Elise Buckle: Rising with women for a better tomorrow

Written by John Moorhead | Edited by SHE Changes Climate

Elise Buckle’s love for nature started at her childhood home in the French countryside. She would often bike to school through the woods with her older brother and sister. They would take their time coming home after school, enjoying the different shades of greenery, gurgling brooks and bird chatter. When the trees were weighed down by fingers of snow, she would cross-country ski to school.?

At nine came her first experience of another side of life. On a family trip to a dusty village in the far east of Senegal she saw the gratitude and joy on a pharmacist’s face as her parents gave him some essential medicines that would find good use. “Why aren’t there medicines on the pharmacy’s shelves?” she asked herself. “That’s not fair.”

In Chile twelve years later, Elise was in a small village sacrificed by former president Augusto Pinochet’s brutal embrace of neoliberalism. Teresa was a mother of seven who had barely survived giving birth and taking care of her children without running water, electricity or heating and enduring the awful beatings of her alcoholic husband. Elise helped Teresa take care of herself and her children. She fondly remembers their moments at a nearby river where she helped wash and untangle the children’s hair in the river. This became Elise’s Chilean family – and to date, she likes to talk about this monumental time from her youth with ministers and other diplomats, to remind them that service is a crucial value that we must extend beyond ourselves.?

Years later, the cotton fields of Tajikistan also marked the way she began to think about life. The soil on which the cotton stood was covered by a white crust having been aggressively treated and exploited by the USSR. The solution proposed by the US was to dump Genetically Modified Cotton and chemicals in exchange for a US army base. This was a classic interest in international development at work. Elise had a different perspective, and was certain in her belief that the system had to change first.

When she returned to Europe, in 2005 she helped pass strong regulation of chemicals by the European parliament. Seeing her potential and determination, women parliamentarians sent Elise to her first climate meeting (COP) the following year in Montreal. Elise realized that climate change was the defining issue of her time. Without addressing climate change, we would not address poverty, gender and social inequity. This was the moment that sparked her lifelong endeavor on climate. She joined Ernst & Young to understand fossil fuels and even learned how they operate from within thanks to mandates at Gaz de France and Total.

When she attended the G8 Summit in Deauville, France, a drought was devastating the horn of Africa. A BBC report that showed a mother burying her child hit a nerve for Elise. As a new mum, she was devastated and concerned; but rather than dwell on the weight of the emotions, she decided to take action and help mothers above and beyond her capacity. To her it was a simple yet firm fact: no mother should have to bury her child due to lack of water and food.

In 2013, during a difficult pregnancy and delivery of her daughter Le?la in 2013, she became aware of the precious gift of life in a way that almost losing her own life could only have.

Elise had been working on climate for over 10 years (and Le?la is 10 this year, 2023). After her near-death experience Elise was ever more determined to work for a safer climate, for a better future for the next generations. “What kind of planet are we leaving behind to our loved ones?” she wondered. And what more could she do about it.

The 23rd World Climate Summit hosted by Fiji in 2017 was held in Bonn. Elise worked as the Climate Policy Advisor for Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan who was Chief Negotiator for the COP23 Presidency. She instilled trust through an inclusive, diverse and empathetic process borrowed from the Pacific tradition of Talanoa dialogue. Fiji can be thanked for keeping the 1.5°C limit alive. Diplomats wore Fijian flowers behind their ears, as a sign of solidarity for Ambassador Khan’s leadership. Soon after COP23, Ambassador Khan was dismissed by her Prime Minister. The decision was abrupt but clearly made to show who was really in charge.

Despite witnessing this, Elise was steadfast in her pursuits in both climate and gender equality. In 2021 when she experienced her own career breakthrough and went through oppression at the hands of then Mayor of Nyon, Switzerland after a period of voting which showed the state’s democratic flaws. Even though the situation threatened to break her, she knew she still had to carry out her life’s purpose.

Thanks to Elise Nyon has a solid climate law of its own even though the Mayor blocked her participation and efforts to bring science into political debates. She successfully headed both the Energy and Human Resources departments at Nyon, which she had to fight for despite getting the most votes.?

Elise also stood up to the Mayor over the town’s failure to protect the human rights and well-being of its employees. Again, the Mayor went after Elise, but in a far more vicious and nasty way. He filed a legal complaint and claimed that Elise leaked a confidential report to the press. During the enquiry, Elise could not represent Nyon’s people. The Mayor thought he could silence her, but others stepped forward and Elise won her case. These were dark days for Elise and a disgrace that a man – a colleague at that – could inflict so much harm on a woman defending human rights and nature with love and compassion.

This was also a pivotal time in her career and ultimately led her to connect with Antoinette Vermilye and Bianca Pitt in 2021 to start and build a global campaign: SHE Changes Climate. The goal was (and still is) to ensure equal representation at all important negotiations and decision rooms about humanity’s future on Earth. At the time, patriarchy and decades of oppression and neo-liberalism were taking the lead, and Elise knew that a nascent climate and nature movement led by women is what would save us.

In the two years since, SHE Changes Climate has grown into a movement that’s giving space, time and resources to various people from the Global South whose voices have been silenced, ignored or misunderstood.

Elise’s message in the face of this oppression has been succinct yet powerful:

“We are facing a planetary emergency, for climate, people and nature. Let’s face it together. Working as One team, for One Planet. As SHE Changes Climate, we are part of the Dandelion initiative, the women-led movement for climate justice which keeps growing every day and is aiming to reach 2 billion people on all 7 continents. And we can succeed by planting the seeds of a better world for generations to come, one seed at a time.

Our vision for the future is to see our children watch a field of thousands of colourful blooming flowers, with the emergence of thousands of solutions for regeneration, under a bright blue sky.”