Seacology's Video

My name is Duane Silverstein and I am proud to be a change agent. My road to becoming an agent of change began somewhat ironically at Columbia University Law School where I got a volunteer summer job working with native Hawaiians to help protect the environment of that beautiful state. Because I liked my volunteer work so much I dropped out of law school to dedicate my life to trying in some small way to make the world a better place. After getting a master’s degree in public policy at the University of California, Berkeley I was named the executive director of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, a charitable foundation. For the next 18 years my job was to give money away to worthy nonprofits. In other words I got to play Santa Claus for worthy causes. In addition to making grants, during my tenure we established the world’s major environmental prize – The Goldman Prize – which has been called the Nobel Prize of the environment by National Geographic and news media throughout the world.

My job was incredibly rewarding. I got to give out $20 million in charitable grants each year and award prizes with large stipends to grassroots environmentalists from around the world. In many cases the attention from the Goldman Prize kept the recipients out of jail and in every case significantly helped the causes they were working on. It would be hard to imagine a more meaningful and satisfying job. I was very young when I started at the Goldman Fund. At the time I was likely the youngest (non-family member) foundation director in the nation. After almost 20 years even the best jobs can lose their edge. Also, as rewarding as the grant making was, I wanted to get closer to the real action and work even more directly to help preserve the planet. One of the recipients of the Goldman Prize was Dr. Paul Cox who won the award for building a school in a remote village in Samoa in exchange for the village agreeing to protect a 30,000 acre rainforest which would otherwise have been logged. Paul asked me if I wanted to head his newly formed organization, Seacology, and I happily said yes.

Before I talk about the terrific work of Seacology the Changents folks want me to mention a little more about myself. Please feel free to skip the rest of this paragraph and go right to the important stuff about Seacology’s critical island efforts. Working in the nonprofit sector I have had a very interesting life. I have met with many presidents of the United States, secretaries-general of the United Nations and heads of state throughout the world. My work has been covered in newspapers and periodicals as diverse as TIME, The Bangkok Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and Scuba Diving magazine. The New York Times once called me “one of the world’s leading island explorers.” I have visited 116 islands and 55 countries, and for that matter have logged around 400 dives. I love scuba diving and I love the fact that Seacology and I are helping to save many threatened coral reefs throughout the world. Articles I have written have appeared in Ocean Geographic, Fathoms, Asian Geographic, The Explorer’s Journal and many other newspapers and periodicals. Recently, Daughtry, one of the most popular rock groups in the U.S. included me, along with several other change agents, in their music video “What About Now.” That’s more than enough about me. I’d rather talk about islands, so here goes.

ISLANDS & SEACOLOGY

In the last 400 years the majority of the world’s plant and animal extinctions have taken place on islands, leading biologist Dr. Peter J. Bryant to call this unprecedented rate of species extinctions “one of the swiftest and most profound biological catastrophes in the history of the earth.”

Indigenous people are all too often faced with the dilemma of choosing between protecting their precious natural resources, and economic development. Seacology searches for win-win situations where both the local environment is protected and islanders receive some tangible benefit for doing so. In Falealupo, Samoa, Seacology built a critically needed school in exchange for the establishment of a 30,000-acre forest reserve. In Vuna Village, Fiji, Seacology is constructing a kindergarten in exchange for the establishment of a 4,752-acre forest preserve and two marine protected areas totaling 3,010 acres. Because we work closely with islanders right from the beginning, our projects enjoy strong local support and consequently lead to long-term benefits. Our ever-expanding list of projects shows that we are truly making a difference in protecting threatened island biodiversity throughout the world.

To date Seacology has launched over 170 projects, preserving 163,811 acres of terrestrial habitat and 1,808,443 acres of coral reef and neighboring marine habitat. In exchange for preserving this threatened habitat, we have built 85 schools, community centers, water delivery systems and other critically needed facilities and funded 30 scholarship programs, vital medical services and supplies, and other crucial support for island communities. Several times a year Seacology leads expeditions to visit our projects on islands throughout the world.