From life-saving pharmaceutical drugs to high-performance materials, chemicals and chemical products are essential in providing society the products it requires to survive and thrive. But the creation and use of many chemical products is hazardous to people and the environment. In order to ensure a habitable future planet, the field of chemistry must adapt and find new ways to be sustainable as well as economical.
Beyond Benign is challenging educational institutions and the chemical industry at large to adopt green chemistry practices. Green Chemistry is defined as the design of chemical products that reduce the use or generation of hazardous substances. By supporting educators and students to teach and learn green chemistry and sustainable science, Beyond Benign is equipping the next generation of scientists and citizens with the tools required to design and select products that support human health and the environment.
Bioneers met with Beyond Benign Co-Founder Dr. Amy Cannon to discuss the organization’s progress and plans for the coming years.
Bioneers: Tell us a little bit about the beginnings of Beyond Benign.
Amy: Beyond Benign was founded in 2007 at a time when green chemistry was not widely accepted in chemistry education and research. It was an exception, rather than the rule. Having spent time in both industry and academia, my co-founder, John Warner, and I had a unique perspective on the state of the chemical enterprise. We saw an opportunity to address a clear gap in how educational institutions teach and train chemists: arming them with the knowledge and skills needed to address hazards and environmental impacts through the practice of their trade. The field of chemistry has a history of contributing to environmental impacts and human hazards. But it also has a central role in addressing these impacts through how we use and approach the design and implementation of chemicals and chemical products. This duality can be confusing but also empowering for chemists.
Dr. Amy Cannon
As a fundamental science, chemistry has tremendous power to address sustainability at the molecular level. This is something that needs to be included in the teaching and training of chemistry, which is why it’s the main focus of Beyond Benign: empowering educators to bring green chemistry into their teaching and practice to better train chemists with green chemistry skills.
Bioneers: Have you seen chemistry education morph throughout the past 10 years?
Amy: Yes, there has been a growing awareness of green chemistry and an expansion in the implementation of green chemistry in chemistry education. Although we would have liked to have seen more progress in the past 10 years, green chemistry is generally much more accepted by the academic community. For example, of the higher ed institutions that are involved with our Green Chemistry Commitment program, more than 75% have enacted significant changes at their institutions.
While I do think we have had a part to play in the changes over the years, I think that one of the biggest motivators is seeing the results of green chemistry in practice. When chemists can see real results from implementing greener chemistry in the design and use of chemical products, they can see the tremendous power of chemistry to address sustainability challenges.
Bioneers: Beyond Benign is challenging educators and educational institutions to change and grow. How has that challenge been received?
Amy: Generally, educators are up for the challenge and see the value of bringing green chemistry into their teaching and practice. The pushback has mostly been from the barriers that come from enacting any type of curricular changes. When educators look to make changes to their curriculum, they are faced with resource constraints, and they also might see some resistance from peers or administrators, usually arising from misconceptions about green chemistry. Once educators and administrators see the benefits of including green chemistry in their teaching and practice – hazard reductions, cost savings, increased student interest – they then seek to do even more.
At Beyond Benign, we work to help educators overcome the real and perceived obstacles that go hand-in-hand with curricular changes. We provide resources, funding, and peer support that empowers educators to incorporate green chemistry in a way that works for their courses and institutions.
Bioneers: Why is working with chemical industry leaders such an important part of what Beyond Benign does?
Amy: The goal of green chemistry is to become the way that chemistry is practiced. Therefore, the chemical industry needs to have a key role in implementing and inventing greener processes and products and also advocating for and hiring a workforce that has the skills to implement these practices. The chemical industry creates the molecular building blocks of our global society. When green chemistry is implemented in the manufacturing and design of chemical products, the impacts are tremendous. For example, in an industrial setting, one chemical industry saw a 97% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions after switching to a biobased solvent in one of its manufacturing processes.
However, it isn’t only chemical companies that can address sustainability goals by utilizing green chemistry. Companies across sectors are seeing the advantages of utilizing green chemistry for safer, healthier products. We’ve seen job postings from companies including Apple, Microsoft, Lululemon, and Pfizer, all looking for scientists with green chemistry knowledge and skills.
Bioneers: Which projects or initiatives are you most excited about looking ahead to the next few years?
Amy: Over the past few years, we have been working on expanding our reach to foster a global, diverse community of green chemistry educators and leaders. To support this community, we have embarked on creating a web-based platform that will house community green chemistry education resources, and also include interactive components that support networking, mentoring, and peer-to-peer interactions. The Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC) is anticipated to launch in August of this year, and we are really looking forward to launching the platform in partnership with the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute. We are hopeful that this platform will further catalyze the implementation of green chemistry globally.
Bioneers: What gives you hope in the work you’re doing?
Amy: I have met numerous students over the years who have brought such passion into their work. Many of them have also led initiatives to bring green chemistry to their departments and their communities. One example is the University of Toronto’s student-led group called the Green Chemistry Initiative. Over the years, they have built awareness within their own department and also served as inspiration for other institutions and student groups to get involved with green chemistry. It is these current and future leaders that will bring change to the chemical enterprise. Students are tremendously powerful change agents.
Bioneers: Can Bioneers readers get involved?
Amy: Yes, we would love readers to get involved. Advocating for green chemistry in schools and universities is always welcome. Beyond Benign hosts a suite of open-access resources available to educators from K-12 through college level. Readers are welcome to share these resources with educators to bring to their classrooms and laboratories.
In addition, we have an ambitious goal of reaching 25% of graduating chemists (in the U.S. we graduate 22,000 chemists annually at all levels) by 2025 through the Green Chemistry Commitment. This goal includes engaging with Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) in the U.S. and beyond to ensure a more diverse and inclusive community. Our current signers represent just over 10% of graduating chemists. Readers are encouraged to share this program with university chemistry departments to help us reach a critical mass of graduating chemists trained with green chemistry skills.
Grace Wicks grew up in an environment where locally grown, organic, fair trade food and respectful rural-urban relationships were the ingredients for success for one of the first farm-to-table restaurants in the country – the White Dog Café in Philadelphia. White Dog was where Grace’s mother, Judy Wicks, established her roots as an activist and entrepreneur engaging the community to build a more compassionate, regenerative and regionally-based economy.
Grace went on to follow her passion for horticulture and founded Graceful Gardens driven by a vision of creating beautiful edible landscapes in urban niches that would form a connected web of gardens across the city. That expansive vision was implemented with modest means; she started her company with $1,500, most of it invested in a bicycle with a trailer to haul around tools and plants. From those humble beginnings, Grace developed a thriving business employing 13 people, instilling in her 200 clients – including chefs for whom she has developed rooftop gardens – an ecological ethos and a deeper appreciation for gardening.
Tragically, the lives of Grace and Judy have been disrupted drastically when Grace contracted West Nile Virus in 2022. The virus initially left her with brain damage, partially paralyzed and in severe chronic pain, unable to speak or feed herself and she still requires 24-hour care at home, which is predominantly provided by Judy.
After a long stay in the hospital and having been confined to bed and a wheelchair for 5 months, Grace is making steady progress. She is able to wheel herself around in a wheelchair, and she is spending some therapy time in a swimming pool and getting in-house physical, occupational and speech therapies.
But Grace’s insurance company abruptly dropped her health insurance coverage and the costs for tests, medications, therapy, and equipment – estimated at $250,000 per year – have created a financial crisis for both Grace and Judy. In addition to medical expenses, funds are needed to help pay for Grace’s mortgage and other living expenses until she can work again.
Judy Wicks is a long-time cherished member of the Bioneers community whose life and accomplishments are a continuing inspiration. Among the many awards that she has received for her work in creating standards and a model for sustainable businesses is the James Beard Humanitarian Award given to an organization or individual, “who has given selflessly and worked tirelessly to better the lives of others and society at large.”
In a recent update Judy described how she is adapting to her family crisis, “As to my repurposed role as caregiver, I am still practicing patience and establishing a new relationship with time. I no longer rush here and there, packing my days with meetings and tasks, but rather am appreciating the many small wonders of the day, being with my beautiful daughter and witnessing her blessed recovery. ”
That recovery needs the generosity of a compassionate community to help Grace through these heartbreaking, arduous times. We urge you to visit the gofundme page and learn more. Please give what you can.
In the circumpolar north, where temperatures are historically colder than in any other regions of the world, climate change’s effects have taken hold far more rapidly and dramatically than anywhere else. “Because Alaska is colder than most places, it’s melting faster than most places,” says Dune Lankard of the Native Conservancy. “The permafrost, the sea ice, the glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates.”
Melting glaciers and warming waters are having dire impacts on local economies and ways of life. The ecological health of these regions is also crucial to the overall climatic integrity of the entire planet. As we work to tackle climate change, we must pay close attention to the unique challenges faced by these northern regions and the vital work being done to protect and preserve them.
This week, we explore the effects of climate change in the north and Indigenous perspectives on how to change course while there’s still time.
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3 Indigenous Leaders Offer Solutions to Climate Change in the Arctic
Indigenous Peoples in the north have been feeling the disastrous effects of climate change for far longer than the rest of the planet’s population. According to NASA record sets, the Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet, disturbing terrestrial and marine ecosystems, destroying villages, and disrupting healthy ways of life.
Innovative solutions to the climate crisis born from the ingenuity rooted in Native knowledge systems are emerging from the circumpolar north. In this conversation, leaders at the Native Conservancy, Indigenous Climate Action, and Native Movement share their strategies for addressing climate change in the policy, civil society, and economic sectors.
Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change: Report from the Arctic
“We came a long ways, we’re going to go a long ways together. For our children that’s not born today yet, and for our elders that’s not here today with us.”
Sarah James, the revered Gwich’in Elder from Alaska, who has won many awards for her work to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling, including the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, depicts how her people are being severely impacted on the front lines of rapid climate change, and how they are responding in this presentation.
