Bioneers

Trauma has perhaps never been more widely prevalent than it is now, nor more varied in its causes: personal stress, familial history, racial discrimination, poverty, oppression, climate disaster, etc. These times are really stretching our capacity to endure, so they require ever more effective healing and self-care modalities that include the taking of our personal inventory and adjusting our beliefs and lifestyles.

In this panel, two master Somatics practitioners and teachers share insights and explain their methods. With: Dr. Ruby Gibson (Lakota, Ojibwe, Mediterranean), author, educator and healer, co-founder and Executive Director of Freedom Lodge; and Staci K. Haines, educator, advocate, healer, co-founder of Generative Somatics and author of The Politics of Trauma.

This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Learn more at http://www.bioneers.org

The post Embodied Healing Approaches to Personal, Generational, and Socio-Political Trauma | Bioneers appeared first on Bioneers.

The ways in which we design our cities, public spaces, and buildings can reflect our overall attitudes about justice, accessibility, and environmental stewardship. Are these spaces designed, for example, to work with or in opposition to the natural world? Are they designed to foster community harmony and collaboration? Are they designed with all of the space’s stakeholders in mind? Forward-thinking designers and architects are fostering a movement that recognizes the built environment as so much more than siloed artistry.

This week, we celebrate the ideas of leaders — including Jason McLennan, Kongjian Yu, and Deanna Van Buren — who exemplify how the built environment, when thoughtfully created, can benefit people, communities, and ecosystems.

JUST A REMINDER! We released videos of all Bioneers keynote presentations this week. You can browse them all here. Don’t forget to share your favorites with your community.

Sign up for the Bioneers Pulse to receive newsletters (like this one!) featuring the most recent stories and updates from the Bioneers community.

Jason McLennan – From Reconciliation to Regeneration

Sixteen years ago Jason F. McLennan launched the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most progressive and advanced green building program, to show that our buildings could serve as one of the key paths toward a regenerative future. Since then, numerous Living Buildings that demonstrate a better, more inspiring way of living and working have been built around the world. Although these projects create ripples of change and are living proof of regeneration in action, and in spite of these and other great models, we continue to build and live in ways that degrade the planet. Why? Jason McLennan explores why physical demonstrations of better solutions are not enough to create change when society has not grappled with its deeper systemic trauma. If we are to participate fully in regenerating the conditions for life on the planet, a deeper process of reconciliation is necessary. To heal the planet, Jason argues, we must fundamentally heal our culture.

Watch here.

Kongjian Yu – “Sponge Cities”: Visionary, Nature-Based Urban Design from China

What if cities were designed so that they could absorb excess rainfall, neutralize floods, and turn their streets green and beautiful in the process? Kongjian Yu is doing just that, as he will report from China. This award-winning leader in ecological urbanism and landscape architecture, and founder of the planning and design firm, Turenscape in Beijing, has become world-renowned for his “sponge cities” and other revolutionary nature-based solutions. These approaches are being implemented in well over 200 cities in China and beyond. Yu’s extraordinary city-wide systems of stormwater-retaining ponds, wetlands, and parks draw from both ancient Chinese hydrological wisdom and cutting-edge design to offer the whole world a model of inspired climate adaptation in an era of rising seas and extreme rainfall events.

Watch here.

Designing and Building a Regenerative, Restorative, and Just World, One Building at a Time

Our laughably inefficient buildings account for some 40% of all U. S. primary energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, our built environment also very often sickens, oppresses and alienates the humans who inhabit it. In this historic session, Bioneers is thrilled to be able to bring together for the first time two of the most visionary architects of our time, who, coming on very different career paths, are both at the forefront of radically expanding our sense of what a truly healthy, nature-honoring and socially equitable built environment could look like. Deanna Van Buren, the co-founder and Executive Director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, is a leading figure in the movement to build “restorative” infrastructure that addresses in its very design the root causes of mass incarceration—poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. Jason McLennan, arguably the most influential “green” architect of our era, has set a high bar, showing us what truly “living,” genuinely regenerative buildings can be. Can these two very different but equally imperative re-visionings of how we rethink the built environment be reconciled/synthesized?

Watch here.

We are gratified to share with you our program accomplishments in 2021. Over the past year, the Indigeneity Program continued to be flexible in light of the second year of the ongoing pandemic, shifting our areas of focus to respond to real time contexts and needs. We used this time as an opportunity to focus on creating accessible media, reaching more people than ever before, as well as provide COVID relief in the second year of the Indigiving mutual aid campaign.

Read the report.

NOW AVAILABLE! Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, 2nd Ed.

We are excited to announce that the second edition of Nina Simons’ book, Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, is now on sale! Nature, Culture & the Sacred offers practical guidance and inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership on behalf of positive change. Join Nina on an inspiring journey to shed self-limiting beliefs, lead from the heart and discover beloved community as you cultivate your own flourishing and liberation.

Get your copy.

The post Crafting a Regenerative World, One Building at a Time appeared first on Bioneers.

Our laughably inefficient buildings account for some 40% of all U. S. primary energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, our built environment also very often sickens, oppresses and alienates the humans who inhabit it. In this historic session, Bioneers was thrilled to be able to bring together for the first time two of the most visionary architects of our time, who, coming on very different career paths, are both at the forefront of radically expanding our sense of what a truly healthy, nature-honoring and socially equitable built environment could look like. 

Deanna Van Buren the co-founder and Executive Director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, is a leading figure in the movement to build “restorative” infrastructure that addresses in its very design the root causes of mass incarceration—poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. Jason McLennan, arguably the most influential “green” architect of our era, has set a high bar, showing us what truly “living,” genuinely regenerative buildings can be. Can these two very different but equally imperative re-visionings of how we rethink the built environment be reconciled/synthesized? This conversation was moderated/hosted by Dawn Danby, co-founder of Spherical.

This discussion took place at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

PANELISTS

Jason McLennan, one of the world’s most influential visionaries in contemporary architecture and green building, is a highly sought-out designer, consultant and thought leader. A winner of Engineering News Record’s National Award of Excellence and of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize (which was, during its 10-year trajectory, known as “the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design”), Jason has been showered with such accolades as “the ‘Wayne Gretzky’ of the green building industry and a “World Changer” (by GreenBiz magazine).

