Russ Feingold: I think people should be talking to each other. In my state of Wisconsin, we value our agriculture, our farming culture, and our economy, but that doesn’t work if you don’t preserve natural areas — if you don’t have normal pollination from nature on crops, and the survival of birds and others crucial for that.

And the same thing goes for something often valued by very conservative people, such as hunting and fishing. I learned this lesson as a young state senator. I was fighting for environmental issues, and some people said to me, “You’ve got to go and meet with the hook-and-bullet crowd.”

I said, “What’s that?”

The hook-and-bullet crowd are basically the hunting and Ducks Unlimited conservation programs. There were some liberals, but mostly more rural, conservative people who all realized that if you don’t preserve wildlife — if you don’t preserve nature — you’re not going to have much fun fishing, and you’re not going to have much fun hunting.

That taught me there’s a fundamental human connection here. That ethic used to be bipartisan and nonpartisan. We need to work as citizens — not as Democrats or Republicans, but as citizens — to say, whatever else you think, let’s do this together.

Mike DiGirolamo: Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your co-host, Mike DiGirolamo, bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists, and activists working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet, and holding people in power to account.

This podcast is edited on Gadigal Land. Today on the Newscast we speak with former United States Senator from the state of Wisconsin, Russ Feingold. He’s also the chair of the Global Steering Committee on the Campaign for Nature, a group of prominent politicians, including the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, that advocates for nature protection to governments across the globe.

Feingold speaks with me about the current fraught political environment and why, more than ever, he believes governments must focus on nature protection, particularly Global North nations providing direct funding to nations in the Global South. While he advocates for the 30 by 30 initiative, he stresses the importance of doing so in a way that preserves human rights and Indigenous inclusion.

Feingold is well known in U.S. politics for pioneering the movement to get soft money out of politics, along with his bipartisan colleagues. But the situation has worsened in recent years, with billionaires being able to influence entire elections. At the same time, billionaires such as Bill Gates have painted nature protection or human health as a zero-sum game where one must be prioritized over the other. This is not true, and Feingold explains why, agreeing with his colleague Mary Robinson, who penned an op-ed in Mongabay on the very same subject.

Feingold’s connection to nature stems from his Wisconsin roots, where he explains that conservation has historically been a bipartisan priority, and he urges that for nature and human health to be prioritized, it must become a bipartisan priority once again.

Senator Feingold, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It is a pleasure to have you with us.

Russ: It’s a pleasure to be on it and to be talking about these things. Thank you so much.

Mike: So you are the chair of the Global Steering Committee for the Campaign for Nature. Can you tell our audience: what is the Campaign for Nature, and what does it advocate for?

Russ: It’s a nonprofit that grows out of the fact that way back in 1992 there were three very important treaties begun in Rio de Janeiro. One, of course, is the famous climate accord. Another had to do with desertification, the loss of arable land and expansion of desert areas. And the third was the Convention on Biological Diversity, the CBD.

The CBD was a commitment that came from people realizing that we were in danger of losing our biodiversity, our nature, if we didn’t start doing something. This is getting to be almost 50 years ago, but people recognized it was important, and so this treaty was created.

It wasn’t until recent years, and the work of various scientists under the auspices of the United Nations, that in May of 2019 they really raised the alarm. They said a million species might be lost to extinction, and that if we don’t do something serious about restoring and protecting nature, the planet is in real trouble.

So they set out a goal. The Convention did, and many other people, saying: let’s commit through this treaty to preserving 30% of the land and 30% of the water of the planet by the year 2030. So when you hear “30 by 30,” that’s what it is.

We are a group that’s trying – we’re not a permanent group – we’re a group that’s trying to help make that happen. And this Global Steering Committee is a group that works with them, an advisory group. Not scientists, not environmentalists, but basically prominent former political figures.

People like Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland; President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria; Lord Goldsmith of England. We’re trying to say: of course the science is important, of course the environmental leaders are critical, but if you don’t have buy-in from the broader public – and this is where political figures come in – you don’t have the public pressure to preserve nature.

So that’s what our group does. We try to take it to the broader audience and the governments around the world and say: we’ve got to really get serious about this.

