Leonie Joubert
South African science writer and journalist Leonie Joubert has an unusual beat: she writes about pollution.
Carbon pollution of the atmosphere, which drives climate instability. Food-like products polluting our bodies with diabetes, heart diseases, and cancer. Plastic pollution which washes up in our arteries and brain tissue, as much as it’s up on the summit of Everest and the deepest ocean trenches. Invasive aliens plants that are like an oil spill in our water catchments, but this oil spill lives, breathes, and self-replicates.
Mostly, she’s interested in who profits from the system that allows some to pollute, but where others pay pay the price.
Her work critiques the prevailing limitless-growth economics and how it drives systems collapse.
Leonie has grappled with these tough environmental and social justice issues for 20 years, writing more than 10 books and several book collaborations, countless pieces of journalism, collaborations with academic and civil society organisations, podcasting, public speaking, and storytelling training.
Her most recent work has featured in National Geographic magazine, Mongabay, Nature Africa, and the Daily Maverick.
She is currently on her most ambitious project yet: Story Ark year-long journalistic voyage, where Leonie is living out of a van and tracking down the invisible climate stories from Southern Africa. Read more about Story Ark or follow @StoryArkDiaries on social media.