Learn more about Jason McLennan and his work at McLennan Design.

Deanna Van Buren, M.Arch, is the co-founder and Executive Director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an architecture and real estate nonprofit that seeks to build infrastructure that addresses the root causes of mass incarceration: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. She has been profiled by The New York Times, and her TED Talk on what a world without prisons could look like has been viewed more than a million times. Van Buren is an alumna of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Dawn Danby is co-founder of Spherical, an integrative design, technology and research studio offering “cosmovision remediation and ontological repair services.” Dawn’s celebrated ecological design work over two decades has traversed scales and industries, from green chemistry to green infrastructure. A long-recovered industrial designer, Dawn now investigates the paradoxical roles of technology in supporting the integrity of Earth’s living systems. Her team’s current work is dedicated to the ecological healing of urban watersheds in California.

The post Designing and Building a Regenerative, Restorative, and Just World, One Building at a Time appeared first on Bioneers.

Nick Estes, Ph.D. (Kul Wicasa/Lower Brule Sioux), Indigenous Rights activist, scholar, writer, co-founder of The Red Nation organization and author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, describes the Anishinaabe people’s resistance to the “Line 3” pipeline in Minnesota that would devastate their lands and livelihood, the outsized impact frontline Indigenous communities are having in fighting climate change and resisting extractive industries, the importance and effectiveness of Earth-centered approaches to fighting for Climate Justice, and the overarching goal of being “good ancestors of the future.”

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Nick Estes, Ph.D. (Kul Wicasa/Lower Brule Sioux), is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a group of Dakota, Nakota and Lakota writers. In 2014, he was a co-founder of The Red Nation in Albuquerque, NM, an organization dedicated to the liberation of Native people from capitalism and colonialism. He serves on its editorial collective and writes its bi-weekly newsletter. Nick Estes is also the author of: Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.

EXPLORE MORE Averting a Hot, Toxic Endgame: Strategizing & Mobilizing for Climate Justice

In this panel discussion, three visionary climate justice leaders they share their strategic insights. With: Eriel Deranger, Indigenous Climate Action; Leila Salazar-Lopez, Amazon Watch; Osprey Orielle Lake, Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). Hosted by Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons.

Julian Brave NoiseCat – Apocalypse Then & Now

In this Bioneers 2021 keynote address, Julian Brave NoiseCat, an activist and one of this era’s most brilliant emerging progressive journalists and thinkers, lays out the case for the moral imperative to assure that Indigenous voices have a central role in humanity’s struggle to address the existential climate crisis.

The post Nick Estes – The Age of the Water Protector and Climate Chaos appeared first on Bioneers.

Excerpted from Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming by Liz
Carlisle; Copyright © 2022 Liz Carlisle. Reproduced by permission of Island Press,
Washington, D.C (Introduction pages 12-15)

Nikiko Masumoto is optimistic. The third generation to farm her family’s certified organic orchard in California’s Central Valley, the thirty-six year-old queer feminist performance artist–peach grower is well aware that hers isn’t the face that people typically imagine when they conjure up an image of a farmer. But she is working to change that, to build an agrarian culture that fully embraces diversity both on the land and in the community. Part of that work involves situating herself in her own family legacy on the land.

“Whenever I begin conversations about myself and my relationship to the land, it’s always through my grandparents and great-grandparents who touched this same soil,” Masumoto says. “There is a gift of that, which is thinking of my life in a lineage that is much more important than my own individual life.” This sense of connecting across generations is central to regenerative agriculture, Masumoto believes. “So many of the methods that develop soil take time—the horizon is long. When you’re wanting to leave a farm to several generations in the future you have a vested interest in taking up those practices.”

But digging into her family’s history is also a painful and complicated process. Discriminated against as immigrants, Masumoto’s great-grandparents never owned the land they worked. What little savings they had built up was lost during Japanese American internment, when some 120,000 people—most of them US citizens—were incarcerated for years simply for the crime of their Japanese descent. So Masumoto’s grandparents had to start from scratch, eking out a living on marginal land as they gradually built up the soil.

“We are the ones that the world needs in this climate crisis,” Masumoto says, referring not just to Japanese Americans but to other communities of color who have experienced oppression. “Because we have those stories, we have that sense of fighting against the impossible.” As I continued my research, I heard Masumoto’s sentiments echoed dozens of times. From Hawai‘i to New York, Montana to Puerto Rico, young farmers and scientists of color were reviving ancestral regenerative farming traditions in a self-conscious effort to respond to climate change and racial injustice in tandem. These farmers and scientists understood regenerative agriculture not as a menu of discrete, isolated practices from which one could pick and choose and then tally up into a sustainability score. Rather, they saw regenerative agriculture as their ancestors had—as a way of life.

“For me agroforestry is not just about figuring out how to minimize your impact and still grow food within that system,” says Olivia Watkins, who is farming mushrooms in the understory of forested land in North Carolina that has been in her family for more than 130 years. “There are so many pieces involved in growing food that don’t just have to do with the crop itself. The fungi in the soil. The wildlife in the area. How does water fall on the land? All those things are intertwined, so for me, the question is always, how can I be mindful of all those things?” Watkins is equally mindful that she’s conserving not only forest but also Black-owned land, which her family resolutely held on to over the course of a century when 98 percent of Black landowners were dispossessed. “With the history of oppression around land, the fact that we are stewarding the land and taking care of it is revolutionary,” Watkins says. On Watkins’s and Masumoto’s farms, what’s being regenerated is not just soil but a complex web of relationships. As both women described to me, this form of regenerative agriculture can only be fully realized when the entire web is repaired so that the interconnected parts can function as a whole. This means attending to a component of the farm often left out of scientific discussions: people.

