Sir Ernest Shackleton’s party was forced to cross three glaciers on South Georgia, Antarctica after their expedition ship, Endurance had become trapped in sea ice and eventually foundered in 1915.
In 2013, adventurer Tim Jarvis (OAM) and his team crossed just two glaciers on South Georgia while recreating Shackleton’s famous trek.
“There we were on what people have described as one of the coldest, driest continents on the planet and we were standing in a lake instead of what had been a glacier until relatively recently,” Jarvis said. “It was then that I began to form the plan that has culminated in 25Zero.”
As an avid mountaineer and environmental scientist, Jarvis has long been keenly aware of the impacts of climate change, but bringing it to the attention of others had always been a challenge.
“At that time I realised if I can show just how much the world’s glaciers were being destroyed by the effects of climate change, then I could get more people to take the issue seriously. I decided that equatorial glaciers were the best examples to use, because of the way the ice is contrasted by its surrounds.”
The plan expanded to focus on last year’s climate change conference in Paris, the COP21 and Jarvis went about setting up teams to climb, film and send the resulting imagery back to the politicians via social media and any other means necessary.
Spending his time climbing Carstenz Pyramid, Mount Stanley and Mount Baker, Jarvis found great traction among African governments.
“The Ugandan government in particular was very supportive and during the COP they partnered with the Nigerian government to hold a press conference,” he explained. “I was being televised to the conference live so that the politicians and journalists could ask me questions – I think that was a truly powerful way to demonstrate how quickly these glaciers are disappearing.”
25Zero, which has also garnered support from the United Nations Development Project and WWF (of which Jarvis is an ambassador), didn’t finish with COP21 either, with plans to do further work in East Africa, Ecuador and Columbia throughout 2016.
“My hope is that the funds 25Zero raises can be put towards community projects local to these glaciers. My belief is that if you want to prevent people from undertaking activities that undermine the climate or biodiversity, then we have to provide positive alternatives. It’s often the less privileged people that are the most important to start this work with.”
This work also ties in with the Shackleton expedition that started 25Zero’s journey in the first place, with Jarvis set to present at Westminster Abbey for the centenary of the expedition.
“Shackleton is taught at management schools all over the world,” Jarvis said. “His leadership skills were formidable and this was evidenced by the way he was able to encourage the individuals in his expedition and have them all work in a directed fashion towards their survival. I think there are big lessons in that for the way we need to tackle climate change on a global level.”
Closer to home, Jarvis is also helping to develop a project with Zoos SA that seeks to breed southern white rhinoceros in a bid to prevent the species declining into total extinction.