Bioneers 2023 Conference Speaker Highlight: Indigenous Forum
The Bioneers Indigenous Forum serves as a platform for Indigenous activists, scientists, elders, youth, culture-bearers and scholars to share their knowledge and frontline solutions in dialogue with a dynamic, multicultural audience. The Indigenous Forum recognizes the vital role that Indigenous Peoples play in protecting the Earth and its resources and seeks to support their efforts to maintain their traditional ways of life, cultures, and values. Join us at Bioneers 2023 to take part in the Indigenous Forum.
“Unfortunately, we’re going to have to think about this type of work more and more in the coming years as we see the effects of climate change reach so many other communities.”
Melting permafrost, flooding rivers and shifting land have made Newtok, Alaska’s water and sewage systems unusable. The estimated cost to move the community nine miles up the Ninglick River is $120 million. The federal government has announced a $25 million grant and sees the move as a demonstration project for future rural Indigenous communities facing similar issues.
“The economy in Kiruna has relied on mining for more than a century, but new extraction activity will need to be balanced with other interests including preserving areas of natural beauty and safeguarding reindeer herding in the region by the Sami people, Mr. Hognelid said.”
The transition to clean energy and electric vehicles is upon us. The only questions are the pace of the transition and whether society can avoid making the same mistakes developing the clean energy economy as we did in the dirty energy era. Where and how we extract, process and (hopefully recycle and reuse) the mineral resources necessary for the electric age remains an enormous challenge. The new discovery of Europe’s largest known deposit of coveted rare earth metals brings these challenges to the sub-arctic region.
Season two of Threshold’s podcast takes listeners on a journey to the Arctic. With the region warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, it’s crucial that we understand its significance and the impact that it has on all of us.
Through this circumpolar journey, Threshold delves into the lives of the four million people who call the Arctic home and hear about their experiences with the effects of climate change. By traveling on various modes of transportation and visiting all eight Arctic countries, Threshold provides a comprehensive look at what is happening in the far north.
As you know, Bioneers is committed to making our events accessible to all. Our full-price registration is significantly subsidized below the true cost of producing the event, and we are so grateful to be able to offer ample further scholarship options to ensure that the event is as inclusive as possible.
In order to access our scholarship rates, simply register for the conference, and follow the instructions for scholarship support (you’ll see our scholarships referred to as Student, Educator, Activist and Limited-Income Senior Rates). We ask that you sincerely consider what rate you register with, understanding that purchasing a ticket at a higher rate and/or donating to our scholarship campaign allows us to offer access to those who need the support.
with Frank Bibeau, Thomas Linzey, Samantha Skenandore
The Rights of Nature movement launched internationally in 2006 and is growing fast. Driven primarily by tribes and citizen-led communities, more than three dozen cities, townships and counties across the U.S. have adopted such laws to create legally enforceable rights for ecosystems to exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve.
In this program, Native American attorneys, Frank Bibeau and Samantha Skenandore, and legal movement leader Thomas Linzey report from the front lines how they are honing their strategies to protect natural systems for future generations.
Featuring
Frank Bibeau, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, is an activist and tribal attorney who works extensively on Chippewa treaty and civil rights, sovereignty and water protection.
Thomas Linzey, Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER), an organization committed to advancing the legal rights of nature and environmental rights globally.
Samantha Skenandore (Ho-Chunk/Oneida), Attorney/Of-Counsel at Quarles & Brady LLP, has vast knowledge and experience in working on matters involving on both federal Indian law and tribal law.
Credits
Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
Written by: Kenny Ausubel
Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.
Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcast
Transcript
Neil Harvey (Host): When you fight nature, you lose.
That simple truth is coming home to roost with unprecedented frequency, intensity and ubiquity. Today, a sobering morning-after awakening is stirring worldwide. Humanity is getting an environmental education the hard way: What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves.
But what if, by extension, when you own nature, you lose?
The ground truth is that we don’t own nature – nature owns us. In reality, we are a part of nature – and we’re decidedly a very junior partner in that relationship. We’re also an expendable one, if we don’t abide by nature’s operating instructions.
These are ancient worldviews held closely by Indigenous peoples – the world’s old-growth cultures. It helps explain why First Peoples are now in the vanguard of an authentic legal revolution.
In practical reality, the global Rights of Nature Movement is simply affirming the existential truth that Nature has its ways and will have its way, whether we recognize that or not. Codifying these rights into enforceable law may give us the best chance to protect and restore the web of life on whose wellbeing our own lives depend.
Frank Bibeau(FB): Wild rice, manoomin, has been around my life all my life. Ever since I was a kid, my grandfather always made sure we had wild rice. It was important for my father to make sure we understood how to go out and harvest and things. Wild rice is mentioned in our 1837 treaty. It says that we have the right to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice on the rivers, lakes and lands that we’re relinquishing or ceding, and so that meant all of the same territory, not just the reservation, but all of the same territory that we were relinquishing, we still had the right to hunt, fish and gather.
White Earth tribal member Frank Bibeau and his father ricing. Photo: Frank Bibeau
Host: Frank Bibeau is a tribal attorney and enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa tribe in northern Minnesota where tribal waters have been under severe threat including from oil pipelines such as the notorious Line 3. His legal work has focused on the Treaty rights of tribes and members to help protect natural resources for future generations.
Treaties are internationally binding nation-to-nation agreements that the Constitution refers to as, “the supreme law of the land.”
Enter Manoomin, the tribe’s treaty-protected wild rice that grows in the abundant waters under threat.
While working at the 1985 Minnesota Legislative Session, Bibeau met lifelong Indigenous activist Winona LaDuke.
In trying to figure out a novel way to protect the watersheds of the Great Lakes basin, LaDuke and Bibeau realized that the treaty protecting manoomin could also protect the entire ecosystem under tribal law. They went in a new direction – in part because water law is so complex, and in part because corporations were trying to appropriate the wild rice for genetic engineering.
In consultation with attorney Thomas Linzey, they decided to use a Rights of Nature legal framework in tribal court against Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, to oppose the Line 3 pipeline.
Frank Bibeau spoke at a Bioneers conference…
FB: So in reality by using rights of manoomin, for me, it’s a water protection strategy. Manoomin, wild rice, grows in the water. Water is necessary for all living life, and where we live, because of all the fisheries and the flyways for the water fowl and everything that’s there, it’s very important to have a lot of pristine water.
And as I started looking through some of our treaty journals, interestingly enough, our treaty journals talk about maple – being maple syrup, maple sugar – and fish being our two primary treaty source foods besides wild rice that’s expressly in our treaty. So you’re talking about maybe three of the most high-demand water quality, you know, natural elements in nature that we relied upon as our primary treaty foods. And if it’s a primary treaty food, there is an obligation for us to be able to access that food. That was part of the deal.
Part of the problem is as you’re trying to develop these defenses, you’re in competition with a lot of other attorneys, and those attorneys, they don’t see this very well. It’s new to them. They didn’t learn it in law school. They haven’t practiced with it, and so when I look at rights of nature, I think it displaces things in a way from Indian Country standpoint that the state and the federal and the non-Indians can’t do. And so what we’ve done in Minnesota at White Earth Reservation in particular, we’ve adopted the rights of nature into rights of manoomin, and we’ve used that in tribal court. They didn’t contemplate that Indians were going to be around today, and so they didn’t really pay attention to the laws that they left in place with us.
And so I think treaty rights are—you’re going to see a lot more use in the environment and a lot more use in the legal playing field. It is growing. It is a new approach, and I think you’re going to find that working with tribes is going to make the difference.
Host: This historic case was first brought in a tribal court to enforce the rights of nature, and the first rights of nature case brought to enforce Treaty guarantees.
Samantha Skenandore is an enrolled citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, and an attorney of counsel at Quarles & Brady.
In 2018, the General Council – the “fourth” branch of government represented by the “People” of the Ho Chunk Nation – voted overwhelmingly to amend its tribal constitution to broadly enshrine the Rights of Nature. The Ho-Chunk – a word which means “People of the Big Voice” – was the first tribal nation in the U.S. to take this landmark leap.
The proposed amendment to the Nation’s Constitution established this:
“Ecosystems, natural communities, and species within the Ho-Chunk Nation territory possess inherent, fundamental, and inalienable rights to naturally exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve.”
The Amendment further prohibits fracking, fossil fuel extraction, and genetic engineering as violations of the Rights of Nature.
Procedurally, the proposed Rights of Nature amendment was the first bold step in an ongoing process to become tribal law.
The voice of the People of the Big Voice was clear – Rights of Nature should be recognized in the highest law of the land.
But where and how could tribal sovereignty and political status be deployed to draft and pass the right type of laws for that jurisdiction? In collaboration with the Rights of Nature project of the Indigeneity Program, Samantha Skenandore entered into a complex process: to assess a crazy quilt of legal entanglements in order to develop a blueprint for action for other tribes – a legal toolkit.
One top goal for any such law is to be genuinely enforceable. Another goal is that these laws would apply to other jurisdictions, including state and local governments in order to effect change both upstream and downstream from tribal lands.
Samantha Skenandore…
Samantha Skenandore (SS): What’s the lay of the land? Where have tribes passed these Rights of Nature laws? Where have they fallen short? Where have they just been symbolic? What are ways maybe that we should look at to help tribes with a toolkit to look at this opportunity for them to kind of flex their sovereignty muscle and see if they can perhaps advance this new area of what I think in American jurisprudence would call environmental law, so 2.0, of having a whole new viewscape on how we see our resources around us.
We have more precedents, we have more information from Frank and Thom’s cases now that we know what to do, what not to do, and how to do things better.
We have sliced and diced all of the case work from water law, other environmental law, international law, and we’ve looked at things from all angles to say we have tried to think of everything, and we have organized a toolkit that says, alright, if you’re a tribe that is Indian Reorganization Act Tribe, when you’re recognized as a federal tribe, a federal entity, a federal government, how your constitution structured you, how you function as a government, does that make it better for you to pass a Rights of Nature law, or are you from Frank’s neck of the woods; do you have treaty rights. Right? Is there a special rule, rights, privileges that you might have that might allow you to pass a Rights of Nature law that would fit and be better upheld under those circumstances?
