Scylla Blervacq I Nicole Phocas – Advocating for Climate Change and Fossil Fuel Divestment
Nicole was born in South Africa from Greek parents. She lived in Zimbabwe for the first four years of her life before moving to Austin (TX) with her family. She moved to Florida as a student and currently works as a legal assistant in Miami after graduating from the University of Miami with a BA in Political Science and International Studies. Like many from the Greek diaspora, Nicole has dual US-Greek citizenship, speaks Greek and has kept strong links with her cultural background and family in Greece.
Scylla was born in Brussels (Belgium) from a Belgian father and a French-American mother. She grew up in the Capital of Europe and moved to Miami with her parents in 2017. Scylla is fluent in French, Dutch and English. She is a Senior at the University of Miami majoring in Health Sciences with minors in Ecosystem Science and Policy, Public Health and Chemistry. She plans to go to Medical School.
Like many young people from GenerationZ, Nicole and Scylla are deeply concerned about the environmental state of our planet and the risks faced by the place they call “home”: 600,000 people in South Florida face “extreme” risk from sea level rise, with nearly $350 billion in real estate below projected sea levels state-wide – not to mention heat exposure, mosquito-borne diseases, hurricane damage, and habitat loss. This is why, they both got involved in The Climate Reality Project, a global organization founded in 2006 by former Vice-President Al Goreand devoted to solving the climate crisis.
Nicole established The Climate Reality Project Chapter at the University of Miami in 2017 and became its first President. Scylla became Co-President in 2018. The UM chapter recruited almost 400 members over 3 years. They hosted a variety of events with high-level speakers such as former South Miami Mayor Stoddard and started engaging with organizations such as the Miami-Dade League of Women Voters, the CLEO Institute and the Cortada Project led by Miami-based and world-renown artist and sea-level rise advocate, Xavier Cortada.
Inspired by similar initiatives at Harvard, the University of California System, Georgetown and Michigan State University, the Chapter launched its flagship activity – a fossil fuel divestment campaign – in 2019. It calls on the University of Miami to show leadership by freezing any new investments in the fossil fuel industry and fully divesting from these companies, including public equities as well as corporate bonds, within five years. A petition started by the group acquired more than 1100 signatures. The two students spoke up at public events such as Miami’s Climate Symposium 2020 and met with some members of the University’s administration to discuss the prospect of full fossil fuel divestment.
In spite of the impact of the Pandemic, Nicole and Scylla kept the Climate Reality Chapter and dialogue with the UM Administration and other stakeholders alive. As they move on with their professional and academic lives, a new leadership will follow in their footsteps – continuing to raise awareness about climate change, sea-level rise, Miami’s unique challenges, and the historic opportunity the University of Miami has of showing leadership in this area as well.