What is a "climate change coach" to me

In the spring of the last year, I was interviewed by the "Climate Change Coaches", a group of coaches who appeared to be primarily based in the UK. They contacted me, perhaps because I had participated in some webinars the group had hosted earlier. I was grateful for the opportunity.

Perhaps because I was still working for an international organisation at that time, I felt like I still had a reasonable distance from the world of coaching. That allowed me to be able to approach the interview casually but honestly. The time spent answering the questions that I had been given in advance was a valuable opportunity to think about why I became a coach and the relationship between climate change and coaching, for me. You can read the interview here.

While the interview was posted over one year and a half ago, I have been thinking about the idea of climate change coaching once again lately.

Some readers of this blog may instantly get the point, which is that if a personal coach is not someone who provides advice, a climate change coach will not teach you about the mechanism or history of climate change or possible solutions to it.

I am very well aware, though, the phrase "climate change coach" could give the impression that it refers to an expert in that field who, through sharing of knowledge and experience, provides specific advice to environmental and climate change activists.

Obviously, I am not a climate change expert. I will not be able to pass on knowledge or give specific advice to activists or future activists, even if I want to do.

I do know some historical background to international environmental law and the challenges of its current implementation, as I teach relevant courses at a higher education institution now. Through this job, I exchange ideas with students, think with them and get inspired by them while I share my field experiences in international relations.

For me, a "climate change coach" is someone who has a strong interest in relevant issues and global challenges while wanting to do something about them, exploring what they can do and striving through trial and error. It is a type of professional coach who is passionate about supporting, through coaching, those who are already taking action or who want to take action.

This may or may not be very different from the image of coaches set up by the Climate Change Coaches group that interviewed me, but that is not an issue for me. As a professional coach, I want to support climate change and environmental activists. That is what I have entrusted to being a "climate change coach".

Whether in the field of humanitarian aid, in which I have had experience, or environmental and climate change activism, those who work in these fields are someone who wants to make the world a better place and to leave this beautiful earth in a better shape for future generations.

I am well aware, as I myself have experienced it to some extent that those who work towards such a mission could have an intense feeling of helplessness, loneliness, and even burnout.

I really want to support activists through professional coaching conversations that can only be conducted by a coach with some shared experience of such helplessness, loneliness and burnout.

This is why I would like to be called a climate change coach.