“I get pissed sometimes at ecologists,” says University of California, Irvine researcher Aidee Guzman, “because they forget that people are involved in stewarding these systems.” Guzman is herself an ecologist—she studies soil microbial activity and pollination on farms—but she’s also the child of farmworkers who left their small farm in Mexico to immigrate to the US. When she looks at California’s Central Valley, she sees thousands of people like her parents—people who have both the knowledge and the desire to steward regenerative farms, if only they had the opportunity. “We have to stop and think about the fact that farmworkers here in the US, people who were brought over from Africa and enslaved, they left their farms, probably extremely biodiverse farms,” Guzman says.

Masumoto, who grew up just an hour away from Guzman, agrees. “Structured inequality in farmworker lives infringes on people’s right to think about the future,” Masumoto laments. “The very people who have the skills right now [to implement regenerative agriculture] are the very people who we have marginalized the most in this country.”

In short, truly regenerating the web of relationships that support both our food system and our planet is going to take more than compost. We’re going to have to question the very concept of agriculture, and the bundle of assumptions that travel with the English word farm. What is the objective of this activity? To convert plants into money? Or to foster the health of all beings?

We also need to think hard about who farms and why. Will agricultural labor continue to be structured as a punishment for the oppressed and a means of marking and fortifying class hierarchies? Or might it be woven into the fabric of social life for all of us, in ways that are regenerative for the human spirit and sustainable for the human body?

As we rethink farming, we’ll likewise need to reconsider our relationship with land and whether we can or should own it. Decolonizing agriculture will require big changes in our economic system. But it will also require daily rituals, coming together for meals that connect us to the land and sustain our bodies as well as our ties to the sacred. “I think what we are learning, or perhaps relearning,” says Masumoto, “is how to belong to a place. That philosophy is embedded in the practices you use to feed yourselves.”

Building this kind of regenerative agriculture will require a much deeper understanding of what happened on these lands that we in the United States now call home. It’s a complicated story and, in many ways, a painful one. But facing it squarely offers an irresistible promise: by coming together to rebuild these farmlands, we can not only heal our planet and its carbon cycle, we can heal ourselves and our communities too.

The post Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming appeared first on Bioneers.

Many of us have reached a point in our work at which we realize the food system is not working. Leaders keep on relying on band-aid solutions, autocratic jargon and political hypocrisy to tackle the problems of hunger and poverty. Yet our society’s way of feeding and treating people just isn’t sustainable, especially when the United Nations predicts that by 2050 we will have an additional 2 billion people on this planet, most ending up in urban areas.

The simple truth is that we can’t talk about a fair, just, and equitable food system without radical new thinking and putting in a lot work. What sort of work needs to be done and who will be the people to do it? Karen Washington, one of the most renowned and influential food activists of our era shares her wisdom and her analysis of why the food system doesn’t need to be fixed but has to be dramatically transformed.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Karen Washington, co-owner/farmer at Rise & Root Farm in Chester New York, is a renowned activist and food advocate, who, among her many achievements, in 2010 co- founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS) an organization supporting growers in both urban and rural settings. In 2012, Ebony magazine voted her one of their 100 most influential African Americans in the country, and in 2014 she was the recipient of the James Beard Leadership Award. Karen also serves on the boards of the New York Botanical Gardens, the Mary Mitchell Center, SoulFire Farm and the Black Farmer Fund.

Learn more about Karen Washington at her website.

EXPLORE MORE Malik Yakini – Food, Race and Justice

In this Bioneers 2015 keynote address, Malik Yakini, Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, explores how the current industrial food system that supplies most of our food creates inequities and shares wise perspectives on addressing racism, thinking beyond the logic of capitalism and how we might create a more just, sustainable food system.

The Food Web Newsletter

All life depends on food. It is that commonality that connects diverse species and is the basis for a relationship with our environment. From the microorganisms in the soil food web like the mycorrhizal fungi that exchange nutrients with plant roots to the woke gourmand at Chez Panisse ordering roasted, pasture chicken and local organic greens, all species depend on the cooperative interactions of the web of life to eat.

Dive into the Food Web with Bioneers and learn more about how a transformed food system can be a source of community wealth, creative culture, and individual health, as well as a way to fulfill our sacred calling as humans for environmental stewardship.

The post Karen Washington – 911 Our Food System Is Not Working appeared first on Bioneers.

Building power and achieving success in the global youth climate movement require international solidarity, communication, and organizing. Relationships with allied groups and organizations are key to making change. An international youth organizer since the age of 13, Alexandria Villaseñor shares the unique ways in which a multicultural, geographically distributed youth movement is building trust, negotiating compromises, distributing decision-making and centering the stories, experiences and leadership of those most impacted in each action and campaign. From grassroots movements to national organizations, Alexandria shows us how youth intend to win the climate fight by working together.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Alexandria Villaseñor co-founded the U.S. Youth Climate Strike movement (part of the youth-led international Fridays for Future movement) at age 13. Now 16, Alexandria has become an internationally-recognized, prestigious award-winning activist, speaker, author and founder of several initiatives, including Earth Uprising International. A contributing author to All We Can Save, an anthology of women climate leaders, and a child petitioner for the groundbreaking international complaint to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Children vs. Climate Crisis, Alexandria serves on the advisory board of Evergreen Action, is a youth spokesperson for the American Lung Association, and is the youngest Junior Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

EXPLORE MORE Alexandria Gordon – The Power of Young People

In this Bioneers 2021 keynote address, Alex Gordon, a winner of the prestigious Brower Youth Award for her organizing prowess on the “Break Free from Plastic Pledge,” voter registration drives and other student power initiatives, shares her experiences as a young person working to create a world that can work for everyone. 

Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program

Over the last 20 years, the Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program has served as an incubator for thousands of youth and educators to deepen their passion and power through self-expression, skills development, mentorship and deep relationship building within the broader community of Bioneers. The program has produced some of the most dynamic, engaging, and cutting edge programming within the Bioneers kaleidoscope and it continues to shape the work of youth movements, activism and education. 

The post Alexandria Villaseñor – Working Together: Building Coalitions of Power in the Global Youth Climate Movement appeared first on Bioneers.