And then we looked at some of the newer constitutions, some very modern forms of tribal governance, and then we looked at all of the case law, right, and we identified all of the challenges. So any attorney, it’s basically a blueprint to say here’s all the things you’re going to face and you’re going to need to discuss with your client to say, hey tribe A, I think we can pass a Rights of Nature law. We checked most of the boxes here. These are the three or four big issues that we’re going to have to tackle, and I’m going to be your counsel. I’m going to help you work through those three or four things, and then advise you accordingly to US tribal counsel to pass this law or that law, or do whatever you choose to do.
So that’s really how we get tribes in a position to consider doing this. And that’s really been my role with Rights of Nature is to create that blueprint and also to take that feedback we’re hearing from the tribal leaders, from their council, their community members, and we’ve even talked to local and state DNR, so non-native allies that say, hey, we’ve been waiting for tribes to do this for some time, what can we do to help.
And so part of the strategic vision and plan will have to be so inclusive to bring that to the table to tribal governments so that they really can do this.
Host: Realistically, although tribes can have a seismic legal impact, Rights of Nature governance, by definition, requires multi-stakeholder coalitions. It’s necessary to weave together diverse bodies of law and jurisdictions in a specific place or region. In many cases, it requires that tribes work withmunicipal and state agencies, as well as with allied communities and citizens, which is generally where it all starts.
Attorney Thomas Linzey developed the world’s first Rights of Nature laws in 2006 working with conservative communities in Western Pennsylvania to face down unwelcome corporate harms such as factory farming and quarries. He is the Senior US Counsel at the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, which he co-founded with attorney Mari Margil in 2019 to advance democratic rights and rights for nature worldwide.
Thomas Linzey (TL): Rights of nature work is not a spectator sport. It can happen anywhere. It can happen in any community. Any community has elected local officials who can pass Rights of Nature laws, but in the US, about half of the states have ballot initiative processes so that you can write Rights of Nature laws yourselves at the local level and then put it on the ballot and campaign for it and pass it, and then begin to enforce it. Sometimes I think sometimes rights of nature feels like it’s 30,000 feet in the air; it’s way up here and it’s something for the lawyers to talk about. It’s not. The lawyers are only relevant if there are people in the community who are moving forward to protect a particular ecosystem with this new approach. And, again, I think without this new approach, we’re kind of screwed in a variety of different ways because you’re relegated back to industry-written environmental regulations which keep you running around like a hamster through a wheel, endlessly exhausting your resources and energy until you eventually disband yourself as a community organization.
So wherever you are, it can be done. It’s possible. And I think safeguarding major ecosystems this way is the next really major paradigm shifting evolution of the law in the US, but it’s being done by communities and by tribes. Those are the folks on the frontlines.
Host: When we return, how tribes are building environmental law 2.0, and how the shift to a rights of nature legal paradigm is challenging the very concepts of ownership and property that underlie Western law.
I’m Neil Harvey. You’re listening to The Bioneers.
Host: After first arising in 2006, by 2022 the Rights of Nature movement had become the fastest growing environmental movement in history.
Driven primarily by citizen-led communities and tribes, more than three dozen cities, townships and counties across the U.S. have adopted such laws and created legally enforceable rights of waterways and other ecosystems.
In parallel, by 2022, six tribes in the US had voted on diverse iterations of rights of nature resolutions, while numerous other tribes were preparing for similar actions.
But, says Samantha Skenandore, each tribe comprises its own community with a unique history, culture and governance structure. She looks to the Ho-Chunk nation’s traditional court on customizing Rights of Nature law. She served as legal counsel on matters before the tribe’s clan leaders and elders, who hold the Traditional Ecological Knowledge of their place going back countless generations, including their cosmology and first principles.
In her own role protecting cultural resources and sacred sites, this precious ancient knowledge provided a road map for how her people had successfully sustained themselves in regenerative ecological cycles over the long haul. It revealed the basis for how to begin to construct culturally appropriate Rights of Nature governance.
SS: Nature, all nature, right, not any subspecies, not any group, subgroup, all of nature was to be included in our constitution and be afforded the bill of rights just like we, us human beings, have within our tribal constitution. So if we passed a law over here to save the salmon or on a very extreme version of rights of nature, we’re protecting all nature and giving it a bill of rights like personhood, that’s the strongest way we can protect nature. And that’s what passed with over, I believe, 1200 votes, 1200 human beings in a room, tribal members, passed that law. So it was beautiful. I mean…[APPLAUSE]
And it was great to be in the room. We all stopped and took a picture. We put a bannerout. But we are very proud of that law. But that’s only phase one. We have to go back and that law has to be taken to the legislature. It goes through a process with the feds, and then it becomes law. Right? And then we have to have these cases in tribal court. We have to litigate them. So we are not quite there yet, but that’s really my contribution to say, you know, I’ve been a part of this since before it was passed, and it’s in the process, watch what happens for this tribe as they move that law forward.
Host: This kind of Indigenous leadership is global, such as in Ecuador which became the first country to put Rights of Nature into its federal constitution. Similarly, Indigenous leadership was paramount in Bolivia, New Zealand, India and Uganda in passing laws that protect everything from a river to glaciers and savanna.
Nor is the Rights of Nature movement boxed into the left-right political dichotomy. Witness Orange County, Florida, the thirtieth-largest county in the US and home to Orlando and Disneyworld – not exactly a progressive bastion.
Known as the “Right to Clean Water Initiative,” it empowers any resident to enforce the rights of waterways and the rights of people to clean water. Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil worked with the community coalition to get the Rights of Nature initiative on the ballot.
TL: So at any one time in the U.S., about a dozen efforts are underway in rights of nature work. Perhaps the most exciting stuff that I see today in the office are Florida, of all places. Orange County, Florida became the largest municipality in the United States to pass a Rights of Nature law back in November of 2020, initially to protect the Wekiva and Econlockhatchee Rivers with certain rights. That was broadened out to give all waterways, all waters within Orange County certain rights. The ballot initiative passed in November with 89% of the vote.
So folks that work on ballot initiatives know that you’re lucky to get 51% of the vote most times, let alone 89% of the vote—And so Floridians argue and differ on every other issue apparently other than protecting the water there, which is under crisis. And in Orange County you had Trump supporters who had “Vote Yes” on the initiative in their windows, with posters and signs. And so it was an interesting mix of these kind of different political ends to come together for this water protection law.
Host: Another initiative is led by the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe which has sued the city of Seattle on behalf of the rights of salmon against dams impeding their migration up the Skagit River.
The lower courts had previously found that numerous road culverts blocked salmon access to habitat to an extent that violated treaty rights and necessitated the culverts’ removal. The Supreme Court affirmed that decision.
Once again, says Frank Bibeau, treaty rights can be decisive as the law of the land…
FB: They estimated it might cost something like two to three billion dollars to remove all of those culverts and change them so that they’re passable for the fish, which to me is interesting because it costs two to three billion dollars to build the pipeline that we’re fighting, and we haven’t even started on the problems that it’s creating. That’s just building the pipeline. So when you try to figure out these value systems, it’s a little odd.
But the thing that I like about the rights of salmon, and this is just for me simply, the rights of manoomin I think is important because wild rice is in the treaty itself. That’s the supreme law of the land under the Constitution of the United States. And so I think that’s going to help us in that way with our litigation. But if we didn’t have wild rice written into our treaty, you know, we’re people of the river, we’re people of the canoe, the woods, we would be doing fish, and that’s what the salmon is.
And so what I tell people is, you know, a lot of people haven’t even heard of wild rice. And so if I’m trying to describe wild rice as essentially what might look like a grain crop in a field across the water, people can be standing beside it and not know it; people can have it on their plate and not know it. So it’s not really the model in my mind. But the fish is the model, because everybody knows what a fish looks like. Everybody knows what a dead fish looks like, and if you see a thousand dead fish, you know there’s something wrong with the water. You don’t have to have a scientist come up and tell you that. And so that gives you, I think, a big leap in terms of what your barometer is in the environment and what’s going on with the water, because we look at protecting the water where I live, and we believe if we can protect the water, then we’re protecting almost everything else.
And so it’s very interesting how the different cultures look at their relationship with maybe what we might call the most significant part of our culture and what we would want to guard and protect for our future generations as much as for ourselves now.
And I think that’s what’s going to make it work also better for us as tribal members because it is spirituality. It is freedom of religion. You know, they only passed the Indian Religious Freedom Act back in 1978, otherwise we were being prevented from practicing it and doing these things. So we have a lot of things that are helping us right now that’ll help everybody else.
Host: For Frank Bibeau as for many Indigenous Peoples, the natural world is a gift from the Creator, not property to be owned. Yet paradoxically, tribes must use property law to defend their lands while transforming Western systems of law.
Thomas Linzey points out that Rights of Nature laws are evidence that a cultural sea change is roiling society. Despite long odds, he says, Indigenous value systems are starting to displace Western systems of law that are anchored in the Constitutional exaltation of private property and hyper-individualism.
So… if we don’t own nature, and nature owns us, what could that mean for the future of our systems of law?
Thomas Linzey and Samantha Skenandore say we’re living through a radical paradigm shift – a ‘tween time into uncharted legal territory. And of course, nature bats last…
TL: I think what’s starting to happen now is people are thinking beyond rights of nature in some ways, that rights of nature is really a platform to have these other conversations. But what does it look like, for example, when we get rid of private ownership of ecosystems? What does it mean for a forest to own itself, for example? What does it mean to get rid of this concept of a deed
And we don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we have a couple projects going that are going to talk about and create legal instruments and structures for that to happen, because after all private ownership of ecosystems is kind of all made up. You know? The English came over, they chopped up the indigenous land, put it into numbered parcels, and then we all kind of have bought numbered parcels over the years, but it’s all artificial. It’s not according to any bioregions, it’s not according to any ecosystems, it’s just lines drawn that somebody said you can now own this and have dominion over it.
