Hello! Halo! Kumusta! Xin chào! สวัสดี! မင်္ဂလာပါ! ជំរាបសួរ! ສະບາຍດີ!

Does this sound like you?

🌊 “Wanting to turn the tides against climate change?”

🤿 “Interested to deep dive further but not sure where to start?”

🏄 “Surfing different sources of information but getting confused?”

🪸 “Overwhelmed by an ocean of information?”

🎣 “Fishing for solutions but not getting any bites?”

🐋 Whale, if you said yes to any of the above rhetorical questions then you’re not alone because we are also in the same 🛥️boat as you, which is why we’re starting this newsletter!

💭Why?

Climate starts with SEA's mission is to inspire individuals across Southeast Asia to take action on climate change and environmental degradation.

In line with the above nautical puns, our name has a few different meanings:

1. Of course, “climate” quite literally starts with the letter “C” and “SEA” is a homophonic play on words, which stands as the acronym for SouthEast Asia

2. Our climate is strongly influenced by our seas and oceans: the ocean has absorbed not only a third of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but also over 90% of the extra heat within our planet; so our climate literally starts with our seas as well (IPCC, 2019)

3. We want this newsletter to inspire you to start taking action in your neighborhoods: think globally, act locally

📰⌚What & When?

Our goal is not to drown you in yet more dense and confusing climate information. Instead we want to keep it simple with light, often humorous, and always easy to digest content regarding climate topics across Southeast Asia—occasionally drawing from the rest of the continent and/or world as relevant.

The content structure will be as follows (though we may experiment going forward!):

1. Highlights of good climate news across the region👍🏼

2. Highlights of bad climate news across the region👎🏼

3. A short interview with an inspiring innovator, changemaker, and/or founder in the region who is taking action against the climate crisis🤩

All of our newsletters will have a certain theme (e.g. air pollution🌫️, waste management🗑️, carbon credits🏭, etc.) because the climate space is so broad and complex.

We aim to send weekly newsletters every weekend with regularly syndicated content across our social media platforms: LinkedIn and Instagram. Please follow us if you haven’t already!

👨🏾👩🏾Who?

Our names are Karina Basrewan and Massimiliano Hasan; we’re both originally from Jakarta, Indonesia and still relatively early in our climate journeys:

• Karina represented Indonesia for Miss Earth🌐 last year and gained a lot of exposure about the importance of biodiversity and conservation through her work there. She’s also a news anchor with SEA Today🎙️ (no relation to this newsletter😉), where she often covers topics related to climate.

• Massimiliano joined a pre-seed venture capital fund & accelerator called Catalyst Fund🚀 last year that focuses on startups serving climate vulnerable populations across emerging markets. He also angel invests in and advises startups in the Southeast Asian climate space, such as Topiku🧢 & Sampangan♻️.

While we’ve been exposed to environmental issues throughout our lives, it’s only been fairly recently that we’ve taken a more serious stance, now dedicating our careers to this cause.

🤔How?

Well, if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it… So one of the first steps you can take towards climate action is to be aware of your environmental footprint👣 in order to see your own contribution towards climate change.

To be fully transparent and accountable, we both took a quiz to better understand our respective environmental footprints… Let’s just say that we were were shocked to see the results 😱.

At 20.5 CO2 equivalent tonnes per year (CO2e t/y) and 26.4 CO2e t/y, respectively, we are both ~37% and ~77% above the US average of 14.9 CO2e t/y as well as 9x and 11x the Indonesia average of 2.3 CO2e t/y (Our World in Data, 2023). This is primarily due to the fact that—in case you don’t know us—we’re admittedly a bit of travel addicts✈️. You can see screenshots of our footprints below:

📲 Go ahead and take your own footprint quiz here! You may also be surprised to learn how large yours is.

📢 In fact, we challenge you to post your results on your Instagram or LinkedIn and tag us, with the hashtag #MyEnvironmentalFootprint 👣

🔍 In any case, now that we’ve calculated our footprints, we can start taking actions towards reducing it; here’s a fantastic reference for how to go about that.

Thanks for reading and please stay tuned for our first official issue next week, which will feature a topic that will take your breath away😷!

Welcome aboard!⛵

Karina & Massimiliano