The three-time Grammy Award recipient has been striving to highlight the need to pay attention to and reverse the growing trends of land degradation, desertification and drought
Musician Ricky Kej
Land is what gives us life and it deserves to be celebrated, believes Bengaluru-based musician and environmentalist Ricky Kej. The three-time Grammy Award recipient, whose music revolves on issues of climate change, humanitarian crises and sustainability, has been striving to highlight the need to pay attention to and reverse the growing trends of land degradation, desertification and drought.
Since 2019, he has also been involved with the the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, first as Land Ambassador, and now as the convention’s Goodwill Ambassador along with African artists Baaba Mali and Inna Modja.
On June 16, the United Nations Convention to Combar Desrtification (UNCCD) marked the Desertification and Drought Day 2023 through a global observance event titled Her Land. Her Rights: Advancing Gender Equality and Land Restoration Goals.
Kej also released a new song highlighting women’s relationships with land, he told Down To Earth (DTE) in a telephonic interview. Edited excerpts:
Dakshiani Palicha (DP): You have been associated with UNCCD for a long time. How do you perceive the nexus of humans, land and climate change? How does the Convention aim to resolve the growing trend of land degradation and desertification and the associated impacts?
Ricky Kej (RK): Land is obviously one of the most important constituents of our environment and more than two billion people depend directly on it for sustenance and financial sustainability.
Everything is interrelated when it comes to climate change and when land becomes beyond use because of its impacts, then this not only causes disasters but also wars.
Just saying that land degradation should be mitigated is generic; what we need is a policy that looks at the issue from the ground up. That’s what UNCCD works towards.
The campaign right now is all about gender equality. Half of the global agricultural workforce is female, but it seems that only a fifth of all landowners are actually women.
So basically, there is a disproportionate effect when it comes to land degradation and women. They are not able to farm on their own land when it is degraded, and they do not even own the land so they cannot take decisions about it, financially or otherwise.
Apparently in several countries around the world, women cannot even inherit their land because there is no law to allow them to do so. And if there is drought in such places and there is a lack of access to water, then on average a woman spends an hour in such places to actually fetch water.
Basically, women are the worst-affected by desertification. To combat this, we need awareness. We need enough women leaders and legislation in countries which allows women rights over their land and inheritance. This is the focus of UNCCD’s campaign right now.
DP: How do you approach your responsibility as UNCCD’s Goodwill Ambassador?
RK: My job as a Goodwill Ambassador is to understand the problems in this regard after they have been figured out and when solutions are being sought.
Then I have to understand how to communicate these complex ideas and thoughts and simplify them through the emotional language of music so that I am reaching out to people through their hearts and souls, rather than just their minds.
I have already composed a song, Born From The Land, which I sang with Baaba Maal. We launched this song in 2019, at the 14th Conference of the Parties (COP14) to UNCCD in India, and it is UNCCD’s Land Anthem now.
I have now written a new song based around the Her Land, Her Rights campaign, which has been sung by Inna Modja. We launched this song on June 16.
DP: Desertification, degradation and women’s relationship with land are all complex subjects. How do you go about interpreting them and presenting the issues in a way that is easy for people to understand?
RK: This process starts with a whole lot of conversations with stakeholders. For example, in the case of the land anthem, it was conversations with Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD’s executive secretary as well as attending events, conferences and asking a lot of questions.
Then I realised that what we have to talk about is that we need to celebrate land, as an entity that brings us life, sustainability and livelihoods. Nobody can thrive without the land.
So that is what the main chorus highlights: We are all born from the land. Everything else in the song basically stems out from these thoughts in a simple language that anybody can understand and connect to.
This new song is all about the relationship that a woman has with her land. Its basic premise is that one cannot separate a woman from a land because at the end of the day, both have got a cultural significance with each other and a bond.
That is what we are trying to bring about in this particular song and also shine a light on all the problems that women face on this planet when it comes to land degradation, climate change and migration.
DP: You have time and again emphasised on the need for a ground-up approach to mitigate climate change impacts. What are some ways in which you think people can contribute?
RK: When it comes to ground improvement, I think it is all about encouraging people to make responsible choices and to change their relationship with land, water, and even fibre.
Because at the end of the day, even the clothes we wear have to be grown on land so our relationship with that should not subscribe to fast fashion. So that is basically what I have been working towards in my advocacy, to showcase the importance of land in our lives and what we can do at an individual level.
I also, sort of, try to lead by example by not subscribing to fast fashion and rewearing my clothes. So what I did was that last year, when I won my second Grammy, was buy a blue sherwani which I have since worn on the red carpet for the Cannes Film Festival as well as for an event to mark Stockholm plus 50, along with another 40 concerts before it became unwearable.
And then, I had to get rid of that because it was no longer wearable this year.
For my third Grammy, I bought a cream sherwani and have already worn it to 22 concerts. So that is what I have been doing: Trying to encourage people to rewear their clothes and not to give into this paradigm of having every single costume be completely different.
Apart from this, I also follow a meatless diet and use public transportation everywhere. And lastly, I get my water and carbon footprints audited every quarter with an agency and figure out ways to reduce them. These are things I follow because of what I have learned through UNCCD.
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