So the question is from perhaps a more radical standpoint is how do we begin to unravel that. And I think rights of nature is a start because you begin to take a couple of those bundles, those sticks out of the bundle of rights when you talk about nature having rights, but in addition when you talk getting rid of private ownership, what does it look for a guardianship model to emerge that actually has legal standing, not just something we talk about. But what happens if a forest—ownership of a forest is able to return to the forest itself? And that’s an exciting new concept, I think, that is being wrapped in to some of the Rights of Nature work that is being done today.
SS: If we’re actually looking for the paradigm shift in the law, the cultural shift, so that those laws in Indian jurisdictions, splattered from East Coast to West Coast, really take off, not just within the United States, but internationally. Right? We need our brothers and sisters north and south of us and east and west of us to also play into this value shift to really make it meaningful.
Because the alternative is the rights of nature will come after you one way or another, right? [LAUGHTER] We can’t sit here and not say there’s a doomsday coming because that’s why you’re all interested. Right? There’s a doomsday coming where we run out of things, or we’ve poisoned things, and where our own well-being is absolutely threatened, because the rights of nature will come for you. And they have.
I mean, we talked about earlier, we’ve talked about flooding, we’ve talked about global warming, global impact. If we don’t shift and have this shift from property to pro-value of nature, rights of nature, it’s going to happen anyway. So whether we get in front of the problem and do it this way, and how we do it strategically is probably, for me, the most important.
And right now, Frank is absolutely right, we have to save property. We have to go with—Tribes have our property. We’re done letting it go to crap. We’re done letting you—permitting activities that there are not resources to permit. And we’re done doing that game. Right? And so there’s a whole strategy behind going from that property concept and that game into the rights of nature game, and that’s really the shift we’re talking about here for Rights of Nature law.
Host: Samantha Skenandore, Thomas Linzey and Frank Bibeau. “Legalizing Nature’s Rights: How Tribal Nations are Leading the Fastest Growing Environmental Movement in History”.
In the 1980s Jo Ann Baumgartner worked on a research project growing vegetables with reclaimed waste water that became the forerunner for the use of treated recycled water to irrigate farms in the California Central Coast and Salinas Valley. The experience was formative for her in two ways: she met her lifelong partner, Sam Earnshaw, and her eyes were opened to the profligate use of toxic chemicals to grow food.
Jo Ann and Sam became part of the cadre of pioneering farmers in the emerging organic movement and helped develop California Certified Organic Farmers and the Ecological Farming Association, and when they moved on from farming, they developed parallel careers conserving and enhancing biodiversity. Sam became the foremost advocate of hedgerows on California farms to provide habitat for wildlife and beneficial insects that prey on pests that feed on crops, while Jo Ann became the Executive Director of the Wild Farm Alliance, which promotes agriculture that protects and restores wild nature.
Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, had a defining influence on Jo Ann’s passion for nature, especially birds. As ED of the Wild Farm Alliance, Baumgartner has been working to show organic farmers how nature can be their ally and how being stewards of biodiversity can actually benefit their farming operations.
Jo Ann Baumgartner was interviewed by Arty Mangan of Bioneers.
Arty Mangan: Aldo Leopold, considered by many to be the father of wildlife ecology, in his seminal work, A Sand County Almanac, wrote: “Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.” How do you Interpret that quote?
Jo Ann Baumgartner: Wild Farm Alliance helps growers understand how to integrate nature into their farming, but I often think that humans haven’t been around long enough to fully understand nature. I think that quote is talking about how it takes a really long time to understand the nuances of just one organism, much less all its influences on a mountain. It could take the lifetime of a mountain to fully understand it.
Arty: Most farming is a disaster when it comes to how it affects nature around and downstream from the farm. You help educate and work with farmers to create conditions that increase biodiversity in ways that can actually benefit the farm. How do you define biodiversity?
Jo Ann Baumgartner
Jo Ann: I define it as a community of organisms with species and genetic diversity engaged in ecosystem processes. Not everybody includes ecosystem processes, but I think it’s key because functions can’t be separated from species. A community of organisms and their functions are intertwined. For example, as I get to know birds more, I get a better understanding of how they are shaping our world. Wild Farm Alliance has a new project in which we’re helping growers understand how field-edge habitats support insects that are beneficial to farmers. Both insects and birds are in rapid decline, so providing habitat for them is really important. Insects are the feedstock for many bird species. Different species shape our world. If many of the species that are currently threatened or endangered had already become extinct, our world would be profoundly different. Many of these species have a profound effect on how ecosystems function.
Arty: Can you explain a bit more about why biodiversity is important to agriculture?
Jo Ann: Having a diversity of species of bees, insects and even some birds is a huge boon to pollination. In tropical situations even some mammals have a role in pollination. Biodiversity also helps with pest control. As I mentioned, our work has shown that birds provide pest control and that field-edge habitats attract beneficial predator insects and arthropods. Coyotes help control rodent populations. Some birds also prey on rodents. Those predators are an asset to agriculture. And biodiversity in the vegetation on or around a farm helps prevent erosion; it holds the soil in place. On California farms, fields are often bare, causing valuable topsoil to wash away during rainstorms.
But more farmers are starting to put cover crops on their fields, which helps hold soil in place and enrich it. Biodiverse vegetation on farms also filters out fertilizers from runoff before they pollute waterways, and plants store carbon. Those are just a few examples of why biodiversity is so important in agriculture.
Arty: You mentioned the decline of insects. Why should we worry about having fewer insects?
Jo Ann: Many species of birds feed on insects, and insects are part of the diet of many reptiles and amphibians such as snakes, lizards and salamanders. Insects even constitute a significant portion of the diet of foxes and bears. And, sadly, we are losing so much of the beauty in the world as butterflies disappear. I spoke to an amazing native plant and butterfly scholar, and he said that when he was younger, in the sixties and seventies, he saw all kinds of butterflies that he now very rarely if ever sees. We are losing part of what makes our world so wonderful to live in.
Photo By Joe Kritz
Wild Farm Alliance put up about 250 nest-boxes on farms in the Monterey Bay area. One of those nest boxes had a chickadee in it whose beak was packed full of insects as it was feeding seven little chicks. That chickadee feeds those kids 150 times a day for a couple of weeks. They need to eat a huge number of insects in order to survive. To keep birds alive, we need native plants around farms to provide habitat for insects.
A study on the East Coast that looked at the relationship between birds, caterpillars and native plants found that Carolina Chickadees need a landscape of at least two thirds native plants in order to have a successful brood. Diverse native plants support insects that support birds, and those birds often help farmers by eating Codling Moths and other pest insects that live in fruit and nut trees and damage crops. Native plants are part of our wild farm story. We encourage farmers to put in native plant hedgerows and to conserve their native plant riparian areas and wind breaks.
Arty: Is it hard to convince farmers that birds can be a benefit to them when they see birds eat their seeds or crops?
Jo Ann: Yes, for many years when we spoke to farmers about birds, they only saw them as pests, but since we published the booklet, Supporting Birds and Managing Pest Birds, I don’t hear that as much. And when I do, I try to help the farmer understand that not all birds and not all insects are bad. I ask them which birds they’re having problems with, because often it’s just one species that’s transient, only there for a little while before heading somewhere else. If we want an agricultural system that does not use a lot of toxic materials to grow food, then we need to rely more on nature and birds and beneficial insects to help with pest control.
Chestnut-backed chickadee. Photo by Doug Greenberg
There is solid evidence that many bird species help reduce crop damage and/or increase yields, so why not support the birds if they’re going to help you economically? But for me, it’s more than just about economics, as important as that is. We need, as Leopold wrote back in the 1930s, an ecological conscience. We can’t just assume that everything that’s good for us is good for all the other organisms on the planet. We have to consider the needs of other species as well.
Arty: Dan Imhoff, one of the co-founders of Wild Farm Alliance, has said that the more monocultural and intensive a system is, the more nature seems to be the enemy. How has mainstream agriculture been antagonistic to wild ecosystems?
Jo Ann: Industrial agriculture uses really toxic pesticides. We know that one seed treated with a neonicotinoid pesticide can kill a bird, and birds dig up seeds, right? And we know that those “neonics” also translocate, so those toxins get into flower pollen and can kill bees or affect their nervous systems, and birds have been disoriented and killed by neonics and organophosphates getting into water. Farmers also use a lot of herbicides, so there are no viable habitats on the edges of farms anymore. There are fewer places for birds and other animals to coexist. Things would improve even if farmers just left some weeds, because quite a few weeds have flowers that support pollinators and beneficial insects and provide bird food.
Pollution that runs off of farms ends up in waterways and harms aquatic species. Many of our rivers are now just small ribbons of polluted water with hardly any habitat. Natural riparian areas should be the corridors for wildlife, especially as the planet warms and animals need to move more, but, in most places, there just aren’t enough flowers or shrubs or sufficient connectivity for wildlife to survive.
Why is there a biodiversity crisis? To a large extent, the answer is that our methods of food production destroy it. The industrial food system doesn’t value biodiversity. It’s hard to change the industrial agricultural way of thinking, but we know there’s a better way. Organic and regenerative farmers can grow food in ways that are less harmful and can even be beneficial to nature.
Hedgerow of deergrass, ceanothus, toyon, coyote brush, manzanita, and sugar bush. Photo by Sam Earnshaw
Arty: Organic farmers are theoretically required to conserve biodiversity and maintain or improve natural resources, including soil, water, wetlands, woodlands and wildlife. How would you assess the enforcement of and the compliance with that requirement?