Mike: As you’ve just mentioned, you work with many former heads of state, including Mary Robinson, who was president of Ireland in the 1990s, and she’s on the committee. Can you describe how you all came together? How did you coalesce around these shared values? And do you collaborate with intergovernmental entities on policy?

Russ: We certainly work with the United Nations, and the United Nations has a secretariat for this treaty in Montreal, so there is some of that. But we’ve really done this sort of independently.

I was encouraged by the Campaign for Nature to identify people that either I knew, or could get through to, to join this committee. And I might add that Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister of Australia, just joined our group and we are very pleased about that, which highlights the fact that this committee is a broad committee. It’s not just one side – it’s not just left-wing or right-wing – it cuts across the ideological line.

The thing that brought people together is that they had demonstrated, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats or Conservatives or Liberals or Labour, that they had a commitment to nature. What we found is that a lot of people from all kinds of political ideologies care deeply about nature and like to work together.

So it was a gradual process. I had known Mary Robinson from my work on trying to help peace efforts in the Great Lakes region of Africa. There are other people, like Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was the president of Liberia, somebody I’d worked with. She was the first woman president ever of an African country.

We have people, as I mentioned, like Lord Goldsmith – Zac Goldsmith of England – who was Boris Johnson’s environment minister. And then there are leaders from the Middle East – both Israelis and Egyptians – on the committee.

So what we did was just gradually identify people who want to help on this. It’s voluntary. And it has led to, frankly, about 25 people. It’s an impressive group of people and, to kid around, I’m the least prominent of the bunch, but it’s a great group of people who committed their lives to public service and now want to really make sure that we do what’s right by nature.

Mike: You have a long career in politics yourself, previously serving as a Democratic senator from the state of Wisconsin. What led you to where you are now? Why did you become so involved in the politics of protecting nature?

Russ: It’s been a very interesting, gradual process. I was not particularly an outdoorsman. You can’t call me that. I got more involved in outdoor things when I was in the U.S. Senate because some of these advocates said to me, “We’ve got to preserve the Utah wilderness,” and they got me to go on a rafting trip – not a very difficult one – a rafting trip down the Colorado River.

I hate to be corny about it, but it reminds me of the John Denver “Rocky Mountain High” song where he says, “He was born in the summer of his 27th year, coming home to a place he’d never been before.” And I found that very moving, because it has almost become, for me in the course of my life, almost a spiritual thing to realize the connection to nature.

The other thing is, in politics, I happen to be a successor – one person after – one of the greatest environmentalists in American history, former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. He’s the guy who got Earth Day created in the United States Senate. He was a hero of mine. I knew him a little bit, and so I knew I wasn’t going to be Gaylord Nelson, but I thought I had a responsibility to fight to preserve natural places and wilderness areas in Wisconsin, like the Apostle Islands; in Minnesota and Canada, like the Boundary Waters; and the Utah wilderness. So I did that kind of work.

Then I began to realize, as I saw things develop even in my home area in Wisconsin, that when I was a kid there were no large birds. There weren’t herons around, there weren’t wild turkeys, there weren’t sandhill cranes. There was a period where things were being used almost exclusively for agriculture, and the work that’s been done to restore nature and to do that kind of work, even at a time when it’s being destroyed in other places, is deeply moving.

I realized those birds and animals weren’t even around 50 or 60 years ago. So now, as I enter this stage of life and do this work, I’ve been very inspired by Pope Francis, who issued an encyclical about 10 years ago where he very eloquently talks about nature and the need to protect nature. He called it “our common home,” which I thought was a beautiful phrase.

But the thing I was really struck by is that he doesn’t just say it’s because of economics, or that it has to do with a lot of technical things. He says nature is critical for a person to be able to contemplate why they’re here and what the meaning of life is. I found that important as well.

So maybe my answer is too long, but it’s been 50 or 60 years of feeling closer and closer to the need to focus on nature and biodiversity.

Mike: From your perspective then, what is the biggest challenge facing nature protection from a political standpoint?

