Top 10: Sustainability Influencers

From global superstars who use their brand to drive climate awareness to those who have risen from communities and turned their burning vision into a movement for change, sustainability influencers are becoming increasingly influential.

Here, Scope 3 Magazine takes a look at the top 10. 

10 | Jane Goodall

• Location: Tanzania
• Sector: Primate Conservation
• Title: Founder, Jane Goodall Institute

Dame Jane Goodall has spent more than 60 years working to conserve and champion primates. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and Roots & Shoots and, in April 2002, was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

She has been the subject of more than 40 movies and has written dozens of conservation books for adults and children.

9  | Naomi Klein

• Location: Canada
• Sector: Climate Justice
• Title: Co-Founder, UBC Centre for Climate Justice

Naomi Klein is an author, social activist, and filmmaker who writes and campaigns on ecofeminism, organised labour, and corporate globalisation. Her first book, No Logo, became a manifesto for the anti-globalisation movement, while her documentaries shed light on the exploitation of workers in Argentina.

In 2016, Naomi was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for climate justice activism, and she regularly appears on lists of the most influential climate voices.

8  | Kumi Naidoo

• Location: South Africa
• Sector: Human Rights and Climate Justice
• Title: Former Sec-Gen, Amnesty International

Kumi Naidoo is a human rights and climate justice activist. He was the International Executive Director of Greenpeace International from 2009 to 2015 and the Secretary General of Amnesty International from 2018 to 2019. His background is anti-apartheid activism in his native South Africa. He has since served as the Launch Executive Director of Africans Rising for Justice, Peace & Dignity and a Special Advisor to the Green Economy Coalition.

7  | Bill McKibben

• Location: US
• Sector: Climate Action and Justice
• Title: Founder, 350.org & Third Act

Bill McKibben founded the Third Act, which encourages people over 60 to take action on climate change and justice. He also helped found 350.org, a global grassroots climate campaign that has organised protests worldwide. He helped launch opposition to big oil pipeline projects and the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become history's most extensive anti-corporate campaign.

6  | Elon Musk

• Location: Canada
• Sector: Space, Automotive, Tech
• Title: Founder & CEO, SpaceX | CEO, Tesla

Elon Musk is among the world's wealthiest people, with an estimated net worth of US$210bn. In recent years, he has courted controversy over his buyout of Twitter (Now X). But he remains an electric vehicle production pioneer, having invested in Tesla Motors in 2004. He became its CEO in 2008 and also helped create solar energy company SolarCity—later Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company.

5  | Vanessa Nakate

• Location: Uganda
• Sector: Climate Change
• Title: Founder, Youth for Future Africa

Inspired by Greta Thunberg, in early 2019, Vanessa Nakate launched a lone protest outside the Ugandan Parliament against rising temperatures. She then started a youth movement to draw attention to the plight of the Congolian rainforests.

Vanessa spoke alongside Greta at COP25 and is the founder of Youth for Future Africa and the Rise Up Movement. She has since started the Green Schools Project, aiming to transition schools in Uganda to solar energy. She has been appointed a Unicef goodwill ambassador.

4  | Paul Hawken

• Location: US
• Sector: Climate and Political Activism
• Title: Founder, Project Drawdown

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist who dedicated his life to environmental sustainability. He is one of the environmental movement's leading voices and an architect of corporate reform around ecological practices. 

He has founded successful, ecologically conscious businesses, published countless books and consulted with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology and environmental policy. 

Paul is the Founder of Project Drawdown, a non-profit dedicated to researching when and how global warming can be reversed. It "maps and models the scaling of one hundred substantive technological, social, and ecological solutions to global warming."

3  | David Attenborough

• Location: UK
• Sector: Broadcasting
• Title: Writer, Presenter, Natural Historian

Sir David Attenborough has been a fixture on British TV for eight decades. He is known in particular for writing and presenting nine natural history series and for being an authoritative voice for climate and conservation action. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation. Sir David has won numerous awards and is still presenting at 98.

2  | Leonardo DiCaprio

• Location: US
• Sector: Movies
• Title: Founder,  Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation

Leonardo DiCaprio is an actor, environmentalist and philanthropist.

In some ways, he was ahead of the curve when 1998 he created the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to support organisations and initiatives dedicated to securing a sustainable future for the planet.

Through his foundation, Leonardo has produced several media projects about climate change and environmental issues, including the web films Water Planet and Global Warming. He sets aside half of his website for environmental news and content and has sat on the Boards of WWF, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Global Green USA, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

Leonardo was an executive producer on Virunga, a British documentary film about four people fighting to protect the world's last mountain gorillas from war and poaching. He was also an executive producer on Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, which explores the impact of animal agriculture on the environment.

2  | Greta Thunberg

• Location: Sweden
• Sector: Environmental Activism
• Title: Co-founder, Fridays for Future

Greta Thunberg rose to fame at the age of 15 when she skipped school to protest climate change, staging a long School Strike for Climate outside the Swedish parliament. She said that she would continue school striking for the climate every Friday until Sweden complied with the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Her protests sparked a youth movement called Fridays for Future and catapulted Greta onto the world stage. She went viral when she sailed on a carbon-free yacht from Plymouth, UK, to the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in New York and said, "How dare you?" to world leaders.

She has continued to be a global climate activist, received numerous honours and awards, was named Time Person of the Year, and multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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