Ship’s captain
Science writer and journalist Leonie Joubert has been reporting on the climate crisis in Africa for two decades. In that time, carbon pollution has only increased, along with the global average temperature. Earth's climate is becoming rapidly more unstable, and far faster than scientific models foretold.
She decided to retire from business-as-usual, packed up her life of 25 years in Cape Town, put just what she needed into a little plumber’s van, and hit the road.
Leonie has spent her career grappling with many of today's tough environmental and social justice issues: climate collapse, environmental change, energy policy, cities as development hubs, and why today’s food system leaves many hungry, heavy, and sick (the hunger-obesity poverty-paradox).
In short, she writes about the muck that comes out the tailpipe of the fossil fuel-powered capitalist machine: carbon pollution of the atmosphere driving climate collapse; highly-processed food-like products polluting the nutritional landscape, leading to the oil spill of hunger, diabetes, obesity and other so-called ‘lifestyle’ diseases; how invasive alien species are a form of biological oil spill, and one that keeps replicating itself; and how plastics are now amassing on the top of Everest, in the deepest ocean trench, and in our bodies, most notably, getting bunged up in the fatty tissue in our brains.
Mostly, Leonie is interested in the power dynamics at play: who profits from being able to pollute, and who pays the price. Through this unusual journalistic ‘beat’, she critiques the limitless-growth economic model — through the lens of climate, food security, plastics, and invasive species — and how this is driving systems collapse.
Through her career, she’s explored these topics through more than 12 books, countless pieces of journalism, various collaborations with academic and civil society groups, podcasting, political illustration, and public speaking. In that time she’s become internationally recognised for her work and won a few gongs along the way.
None of this means anything though. Without a stable climate and a liveable planet, all of these achievements are vainglorious trinkets.
Hence, Story Ark.
What we do in the next few years will determine the future of life on this planet for many thousands of years to come. Every second counts.
Second-in-command
The cat called Mouse is a senior officer on board, and applies her full work ethic to the grave duties of chief navigator and plucky comic relief.
She only speaks when she has something really important to say, which is why her bio is so brief.
Institutional partner
With Story Ark, Leonie is returning to her alma mater, where her career in science writing began two decades ago through a pioneering collaboration between the Stellenbosch University Faculty of Science and the Department of Journalism. This allowed her to travel to the Prince Edward Islands and shadow a team of researchers who were studying how planetary warming was leaving an indelible fingerprint on this special sub-antarctic system.
Now Leonie is a research associate with the School for Climate Studies at Stellenbosch University.
Media partners
Story Ark’s investigations will be published on this website, as well as through partners in the mainstream media, including Mongabay, the Daily Maverick, and Nature Africa.
The Henry Nxumalo Foundation is supporting investigative components of the project.
Sponsorship
Like any good voyage, Story Ark is travelling to remote and often pretty inaccessible parts of the country. Off-grid power supply for these legs of the journey is possible because of a solar-capable Ecoflow portable power supply.