Page 153 – Bioneers

Bren Smith – The Least Deadly Catch: Ocean Farming in the Climate Change Era

Bren Smith, founder of GreenWave and winner of the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge award, tells his personal story of ecological redemption. He dropped out of high school and became a commercial fisherman at age 14, but witnessed the destruction of the ocean firsthand. In a quest for a better way, he pioneered a revolutionary new model of harvesting bounty from the seas. He describes his innovative, practical design and future vision for “Restorative 3-D ocean Farming”. It restores ecosystems, mitigates climate change, creates jobs in a blue-green economy, and ensures healthy, secure local food for communities.

Introduction by J.P Harpignies, Bioneers Senior Producer.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference. To find out more about Bren Smith and his work, visit GreenWave.

Vien Truong: Creating an Equitable Environmental Movement

Vien Truong, formerly the National Director of Green For All, has worked tirelessly to bring equity, social justice and climate justice to the frontlines of the environmental movement and public policy. She has been a central force in putting environmental justice at the center of California’s groundbreaking climate policy, legislation and cap-and-trade funding. Vien shares her wise perspectives on how to build a new clean-energy economy that brings prosperity and justice to low-income communities and communities of color.

Introduction by Steve Phillips, founder/Chairman, PowerPac+

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

Mark Plotkin: Maps, Magic and Medicine in the Rainforest

Mark Plotkin, groundbreaking ethnobotanist and author of seminal books including “Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice”, works closely with Indigenous peoples and uncontacted tribes in the northwest Amazon. As co-founder of the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) in 1995, he depicts ACT’s work partnering with over 30 South American tribes, including the Kogi, to map, manage and protect over 70 million acres of ancestral forests. He describes collaboration with elder healers to develop and implement successful “Shamans and Apprentices” programs to transmit sacred healing information down through generations within the tribes themselves.

Introduction by Laurie Benenson, film producer and environmental changemaker.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference. To learn more about Mark Plotkin and his work, visit the Amazon Conservation Team.

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez: What Are We Fighting For?

“Revolution is on the horizon, and youth are rising with the oceans to lead the movements that will shape our future”, says Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, a Indigenous hip hop artist, environmental activist (since age 6!) and the newest board member of Bioneers. He’s the award-winning Youth Director or Earth Guardians, a rapidly growing international organization of young activists, artists and musicians committed to protecting water, air, land and atmosphere. He organized many rallies, actions, demonstrations and events. He travels globally to speak about environmental and Indigenous issues, including at the United Nations with Robert Redford. He brings alive the unparalleled intergenerational movements emerging to save our planet, as youth globally join hearts and hands against some of the world’s most powerful industries to take a stand for the future and build resilient communities.

Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers CEO and Founder.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

To find out more about Xiuhtezcatl Martinez visit the Earth Guardians.

Visit the Bioneers Green New Deal Media Collection.

Janine Benyus – Biomimicry as a Cooperative Inquiry

Our species is finally turning toward other species for their embodied wisdom, borrowing these insights to solve challenges such as delivering nutrition in a way that nourishes both planet and people. Biomimicry author and visionary Janine Benyus shows how nature-inspired breakthroughs in agriculture are evolving from plant-focused “silver bullets” to system-savvy healing. She gives us a sneak preview of the amazing entries in the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge in food systems. She explores how the “democratization of invention” is growing more biomimetic – as teams turn to nature together, in massive parallel, to discover a multitude of wild ideas that work together as a system. Cooperation, naturally enough, is the best way to learn from life’s genius!

Introduction by Paul Hawken, author, activist, entrepreneur.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

Explore our Biomimicry media collection >>

Nina Simons: Reclaiming Relationship & Tradition | Bioneers 2016

Reclaiming Relationship & Tradition: Towards a Future that Works for All

Opening remarks by Bioneers co-founder and President Nina Simons.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

Youth Leadership: Ryan Camero

Ryan Camero, Brower Youth Award winner, arts activist and community organizer discusses his work helping build diverse coalitions in the spirit of “intersectional” justice to protect highly threatened and crucially important Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

Thomas Linzey & Mari Margil: Occupy the Law

Thomas Linzey & Mari Margil – Occupy the Law: The Movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature.

As species collapse around the world while governments still authorize fossil fuel extraction and other destructive, unsustainable activities, communities across the U.S. are rising in resistance to “occupy the law”. They’re enacting “community bills of rights” that recognize a community’s legally enforceable right to sustainability and the rights of nature. Two of its most effective path-finding national and global leaders, Tom Linzey and Mari Margil of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, show how this movement challenges our constitutional framework in which corporate rights and the preemptive authority of state and federal governments block sustainability, environmental protection and democracy.

Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers CEO and Founder.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

Find out more about Thomas Linzey & Mari Margil and how you can engage with their campaigns and efforts by visiting the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

Explore our Rights of Nature media collection >>

Katsi Cook – Deepening Indigenous Women’s Networks: Embodiment, Healing and Resilience

Legendary Mohawk midwife and environmental health researcher and advocate Katsi Cook illuminates her dynamic new work strengthening Indigenous communities and addressing the cultural and physical safety and thriving lives of Indigenous girls and women. As Program Director of NoVo Foundation’s Indigenous Communities Leadership Program for Indigenous Girls and Women, she’s building bridges across communities and existing networks to increase synergy in the protection of Indigenous girls and women from multiple forms of violence and oppression. She shares preliminary results from a network-mapping analysis using a net-centered approach based on the understanding that “leadership is an emergent property of a network in balance”.

Introduction by Nina Simons, Bioneers co-founder and President.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

James Nestor: New Approaches to Cracking the Communication of Whales and Dolphins

James Nestor, an author and journalist with a passion for extreme adventure who has written for Scientific American, National Public Radio and The New York Times, draws from his mind-boggling, multiple award-winning new book, DEEP: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves. He describes how groups of athletes and scientists plumbed ocean depths, and researchers collaborating with engineers from Apple, Google and elsewhere worked to “crack” the cetacean language code and send back messages to these giant marine mammals – to make contact. Their weird and wondrous new discoveries might just redefine our understanding of the ocean, and of ourselves.

Introduction by Joshua Fouts, Bioneers Executive Director.

This speech was given at the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

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