Russ: It’s not that hard to get people to say they care about nature. Anytime I talk to a world leader about joining our group, they talk about something about the place they grew up in in their country, whether it’s in Africa or Asia. People have an affection for nature.

But there are political headwinds, especially coming from the United States, that have been very negative about climate change, which frankly I think is ridiculous and wrong. With nature, there is still a broader constituency that supports it. So it wasn’t that hard for them to get the commitment a couple of years ago to do this 30 by 30 goal, to do it by 2030.

The problem now is: who’s going to pay for it? Most of the work of preservation needs to happen in Global South countries – many of the African countries, many of the Latin American countries, Southeast Asian states. These countries do not have the funding to pay for this.

I remember being in Rwanda and meeting with the head of the forestry system in Rwanda, and he said to me, “Oh yes, we’re going to designate X number of hectares for forests in the coming weeks.” He said, “But Mr. Feingold, we do not have foresters. We do not have people that know how to maintain natural areas.”

They don’t just take care of themselves. If they aren’t properly husbanded and handled, as I’ve seen people trying to do, it doesn’t work. So that takes money.

Our work on the Global Steering Committee right now – which I think is about the only group of its kind we know of, of political figures doing this – is trying to persuade countries to help us. Of course, we want to keep involved the countries that have been involved in the past, like Britain, and Germany is doing a great job with their Legacy Landscapes Fund. Australia has a very high percentage, for a country, in terms of its contributions, but we need more from them.

We also need more from some of the countries that have come into pretty good wealth in recent years – countries like Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and others. So we are working hard to develop funding, particularly direct funding, that would help programs preserve or restore natural areas, working especially with Indigenous or native peoples throughout the world.

Mike: One of the core tenets of the Campaign for Nature is to approach biodiversity conservation in a way that fully integrates and respects the leadership and rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities. I think it’s important to discuss this, because there is some scrutiny on the 30 by 30 initiative in that many Indigenous and local people are rightly concerned about having their land taken away from them in the name of conservation.

So how does the Campaign for Nature work to advocate for human rights in conservation? What do you prioritize?

Russ: They are completely right in saying that there is a history there that is not so pretty. In fact, studying this for years, because I do a lot of work on Africa, some of the great national parks that were the first ones created by the Belgians – as in Virunga in Congo and some of those places with their gorillas and so on – they preserved the area, but they kicked out all the Indigenous people.

I’ve met in Uganda with the Batwa people who were dispossessed. There was this lack of understanding, for many decades and even coming into the 21st century, that the people who know how to do this best and are most committed to it are the native or original or Indigenous people of those areas.

Even this effort did not understand that for a while. As I said, this treaty started going in ’92, and even in 2010 when they had one of their big 10-year conferences, they still had not identified the involvement of Indigenous and native people as a priority.

By the time of the Kunming-Montreal Agreement in 2022, when we came up with 30 by 30, we had three priorities. Number one was preserving the planet – 30 by 30 by 2030. Number two was the finance. But number three was the direct involvement of Indigenous people in all of this.

Now when you go to conferences on nature or climate change, you see a much heavier and more serious involvement of Indigenous people. In fact, I would say it’s increased dramatically in the last two or three years, which is a very important and good development.

Mike: There have been a lot of financial commitments made to Global South nations over the years from Global North countries, but many of these financial commitments have fallen through or they’ve failed to materialize in some way. Critics cite that the money is often handled in overly restrictive ways, or it’s administered by elite institutions like the World Bank, which doesn’t provide transparency or accountability.

So what kinds of policies would you advocate for to change this situation?

Russ: We need those organizations. We need the World Bank. We need the various sort of “usual suspect” countries that have the resources, and we need money that would be given directly to governments to then give to others.

However, you’ve hit on the thing that I think is missing here, which is direct funding to these programs where people are actually out there doing this work. This is really the almost genius of something that was started two or three years ago by Germany: something called the Legacy Landscapes Fund.

Sometimes one country gives another country – a Global South country – some money to do some preservation for a year or two, but then it’s gone; the money dries up. So what the Legacy Landscapes Fund did is commit something like a hundred million dollars, along with a match of money from philanthropies, to pick programs around the world – whether in Peru or Indonesia or Malaysia – where a 30-year commitment is made to the project, working with Indigenous and local people.

