Idris Elba And His Wife Sabrina Talk on Climate Change
Idris Elba and his wife Sabrina Dhowre Elba spoke about climate change and what people can do to make a difference.
The couple, who are ambassadors for the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), chatted with Liz Bonnin for BBC Radio 5 Live’s new podcast “What Planet Are We On?” about the Earth and using their platforms to highlight climate change.
Elba said: “There is definitely something that we can all do. You are doing it now listening to this. There is hope.”
Dhowre Elba added: “There is a method, there are steps. It isn’t just throw your hands in the air and go, ‘The world is on fire.’ There are solutions and it’s figuring out what those solutions are and how we can each play a part because we do know that every person can make a difference.
“It is so easy to feel hopeless when you do hear all of that scaremongering but people can make a change. Each individual person.”
Idris wants to use his platform to “shine a light” on those most affected by global warming.
“There’s no shortage of voices talking about climate change and the green debate,” the actor shared, “but there’s not much visibility on the people that haven’t much at all and still suffer climate change.
“We look at small farmers as slightly unrelated to us, somewhere in the Sahara, but that food chain links to all of us.
“The effect is not apparent now, but it will be massively.”
Dhowre Elba added of starting a family, “We’ve just got married. I want to have children one day and bring them into a world which I don’t think will be destroyed in the coming years.”
The pair have looked for programs that help people in Africa who are affected by climate change; they visited Sierra Leone last year to meet farmers affected by the Ebola epidemic.
“These farmers are probably the least contributors to the climate change problem but are yet being affected the most,” Dhowre Elba told Bonnin.
“This demand, which we saw go up with the pandemic, has always been an almost unreal demand. Food waste is no secret issue in the West and in the North.”
Idris said: “My son is six years old and I want him to know Daddy went to Sierra Leone to look at agriculture. ‘What’s agriculture, Daddy?’ Well, it’s a way of growing food. It’s a way of looking after our world. And if we look after our world, it will supply us back.
“And that is something we should leave with the next generation. Even if it’s just not that everyone is going to be a great farmer but it’s the understanding of the food chain and food supply. That is really important.”
