I was born in Paris but grew up in the south of France, north of Nice, until my family moved to Ireland when I was nine. We lived by the sea and close to the mountains in France so it was a very outdoorsy lifestyle. There was a little wood outside our house, and my sister and I were always outside with our dogs looking at snakes, hedgehogs and spiders. Nature worked its magic on me and ignited a kind of spark to know more about how it all worked.
My mum decided on a whim that she wanted her children to get a good Catholic education. Moving to Ireland was a bit of an impulsive decision, and we used to jibe her about it. For the first year, it was an absolute culture shock. It rained a lot and I think I remember crying most mornings over breakfast for the first few months. But once I started school at Mount Anville [in Dublin], things began to get easier. The girls there were so warm and welcoming, and the friends I made are still my besties. I didn’t get bullied and there were no racist issues.
I was very lucky to go to a school with kids who didn’t think: “Who’s this brown thing?” In later years when I was working at RTÉ I met a mixed-race woman who had moved to Ireland around the same time as me and she’d had a terrible time.
I found the food shocking. I’ll never forget going to some friends’ houses and being served the classic meat, overcooked vegetables and big boiled potato on a side plate. I remember sitting there thinking: ”What is this? Where’s the rice? Where’s the pasta? Where’s the grilled fish?”
Both my mom and dad hailed from the Caribbean, so we went back there a lot: Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. I would always miss those extracurricular activities at the end of term, like school plays, which I hated, but it meant I could snorkel on coral reefs and run around my grandmother’s garden in Martinique picking mangoes, avocados and limes. She was the quintessential safe, warm, beautiful matriarch, who made the most amazing food. This was a very special part of my upbringing that helped me survive the Irish weather.
When I come home now, I love to walk from Dún Laoghaire to Dalkey along the coast road, then sit on Dalkey Hill and just look out at the sea. That walk is very therapeutic for me. I also love to visit the west and I think it’s more my spiritual home than Dublin. I’m obsessed with the Burren and I’ve had the opportunity to revisit it twice recently for programmes, which was such a gift. Walking the hollow warm limestone of the Burren and just taking time to look at the little shrubs and herbs and flowers is pretty special.
I’d love to make a wildlife series in Ireland. It would inevitably have to deal with the sticky issues of agriculture and farming and land use, which I know is a really contentious issue in Ireland right now, as it is in most parts of the world. But when you make a programme about wildlife, it can’t all be joyful.
I recently hosted a beautiful awards ceremony that celebrated extraordinary humans in Africa who are pulling out all the stops to protect nature in the face of the challenges ahead. I want to make a programme about all the great stuff that’s happening around the world because we’re not told. Every news headline is rape, pillage and murder, death, horror, fear and war, but that’s not the way the world is. It’s also full of heroes, innovation, groundbreaking solutions, beautiful communities working together and nature being protected. We never hear about this and we should be asking why the news headlines are so biased in a negative way to keep us feeling terrified, fearful and racist.
I’m really inspired by the ecological economists working to transform our economic model. As a biologist, I’m having to lean into subjects I didn’t think were my wheelhouse to better understand why all of the conservationists I film with can’t solve the problems we have in nature. It’s because in the global north we prioritise profit and infinite growth above the health of our planet, but GDP is not an accurate measure of success. I currently live in the sixth most powerful country in the world [the UK], according to GDP, but we have sewage and agricultural run-off polluting all of the riverways in the British Isles. If you call that success, there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way we live.
We all need to take a long hard look at the part we’re playing in a collective system that isn’t fit for purpose any more, and Ireland isn’t immune to that
Our society has individualised us to within an inch of our lives. We’ve become so disconnected from each other and from nature and it’s part of the reason we’re in this mess. We all need to reconnect and collaborate again to find solutions for a brighter future. I think Ireland – more than a lot of countries, including the one I live in – has retained a sense of community. Certainly in the last few years, Ireland’s leadership has been better than ours here, but it’s still privy to an economic model and global system that demands infinite growth and profit.
[ Our meat-dependent world brings tears to Liz Bonnin’s eyesOpens in new window ]
We all need to take a long hard look at the part we’re playing in a collective system that isn’t fit for purpose any more, and Ireland isn’t immune to that. I’ve worked with some amazing ecological economists and it’s clear as day that it’s entirely possible to have a thriving society, a thriving economy and a thriving planet.
In conversation with Marie Kelly. This conversation, part of a series, was edited for clarity and length. Liz Bonnin’s new documentary Animal Genius will air later this year