It is a one-million-dollar-a-year grant, which is renewed every year as long as the goals are being met. Instead of it being a two- or three-year thing that dies on the vine, it’s a 30-year commitment. The money is there, it has been provided, and there is a board that makes sure it goes where it is supposed to go.

That’s the model – there are 15 projects right now – that we want to replicate. We’ve been talking to the Australians about this. We’ve been talking to the Singaporeans. We’ve been talking to people in the United Arab Emirates and people in Korea, and in Britain, to see if they would be willing to do programs like this to really multiply the number of, as you say, direct programs that make sure that it’s not just a bureaucratic thing.

Yes, many times these big pledges are made and nothing ever happens. The same thing has happened with climate finance – it’s way, way too little. These programs are tangible, they actually lead to the funding, and I believe they will lead to success, because one thing you learn if you study nature is that it has an enormous ability to repair itself and to restore itself if it’s given a chance and if it’s not too late.

Mike: Hello listeners, and thank you for tuning in to the Mongabay Newscast. As we approach the end of the year, I encourage you to share your feedback on our audio reporting. If you like, you can share your thoughts on the Mongabay Newscast by filling out our survey in the show notes. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show on the podcast platform of your choice.

Back to the conversation with Senator Russ Feingold.

So recently at COP30 in Brazil there were protests from Indigenous people who were asking to have their voices play a central role in the international agreements regarding both nature and their rights. Yet fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered all delegations except the host country, Brazil, again at this COP. Is there anything you would like to see change at future international gatherings like this?

Russ: That’s a fair comment. There were mixed reviews of what happened at COP30. Many people thought it didn’t achieve many of its goals. In fact, unfortunately, two years ago there was a direct reference to the need to phase out fossil fuels, and that wasn’t in this time.

However, the concerns you’ve just described – the concerns by many, including Indigenous peoples and others concerned about climate change – did lead to a realization that we’ve got to get serious about fossil fuels. So there was an agreement that a work plan, a direct program, would be developed in the coming year with guideposts and deadlines that a number of commentators believe is promising.

I’ve actually had a conversation in the last few days with Christiana Figueres, who was the convener of the famous 2015 climate accord. She came away with some optimism that there were elements of this that were positive. She also said that the amount of activity that’s going on to make sure that we have renewable energy, that the resources that are coming, are much greater than people realize.

So this is not a time to say everything’s great, but there are some things that came out of COP30 that, if they’re really built on, could help address the things you’re saying. It’s an enormous concern. It’s taken way too long.

One of the things that is very important to us is the interrelationship between the climate and nature issue. They’re not always interrelated, but they usually are. Most people believe that you really only solve both of them together; you can’t solve one and not solve the other. So that’s exactly my hope for what will come out of COP30 as we head toward COP31.

Mike: In terms of justice, we’ve had a criminal psychologist on this show advocate for ecocide laws to hold corporations accountable for nature destruction. Do you think it’s time for fossil fuel companies to finally be held accountable for their destruction of nature under laws like ecocide?

Russ: I think that would be a positive development. I’ve noticed that some international courts are beginning to accept and rule in favor of those who are suing on behalf of nature and people. I think the development of international law in this area can be very helpful because a number of countries that might not want to pony up some money for this, when they see that this is becoming a legal regime, it’s different.

We recently had an enormous success that has to do with oceans. Another treaty that was started, thought about, 20 years ago – the High Seas Treaty, or the “biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction” treaty.

Mike: We’ve talked about this treaty several times on this show. It is the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, otherwise known as the BBNJ Treaty. You can find links to those episodes in the show notes.

Russ: There had not been any law at all – international law – until a few months ago, ever, with regard to the open sea. There was the Law of the Sea, which covered the extraterritorial 200 miles outside of a country, but not 75% of the water of the oceans. No protection, no international law.

But we worked hard on this and we managed to get, at the United Nations General Assembly, the 60th country to ratify. So it is now going to be binding starting in January. We’re hoping to get more countries involved.

