this conservation strategy that really kind of routes all conservation programs to consider and prioritize community engagement, where anybody that's going to develop any kind of wildlife program be at welfare oriented, whether whether it's regarding the illegal wildlife trade, whether it's just management or development of tourism initiatives, that local communities and their stakes in that have to be considered, they need to be included from the beginning. And I feel like that's one step towards environmental justice.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to just flag a couple of things you said that are really important. So the first thing is that you're not just trying to save animals, that we're all part of this circle of life, that we're all connected and that we all suffer when our environment and our animal kingdom suffers. The other thing that you said is, or it sounds to me like you're trying to raise awareness and education of issues that people do not know and understand fully. So how much of your work is really just around raising awareness?

Greta Francesca Iori
A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. I wish I had a whole team on social media. The team to create you know, in the world of today, I feel like I don't have enough hours, like all women like everyone to do everything I'd love because while you're conducting work on the ground while you're really leading on literally hundreds of different projects around the continent, that are field based, and then you also want to be able to teach everyone all the complexity and the many facets that make up your work. It's daunting, because it's so complicated. And I completely understand that. For people living far away from these landscapes, it's alien, this, this my work, everything that I'm doing is like something that can't connect to. But I think going forward 2020 especially has shown me the power of social media, the power of how education and raising awareness and sharing the real information from the ground from the people that are living it. So from the frontline communities, not even for me, but giving finding a way to amplify their reality so that people can understand better is crucial in order for us to understand the solutions to saving ourselves.

Kassia Binkowski
So you're still relatively early in your career, and you've touched so many different things. And you've become engaged in the industry in a lot of different ways from awareness building to academia to actual intervention, interception. Fast forward, you know, 10 or 20 years, what is it that you want to see women achieve in this industry?

Greta Francesca Iori
Oh, that's a beautiful question. I would love to see women be the leaders of wildlife conservation, to be the leaders with regards to how we engage with our communities, to have community women leading on these initiatives. The dream would be that nobody from anywhere else needs to tell anyone how to manage their land and their wild species, and that we in the global north, who have lost touch with wildlife, who have lost touch with nature, who have lost touch with ecosystem living, we learn and start to understand that we're the ones that need to go back and ask how do we do it? How do we save the world? You know, and that would be my dream, because I feel like that's our only hope, in fact, and it can't only be a dream, it needs to become the reality if the planet and its biodiversity are going to be able to withstand what's coming to us in the next century.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I think the work that you're doing is important, I think the work that you're doing is something that we all need to know about that, you know, wherever we live, it's what you're saying of, you know, the people who are out of that landscape feel disconnected. It's not an excuse, it's not a good reason to feel disconnected. I think that the the fact that we have the world as a smaller place than it used to be. We know what's going on, we have resources, we have the tools to, you know, educate ourselves to educate others. It's important, it's necessary, it's for the sake of the future of the natural world and the human world.

Greta Francesca Iori
Absolutely. I think if we don't start really amplifying the voices of marginalized women, marginalized men, oppressed communities globally, we really are, we're just going to uphold the status quo. And up until now, I was very afraid to challenge the systemic inequalities and structures that really we're all a part of, because there is no other system, we're all part of a systemically broken system. And that puts a lot of rich white men in a lot of power, and really undermines your power as an individual to change things that upset you. But this year has challenged us all to a very deep level where we recognize that our leaders are not going to fix the world. People we admire can't fix the world. It's going to have to come from each and every one of us. And how we do that is by amplifying the voices of the people that have never contributed to the problem. And you know that has everything to do with where they were born, but they are paying the greatest price. So it is I feel like our responsibility. And in a way women, we take responsibility seriously. I find that most women when they know there's a problem, even if it had nothing to do with anything they've done, they will put in the time to try and help. And that's why I feel like when you have a collective of women doing this work, a collective of women creating opportunities, we might have a shot to make the world a better place.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Breaking Glass is a production of Evoke Media. Evoke is a nonprofit organization that exists in order to elevate the people and stories that are working to make the world a more unified and equitable place. Learn more at weareevokemedia.com.