Jo Ann: That’s tricky to answer because we believe strongly in organic, and we want to support the organic community as best we can, but the fact is that some organic farmers support biodiversity more than others. Several years ago, the Wild Farm Alliance surveyed the majority of organic certifiers in the country and found that there were some certifiers that did nothing in regards to evaluating farms for biodiversity while others did a great job. The organic community is starting to understand that this is part of the regulation and needs to be addressed, but more work has to be done.
The reality is that some organic certifiers’ applications only have one question about how biodiversity is encouraged on the farm, and there’s no real evaluation of it in the certification process. Other certifiers we’ve worked with have expanded their inspection reports to be more comprehensive about evaluating biodiversity. It’s an educational process because some growers are clueless about biodiversity. Certification inspectors can’t tell growers what to do, but, if they’re knowledgeable, they can initiate conversations about biodiversity. They can talk about what they have seen on other farms.
Arty: When you talk to farmers, what are some of the main principles and practices that you are encouraging them to adopt?
Jo Ann: There are four things: 1. Keep the soil covered with plants. 2. Add native flowering plants. 3. Add structure, not just grasses and forbs, but shrubs and trees. 4. Make it your intention to support the wildlife in our world as much as you can.
Wild Farm Alliance has three major campaigns: Farmland Flyways, Farmland Wildways and Farmland Waterways. We want to see a million nest-boxes and perches put up on farms in the U.S., and we want to see hedgerows to the moon and back, which is equivalent to the 500,000 miles of hedgerows that were once in the UK (sadly, they’ve lost half of them). And Farmland Waterways is about restoring and conserving 100,000 miles of riparian habitat, which is 10% of the river frontage on farms.
Food plays an essential role in preserving cultural identity and promoting health and wellness. In Black communities, food is a celebration of the rich cultural heritage and culinary traditions of the African diaspora. To commemorate Black History Month, we are paying homage to the Black chefs, farmers, and food activists who have made significant contributions to the food industry and continue to shape the way we eat today. Join us in honoring their legacy and learning more about the delicious dishes and sustainable practices that make Black Food a true celebration of diversity and resilience.
This week, we share presentations, podcasts, interviews, and recipes from food activists, community garden visionaries, and leaders in the Bioneers community.
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VIDEO: 911 Our Food System Is Not Working
Many of us have reached a point in our work at which we realize the food system is not working. Leaders keep 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.
Karen Washington, one of the most renowned and influential food activists of our era, shares her wisdom and analysis of why the food system doesn’t need to be fixed but has to be dramatically transformed.
VIDEO: Seeding Food Sovereignty: Black and Indigenous Farming Leaders Share Their Strategies
A food sovereignty movement is sprouting on the trail of colonialism and white supremacy, which have unknowingly planted the seeds of their own unmaking. This multigenerational movement is being led by colonized people uprooting global systems of privatized land ownership and environmental degradation. In confronting this system of exploitation, we can transform the underlying relationship of extraction to one rooted in kinship and reciprocity.
In this panel conversation, BIPOC leaders share food sovereignty strategies rooted in cultural knowledge, as well as the rematriation of land and dignity to colonized people who overwhelmingly represent the number of exploited laborers working on stolen land.
Bioneers 2023 Conference Speaker Highlight: Bryant Terry
Bryant Terry, an award-winning chef, educator and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system is Editor-in-Chief of 4 Color Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House and Ten Speed Press), Co-Principal and Innovation Director of the Zenmi creative studio, and Chef-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. Register for the Bioneers 2023 Conference to hear Bryant’s presentation this April.
PODCAST: Liberation, Food Justice, and Stewardship
“Our liberation is embracing our cultural foods. I think that’s a very important part spiritually, physically and otherwise.” The influences of Africans and Black Americans on food and agriculture is rooted in ancestral African knowledge and traditions of shared labor, worker co-ops and botanical polycultures.
In this podcast episode, we hear from Karen Washington and Bryant Terry on how Black Food culture is weaving the threads of a rich African agricultural heritage with the liberation of economics from an extractive corporate food oligarchy. The results can be health, conviviality, community wealth, and the power of self-determination.
ARTICLE: Urban Farming and the Wonders of Nature In a Food Desert
“Our farm is a sanctuary for life. It’s also a place where people can step out of the pressures of an everyday city life and be able to step into a new world.”
Chanowk and Judith Yisrael are farmers in the suburban South Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, which has been designated as a food desert. On their half-acre property, they grow 40 fruit trees and raise bees and chickens in what they refer to as a “home grown revolution.”
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 such as 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.
Now in its 34th year, the Bioneers Conference, viewed by many as the leading independent environmental and social-justice themed annual gathering in the U.S., will be held in Berkeley, California, on April 6-8, 2023. Featuring hundreds of inspiring and visionary leaders, Bioneers 2023 will bring thousands of engaged and civically active attendees to Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus and to venues across downtown Berkeley for three days of riveting talks, movement building, and connections.
The theme for 2023 is “Transformation, Regeneration, Celebration,” and speakers include writer Rebecca Solnit; Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Rep. Pramila Jayapal; energy policy leader Dr. Leah Stokes; writer and teacher Joanna Macy; Indigenous Policy and Climate Justice expert Jade Begay; activist chef, writer and educator Bryant Terry; National Geographic Explorer and whale behavior expert Dr. Shane Gero, journalist Laura Flanders; science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson; Othering and Belonging Institute Founder john a. powell; clean energy entrepreneur Danny Kennedy; chef and food activist Alice Waters; labor organizer Saru Jayaraman; and Indigenous scholar Dr. Yuria Celidwen, alongside hundreds of afternoon panelists and speakers.
According to Bioneers CEO & Co-Founder Kenny Ausubel, “The big wheels of massive change are turning. Climate disruption bears down daily, and there’s a widely felt morning-after awakening that it’s going to crash the economy and bring civilization to its knees. Although the shift to renewables is now an accelerating inevitability, it’s going to take relentless political action. Meanwhile, movements of the past decade for liberation, justice and multicultural democracy are swelling to challenge right-wing populist and neo-fascist forces underwritten by cynical plutocratic elites. Especially in these darkest of times, we come together to celebrate. We invite you to join forces with the Bioneers community of leadership in this time when we’re all called upon to be leaders.”
“Berkeley is a city of innovation and at the vanguard of new ideas, especially when it comes to the environment,” says Mayor Jesse Arreguín, “I am honored to have Berkeley be the host city for this important conference during a critical time for addressing climate change, and look forward to the exchange of ideas from trailblazing leaders across the country.” For the past three decades, Indigenous knowledge, participants, and partners have fundamentally shaped and guided Bioneers. The annual Indigenous Forum is a Native-led sovereign conference-within-a-conference — a unique cross-cultural and invitational platform. Regularly attracting representatives from dozens of tribal nations, it remains the only gathering of its kind, bringing together Indigenous activists, scientists, elders, youth, culture-bearers, and scholars to share their knowledge and frontline solutions in dialogue with a dynamic, multicultural audience.
Organizers also invest in the potential of youth and educators, with a bustling youth scholarship program bringing upwards of 500 youth and mentors to experience the Bioneers Conference annually.
Described by Bill McKibben as “a crucial organizing principle,” the Bioneers Conference has long served as an annual focal point for the progressive community. The gathering strives to feature well known figures as well as emergent leaders who are engaged in exemplary work in their communities. It’s not just the speakers who make a difference. Bioneers attendees are sophisticated and active leaders in their own right, leveraging inspiration and connections built at the event to return to their communities and fields with new energy and momentum for change.
With the move to the East Bay, Bioneers is excited to be located in such a thriving, progressive, and accessible new home. (The entire event will be within easy walking distance of the Downtown Berkeley BART Station.) For those interested in learning more about cutting-edge work taking place in the region, Bioneers is offering two pre-conference tours on April 5, one focused on urban farming and food production and one exploring the vibrant cultural history and ever-developing landscape of the East Bay as a hub of social justice activism.
Featuring engaged arts, musical performances, and ample opportunities for connection, Bioneers 2023 will bring hope, inspiration, and movement building to the East Bay. Registration is open now, with discounted rates available for youth, educators, activists, and seniors. More at: conference.bioneers.org. Contact press@bioneers.org for specific inquiries.
–– About Bioneers: Bioneers is an innovative nonprofit organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. Founded in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we act as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. Bioneers is inspiring and realizing a shift to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations.
Indigenous Peoples in the north have been feeling the disastrous effects of climate change for far longer than the rest of the planet’s population. According to NASA record sets, the Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet, disturbing terrestrial and marine ecosystems, destroying villages, and disrupting healthy ways of life.
Innovative solutions to the climate crisis born from the ingenuity rooted in Native knowledge systems are emerging from the circumpolar north. In this conversation, leaders at the Native Conservancy, Indigenous Climate Action, and Native Movement share their strategies for addressing climate change in the policy, civil society, and economic sectors.
Featuring: Dune Lankard (Eyak), Native Conservancy; Eriel Deranger (Athabaska Chippeweyan First Nation), Indigenous Climate Action; Ruth Miller (Dena’ina Athabaskan/Russian Ashkenazi Jewish), Native Movement. Moderated by Alexis Bunten (Aleut/Yup’ik), Co-Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program.
The following is an edited transcript from a live panel discussion.
Alexis Bunten
ALEXISBUNTEN (BIONEERS): When I was a very young kid, my grandfather pointed out that the Earth was getting hotter. Some scientists in very small circles were talking about it, but lots of Natives were talking about it. Even non-Natives who lived in the North were observing changes in the glaciers over a 60-year time span. People who lived up there knew it.
As people who’ve grown up in the North, what have you observed in terms of climate change?
DUNE LANKARD (NATIVE CONSERVANCY): When I was 5 years old, the Good Friday 1964 earthquake happened in Prince William Sound in our backyard, and that turned our fisheries and our way of life upside down. Before that, we were the razor clam capital of the world. It was like climate change happened to us overnight.
