Richard Leakey Interview (page: 7 / 7) Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist	Print Interview

At present, we understand you're very cocerned about the great apes. Is that right?

Richard Leakey: I have two major concerns at the moment. One is the survival of the great apes.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The great apes of the Far East -- the orangutans living in forests that are being increasingly cut down for timber, but also for palm oil plantations -- these are relatives that have lived for millions of years, very close to us biologically, genetically, tell us a great deal about where we came from. The habitat is just being cut down around them, and animals are being killed, infants sent to zoos and pets. It needn't be. I think there is a great demand for advocacy. There's a demand to get corporations to take a more responsible position about seeking oil from biosources. I think, unfortunately, biofuels are leading to an increased demand for biological fuels, which will impact on the great apes. The chimpanzees and the gorillas and the bonobos in Africa are similarly facing habitat loss through timber and plantation, forest mono-cultures. I think there needs to be a voice, and in a sense, this comes back to: I am perceived to have achieved so much, that people will listen to me talking about the future of the great apes. Even though I am not an expert in the future of the great apes, I have a voice that can be used for a good cause.

That's the level of influence I spoke of, coming from perceptions of achievement that may or may not be valid, but can be turned to good order. An organization under the United Nations called GRASP, the Great Apes Survival Project, is something I give a lot of time to. I am also concerned with corruption at the national level in Kenya.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Corruption has been a huge setback to development in Africa, certainly in Kenya. When I was in public service, heading the government, I did a lot to try to bring that under control and didn't get very far. I've recently taken on the chairmanship of an organization called Transparency International in Kenya, and I believe that it's perfectly possible to have less corruption. I think there's mega corruption and micro corruption, but there's absolutely no need to have a society that runs on corruption. Corruption you'll never eliminate, but it shouldn't be necessary to pay extra to get a birth certificate, or pay extra to get your child moved from one school to the other on merit. It shouldn't be necessary to have to pay something to get your business license renewed, and it certainly shouldn't be necessary for governments to spend money on civil works projects, in which they normally set aside 20 percent for kickbacks to the ministers and the officials running it. This has to be fought, and this has to be fought by bringing attention to the crisis and bringing education to the young people and saying, "It's not necessary to do it this way."

So fighting corruption has been a major preoccupation of mine and one which I am still very much engaged along with the work on the great apes story. These are two public causes that concern me a lot at the moment in Kenya.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. My ability to speak on corruption is because, first of all, I'm not corrupt and never have been, but more importantly, I'm perceived to have never been corrupt. There is a distinction, but in this case, they are the same. I'm expected to be brave enough to speak the truth, and I am known not to be willing to be persuaded not to say something if it needs saying. So much so that I am no longer allowed to really exercise any discretion, because the public will expect me to put my neck on the block, irrespective of any personal considerations. I am now perceived to be fearless of retribution, and that I will speak for the people on issues of this kind, and it's an interesting role. It is not one that I particularly sought, but I guess it's very flattering and going back to the Victorian ethos of Britain, which I guess I have some links to. Is there a better cause to die for than one's country?

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

How do you see the future of Africa?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Richard Leakey: I think the future of Africa is, in the short term, confused. I think, in the short term, turbulent. Short term, a lot of unnecessary suffering and death and turmoil. In the medium term, I think clearly moving out of that in pockets, and in the long term, it will come together. The populace of Africa, the human resources of Africa, the natural resources, although they've been plundered, are still plentiful. I think Africa will come together, but I think it will come together in the longer rather than the shorter time frame. Maybe the next 30 to 50 years, you'll begin to see real change. The reason I say that is we've got an awful lot of Africans now who are getting their education and their training in a way that wasn't possible before, and an awful lot of Africans are now training abroad. They're coming home to Africa with skills, not just reading and writing. I think traditional education for Africans in Africa has been a little shallow. It's been learning by rote. It has not been immersing yourself in an experience and having a self-development capacity in education, which comes with better funded, broader schools.

What makes us human?

Richard Leakey: What makes us human is a question I am often asked. Or to put it another way: "What is a human?" If you take the religious point of view, then you just have to define us, and particularly us that are Christian. That's the usual definition for human. You have to have a soul. The soul has to be saved. It has to have a pathway to a better afterlife. Alternatively, the consequence of not having a better afterlife would be a terrible afterlife -- if that is what it is -- purgatory and hell. I think that is giving way now to a broader sense.

To be human, I think, is to simply be a species. We are a species that has characteristics, but we have to add a dimension which Darwin first tried to introduce, which Linnaeus in the 1700s tried to introduce. Any species you see today has a history, and if you take the history back over enough time, what you see today will be different from what you see before today. And the further back you go, the less likelihood there is that you can recognize it. So, when you look at us, we have ancestors that go back 200,000 years that were like us anatomically. Probably like us in terms of being able to adapt through educational processes, and a 200,000-year-old ancestor probably could have been educated to participate in the seminars of the Academy if this had been developed over a long enough period. But if you take their ancestors, which are also our ancestors, but you go back to half-a-million and a million years ago, they are human in lots of ways, but are they quite human? Are they quite like us?

If you go all the way back, are they more like us or more like other apes? And of course, this poses the question, "Is a human a human?" A better definition is that we are the fifth ape. There are gorillas. There are bonobos. There are orangutans. Gorillas are broken into two, lowland and mountain. That's four, but there are five, and the great worry that the fundamentalist right contains is, "How did we separate from the apes? If you are saying this, the conclusion is that we are an ape." Well of course we're an ape, and we're an ape that drew the definition, so we're an interested party with a conflict of interest.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. If the definition of life on earth had been done by a separate entity off the planet, they would have said, "There are five apes, and one has been remarkable in its technological development, and its ability to come up with myths and mumbo jumbo to explain so many things that clearly are not right. The others get on with life in the forests and do what they were supposed to be doing." But we are just another ape. So what is a human? Well, it's an ape. It's an ape that's got technology. It's got a large brain, complex language. It's got a curious way to move around, two-leggedness -- which leads to compassion, empathy -- and technology and a brain that don't always work in concert and could lead to the extinction of lots of other creatures. And it has done, but it may well lead to our own, and that's the sort of stupid ape we are in reality.

We all feel fortunate to have been part of this conversation.

Richard Leakey: Well, thank you.

Thank you very much. That was wonderful.

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