That’s a great example of where a legal regime like the one you’re talking about – legal rulings, a legal regime, a treaty that is binding on the countries that are involved – can really help make a difference, to make countries feel like they better shape up and put the resources where they’re needed.

Mike: This is a long question, but as a former U.S. resident myself, I’m a little bit concerned about this current “abundance” debate that seems to be happening right now in the Democratic platform, which seems to peg the environmental movement as being in the way of development, progress, jobs, the economy.

When in actuality, I think it’s the opposite. Environmentalism is a movement that protects people – our lives and livelihoods – because society depends upon nature and natural resources to function. Yet there seem to be people such as Bill Gates, who recently published an essay about how we must choose to either fund human welfare or fund the environment, and not both, when these are not separate things. We need a healthy planet for a healthy society.

Mary Robinson argued the same thing in an op-ed for Mongabay, but U.S. politicians have seized Gates’s manifesto as a justification for cutting social services and for continued development of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, many Americans have long supported phasing out fossil fuels.

So what’s your response to people like Bill Gates, and what kind of message do you think would resonate with Americans?

Russ: I’m with you, and I believe that most Americans, if they’re asked, would agree. I don’t think the Democratic Party should adopt an attitude that somehow the environmental movement is in the way. That’s nonsense. As you said very eloquently yourself, usually when they’re handled correctly, the two go hand in hand. Nature and the economy work very well together.

I think it was very regrettable that Bill Gates made this statement. I don’t really understand it. We worked with Mary Robinson to get this response. Because of the power of corporations – we’ve seen this with the Trump administration – these corporate giants being read in by the Trump administration and allied media, the attempt to intimidate corporations and then, in turn, corporations intimidating others, is something that has to be resisted. It has to be resisted in the area of climate and it has to be resisted in the area of nature as well.

We have to maintain what is common sense. I actually saw an example of this where Donald Trump was trying to get a bunch of federal lands sold off in Idaho, and guess who stood up and said, “You know what, we don’t want to do this. We are from Idaho”? These were very far-right politicians who wouldn’t let him do it. They felt strongly about their lands.

Mike: So who do you think in the United States is prepared to lead the charge on protecting nature? Does anyone or anything stand out to you?

Russ: I don’t know who would be the individual. I know that Brian O’Donnell, who is the head of the Campaign for Nature, is one of the great environmentalists in the world and he has done a wonderful job.

But I’ll be looking at that presidential election as it’s coming up to see who realizes that making this – not only climate, but nature itself – a centerpiece of a presidential campaign would be a very smart thing to do, because it brings in all kinds of people and it brings in young people.

Right now, obviously, young people are driving a great deal of the future of politics, particularly in the Democratic Party. I think this is a golden opportunity for political figures to say – usually they pick one or two things to really focus on – this would be something that could help bring people together and not be something that would be easy to attack somebody for.

Mike: You were a chief sponsor, along with the late Senator John McCain, of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which decreased the role of soft money in politics. But as we’ve seen with the likes of Elon Musk spending $277 million funding Trump’s campaign, there is still a long way to go to rein in private money having an outsized effect on political campaigns.

Can you explain the consequences this has for nature and for a democratic society that has a say in how its lands and resources are used?

Russ: It’s really disastrous. In fact, McCain and I were successful. The law was in place between 2004 and 2010, and it was working. Elon Musk could have only given $4,000 with his spouse under our law.

Then the United States Supreme Court decided, in one of the worst decisions in the history of the Court – the Citizens United decision in 2010, and then the SpeechNow decision which followed it – to say, “Oh, actually, corporations should be able to do this.” It had been against the law ever since Teddy Roosevelt signed the Tillman Act in 1907.

So they didn’t just destroy the McCain–Feingold bill, they destroyed the whole system and turned this system of government, this system of campaign financing, over to the billionaires. Of course, President Trump figured that out. He figured, “If I can intimidate the billionaires, I can get all kinds of money for my campaign,” because you can give all you want now through various ruses.

That is something that has to be changed or, definitely, the environment will suffer and nature will suffer, as is already occurring in many places.

