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born 1989 Angola
Adjany da Silva Freitas Costa (born 1989) is an Angolan biologist and conservationist from Huambo who served as the Angolan Minister of Culture, Tourism and Environment from April to October 2020.
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17 quotes
The best part is meeting people from all over who, like me, travel all over the world and never really feel like they belong somewhere.
The best part of my job is being able to include the environment in topics that most people think are completely unrelated.
As conservationists we see degradation happening every day, so we are always in a hurry – we want things to happen right now.
Motivation helps, but if you are not disciplined, if you are not focused and have no goal, it is very difficult to keep going.
It’s very sensitive, but also very rewarding.
It’s a very grey world where you have to focus on everything that has been accomplished in the field because that’s what brings you hope moving forward.
Drylands are extremely important not just for the survival of biodiversity but also for us, for our culture, for our survival and for the way we interact with nature itself.
As one grows, obstacles along the career path will shatter the dreams you had, but help you to create a different dream. I call it ‘adult dreaming’.
My first piece of advice is to enhance your skills. By enhancing your skills, even the ones you don’t like, you will understand how to do your job better.
In the current world we are very focused on having a voice, and having a voice is very important, but hearing the voices of others is even more important.
We depend on ecosystems for survival, and more so do poor rural communities.
What motivates me right now is the local communities that I work with. Looking at the small steps they have taken by themselves without a proper plan motivates me to help them further.
We must always be aware that any conservation space is a range of components: it’s not just about biodiversity, it’s not just about the local communities.
Sometimes we have to take a step back. That doesn’t mean that you have to stop moving forward, it just means that it might not be at the pace that you want, and that is very normal.
If it’s to that point where you think you want to do it and it feels right but other people are telling you not to, just do it. No matter what obstacle you think might stop you, when you wake up in the morning just say “I’m doing it.”
One thing that I can say I am actually proud of is overcoming all of the obstacles. So, it’s not the awards, it’s not the positions, it’s none of that, it’s the work that led to those accolades that I think are my biggest accomplishments.
... Nowadays I have not only learned to overcome these hardships, but to learn from them. Now I understand they stand for the work we’re doing toward a better future, something greater than ourselves.
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