Cree legends talk about the nefarious winter spirit Witigo’ and how it can possess you to such an extent that you become an all-consuming cannibal stricken with insatiable greed and hunger. 350.org‘s Cree Campaigner and best-selling author of Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing, Clayton Thomas-Müller, discusses how this sort of possession offers us an excellent metaphor for the mindset that has brought us the ravages of ruthless extractive capitalism and the oppression of First Peoples and other historically disenfranchised groups; and he proposes some answers to the question: What is it going to take for us to move through and heal from the violence of colonization?

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Clayton Thomas-Müller is a member of the Treaty #6 based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation also known as Pukatawagan located in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Based in Winnipeg, Clayton is a senior campaign specialist with 350.org. Clayton is a campaigner, award winning film director, media producer, organizer, facilitator, public speaker and best selling author on Indigenous rights and environmental & economic justice.

EXPLORE MORE Excerpt: Life in the City of Dirty Water

The mass Indigenous-led movement against oil pipelines has made a permanent impact in the fight against climate change. Indigenous nations are leading the movement to protect water and hold governments accountable to treaty laws that preserve Indigenous relationships with the environment. In this excerpt from Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing, Clayton Thomas-Müller shares the power and wisdom of Indigenous climate advocacy. 

Indigenous Activism NOW: Talking Story With Clayton Thomas-Muller and Julian NoiseCat

In this Bioneers 2021 panel, Clayton Thomas-Müller and Julian Brave NoiseCat share the story behind the story about how their lives intersect with their activism and discuss their new projects and their hopes for the future. Moderated by Alexis Bunten (Unangan/Yup’ik), Co-Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program. 

The post Clayton Thomas-Müller – Reparations, Healing and Reconciliation—A Battle Against the Winter Spirit, Witigo’ appeared first on Bioneers.

“If you’re at all like me, you may be having trouble finding your way through the challenging confluence of crises we are facing these days.” Bioneers Co-founder Nina Simons explores how we can support each other to make our way through the maze we’re currently facing.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference. Read a written version of this talk here.

Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist is also co-founder of Women Bridging Worlds and Connecting Women Leading Change. She co-edited the anthology book, Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and most recently wrote Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. An award-winning social entrepreneur, Nina teaches and speaks internationally, and previously served as President of Seeds of Change and Director of Strategic Marketing for Odwalla.

The post Nina Simons: Navigating the Nexus – Nature, Culture & the Sacred appeared first on Bioneers.

Kevin Patel, a 21-year old LA-based Climate Justice activist extraordinaire who passionately demands that youth be listened to right now, not marginalized as “leaders of tomorrow,” recounts his own health challenges growing up in heavily polluted South Central Los Angeles and insists that climate action and ending racial and class disparities have to be inseparably linked in our movements.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Kevin J. Patel is a social entrepreneur from Los Angeles, CA. He founded OneUpAction International, an organization that supports and empowers youth to implement climate solutions. Kevin has created the first-of-its-kind Youth Climate Commission in LA County to amplify youth voices on the climate crisis. Kevin is a UN Togetherband Ambassador for Goal 7, 13, & 14. He is a National Geographic Young Explorer. He also serves on the Youthtopia_World : Circle of Youth Council, the Ikea Ingka Young Leaders Forum, ClimatePower Creative Advisory Board and the Environmental Media Association’s Activist Board. Kevin is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree in Political Science at Loyola Marymount University.

EXPLORE MORE Nalleli Cobo – On the Frontlines of Environmental Injustice: Standing up to Urban Oil Drilling

In this Bioneers 2021 keynote address, Nalleli Cobo, an extraordinarily effective Environmental Justice activist since she was 9, shares the story of her trajectory and challenges in fighting an oil drilling site in her neighborhood, and how local struggles relate to the larger global fight for Climate Justice.

Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program

Over the last 20 years, the Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program has served as an incubator for thousands of youth and educators to deepen their passion and power through self-expression, skills development, mentorship and deep relationship building within the broader community of Bioneers. The program has produced some of the most dynamic, engaging, and cutting edge programming within the Bioneers kaleidoscope and it continues to shape the work of youth movements, activism and education.

The post Kevin J. Patel – Our Collective Ecosystems appeared first on Bioneers.

Samuel Myers, a leading figure in the study of the impacts on human health of the accelerating disruptions to Earth’s natural systems, shares the guiding principles and implications of this newly emergent, rapidly growing field, recently dubbed “Planetary Health.” Every dimension of human health and wellbeing is under threat from our ongoing degradation of Earth’s life-support systems. Planetary Health research is providing rigorous evidence that urgently stabilizing our planet’s natural systems is essential if we are going to have any chance of safeguarding a livable future for humanity. Dr. Myers explains the goals and work of the broad global coalitions around The Planetary Health Alliance (of which he is the founding director) coming together to drive home the inextricable links between human and environmental health and to develop policies and actions to protect our biosphere.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Samuel Myers, MD, MPH, studies the human health impacts of accelerating disruptions to Earth’s natural systems, a field recently dubbed “Planetary Health.” A Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, he is the founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance, the author of roughly 100 peer-reviewed research articles, and the lead editor of Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves (Island Press, 2020).

EXPLORE MORE Kenny Ausubel: The Coming Age of Ecological Medicine

Read an excerpt from Ecological Medicine, Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves (2004, Sierra Club Books), a collection of writings from the world’s leading health visionaries, showing how human health is inescapably dependent on the health of our environment.

Deep Dive: Ecological Medicine

Whether we call it “Ecological” or “Planetary” or “Holistic” medicine, or “One Health,” the effort to expand our understanding of health and to bring into being a new form of far more effective and equitable healthcare is more critical than ever. In this collection of Bioneers media, we feature some of the leading lights of this movement, both early visionaries and contemporary luminaries, approaching this imperative from a wide range of perspectives.

The post Samuel Myers, MD – Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves appeared first on Bioneers.