Mike: We’re clearly at a point in time where there is a rise in authoritarianism, and it seems that people in positions of power are stoking fear, blaming cost-of-living pressures on immigrants, and pushing nationalist policies and stripping away human rights.

What words do you have for people listening right now who are trying to fight to protect nature amidst all these devastating conditions?

Russ: What this Campaign for Nature has reminded me of, in a very different context… I’ve worked as an American representing the United States in various situations. What this reminds us is that to fight authoritarianism, you have to work internationally.

The authoritarians are coalescing internationally. Donald Trump’s pardoning of the former president of Honduras, and his affinity for authoritarian leaders – these people are coalescing. Those of us who believe in democracy and the rule of law, and who care about the nature and climate issues, we have to establish relationships across national borders.

So this group of people that I’m working with on the Campaign for Nature – we are all about the nature issues, but it can also lead to the establishment of relationships that can help fight authoritarianism in other contexts. It’s the world’s fight and it will be for the future. You will no longer have things just decided in the United States or just decided in Australia. Everything will be interrelated, as the internet has caused us to realize.

Because of that, political alliances and political unity against authoritarianism internationally is one of the most important things anyone can work on in the coming years. That’s about relationships. It’s about personal relationships. It’s about getting to know leaders in other countries.

I recently, under the auspices of the Campaign for Nature, was allowed to attend something called the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva. There were over a hundred countries represented – legislative delegations. There were countries there that I almost never met with: Iran was there, Russia was there, Belarus, North Korea, etc.

But it was a room full of people where you could actually talk to each other and discuss whether or not people would be interested in pursuing the nature issue. I was inspired by that, because I believe it can help develop relationships on other issues. Even though some of those countries are authoritarian now, I believe the people of those countries want freedom from that, and it gives us a chance to establish relationships for the future.

Mike: You talked earlier in this interview about your connection to nature and what it means to you. I’ve heard it said by many people in positions like yours that there’s a big problem we have right now where there is a lack of understanding of how connected we all are to nature, how much we rely on it.

So what would you say to not just people listening to this podcast, but to the public at large? What would you ask them to think about, to fully understand how much they depend upon nature and how much it should mean to them?

Russ: I think people should be talking to each other. For example, in my state of Wisconsin, of course we value greatly our agriculture and our farming culture and our economy. But that doesn’t work if you don’t preserve natural areas, if you don’t have the normal pollination that comes from nature on crops, and the survival of birds and others that are crucial for that.

The same thing goes for something that often very conservative people care deeply about, such as hunting and fishing. I learned this lesson as a young state senator. I was fighting for environmental issues and some people said to me, “You’ve got to go and meet with the hook-and-bullet crowd.” I said, “What’s that?”

The hook-and-bullet crowd are basically the hunting and Ducks Unlimited conservation programs. There were some liberals, but mostly more rural, conservative people who all realized that if you don’t preserve wildlife, if you don’t preserve nature, you’re not going to have very much fun fishing, and you’re not going to have very much fun hunting.

That taught me that there’s a fundamental human connection here. If you can keep it away from the partisan politics, keep it away from the nonsense about “woke” and all these different things, but return to what we in Wisconsin used to call “conservation.” Before the word “environment” was really used, conservation in Wisconsin was completely bipartisan.

We had governors, Republican and Democrat, compete with each other to see who could designate the greatest amount of acreage of natural areas. That ethic used to be bipartisan and nonpartisan, and we need to work as citizens – not as Democrats or Republicans, but as citizens – to say: whatever else you think, let’s do this together.

Mike: Is there a website or any information you’d like to direct our listeners to, to learn more about the Campaign for Nature?

Russ: Yes. Campaignfornature.org. The Campaign for Nature. You can see all the different things we’ve been working on, but also who the members of this Global Steering Committee are, and I would strongly urge you to do that.

Mike: Senator Russ Feingold, thank you for speaking with me today. It has been a pleasure.

Russ: My pleasure as well. This is something I love talking about. Thanks so much.

Mike: If you want to learn more about the Campaign for Nature, please visit campaignfornature.org or click on the link in the show notes. And if you want to read Mary Robinson’s response to Bill Gates, you can also find this in the show notes.

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