Dune Lankard
Then on the 26th anniversary of the ’64 quake, we had the Good Friday 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Again, our ecosystem took a major hit, our fisheries were disrupted, and everything was turned upside down again.
Then 25 years later, we have climate change, we have ocean acidification, we have ocean warming and ocean rise. About five years ago, we only had 44,000 sockeye salmon return home to the Copper River Delta. The following year, only 85,000 sockeyes found their way home. The next year, the ocean heated up to 76 degrees for over three weeks down to 20 feet below the surface, 40 feet at low water. Millions of krill, wild mussels, wild kelp forests, salmon, and birds died.
Sockey Salmon in the Copper River.
The ecosystem is changing before our very eyes. Because Alaska is colder than most places, it’s melting faster than most places. The permafrost, the sea ice, the glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates. Even two-and-a-half years ago, you could walk right off the shoreline onto Sheridan Glacier, which is right near Cordova, and walk for miles. Now it’s a mile away.
Ruth Miller
RUTH MILLER (NATIVE MOVEMENT): It’s really difficult to answer a question about when I first got started in climate advocacy, because for an indigenous person, I would say I got started 30,000 years ago, when my ancestors began their deep relationship with our lands. Our traditional subsistence practices were first developed to honor and respect and live in reciprocity with the lands. That was the beginning of our environmental advocacy, when we first learned 30,000 years ago that our survival was interdependent with the survival and the well-being of our non-human relatives.
In this lifetime, I think that my advocacy was first initiated when I was about 14 or 15. My very first job was working for United Tribes of Bristol Bay against the proposed Pebble Mine, which would have been one of the largest copper and gold mines in the country: an open-pit mine that would have devastated one of the last great salmon fisheries in the world.
We were meant to be supporting fishermen to testify to the EPA proceedings about why we didn’t want the mine. But as I sat there starting to talk with people about what their stories might say, how they might articulate why they didn’t want the mine, I got nowhere. And at 14 years old, I was frustrated. I was like, “What do you mean you don’t know what to say? Doesn’t this sound scary enough?” But I realized, very early on, that I was asking for the wrong story. Instead of asking, “Why are you against the proposed Pebble Mine?” I began asking, “What do our salmon mean to you?” Suddenly the stories began to flow like the fish through our streams.
Mist settles on Cook Inlet, not far from Illiamna, Alaska, and the proposed Pebble Project seeking to mine gold, silver, and molybdenum.
Coming back to Anchorage, I slowly came to an understanding that the environmental justice issues we’re fighting aren’t far out in these rural places. Just last summer, almost 10 years since that first experience in Bristol Bay, I learned that the creek that runs right near my house carries a Dena’ina name that means King Salmon Creek. In this tiny little stream that I blindly walked past almost every day of my life, king salmon used to run. In fact, we have stories of our biggest city, our gathering place, being home to thousands upon thousands of traditional fish camps lining the shores. Now we have the Port of Anchorage. We have 50,000 people, settlers mostly, guests on our homelands that have polluted our lands beyond recognition. There are no king salmon that flow in that river anymore.
So when I think about climate change, it’s not just a matter of the thawing permafrost, and the melting sea ice, and the threat to our infrastructure, and the increasing threat from shipping and militarization throughout the Arctic. It’s an intertwining dialogue that has to address both the roots of our people and our lifeways, the ways that our livelihoods continue to reflect our subsistence and cultural need for interdependency with the other species that will also be impacted by climate change. It is also a question of where we want to go from here as we face this existential threat that we are feeling in Alaska and in the north more than any other place in the world. What kind of future will we choose? What kind of Anchorage will we choose? What kind of pathway will leave us any future at all?
We are living this reality now. But we also have 30,000 years of experience of what right relationship can look like.
Anchorage skyline on a winter evening.
Eriel Deranger
ERIELDERANGER (INDIGENOUS CLIMATE ACTION): My people come from the Peace Athabaska Delta, which is in the Subarctic and the Arctic. It straddles both, and it is a really precarious place to be when we talk about Arctic impacts and northern impacts, because there’s this imaginary line. Are we Arctic, are we not Arctic? Do we get Arctic subsidies and supports like folks from the Arctic or do we not? We experience the same level of impacts that folks 80 kilometers north of us do, and some of those impacts are food.
Food is the first place where we see deep impacts to our culture due to climate change. We’re river people. We relied on fish and caribou and muskrats and birds and waterfowl. These keystone species weren’t just about food for us, but also clothing. The biggest change that our people have seen is in the cultural ceremony of harvesting these species. It was about bringing the community together. For a lot of elders, when they talk about climate change, they talk about the loss of community.
For us, climate change started with colonization. That’s when the climate changed for us, not just politically and culturally, but there were massive changes to the lands from ripping out those resources and treating them as something to be dominated and taken, and replacing them with consumerism and capitalism and hyper-individuality, and disconnecting us from those places. That led to this disconnected relationship with those keystone species. That led to this destabilization of our environments.
With the imposition of colonial extractivism and the largest industrial project on planet Earth, the Alberta tar sands, which lies about 200 kilometers south of my community, we saw massive changes to the river system, from the dewatering of that river system to support the extraction of the Alberta tar sands to the contamination of those very same rivers. These are the rivers that fed into our community. These rivers not only fed the muskrat and the caribou and the bison and the waterfowl, but they fed our community. And as that river got lower, it got hotter, it got contaminated, and the muskrat stopped going into our river systems.
Caribou used to migrate in the hundreds of thousands through my territory. We are down to less than 20,000 caribou that migrate through our territory today.
It’s not just climate change. Climate change is exacerbating the impacts that we’re feeling from extractivism, from the imposition of capitalistic values that have put a dollar amount on our species, that put a dollar amount on how we live.
The tar sands oil refinery, Alberta, Canada.
ALEXIS: All of you are working with organizations and constellations of networks and incredible people to address climate change. What are some of the initiatives and projects that you’re working on?
ERIEL: I think first and foremost is bringing visibility to the fact that Indigenous Peoples at large globally are experiencing the impacts of climate change first and most intensely, and that’s because of the intimate relationships that we have with the land. Our community is already experiencing in some places more than two degrees in changes in temperatures.
But beyond that, our knowledge is so critical to building solutions that aren’t just going to help our communities combat the crisis by building regional solutions, but that can be replicated at large to support regional solutions that are aligned with relationships with the lands and territories. Indigenous Climate Action is an organization based out of so-called Canada, and we’re really looking to skill up, empower, inspire, and inform indigenous leaders in our country to recognize that they have the knowledge and the power and the moral and legal frameworks to lead climate solutions – not just in Canada, but the world over.
We have legal rights, as dictated under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that allow us to self-govern, to decide how our lands and territories are managed, to give free prior and informed consent to projects that happen on our land, and to form our own systems of governance and education, and we need to start flexing those rights. We need to start advocating for them, and we need to understand the importance that they hold in advancing solutions.
We do that through amplifying the beautiful solutions that we’re already seeing, whether that’s the cultural revitalization in our communities through language, artisan work, or indigenized economies.
At Indigenous Climate Action, we are doing indigenous climate leadership training; we are building an indigenous just transition guide; we are working on having indigenous-led divestment movements; and we are also working toward looking at the suite of climate policies and what it means to decolonize them.
This is the work that we see as critical, not just to ensure that folks in the Arctic can continue to thrive for this generation and the seven generations beyond us, but so all Indigenous Peoples can be recognized in the communities and for the values that our knowledge holds in driving solutions for tomorrow.
RUTH: In Native Movement, yes, we’re a nonprofit, but we work in a variety of ways to undermine the kinds of systemic rules that have been fed us. We have a variety of programs in addition to the climate justice work that I support. We have an environmental justice program that works at community invitation to intervene toward environmental justice and against extractive development across our state. But we also have a gender justice and healing department, where we work towards LGBTQ and two-spirit rights, where we work against police brutality, where we work toward the protection of our indigenous women and girls and two-spirit peoples, because we know that all of these issues are intertwining. They all create the fabric of what a healthy indigenous society can look like.
We also fiscally sponsor several community initiatives so that community members can bring their localized, home-grown solutions to us and be incubated to get strategic support, campaign support, and fiscal support to then grow and take on a life of their own.
One of our primary tactics is truth-telling. We do a lot of training and capacity building, working with our own community members to talk about the harms and the hurts that we’ve been through; what have we gone through to arrive at this moment of intertwining crises? Then we work to heal, because we deserve to be whole, we deserve to be healed and healthy as we advocate for our own dignity and our own human rights. When we build capacity, we are also elevating our local leaders into positions of power and supporting them to be able to articulate their expertise so that we are ever-growing, constantly replaceable, and our movement is sustainable.
We do a ton of trainings, one of which is a decolonization training. (As if that can be achieved in a training, right?) But it is a very intensive, long training that we offer that tells the truth about the history of Alaska and the history of the US. Through these trainings, we’re doing that healing work, we’re doing that truth-telling work, and we’re also creating space for imagination and creativity to show us a path forward that is visionary and brighter than what we have been given.
We also work on a lot of policy, but it’s not just bringing policy to our communities. It is a two-way reciprocal relationship of translating complex English policy on climate into language that we recognize and that resonates with us. Then we apply our values-based framework to see if that policy reflects us.
We also engage with a lot of storytelling and narrative work. When most people think of the climate crisis, they still see a polar bear stranded on an ice flow. Our story of climate crisis is emotional. It describes deep interdependency that goes back 30,000 years. Our climate crisis is my moment of heartbreak when I realize that the knowledge I was guided in by an elder about the time to harvest fiddleheads is wrong for the first time. That elder is wrong because the seasons have changed so drastically. By empowering greater narrative sovereignty from our community members, we are able to shift what the climate crisis looks like and what the story of climate solutions looks like.