California is the world’s largest consumer of oil from the Amazon rainforest. This extraction contributes to climate change, causes deforestation, pollutes the oceans, displaces Indigenous peoples stewarding the Amazon Forest’s last remaining biodiversity, and harms people at every end of the supply chain, including the marginalized communities living in the shadow of toxic refineries right here. We honored to be able to offer our main stage to two leading Indigenous Amazonian forest-protectors, sisters Nina and Helena Gualinga, who work closely with our friends at Amazon Watch as they appeal to Californians (and all of us) to #EndAmazonCrude and demand corporate responsibility for people and planet.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Nina Gualinga is an Indigenous woman defender of the Amazon from the Kichwa community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon who advocates for women’s rights and climate justice. She is an international spokeswoman for Mujeres Amazonicas and the Women Defenders Program Coordinator at Amazon Watch.

Helena Gualinga is an Indigenous youth environmental and climate justice advocate from the Kichwa community of Sarayaku. She is a co-founder of Polluters Out and is a Young Women Project Lead with WECAN. Her work and story is featured in the recently released documentary, “Helena from Sarayaku,” which premiered at the DC Environmental Film Festival.

EXPLORE MORE Nemonte Nenquimo – Indigenous Guardianship is Key to Halt the Climate Crisis

In this address to the 2021 Bioneers Conference, Nemonte Nenquimo, a leader from the Waorani community in Ecuador and a founding member of Indigenous-led nonprofit organization Ceibo Alliance and its partner, Amazon Frontlines, discusses why respecting Indigenous people’s internationally recognized rights to decide the future of their territories, cultures and lives is critically urgent for the protection of our world’s most important rainforest, our climate, and life on our planet.

The Amazon at a Tipping Point: Can We Turn It Around?

For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples have protected their sacred ancestral territories in the Amazon. In this keynote address to the 2019 Bioneers Conference, Leila Salazar López, Executive Director of Amazon Watch, urges us to stand with them to protect and restore the bio-cultural integrity of the Amazon, because our collective future depends on it.

The post Helena and Nina Gualinga – #EndAmazonCrude: A Call to Action with Amazonian Indigenous Forest Protectors appeared first on Bioneers.

In this talk delivered at Bioneers 2022, Bioneers Co-Founder & CEO Kenny Ausubel outlines some of the issues we face and the movements growing from marginalized communities opening spaces for authentic metamorphosis.

Read a written version of this talk here.

Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder (in 1990) of Bioneers, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, journalist, author and filmmaker. Co-founder and first CEO of the organic seed company, Seeds of Change, his film (and companion book) Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime helped influence national alternative medicine policy. He has edited several books and written four, including, most recently, Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature.

The post Kenny Ausubel – Dancing on Thin Ice appeared first on Bioneers.

Sixteen years ago Jason F. McLennan launched the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most progressive and advanced green building program, to show that our buildings could serve as one of the key paths toward a regenerative future. Since then, numerous Living Buildings that demonstrate a better, more inspiring way of living and working have been built around the world. Although these projects create ripples of change and are living proof of regeneration in action, and in spite of these and other great models, we continue to build and live in ways that degrade the planet. Why? Jason McLennan explores why physical demonstrations of better solutions are not enough to create change when society has not grappled with its deeper systemic trauma. If we are to participate fully in regenerating the conditions for life on the planet, a deeper process of reconciliation is necessary. To heal the planet, Jason argues, we must fundamentally heal our culture.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Jason McLennan, one of the world’s most influential visionaries in contemporary architecture and green building, is a highly sought-out designer, consultant and thought leader. A winner of Engineering News Record’s National Award of Excellence and of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize (which was, during its 10-year trajectory, known as “the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design”), Jason has been showered with such accolades as “the ‘Wayne Gretzky’ of the green building industry and a “World Changer” (by GreenBiz magazine).

Learn more about Jason McLennan and his work at McLennan Design.

EXPLORE MORE Planting Buildings: The Living Building Challenge

In this podcast, visionary architect Jason McLennan describes nature’s blueprint for building a better world. He designed the Living Building Challenge 2.0 to raise the bar on green building: meet or exceed what nature provides. While the standards seem impossibly high, it may be simpler than we imagined.

Biophilic Infrastructure: Letting Nature Lead the Way

In this panel from the 2021 Bioneers Conference, Ben Goldfarb, Dr. Crystal Kolden, Ariel Whitson, and moderator Teo Grossman dive into what a more enlightened, effective, biophilic and biomimetic infrastructure conversation needs to look like. What will it take to turn our attention towards the rebuilding of our natural infrastructure, for the benefit of all life and human society? How can built infrastructure elegantly and respectfully engage with and support nature? The answers are not easy, but we know enough to get started – and, unsurprisingly, it often begins with letting nature lead.

The post Jason McLennan – From Reconciliation to Regeneration appeared first on Bioneers.

This performance took place at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Jason Nious, a performing artist and creative director whose background with high school step teams and NCAA gymnastics launched his career, has traveled extensively with Cirque du Soleil, Usher, Stomp, Step Afrika, and numerous theatre and film productions. As founder and Director of the Las Vegas, NV-based, award-winning body percussion ensemble, Molodi, Jason designs new touring productions and facilitates Molodi’s arts education program, reaching over 20,000 students per year. He also serves as an arts integration consultant with Focus 5, Cirque du Soleil, Cleveland Playhouse, and The Smith Center; and is an Artist-In-Residence with the Museum of Dance, Education Chair of the LAB LV Theatre Company, and regularly conducts in-school residencies through the Nevada Arts Council.

The post Performance by Jason Nious appeared first on Bioneers.

“When you think about Black Lives Matter, when you think about the movement that has been created over the last five years, remember that our movement is about imagining a world where black folks are actually free. Imagining a world where the word poverty is a past tense, imagining a world where we don’t need handcuffs or shackles any longer, imagining a world that we all deserve to live in.” —Patrisse Cullors, co-founders of #BlackLivesMatter

In this week’s The Pulse newsletter, just days ahead of Juneteenth, we share voices from the Bioneers community — Angela Glover Blackwell, john a. powell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patrisse Cullors and Heather McGhee — discussing the movement for racial justice, how it has progressed, and its potential powerful future.

Sign up for the Bioneers Pulse to receive newsletters (like this one!) featuring the most recent stories and updates from the Bioneers community.

