Scientist credits Namibian childhood for Africa Planet Prize

Namibian-born Jessica Thorn, assistant professor in global food security and environmental change at Imperial College London and Namibia University researcher, was recently named a winner of the inaugural African Planet Prize. 

“This reflects not only my personal journey as a Namibian environmental scientist,” she said, “but the countless voices, communities, mentors, and colleagues who shape the work that I do and have opened their worlds to me.” 

The prize, created this year by the African Academy of Sciences in partnership with the Frontiers Research Foundation of Switzerland, recognises outstanding peer-reviewed scientific work that contributes to safeguarding the earth’s nine planetary boundaries. 

Growing up in Namibia, Thorn and her family spent long periods camping in the desert and travelling through remote landscapes. That environment, defined by low rainfall and wide distances, got her questioning natural resources and dependence on them. 

Her work now focuses on the links between climate change, land use, biodiversity, and human well-being across several African countries. 

Her academic training began with a PhD in zoology at University of Oxford, and later expanded into climate adaptation and human geography. She leads the African Nature Futures Lab, an interdisciplinary programme working in countries including Namibia, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, and Kenya. Its research examines how climate change interacts with land use, infrastructure, and urban growth, and how ecosystems provide benefits that support livelihoods. 

Namibia continues to shape her scientific perspective. It is, she says, “a water-scarce environment”, which makes the limits of resources tangible, and its cultural diversity contributed to her understanding of the continent’s complexity. “It allows me to recognise the importance of individual action and planning and policy.” 

Thorn says recognition for her work, including ranking among Namibia’s leading scientists, is an acknowledgement of research that crosses disciplinary boundaries and is directly linked to implementation. “You need to work with decision makers who are directly framing the problem that you research and not divorcing it from the actual implementation of solutions. 

“A lot of my work is empirical,” she says, “so I get to see what the impact has been in climate change for people who are on the front lines of heat, drought, plastic and water pollution, and especially, widening inequality,” she says. That experience has informed her focus on approaches that connect conservation, development, and social conditions, and on recognising informal settlements as a central part of African urbanisation rather than a temporary phenomenon. 

Her research feeds into policy. She has been a contributing author to the Africa chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and worked on the African Union climate strategy. 

Training is a central component of her work. Through participatory scenario planning, she has trained more than 1 400 practitioners across 11 countries. This helps people “think more imaginatively about what’s possible, what would be the trade-offs, and who would be the losers” and “builds legitimacy, trust, and innovation in engagement with people one normally wouldn’t engage with”. 

Alongside her scientific work, Thorn speaks about the influence of her Jewish upbringing on her approach to leadership and collaboration. “In Judaism, egalitarianism has been really important in my education and that women have an equal role. That was an important part of my Jewish education in the progressive community in Cape Town,” she says. 

In fields where senior positions are still dominated by men, this has shaped her commitment to mentorship. “I’m always trying to be a mentor for women, and often I’m the only woman in the spaces in which I work and constantly have to tackle those biases.” 

She also connects her Jewish identity to the experience of belonging to a small community with a strong sense of continuity. Her grandmother came from Lithuania to southern Africa, and she grew up in a small Namibian Jewish population before moving to Cape Town. 

Tikkun olam is another influence. She describes it as “our responsibility to leave the world in a better condition”, linked to “the value of education and knowledge”. That outlook, she says, informed her decision to work in the public sector and emphasis on diversity in research teams. 

She also identifies reasons for optimism in her field. There is more funding; more African leadership; and greater recognition by governments of the need to plan for climate impacts. 

“The conversation in the past 30 years has changed hugely,” she says, pointing to the growth of nature-based solutions, urban greening targets ,and programmes that support African researchers to remain on the continent. The democratisation of knowledge and promotion of women in science are also important developments. 

Thorn dedicated the Africa Planet Prize to her family and the landscapes of her childhood, recalling being taken into the desert to camp under the stars and swim in rivers after the rains. Those experiences, she said, taught her “reverence for nature, a sense of wonder, and the understanding that our world is a delicate tapestry of interconnected life”.