CIERP Alumni Perspectives: A Discussion with Tallash Kantai

By Sabrina Rose

This blog post is part of CIERP and CPL’s Black History Month Blog Series, where current Fletcher students interview Black alums about their successful careers in the environment sector.

Few people engage in as many international environmental negotiations as Tallash Kantai (MALD ’13). A Kenyan living in Scotland, Tallash began her environmental career alongside her brother supporting tree-planting initiatives in Nairobi. She studied IERP and International Organizations at Fletcher and went on to join the Earth Negotiations Bulletin team at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, where she observed and analyzed international negotiations on biodiversity, climate change, clean energy and more. Tallash rose from a writer for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin to leading the side-events team that covered COP 21 in Paris in 2015.

Of the many conferences that Tallash has covered, none have impacted her more than the first United Nations Ocean Conference in 2017. She was most inspired by the conference’s inclusivity. Tallash has since joined the University of Strathclyde’s Centre for Environmental Law and Governance, where she is researching the international governance of marine plastic pollution. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tallash (virtually) to talk about her experiences since Fletcher.

SR: What inspired you to pursue a PhD in the governance of marine plastic pollution?

TK: I attended the first UN Ocean Conference in New York in June 2017, and I don’t think that anybody who was there did not leave touched. It was a conference like none other. There was a lot more activism and private sector involvement than I had ever seen at any of the other conferences that I covered. It was inclusive in a way that none of the climate conferences or biodiversity conferences were. I left that conference wanting to work on the ocean.

After the conference, a friend of mine won related research funding from the UK government and invited me to join. The UK government is trying to change its top-down development paradigm, so they started a number of research hubs. The One Ocean Hub is the UK-funded research facility that I’m affiliated with, and it is absolutely brilliant. The novelty of the hub is that it links research to development, but all of the research projects are co-developed with developing country partners.

Do you believe a binding, international agreement to reduce marine plastic pollution is possible?

There is definitely an appetite for a new agreement on plastic pollution. We should be dealing with plastic pollution, but not from the ocean side. The ocean is the final receptacle. I worked with UNEP on a global study of legislation on plastic pollution, and less than 5 percent of the legislation we reviewed deals with marine plastic pollution. We have to go further up the supply chain.

The problem is, there is still virgin plastic coming into the system. The price of crude oil is back to pre-pandemic levels, not because people are traveling more, but because manufacturers are making more plastic. Oil and plastic are the commodities of the oil and gas industry. A plastic pollution treaty does not address that. The treaty would need to be a plastic treaty or advocates should join the voices of the climate movement who are calling for us to stop drilling for oil.

How can African delegates’ voices be heard more in environmental negotiations?

Being engaged in negotiations changed the way that I viewed Africans in the negotiations, because I could see the pitfalls. I could see why their positions, even if they were strong, were not always picked up. Microaggressions have a huge bearing on what’s agreed and what’s not agreed. It really matters who is speaking for Africa.

There are consultant negotiators, people who would take up the position of the country, although those people are not from that country. That’s an interesting pathway where people who care can participate in the negotiations and speak on behalf of the more vulnerable countries.

On the other hand, there are a lot of students of African descent who are graduating from U.S. and European universities who should be going back and trying to obtain these positions. When I lived in Indonesia while working with the UN on REDD+, the government was investing in bringing back graduates of a very high level that studied abroad, paying them the same salaries they were getting wherever they were. We have to invest in our future, but our governments have to be interested in that sort of investment.

What advice would you like to give students at Fletcher who are interested in working in environmental governance?

Ask hard questions and then explore them, whether in your thesis or in other research. Really drill down. If there’s anything COVID has taught us, it’s that everything is linked. So we should also look for solutions that are completely outside of the box. Our ‘box’ is the environment, but so many solutions to environmental problems come from outside of the environment. We shouldn’t be afraid of trying to innovate solutions that come from outside the environmental field. Create spaces to talk to different people from different disciplines.

In celebration of Black Legacy Month, do you have any advice specifically for Black students interested in this space?

After all that happened last year and the murder of George Floyd, there’s a new feeling in the world. There’s been a shift in the way that the world is working. Whether that shift is superficial or not, there are now more spaces for Black people than there have been before. I don’t know how many positions that deal with diversity and inclusion are now open in places that did not traditionally have this role. Enter the roles. Don’t be afraid of the fact that the roles may be tokenistic. Enter the roles and use your voice there.

What else have you learned from the Fletcher community that has helped you along your journey?

When my class was preparing to graduate, we were panicking. Professor Julie Schaffner told us, ‘Calm down. There is no career decision that is permanent. Stop panicking. There is no career decision that is permanent.’ This stuck with me. Allow yourself to live. Part of living is making mistakes and making changes. The only constant in life is change.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Sabrina Rose is a current MALD student at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

This is the final post in the Black History Month Blog Series. Read the articles about Dr. Nichola Minott here and Dr. Marcus DuBois King here.