DUNE: My mother decided that when I was 10, I was “the one.” I said, “The one what?” And she said, “You’re the one who’s going to save our salmon and our people and our language and our way of life.” And I said, “I’m 10, Mama, what about Debbie, Linda, Don, Pam, Bruce and Joe?” And she said, “No, you’re more stubborn and you have more will power, and I know that you will never sell us out.” And I said, “So you’ve cursed me.” And she said, “I’ve gifted you.”
She and grandma started teaching me about the seasons of animals and berries. I remember we were out blueberry picking one time, and grandma said, “The pink salmon run is coming to a close.” We weren’t anywhere near a stream, so I said, “Grandma, did that just come out of the blue?” She said, “No, the fireweed is almost flowering at the top. When it’s close to the top, the run is over.” I was like, “Oh my god, from this flower you can tell that the run is dwindling?”
Then I grew up with hatchery fish, “computer fish.” They’re remote release, so they have nothing to do with those flowers. They have nothing to do with reality. So whenever I see those fireweeds now, I know that things are not the same because I can’t tell time by the flowers anymore.
Thousands of salmon spawning in August in the Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery near Valdez in Southeastern Alaska
We need to change our relationship with our traditional food sources and at the same time practice our subsistence way of life. In Alaska, 90% of the people who live in rural communities still practice a subsistence lifestyle. They’re still connected to the land and the sea and those seasons of animals. But already we can see huge changes happening.
But here’s the thing: It’s not just a matter of climate change; it’s a matter of law and policy and the extermination of our resources and our way of life. And I’m not in the mood for this anymore. We’ve put up with this nonsense for way too long.
We have to fight back. And how that happens isn’t by luck because we want it to, it happens because we file lawsuits, we block roads, we jump off of buildings with banners, we get CDQs for mariculture for the service of the ocean for Indigenous Peoples around the world. The people who are getting permitted are Indigenous Peoples on their ancestral land, in front of their ancestral waters, where they’ve lived for thousands and thousands of years. We’re the original stewards, the original guardians, so we should be leading the way, not following somebody else who doesn’t have a plan.
This is an opportunity to change the way that not only we live on the ocean but to change our relationship with our food source. We scale up by scaling down. We build local processing facilities, so we can process our own foods. We take care of our own people. We figure out how to sell our excess. We put ourselves in a position so we’re able to lead this industry by example. Because the fishermen are going to get their share, industry is going to get their share, the bigs, as we call them – the processors, the canneries, the hatcheries, the big seafood corporations – everybody’s going to get their share. But I’ll tell you what, if Indigenous Peoples don’t organize and don’t figure out how to overcome these barriers to entry, then they’re not going to be a part of this “emerging industry” that happens to be thousands of years old.
Our Native Conservancy is addressing the dozen or so barriers to entry. We’re starting an indigenous ocean farmer’s loan and grant fund. We’re starting the Native Kelp Cooperative. We’re starting the Native Kelp Alliance. We’re starting to build our own boats. We just bought our own boat company and we’re about ready to buy another. We’re going to try to figure out how to drive this economy that is about sustainability and being regenerative. We can do it ourselves by leading the way.
I feel like we’re at one of those pivotal times in history. With these modern-day land claims, if the Indigenous Peoples organize and lead, they’re going to be able to feed their people, they’re going to be able to be a part of a regenerative economy that’s actually good for the ocean.
Our goal is to put our Indigenous Peoples in a position to take things back into their own control. To be able to live in their villages and know that they’re a part of something greater than just themselves.
ERIEL: This is why listening to the people from the North is so important, because Northern people, we don’t take food for granted. We’re so far north we don’t have the luxury of just picking and choosing at the grocery store. Our people are connected to where our foods come from. It’s part of our identities. My people are called caribou people because of the vast caribou that existed there. We know what it means to build sustainable food systems, and we know that it requires stable ecosystems.
It’s critical to listen to those who have those connections and understandings and relationships about what we can do to pave a better future. It’s all dependent on ecosystem health.
The delicate relationships that allow the natural world’s relatives — from microbes to mountain lions — to thrive are a reminder of our reliance upon one another. While Earth’s inhabitants literally can’t live without each other, recent reports have shown that global wildlife populations have declined by 69% since 1970. That loss of biodiversity not only affects the animals and plants that call these ecosystems home, but also the millions of people who rely on them for their livelihoods, food, and medicine.
As Justin Winters writes in an article below, “The only way to thrive is together.”
It is our responsibility to take action and protect these vital ecosystems by supporting conservation efforts, reducing pollution and habitat destruction, and implementing sustainable land-use practices. By conserving biodiversity, we ensure the survival of countless species and the continuation of vital ecosystem services that support life on Earth.
This week, we share interviews, articles, and news covering efforts to conserve and improve the biodiversity of our planet.
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“We Can’t Give Up Anything”: 3 Experts on Protecting Biodiversity
“It’s not just about protecting or conserving. It’s also about governing these territories from a life-centric view. It’s a community-collective vision articulated through many, many participatory activities that help define the future vision for the territory.” -Atossa Soltani
In 2020, the United Nations published an alarming report, stating that in the last two decades — despite all of the global conferences and initiatives that took place to set agreements to stop the destruction of the natural world and to protect biodiversity — not a single goal was met. In these interviews, activists and scientists Atossa Soltani, Rod Fujita, and Carly Vynne describe promising methods for protecting wildlife and wildlands across the world.
From Childhood Fascination to Frog Conservation: An Interview with Robin Moore
“At school, when you’re really into this kind of thing, you’re sort of a weirdo. What I realized later in life is that the weirdos who hold onto that fascination are the most interesting.”
Robin Moore, the Vice President of Communications and Marketing for Re:wild, turned his childhood fascination with frogs into a career in conservation. In this conversation with Bioneers’ Teo Grossman, he talks about growing up in Edinburgh and spending his summers in the Highlands, where he had a passionate connection with the frogs and other wildlife in his backyard. He went on to study zoology and ecology, eventually earning a Ph.D. and studying a species of frog in Majorca, Spain. After realizing the extent of the threat facing amphibians, he became more involved in frog conservation efforts and spearheaded a project called The Search for Lost Frogs at Conservation International.
Protecting Cultural and Biological Diversity Is Central to Solving Climate Change
“Representation is key. The solution to tackle the climate crisis is, at its core, intersectional. By protecting cultural diversity, we protect biodiversity. The only way to thrive is together.”
The Amazon rainforest is home to over 16,000 different tree species and 40,000 plant species, making it one of the most biologically diverse locations in the world. Without the Amazon, our global climate system would collapse, and it is now more important than ever to respect and support the diverse cultures that have helped to preserve these priceless ecosystems that have enabled humanity to evolve.
Casey Camp-Horinek, a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, is a longtime activist, environmentalist, actress, and author. Her work has led to the Ponca Nation being the first tribe in Oklahoma to adopt a Rights of Nature statute and to pass a moratorium on fracking on its territory. Casey, who was instrumental in the drafting of the first International Indigenous Women’s Treaty protecting the Rights of Nature, works with Indigenous and other leaders and organizations globally and sits on the boards of WECAN, Movement Rights, and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Register for the Bioneers 2023 Conference to hear Casey’s presentation this April.
Amazon Rainforest Defender Marina Silva Named Brazil’s New Environment Minister
“Brazil will return to the protagonist role it previously had when it comes to climate, to biodiversity.”
Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that Amazon activist (and former Bioneers speaker) Marina Silva will be the country’s next minister of environment. This announcement indicates the new administration will prioritize cracking down on illegal deforestation in the Amazon, even if it means conflicting with powerful agribusiness interests.
A resplendent rainbow fish, a frog that looks like chocolate, a Thai tarantula, an anemone that rides on the back of a hermit crab, and the world’s largest water lily are among the new species named by science in 2022. In this well-trodden world, finding a new species is a glimpse of the uncharted riches of biodiversity still hidden around the globe.
The influences of Africans and Black Americans on food and agriculture is rooted in ancestral African knowledge and traditions of shared labor, worker co-ops and botanical polycultures.
In this episode, we hear from Karen Washington and Bryant Terry on how Black Food culture is weaving the threads of a rich African agricultural heritage with the liberation of economics from an extractive corporate food oligarchy. The results can be health, conviviality, community wealth, and the power of self-determination.
Featuring
Karen Washington, co-owner/farmer of Rise & Root Farm, has been a legendary activist in the community gardening movement since 1985. Renowned for turning empty Bronx lots into verdant spaces, Karen is: a former President of the NYC Community Garden Coalition; a board member of: the NY Botanical Gardens, Why Hunger, and NYC Farm School; a co-founder of Black Urban Growers (BUGS); and a pioneering force in establishing urban farmers’ markets.
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.
Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcast
Transcript
Neil Harvey (Host): Like other foundational contributions to American culture, the influences of Africans and Black Americans on food and agriculture have been variously erased, scorned and belittled. African American agrarian history is doubly complicated by its intimate association with the trauma of slavery. Africans who were violently forced into captivity and brought to the Americas to power the plantation economy were highly skilled farmers with expertise in agriculture founded in ancestral African knowledge. Their traditions were ones of shared labor, worker coops and botanical polycultures. At the heart of their worldview was reverence for the sacredness of the Earth.
Across centuries of enslavement, African-descended people survived savage injustice and suffering. When slavery ended, Black farmers were able to purchase nearly 16 million acres of land. Today almost all of that is gone, the result of stolen lands, terrorism and structural racism including by US government programs: the modern US Department of Agriculture has been legally found to have discriminated against Black farmers on a mass scale.
These burdens of history are the context for today’s radical health disparities between Black and white communities, including an epidemic of diet-related diseases.
But renowned urban farming trailblazer Karen Washington says it’s time to overcome those burdens of history and remember the deeper African-American lineage.
Karen Washington(KW): So it starts by understanding your history. I grew up in an area where farming was equivalent to slavery. And now that’s starting to change because when the elders speak to young people they say, you know why we were brought here enslaved? We were brought here because of our knowledge of agriculture.
