Heïdi Sevestre

A few weeks ago Juba from Cigcola from Smelly Feet Records got in touch about a series called The Expansion, asking a simple question: what were you listening to out there? I sent back an embarrassingly long answer. Three months on a kite, eight to ten and sometimes twelve hours a day, with a landscape that barely changes — you have a lot of time to fill. So I'd treated Antarctica as a blank page and used it to catch up on every book I'd ever meant to read. Mostly audiobooks, if I'm honest....

On 15 July I was at UNESCO headquarters in Paris to moderate a high-level plenary at the Global Conference of the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development. The session was called Science Diplomacy in Action: Governing Global Commons, and I still find it slightly unreal to write the list of people who were on that stage. Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, former President of Iceland and founder of the Arctic Circle, Lidia Brito, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Priority Africana...

Many thanks to Nerea González for this article on the importance of snow and ice as existential water ressources. We met a couple of weeks ago at UNESCO for first Global Conference of the Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development, and the launch of their Global Report on "Science at a turning point" which I recommend everyone to read.