The Old Diocesan Issue 10 - Magazine - Page 47
FORCE FOR GOOD
I
Ian Michler (front)
mountain biking through
the Etendeka mountains in
northern Namibia during
the 5,400km Tracks of
Giants Expedition in 2012.
The book Living in Two
Worlds, which addresses
the wider sustainability
challenges the world
faces, emerged from
this epic trip.
an Michler (1977W) is an
environmentalist, wilderness
guide, author and graduate
of the Sustainability Institute at
Stellenbosch University. As much
at home in the Okavango Delta or
the Mahale Mountains of Tanzania
as he is in the Cape, he runs Invent
Africa, a company that specialises
in wilderness trips across Africa.
In this conversation, we cover the
thorny aspects of conservation,
the success of his film Blood Lions,
and his recent book – written with
fellow wilderness guide and former
Springbok Ian McCallum – Living
in Two Worlds.
Your co-adventurer, Ian McCallum,
writes that “modern humans may
know about wild places, but with
rare exceptions, we no longer know
them”. Today, we seem to be more
environmentally conscious than
earlier generations because we’re
bombarded with bad news about
the environment all the time. When
you were growing up, do you think
people were more naturally engaged
with the environment?
I was certainly tuned in because
I was brought up on a farm in the
southern Cape. We had access to
the coast, the mountains and the
fynbos, and there was wildlife on
the farm. I recall as a boarder in
White House with Adrian Kuiper
(1977W), we got a packed lunch on
Sundays and hitchhiked to those
wetlands where the film studios
are today. We wandered around
for an entire day looking for birds
before we realised we had to go
back because we had chapel in
the evening. So, yes, there was a
lot of time – and fewer distractions.
Tell me about living in Hillbrow in
the ’80s, before you started working
in tourism and the environment.
Those were two of the best years
of my life. I was starting as a broker
on the JSE; I lived in Hillbrow and it
was unbelievable. It was a melting
pot in terms of living among a mix
of cultures. At night, streets and
clubs were mixed. I used to play in
a football team with all the black
guys. We also used to spend quite
a bit of time in Soweto – we were
keen followers of Moroka Swallows.
In Living in Two Worlds, you
and Ian McCallum travel through
southern Africa, following the tracks
of migrating elephants. Yet there’s
a part of your life that’s thoroughly
modern and urban. You talk about
campfire conversations in the desert
one moment, and Dylan, Springsteen
and Aerosmith the next. Do you feel
like you’ve kept a balance between
the Hillbrow Ian Michler and the
Okavango Ian Michler?
Yes – because I’ve sought to.
I’m as thrilled flying over New
York City, looking at that concrete
monstrosity, as I am in the Delta,
watching a line of elephants cross
a floodplain. You also have to be
immersed in the culture of cities.
I guess I’m driven to unravel
not what makes me tick, but
what makes humanity tick.
I’m fascinated by what I believe
is humanity’s greatest challenge,
and whether we can think our
way out of this crisis.
Increasingly, I think our problem
is scale. We have good ideas about
how we should live, but the moment
we try to scale them up, we run into
trouble. In a village of a thousand
people, we can do so much – but
how do we manage a hundred
thousand, or a million? How do
we conquer scale?
We won’t. I’ve looked at many
studies on what is a sustainable
population for the planet, and
most of them suggest around
3.5-billion. We’re more than
double that now. The way to
feed nine-billion people is with
monoculture – but these are the
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