Meet our new Environment Programme director – Masego Madzwamuse

Masego Madzwamuse joined us as director of our Environment Programme, based in our main administrative office in Geneva, Switzerland, in early September. We sat down together to find out a bit more about her, how she views the environmental sector, and how she sees the programme evolving over the next five to ten years. Please join us in welcoming Masego to Oak Foundation!

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background: 

I was raised in both Zimbabwe and Botswana, but I had been living in South Africa for the past 14 years, until I recently moved to Geneva, Switzerland for this position with Oak Foundation. My interest has always been on the intersection between people and nature, not just because of my background in sociology and environmental science, but because of the communities I interacted with. I saw the lived experiences and realities of my mother’s people who were from the Kgalagadi Desert in Botswana where most of their livelihoods were directly dependent on the use of natural resources. This wasn’t just about survival for them; their identity showed that the separation between nature and people was an artificial one. 

I started my career in the environment sector working for the 
International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It struck me at the time that conservation planning responses were pushing communities to the periphery. Environmental planning for protected areas was behaving as though the territories were not occupied, and as if these were territories that human beings and communities did not have a relationship with. I could see that to a large extent, there was a systemic informalisation of the relationship between people and land. There was even a criminalisation of the relationship that local communities, particularly those of Indigenous descent, had with their natural environment. 

This role made me understand the power that the international community has on agenda setting and policy setting in local communities. I was also struck by the fact that I saw few people that looked like myself, my grandmother, and my community in these spaces. Few people who I felt were the rightful custodians of nature were present in the decision-making rooms. At the time, the conservation sector also frowned on activism and a rights-based agenda. In the human rights space where Indigenous people and local communities could have found voice, there was a focus on political and civil rights, but very little on social and economic rights. So, when an opportunity to join the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa arose, I took it. There, I joined a team that was committed to building networks and coalitions of human rights movements and social justice and development organisations. For many years, I worked in the space of economic and social justice, and in a way, that quickly took me back to looking at the rights of communities in rural areas. Two and a half years ago, I left the Open Society Foundation, after serving happily for eight years, to join a re-granting organisation called the Southern Africa Trust, which works in the development space in Southern Africa. Its mandate was to use policy advocacy to reduce poverty and inequality in the Southern Africa region, as well as to build the capacity of civil society organisations. Its mandate was about supporting movements to advocate for change in their own right and influence regional integration policies. There’s a lot of power when people advocate on their own behalf, instead of through intermediaries and through organisations that speak on their behalf. 

What attracted you to Oak? 

What attracted me to Oak is the Foundation’s commitment to social justice and its holistic approach to addressing the root causes of injustice and environmental crisis. A few organisations do this well, and the lessons we draw from the current moment point to the importance of intersectional
approaches. That will help us support the right organisations working to address the climate and the economic crises, as well as the loss of biodiversity and the health pandemic we are currently experiencing. I also think that Oak’s convening power in the philanthropy space to mobilise and facilitate resources towards tipping points for change is commendable. 

Also, another thing that attracted me to Oak Foundation had to do with the large number of civil society organisations that were doing incredible work, yet were struggling to access funding. Looking at funding flows, the environment sector only gets a tiny slice of funding. But, when you look at geographic distribution as well, organisations based in the Global South don’t receive a lot of funding either. This has nothing to do with the amount of funding that is available, nor the capacity to offer solutions, but instead, it has to do with visibility, and it also has a lot to do with being in the room when decisions are being made. I felt that, if I can be part of a global community of philanthropy advisers, then I could bring my experience from the field and truly make a difference. I worked as a grant-maker before. It is for these reasons that I took the opportunity when it arose, partly also to be at the nexus of what I think is needed for us to support meaningful transformation. 

Why are you passionate about the environment? 

I think that the environment is the very foundation of life and it goes back to what I was saying about really coming from a lived experience and a background where the separation of people and nature is an artificial separation. The Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis have been stark reminders of this connection, so I think that just in terms of building sustainable futures and in terms of opportunities for prosperity for all, if we don’t take care of the environment, you cannot guarantee an improved quality of life for everyone. 

What is one of the biggest hurdles to combatting climate change and conservation concerns, and how are Oak’s partners contributing to overcoming/ tackling this? 

I tend to approach environmental issues from a social justice point of view, which is that improvement ought to be for the benefit of those who are on the margins of our economic systems. These people tend to be the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. There is potential for solutions, and it’s a privilege to be able to work with people who come into the philanthropic space with the flexibility to see how we find the solutions, and to look for solutions that come from the very people who are affected. This allows people to take these solutions forward at scale and they don’t have to go through the restrictions of traditional development aid. It is this entrepreneurial lens, this catalytic, risk-taking lens, and this solution-driven lens that delivers improved livelihoods. Oak is at this really important nexus to take the world towards the future that is so different from where we’ve been.

We’ve got partners that do really fascinating work. Our partners don’t just critique the system but are actively doing exploratory work to find solutions. It excites me that some of our partners also look at who are the biggest players, who holds them accountable, and how they are held accountable. For example, I’ve been seeing some emerging work that is looking at monitoring the conduct of international finance. There is also a lot of support for people’s movements, because power yields nothing without demand. There is power in being able to support social movements to maintain the pressure on governments and on industry to do the right thing.  

Considering what is going on in the world right now, the work of the Environment Programme’s partners is especially crucial. How do you see the programme evolving in the next five to ten years? 

That’s been a very interesting point of discussion for us in the team, especially considering the recent release of our five-year strategy. I think taking a people-centred approach within the team was a bold move, but I’ve also come to realise and appreciate that this approach is not necessarily new, because there were pockets within the Environment Programme that were people-centred. This intentional approach is an acknowledgment that the separation of people from nature is not a useful one, particularly if we look at the kind of impact that human beings and human development has had on the environment. So, if we would like to deliver positive outcomes for the environment, we have to involve people.  I also really like what the programme is doing in regard to giving visibility to the people who are the custodians of nature and the environment, and giving them voice and space in the international sphere.

What gives you hope for a greener future? 

What’s giving me hope is the energy that humanity has to find solutions. Change is happening as the result of pressure from people, as a result of pressure from civil society, and as a result of the science being clear and loud. The climate crisis and problem of ecosystem collapse have become difficult to ignore and that really gives me hope for tipping the scales in the in the right direction. The movement is stronger than it has ever been. The internet has also made our global community so small; it makes it easy for us to have conversations and to come up with global solutions. We are more connected than we’ve ever been and with that I think it is much easier to come up  with a common vision. 

We’ve been forced into a corner, we really can’t go back, and we can only move forward. This momentum is going to stay with us for a long time because it’s so personal to each and every one of us. We are all affected, it’s no longer about the other, and it’s about all of us as humanity. We have to build a greener future because it is for the benefit of all of us.