Interview

How soil, communities and law can save our future

29 January 2025

Sumru Ramsey is an environmental advocate whose journey from finance to activism has shaped her mission to create regenerative futures. With a background in business and finance from Queen Mary University of London and London Business School and a qualification in garden design, Sumru believes that we need to move from intentions to actions. 

Sumru highlights the power of law to hold corporations accountable, the importance of healthy soil and the need to rethink our relationship with nature. Her advocacy spans issues such as plastic reduction, greenwashing and regenerative farming, inspiring others to help create a sustainable future.


Your work with ClientEarth involves leveraging philanthropy for environmental justice. How do you believe philanthropic initiatives can best support regenerative futures, especially in areas where environmental and social needs intersect?

For the future of our planet, it is crucial we learn to live in a healthy symbiosis with nature. One million species are threatened with extinction; 20 million people are forced to move due to climate change – climate health and social justice are closely linked. Ninety per cent of the world’s forests have already disappeared and 7.25 million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean every year. It is essential to protect our planet, our health and future generations. 

I am a member of the development board for an environmental law charity – ClientEarth.

By using the power of law, ClientEarth holds corporations and governments to account for their commitments. The biggest challenge today is not just the commitments, but their actual implementation. We need to move from intentions to actions. 

I believe that using the force of law is incredibly powerful to defend and preserve life on Earth. Our planet will survive but we won’t if we don’t restore nature. The high density of concrete-built cities next to vast deforested land farmed for intensive, industrial-based agriculture inevitably leads to severe natural disasters. 

Environmental and social needs are deeply interlinked. Environmental disasters, climate change, biodiversity loss, floods and droughts all have a deep impact on society. These can lead to mass migration, malnutrition or even starvation, the spread of disease or deepening inequality in most affected areas. 

Building regenerative futures requires a resilient and long-term sense of purpose. It is about shying away from a short-term, extractive mindset. Philanthropic foundations often have this long-term time horizon by design. They are therefore ideally set up to change habits and behaviours to build a more sustainable society for future generations.

In your advocacy and board work, you have likely witnessed how environmental policies affect local communities. What strategies have you found effective in empowering communities to engage with and influence these policies?

It is important to ensure that communities can use the law to ensure that companies and governments uphold their obligations on environmental issues.

One example that ClientEarth is working on involves representing people in the US who have been burdened with abandoned oil and gas wells polluting their properties. There are over two million such wells across the US that have been abandoned by fossil fuel companies, who should have ‘plugged’ the wells once they stopped producing. The farmers and property owners involved in the case are asking the court to establish their right to collect clean-up costs from the companies, which they allege fraudulently sold the wells to escape their obligations. 

Another interesting area of ClientEarth’s work relates to community-based forest management in Gabon, undertaken together with local NGO Brainforest. This project aims to empower communities with the legal knowledge required to set up and sustainably manage community-owned and -operated forests.

Community-based forest management is one of the most effective ways to protect against commercial loggers and deforestation while supporting local economies.

You've been an advocate for reducing pesticides in our food chain for over 25 years. What first inspired your passion for a non-toxic approach to gardening and food?

Originally Turkish, in my early twenties I was very worried that our beautiful blue coast was not being protected adequately from over-construction by massive fisheries being built and managed with little or no regulations. The area in which these fisheries are located is home to very potent Mediterranean seagrass. Seagrass can capture large amounts of carbon, it cleans the water from pollutants and it forms a habitat for marine life. At the time, I was deeply inspired by the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, in which she clearly outlined the urgent need to move away from pesticides. This year is the 100th anniversary of Rudolph Steiner’s agricultural lectures on biodynamic farming and organic agriculture, which was known to many ancient civilisations but was abandoned for toxic monocultural farming. 

The true cost of producing monocultures was never taken into account and now we are faced with a crisis in soil fertility. But people today are starting to realise the importance of having healthy soil. I am following regenerative farmers who collect data and use AI to help navigate trends in illnesses and pests in plants. I am learning every day from nature and its interconnections. Plants have immune systems very much like ours. Healthy plants reduce the need for pesticides. 

Everything in nature is related, so it is very important to understand the soil our food is grown in, as this determines the level of nutrients. What has your food eaten? For soil to be healthy and nutrient-rich, it needs to be balanced. We need a deep, systemic approach with an analysis of why certain diseases are appearing. Science shows us the relationship between plant health and pests. Producing healthy crops diminishes the need for pesticides. 

I believe regenerative practices will become mainstream in the next 20 years. We cannot afford to continue in this pesticide-centric model. Three-quarters of the Earth’s soil is degraded. The trillions of micro-organisms in our soil are dead and water can no longer be absorbed. Soil has many functions, from being a carbon sink to purifying water, preventing floods through absorption and giving us food. We should nurture it, not abuse it.

You’ve highlighted how our everyday choices impact nature – from food to consumer goods. How can a greater awareness of these connections help us address issues like climate change?

I would like to inspire others to grow their own food and to feed their soil correctly or support biodynamic practices near them. Keeping childlike curiosity is crucial, such as asking questions about where things come from. 

One way for each of us to get involved is to become micro-activists on the issues that interest us most. Just spending your money more consciously is a start. Consumers also need to be aware of greenwashing, where a corporation makes misleading claims about the sustainability or climate impact of its product.

How do you think we can encourage families, especially children, to connect with nature and understand the cycles of life through hands-on activities like gardening?

Our daughter started collecting seeds at the age of five and planting her own vegetables. This helped her understand our power to reproduce plants and strengthened her connection with nature and its vulnerability in times of heavy rain, early frost and heatwaves. The natural circular cycle of composting and using our waste to feed our plants and animals, which in return feed us, offered her an understanding of our interconnections and translated into a deeper respect for our interdependencies. You can experiment in your own garden, test the soil’s pH levels, give it the right natural feeds, rotate crops, and add wood chips, leaves and straw. At home, we compost rabbit and chicken manure. All this allows for mycelium to form and helps plants absorb water and nutrients as well as helps with plant immunity. 

A sense of purpose is very important for our happiness. Giving back to nature by allowing certain parts of your garden to go wild will bring back the insects, butterflies, bees and birds. Going back to the basics of kitchen gardens, allotments or buying from regenerative farms can help connect children to nature in tangible ways that also keep us healthy.

We need to move from intentions to actions and what better way than to start in your backyard, where you can learn a lot more than you think!

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