Angela Glover Blackwell – Transformative Solidarity for a Thriving Multiracial Democracy

True solidarity requires stitching together what appears separate into a powerful, magnificent whole. The honed, deliberate, transformative practice of solidarity produces an exhilarating recognition of our interconnectedness and interdependence—essentials for thriving democracy. Angela Glover Blackwell is a renowned civil rights and public interest attorney, longtime leading racial equity advocate, and founder of PolicyLink, the extraordinarily effective and influential national research and action institute that advances racial and economic equity by “Lifting Up What Works.” In this talk, Angela Glover Blackwell discusses transformative solidarity and why it’s necessary for a thriving multiracial democracy.

Watch here.

From Othering to Belonging

How can we, as a society, move from “othering” to belonging? What and whom does othering actually benefit? How can we expand the circle of human concern and concern for nature? How can we live into our innate interconnection to create true inclusivity and wholeness? How do we build the structures, institutions, policies, cultures and stories that will support that inclusivity? Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powell, renowned law professor, activist, and founder of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley discuss these critically important, existential questions.

Watch here.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patrisse Cullors and Heather McGhee: In Conversation with 3 Racial Justice Movement Leaders

We continue to witness a national and international uprising, demanding an end to the systemic racism that has enabled the unforgivable police murder of countless black men and women. In support of this movement for change, we’re sharing a trio of short podcast episodes that address racial injustice, intersectionality, #BlackLivesMatter and more.

Listen here.

Introducing the Democracy & Belonging Forum

This week, the Othering & Belonging Institute launched its first-ever transatlantic initiative, the Democracy and Belonging Forum, a space for civic leaders in Europe and the U.S. who are committed to countering pernicious polarization by bridging across lines of difference while centering the needs and concerns of marginalized groups.

Learn more.

NOW AVAILABLE! Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, 2nd Ed.

We are excited to announce that the second edition of Nina Simons’ book, Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, is now on sale! Nature, Culture & the Sacred offers practical guidance and inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership on behalf of positive change. Join Nina on an inspiring journey to shed self-limiting beliefs, lead from the heart and discover beloved community as you cultivate your own flourishing and liberation.

Get your copy.

The post How to Create a Thriving Multiracial Democracy appeared first on Bioneers.

How can we, as a society, move from “othering” to belonging. What and whom does othering actually benefit? How can we expand the circle of human concern and concern for nature? How can we live into our innate interconnection to create true inclusivity and wholeness? How do we build the structures, institutions, policies, cultures and stories that will support that inclusivity? Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder-in Residence at PolicyLink, which works to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, and john a. powell, renowned law professor, activist, and founder of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, delve deep into these critically important, existential questions.

This discussion took place at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

PANELISTS

Angela Glover Blackwell, one of the nation’s most prominent, award-winning social justice advocates, is “Founder-in-Residence” at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity that has long been a leading force in improving access and opportunity in such areas as health, housing, transportation, and infrastructure. The host of the Radical Imagination podcast and a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, Angela, before PolicyLInk, served as Senior Vice President at The Rockefeller Foundation and founded the Urban Strategies Council. She serves on numerous boards and advisory councils, including the inaugural Community Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve and California’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery.

Learn more about Angela Glover Blackwell at PolicyLink.

john a. powell, Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley; previously Executive Director at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State, and prior to that, founder/Director of the Institute for Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, has also taught at numerous law schools, including Harvard and Columbia. A former National Legal Director of the ACLU, he co-founded the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. His latest book is: Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.

To learn more about john a. powell, read his full bio at the Othering and Belonging Institute.

The post From Othering to Belonging appeared first on Bioneers.

In 2007, artist Judy Baca joined Bioneers for a conversation centered on her inspiration:

“That’s how I came to be a muralist. It came out of my desire to work across differences, to work with young people, and to create something that had meaning in the midst of a social revolution. I saw these young people fighting with each other at a time when they needed to join and work for the betterment of their communities.”

Judy Baca

An artist best known for her murals speaking to social justice issues, leaders, and solutions, Baca has been bridging divides and bringing communities together for half a century, but her work hasn’t seen widespread exposure until recently — a story told in a New York Times article titled “A Judy Baca Moment: ‘My Work Has Been Good for a Long Time.’”

In the article, Baca points to the rise in social justice activism and the art community’s desire to keep up with the times as reasons for her recent soaring popularity. “They are going, ‘Oh my God: We don’t have a Latina. Oh my God: We don’t have very many women. Oh my God — and then you know there’s like, ‘Get her — we click off these five things,’” she says in the article. “I mean that’s not to say that my work isn’t good. I mean no — my work has been good for a long time. And it’s been better and better.”

Baca is perfectly on-point when she says she’s been good for a long time — not just “good” as an artist, but “good” as a social-justice warrior. Working against the grain and without any expectation of praise from the art establishment, Baca has served as a sort of artistic conduit for neighborhoods and community members with something important to say. Her murals are generally the result of close collaboration — both in ideation and execution — with the people who live, play, or work near a mural site. As a result, Baca’s completed works often speak to important justice issues, but the shared creation of the works can be just as moving.

In celebration of Judy Baca’s recent, much-deserved acclaim, we’re happy to share two inspirational keynotes presented by Baca at Bioneers Conferences, alongside a handful of media further telling her story.

Tattooing the River

In this 2003 presentation, Baca describes how art can reconnect people to place, revive disappearing history, and repair cultural root systems.

PODCAST | Tattooing the River: People, Place and the Art of Diversity

While working with at-risk youth to create The Great Wall of Los Angeles, the world’s longest mural, Baca realized that restoring a disappeared river also meant restoring disappeared cultures.

The Interactive Digital Mural

In her 2007 Bioneers presentation, Baca discussed unleashing the power of public art to help transform society.

Judy Baca, the renowned Chicana muralist who paints LA’s forgotten history: ‘My art is meant to heal’: “I had to just perceive what I was doing as significant for myself and my community and move ahead with willfulness and belief, buoyed by the community people I worked with – not by the arts,” says Baca in this piece from The Guardian.

There’s more to Judy Baca than her ‘Great Wall of Los Angeles’ mural: Find a more in-depth history of Baca and her work in this article from the Los Angeles Times.

