Blissonance, language as identity, and the new IFRS sustainability standards
3 Things to Get Curious About this week + a surprise for new subscribers!
Greetings, earthlings!
Before we dive into this week’s topics, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce some changes to this newsletter that I’m making moving forward.
This week is the inaugural week for “3 Things to Get Curious About” - which I’ll endeavor to get to your inbox weekly. The idea for this came about as I was sitting on my desk on a Monday morning sifting through different lists I’d created and bookmarks of articles and memes I’d accumulated over the weekend. It’s truly amazing the amount of information we get fed (sometimes unwittingly) on a daily basis.
This last month I’ve also had some interesting conversations with students who wanted to know what I did, read, and dealt with on a day-to-day basis. So this is an attempt to show a little bit of the breadth of topics I need to cover in my job as a corporate sustainability practitioner, but also other things I take an interest in - whether it’s for my work with women, conservation, or just my hobbies as an amateur naturalist (because no, biology and botany are not exactly the strong suits of an environmental scientist) and aspiring food and travel writer (yes, manifesting this!)
Exclusive content for subscribers!
As a result of these conversations and feedback from formal courses I teach through the Ateneo Center for Continuing Education, I’m also introducing a couple of new sections: Teacher’s Notes - dedicated discussion guides for educators who wish to dive deeper with their students on topics around sustainability, conservation, and ecoliteracy. I’m thinking for the first few guides to be centered around how to talk about climate change using documentaries and films, so stay tuned!
Last but not least is “Science and Sensibility” which will essentially be my key takeaways on emerging science or regulations around topics mentioned in #2 (I hear you, I have a lot of backlog to read and digest as well, so having you as a reader helps me to get my own homework done). Fair warning: there may be occasional things on turtle conservation, soil health, and things about the science of food as medicine as these are topics I’m currently also researching. These will be automatically be sent to your inbox twice a month at most, but you can always opt out of these sections through your Settings tab.
P.S. There is a surprise for new subscribers (hint: savings!) so hurry. Offer is valid until July 7 only.
And now on to 3 things to get curious about this week. It’s a week about language and “taxonomies”, and how humans make use of these to make sense of the changing world and climate around us.
Blissonance
“When an otherwise blissful experience in Nature is wedded to or disrupted by the recognition that one is having an adverse impact on that place that they are enjoying by being there.”
As a traveler, diver, and hiker, blissonance is something I feel frequently; most often when, on a dive, I encounter large groups of other divers - most armed with cameras and large strobe lights crowding around a nook in a reef where they’ve spotted an elusive moray or a rare pygmy seahorse. This feeling is most often followed by guilt and wondering if I’m being selfish by being there on that reef and enjoying it as I do.
But across all my travels perhaps the place where I’ve felt this the most was in Tubbataha Reefs, which I had the opportunity to visit around this time last year. A visit to the atoll requires a fourteen hour overnight journey on a live-aboard, and for the week or so that visitors are there, there is no land or other human civilization in sight save for the Ranger Station - a relatively small concrete structure on stilts that houses Tubbataha Reefs’ protectors.
Being out there in the middle of the ocean, one is greeted in the mornings by turquoise waters for miles around, and the only human made sounds are those of dive boats moving from one area of the atoll to another. The beauty and isolation of Nature out there on the reefs, and the beauty of isolation from human civilization is immensely beautiful and overwhelming; blissonance is knowing that there are very few places left on earth that are only minimally disturbed by humans, and it made me wonder about the very definition of Nature. Is Nature as we classically defined it - something separate and untouched from “Mankind” becoming extinct? But also, do we need to re-define Nature, and find our own place IN it, so we can save it (and the human race?)
Language as identity
In Language of the Spirit, published by Atmos magazine, writer Ruth H. Robertson writes,
“Language holds the identity of a people. Within a language, you discover how its speakers view the world.”
This is something that’s been on my mind lately. The Philippines has over 120 (some say the actual number is 187) spoken languages, and while I understand and speak about two or three of those, I still consider English as my native language because it’s the language I feel most comfortable speaking and writing with. I do not consider myself fluent in Hiligaynon, which is my native language, because it was not taught in school. Instead we learned “Filipino”, which is a formalized version of Tagalog, a language of the Northern regions of the country.
I took a beginner’s Hiligaynon course a few months ago as an attempt to get back in touch with my indigenous roots, and learned many things about my indigenous history, including how my ancestors perceived nature and the world around them (i.e. the Hiligaynon word for ‘forest’ is the same as the word for ‘ancestor’)
‘kagulangan’ - Hiligaynon meaning forest, also ancestor
I reflect more on language, and the use of the Bahay Kubo song (a traditional Filipino folk song used to teach about vegetables) to preserve culture and landscape, in this article for Kapwa Magazine. You can grab a digital copy here.
For Sustainability practitioners - the new IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) S1 and S2 standards were published last week.
According to a project summary released by IFRS along with the Standards,
S1 - Sustainability-related Financial information - sets out general requirements for companies to disclose sustainability related risks and opportunities that will be useful for general users (read: investors) of financial reports to determine resources or support they give to companies
S2 - Climate-related disclosures - builds on S1 and elaborates on how companies can disclose on climate specific risks and opportunities. This set is supposedly aligned with the recommendations of TCFD (Task Force on Climate related Financial Disclosures) as well.
3 things you need to know about this right now are:
Effectivity of the standards will be for annual reporting periods beginning on or after January 2024 (so we will probably start seeing information in first quarter of 2025)
Companies are required to have both sets (S1 and S2) of disclosures in order to assert compliance
These standards remain voluntary as of publishing date
I’ll be studying these more in-depth in the coming week and will share my key takeaways with you.
BONUS!
3 Things I am listening/reading/watching:
I’ve been riveted by the first few episodes of Apple TV’s Extrapolation. It’s a series that explores, through interconnected personal dramas, how Earth’s changing climate affects family, relationships, and work. As a climate nerd, I’m amazed by the scientific detail and attention the producers have put into the body of work. The series is told over an imaginary span of 33 years (from now up to 2070+) and even the opening credits show estimations of how much carbon will be in the atmosphere at the specific period an episode is told. Interestingly, the series is not getting very good reviews. Perhaps because a lot of it feels too close to home and it’s an uncomfortable watch? Check it out below:
Meryl Streep is last whale on earth in Apple TV's Extrapolation
I just finished reading Peter Mayle’s “A Year in Provence” and I’ve fallen in love with Provence; at least in the way that he has depicted rural life there. Apparently this book was a game changer when it was first published in 1989; no one until then had really known or written what we now know as “travel writing”. I finished the book wanting more and am feeling very lucky to find that he wrote many more books on the topic.
The Atlantic’s “How to Talk to People” podcast has been on my stereo on the way to work these days. An episode I found particularly interesting is titled “The Infrastructure of Community” and asks the question: How may we design public spaces to foster more human connection?
Til next week!