The post Judy Baca Is Finally Getting the Recognition She Deserves from the Art Establishment appeared first on Bioneers.

Caveat: Before reading this article, it is important to first acknowledge that many people living in the U.S. are not lucky enough to have a yard. For many Americans, home ownership or even renting a home with access to a yard is not possible due to race-based, intergenerational, structural inequalities.

Americans love to manicure their lawns. It is a sign of pride in homeownership deeply steeped in the “American Dream” to buy a house in the suburbs and raise a family. This “dream,” however, belies deeper, nefarious roots in settler colonization and white supremacy. 

The earliest American lawns were modeled after the elaborate gardens of English and French aristocracy in an attempt to legitimize their status in the newly formed U.S. But it wasn’t until well into the 20th century that the lawn became a status symbol of escaping poverty. Americans (overwhelmingly white Americans) were able to move from crowded cities and rural landscapes to the newly formed suburbs designed to look like one continuous lawn space from house to house. Conformity to lawn care standards was, and still is, a sign that one is a “good neighbor.”

This suburban vision of America erases the ongoing structures of power, domination, and extraction that made homeownership and the accumulation of intergenerational wealth possible for (predominantly) white settler descendants. All of America began as Native land. As these lands were extracted from Indigenous stewardship, settlers drastically changed landscapes through the destruction and replacement of Native biodiversity to accommodate new economies. These new economies, including the lawn care industry, are only possible with the removal of Indigenous peoples, the enslavement of African descendants, and the ongoing exploitation of labor, typically from Latin America, and other nations that have asymmetrical economies due to the extractive practices of wealthy Northern nations. Moreover, the majority of American suburbs have a history of racist redlining to keep out people of color.

What does it mean to “Decolonize” Your Yard?

To “colonize” means to take control of land outside of state borders. Settler colonization involves displacing the original inhabitants through force and replacing them with a new population that upholds the invading state’s power. Applying this concept as a metaphor, to colonize a yard means to remove Indigenous plants and replace them with something foreign, disrupting and often destroying the original ecosystem in the process. On the other hand, “decolonizing” — or rather, “Indigenizing” — a yard means replacing invasives with Native plants local to the area. You can still decide on what plants you want and the design of your yard, which is the most fun part of gardening, in my opinion.

I also believe that a “decolonized” yard should fight back against extractive capitalism, which has led to our biggest social and environmental problems, by growing food that can be eaten year-round using organic, preferably permaculture practices. Not only is home-grown produce fresher, tastier, healthier, and more fun, but growing it yourself reduces the carbon footprint and waste associated with purchasing food at the supermarket.

I have been experimenting with decolonizing my yard for the past several years. I started by replacing water-guzzling shrubs with Native bushes along the side fence. The dirt patch in my backyard now includes a Native garden with several medicinal plants. When I was gifted heirloom corn, beans, and squash seeds last year, I tried to grow a “Three Sisters” garden, but the gophers ate the beans and squash. And, my daughter has cultivated a wildflower patch ever since she could walk.

I am not perfect. My front yard, which I only begrudgingly mow during the wet season, has a Native oak in it surrounded by wild and invasive grasses. Someday, I hope to establish a xeriscape perennial garden there. My Native plant garden in the back contains a couple of non-Native fruit trees and plants that existed before I moved in. I also planted non-local but water-tolerant plants, shrubs, and flowers that I like for their aesthetics along another border.

While my “decolonized yard” experiments are nowhere near complete (and will probably never end), I have observed several benefits over the years.

The Benefits of Decolonizing Your Yard

Conserves Water. Ignore this point if you live in a part of the country where it rains often and consistently. According to the EPA, landscape irrigation accounts for nearly one-third of all residential water use, totaling nearly 9 billion gallons per day. And, as much as 50% of this water is wasted due to environmental conditions and inefficient irrigation methods and systems. I live in a place with some of the most expensive water in the country, where summer water bills for people who water their grass easily tops $500 a month! Why would you waste water in a place where it is scarce?

Reduces Fossil Fuel Pollution. My neighbors love to leaf blow. One neighbor of mine leaf blows several times a week (and often, multiple times a day). My other neighbor has a “lawn person” come every other Saturday morning, at which time he blows three houses around me, subjecting the neighborhood to his extremely loud gas blower for hours. One study shows that the hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Ford F 150. Gas lawn mowers are just as bad.

Reduces Chemical Pollution. As you can imagine, my neighbors also chemically poison their trees. When they ask if they can “courtesy spray” mine once or twice a year, I always say “no thanks.” (And, my trees are doing just fine without poison treatments!) Pollutants in the form of pesticides and fertilizers harm the environment and web of life as these chemicals make their way into the groundwater. My neighborhood has a serious problem with peoples’ pets dying of poisoning (vet confirmed) from eating small mammals that have ingested concentrated amounts of “yard maintenance” poison from their food sources. If peoples’ dogs and cats are dying of this, so likely are the wild animals that we share our community with. If that’s not convincing enough, Americans have an average of 43 different pesticides in their bloodstreams according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Reduces Noise Pollution. The noise pollution emitted by leaf blowers and lawn mowers also deeply disturbs ecosystems. I observed that my neighbor who blows every day has practically no birds in his yard, while my yard hosts several species. Decolonizing your yard involves a responsibility to make a habitat that is welcoming to insects and animals who rely on audio cues to find food, avoid danger, mate and eat. Loud noises from garden tools drown out natural sounds and stress wildlife, threatening their survival and the stability of animal populations. On a broader scale, a meta-study in the Royal Society suggests that human-caused noise pollution negatively affects every kind of animal, and even plants, across the planet, contributing to the human-caused 6th mass extinction.

Invites Animals. If you want to attract certain species, your yard needs to have the plants that they eat (or that provide the food for their prey). I have carefully selected plants to optimize the variety of types of birds that come to my yard as well as insects. I was thrilled last summer when I saw a California Mantis for the first time in the wild, in my garden! In addition to planting flowers that attract endangered bees and other pollinators, I love watching the annual ladybug hatching season.

Controls Animals You Don’t Want. My neighborhood has a huge gopher problem. When I planted a Native garden in my backyard, I noticed that the gophers stopped coming up there, yet they persisted in digging up holes throughout my front yard, which still has the grass they like to eat. My theory is that the Native plants have evolved alongside the gophers in a kind of an arms race to adopt traits that make themselves not tasty for gophers. Remember those ladybugs I mentioned? They love to eat the pests that go for my food garden. It’s a win-win situation.

Educates About Indigenous Peoples. As I began my journey to replace invasives with Native plants, I had to learn what these plants are, and in what kind of conditions they grow. I found it fun to plan the textures, shapes and colors that would be side-by-side in the backyard. As I was researching, I also took note of how each plant might be useful to insects and animals, including humans. Whenever possible, I tried to learn about the plants from Indigenous knowledge systems, the more local the better. In the process, I learned more about whose ancestral territory I inhabit, how this tribe cultivated the wild, and also about knowledge that was lost throughout the brutal California genocide.

Provides Food and Medicine. I have been playing around with different kinds of vegetable gardens over the years. I am admittedly not very good at it, but each year I have some kinds of fresh veggies that can be picked to add to our meals. Last year, my cherry tomato bush went perennial. So, in addition to my tomatoes tasting far better than store-bought, I didn’t have to buy tomatoes at the store anymore. I also deliberately grew several plants that can be used to treat various ailments used in dried forms in tea. (I also learned that it takes a lot of time and effort to harvest and dry these!)  

Offers a Way to Be In Harmony With Nature. Having a yard with Native plants has been so fulfilling. As someone who started with a “black thumb,” I have learned so much about plants and how they interact with insects and animals. But perhaps the biggest benefit that I have gleaned from this process is time spent outdoors observing nature and the joy of watching the plants grow. Better yet, I included my daughter in all these activities, and now she has a deep and abiding love for nature.

Join the Movement to Decolonize Your Yard! Will you join the movement to decolonize YOUR yard? Like me, you don’t have to be good at it. You don’t have to do it all at once. And, you don’t need to virtue signal or take the moral high ground over people with conventional yards. All you need to do is start with one of the following suggestions:

• Get a water catchment system 

• Make your irrigation system more efficient

• Replace invasive plants with Native plants.

• Make a garden for yourself.

• Make a garden for neighbors in your own yard or community space.

You can do it!

Additional Resources

The Great American Lawn: How the Dream Was Manufactured

Is it time to decolonize your lawn? 

7 Ideas to Transform Your Lawn With Native Plants

Replace Your Lawn with Native Plants

Noise Pollution Is a Major Threat to Many Different Kinds of Animals, Study Finds

6 Ways to Reduce Pollution in Your Yard

4 Ways that Noise Pollution can Impact Wildlife (and 4 Ways to Help)

Pesticides and environmental injustice in the USA: root causes, current regulatory reinforcement and a path forward

 Control Household Pests Without Scary Poisons

Increasing Efficiency In Landscape Irrigation

The post Why & How to Decolonize Your Yard appeared first on Bioneers.

The desperately needed radical change in humanity’s environmental and socio-political behaviors requires a transformation of our core attitudes toward the “feminine” (in all its forms) at the deepest levels of our psyches. Women on the frontlines are often both the main victims of climate impacts and leaders in the struggle for climate justice. Zainab Salbi has dedicated her life to empowering women around the globe, and she has now co-founded Daughters for Earth, a dynamic new campaign to mobilize women worldwide to support and scale up women-led efforts to protect and restore the Earth.

This week, we explore how women’s leadership is transforming the movement for climate justice, balancing action in the world with individual healing, and creating more resilient networks and communities. 

Zainab Salbi – Daughters for Earth

As climate change and the destruction of Earth’s lands, waters and wildlife accelerate, women around the world are the most impacted, but they are also the frontline warriors fighting to protect our future. Unfortunately, their work and leadership are often not seen, appreciated, or funded. In order to address that marginalization, female leaders in the women’s rights, environmental and philanthropic sectors came together to found Daughters for Earth (under the auspices of the visionary philanthropic organization, One Earth). A co-founder and leader of this new initiative is Zainab Salbi, a widely celebrated humanitarian, author, thought leader, and journalist. In this presentation, Zainab explores the interconnection between our personal search for healing and how we face the challenges of climate change.  

Watch here.

Daughters for Earth: Women and the Climate Change Movement

Women all over the globe, especially in the “developing world,” are the ones who most often bear the brunt of having to contend with the radical disruptions visited upon their families and communities by climate change and environmental degradation, yet women’s voices are far too often ignored. Furthermore, climate change and physical and psycho-spiritual health are almost always discussed as separate issues, but the personal and the political, the heart and the mind are not just interconnected, they are all one. In this discussion, Justin Winters, Zainab Salbi, Helena Gualinga, Kahea Pacheco, and Nina Simons explore the impact of climate change on women and how to assure their full inclusion in all climate solutions, how these struggles relate to the personal search for healing, and what it will take to create authentic global change. 

Watch here.

Take Action: Support These Movements

Daughters for Earth | A women-led campaign that is bringing together women’s rights, environmental and philanthropic sectors to address the marginalization of women in climate change action.

Women’s Earth Alliance | An organization that identifies grassroots women leaders fighting for climate justice and invests in their long-term leadership through training, funding, and connecting them to a network of support.

Amazon Watch | An organization that works to protect the Amazon’s ecological systems by partnering with Indigenous leadership and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, and corporate accountability.

One Earth | A nonprofit organization working to accelerate collective action to solve the climate crisis through groundbreaking science, inspiring media, and an innovative approach to climate philanthropy.

Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, 2nd Ed. – Launching June 7th!

We are excited to announce that the second edition of Nina Simons’ book, Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, is launching on June 7 and is now available for pre-order! Nature, Culture & the Sacred offers practical guidance and inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership on behalf of positive change. Join Nina on an inspiring journey to shed self-limiting beliefs, lead from the heart and discover beloved community as you cultivate your own flourishing and liberation.

Pre-order here.

The post Women’s Leadership + Climate Justice: A Nexus of Opportunity for Transformation appeared first on Bioneers.