We weren’t brought here because we were dumb or strong. We were brought here because we had agriculture in our blood. We’re an agrarian people. We brought seeds in our hair to feed this country, and when you start talking to that—to black and brown people, all of a sudden they understand the power that they have, their connection to food.
Host: Inspired by a rich African agrarian heritage, Karen Washington sees food justice as a seminal space to uplift Black communities holistically.She has been recognized by Ebony Magazine as one of the hundred most influential African Americans, and the New York Times referred to her as “urban farming’s de facto godmother.”
As a tireless advocate for the economic empowerment of communities of color, she is a powerful force for creating the conditions for people of color to have equal access to health, distributed wealth and power.
KW: For so long, the negativity that has been instilled in our head when our relationship to food—when the truth comes up—and also when it’s spoken from the elders who knew about farming, knew about the history—it changes, and then all of a sudden people say you know what, I want to be in the game. I want to understand my relationship to food because all around me I see the diet-related disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity that’s happening. But yet they’ll tell you my grandparent lived to 100 years of age because they ate the food from the Earth. And so, again, talk about your history, that rich cultural history. Bring it up to the surface so that people around are now proud of that history, and proud of that relationship to food and who they are.
Bryant Terry (BT): You know, I always talk about the idea of Sankofa, this West African concept of, you know, looking backwards as we move forward, and bringing with us the best practices and traditions.
Host: Bryant Terry grew up in the South where he worked in his grandfather’s diverse urban garden. They grew grape vines, nut trees and a variety of vegetables, along with raising chickens and pigs. At the time, he hated weeding, harvesting, and shucking corn and peas. Now he looks back in appreciation of the life lessons he learned at that backyard garden in Memphis.
Bryant Terry went on to author landmark books bridging traditional African American foods with veganism. But, he says, food is about a lot more than food.
BT: And I knew coming from these strong middle class black communities going to Atlanta and Chicago and Georgia, and other parts of the country and visiting black folks that 1) my first encounter with this idea of veganism came from Seventh Day Adventists, black Seventh Day Adventists in my community. And then in high school, when I had to go through my obligatory – after reading the autobiography of Malcolm X – my obligatory obsessive period with the nation of Islam, I learned about Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s How to Eat to Live two-book collection that talked about the rejection of the standard American diet and embracing foods that are for healing and life. We can talk about Rastafarians and the Ital diet. We can talk about comedians – Dick Gregory, and his activism around food and health issues. We can talk about—I mean, the impetus for me even shifting my whole habits and attitudes and politics around food was hearing the song Beef by blastmaster KRS-One at Boogie Down Productions, a hip hop song that talked about factory farming.
Beef, what a relief
When will this poisonous product cease?
This is another Public Service Announcement
You can believe it or you can doubt it
Let us begin now with the cow
The way it gets to your plate and how
The cow doesn’t grow fast enough for man
So through his greed he makes a faster plan
Host: Research has shown a direct link between diet and disease. Due to a severe lack of access to healthy foods and easy access to the Standard American Diet of highly processed carbohydrates, unhealthy fats and sugar, Black Americans suffer disproportionately from diet related disease compared to whites.
At the same time, racist attitudes have disparaged traditional African and African-American foods that have sustained Black people through centuries of struggle and privation.
BT: In the spirit of anti-blackness, everything we do is vilified, you know, including our food. And we know historically and contemporarily —and it’s not just a wider culture, it’s even—this is the thing that hurts and upsets me, and why I write books and why this book is so important, because it’s even people of African descent. Black folks who will be talking about our food as “slave food”, to vilify and talk so negatively about our historical and cultural foods.
And I’m not going to deny things like chitlins and pigs feet and, you know, whatever, the kind of discarded parts that plantation owners might force many enslaved Africans to eat. That’s about ingenuity and creativity and making the best with what people had. So that’s one part.
But then the other one is that when people talk about black food, they’re imagining the big flavored meats and the overcooked vegetables and the sugary desserts that you find at a soul food restaurant, right?
I’m not denying that red velvet cake, and mac’n’cheese, and ribs, and whatever — But what about collards, mustards, turnips, kale, dandelion, sugar snap peas, pole beans, black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, kale? These are our traditional foods. These are the types of food that have sustained people for generations, and we can’t leave this out of the conversation, because it’s been intentionally erased. You know? These are the types of foods that any Western-trained allopathic physician, nutritionist or dietician would say we should all be eating. Collard foods is black superfoods. You know? They’re high in A, C and E. They have a lot of anti cancer-fighting compounds. Okra, which is like one of the king staples of black foodways coming from the continent and spreading around, it helps to lower blood pressure. So…
Our liberation is embracing our cultural foods. I think that’s a very important part spiritually, physically and otherwise. We have to be embracing these foods because it’s our birthright. They were there before us and they’ve sustained us through the roughest times. And I think they will be a powerful way to address this exponential rise in preventable diet-related illnesses that we see in our communities.
Host: Food at its essence is nourishment. It’s health and wellbeing. It’s family and community and culture. It’s a daily thanksgiving to the Earth and ancestors.
Then again, it’s one thing to embrace cultural foods and food culture. Yet how do you do that within a fundamentally extractive, commodified, and intensely monopolized food economy?Again, Karen Washington…
KW: And if we look at the food system closely, we can see that it’s in like four quadrants.
There’s the production, there’s the processing, there’s the distribution, and there’s the consumption. On one hand you have the movers and the shakers, the shakers being the policymakers and climate change, the other side is the movers, labor and energy and waste. It’s being fueled by land and resources.
But if you look at those four quadrants, what is the common denominator that you see? It’s labor. This land that we are on was built on the backs of indigenous and enslaved people, that even today our food system, again, is being built on labor from prisons, and now it’s the migrant workers that are providing the cheap labor in this country, and you wonder why there’s such a disconnect of people trying to understand where their food comes from, trying to feed their family, where for so long the food system is supposed to be helping those people but instead it’s exploiting them.
And so, for me, it’s about shifting of power, shifting of power. The way the food system is going to change is shifting the power from those who for so long have had power over others back into the hands of the community.
BT: We can’t just talk about food in isolation because what our industrialized food system has done is create it as a commodity, and then you have this huge chasm where so many of the things that have been traditionally so integral to the way that we grow food and cook it and eat it, like art, like culture, like community, like building around the table, like growing food in a sustainable way, like feeling like we can do it in a communalistic way and not in this individualistic capitalist way. My work, through books, through activism, through talking has been about reintegrating that so that we can have all those things in concert with each other, because it’s not just about food as fuel, it’s about life, it’s about connection, it’s about love, it’s about all these things that capitalism has stripped it of.
Host: Bryant Terry is constantly seeking ways to counter this shrink-wrapped racial capitalism that dominates the food economy.
At a high tide of racial reckoning in 2020, he was inspired by reading Toni Morrison’s book celebrating Black culture. Titled The Black Book, in it Morrison wanted to explore this provocative question “What would your life be without racism?”
Bryant Terry decided to pose that question to Black cultural leaders and asked them to share family recipes and stories for his book Black Food. It was going to be published at an epic moment when the Movement for Black Lives was becoming the biggest and most diverse in American history. Publishers were scrambling to fabricate a more inclusive, anti-racist image. Bryant Terry seized the moment.
BT: This book came on the heels of, in 2020, when we were as a country dealing with this, what people describe as a racial reckoning, really looking inward, and facing the realities of how we have treated black folks, people of African descent and other folks of color, but specifically black folks, because this was coming on the heels of the state murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
And in the midst of that, there was a revelation of a lot of racism in food media. I don’t know if you all are aware of this, but there were some legacy food magazines that were being called out for their racist behavior, their failure to support their employees of color, the mistreatment of many of their black and other folks of color employees. And then there were some publishing companies – it was revealed that they were doing some horribly racist things to some of their authors, as well as employees. And one of my friends, I literally learned about this horrible way in which this major publisher in New York City treated her and practically tried to erase her from her book because she co-authored with a white woman. And they thought that the white woman would be a better face of the book than this heavyset black woman.
For me, it was a moment where, this book that I had been thinking about putting together for years, when I contacted all the contributors or potential contributors, what I told them is that you can’t write a book like this without touching on the ways in which black people have been exploited and marginalized and erased. That’s just a reality that we know we contend with all the time. And I feel like so many of the books that are talking about our realities do focus on our struggles and focus on our historical marginalization and oppression. And we know about these realities, so we don’t have to talk about it to each other because we’re aware of it. And one of the things that I was clear about is that this book, I wanted it to be created without concern for the white gaze. I wanted this to be about black people speaking to each other, having conversations about our deep connection to food, and about our different foodways and how they’ve developed throughout the globe. And of course we want to invite the world in to be a part of the conversation, but we’re not modifying, we’re not trying to make it pretty, we’re just speaking about our realities.
BT: I’m just gonna be real with you all, when everything was going down with the racial reckoning with a lot of these companies and corporations, they were embarrassed, and they were invested in repairing reputational harm.
I was trained as a historian, I’ve seen this before, and I was very clear that there was going to be this period in which these companies were working really hard to repair reputational harm, and they’re going to be doing everything to make black folks happy or perform their kind of solidarity or blackness or whatever it looked like, and I was clear that that door was going to be open and then it was going to shut again. And I wasn’t clear about how long it was going to be, and it’s been interesting, because I have been talking about, yeah, I feel like the door is shutting.
I was in Philadelphia at this conference. Korsha Wilson is this journalist based in New Jersey. She wrote a big profile on me in The New York Times, and we were in conversation. And I brought up the fact that I felt like the door was closing. And she said it’s already closed. She talked about in 2020 how she was getting like an avalanche, a waterfall of like, you know, jobs from magazines and newspapers. And this is a respected, seasoned journalist and she said it slowed down to a trickle. So imagine those up-and-coming budding writers who are trying to do this work and get into like food media.
And so what I was clear about with my agent is this is a moment to grab power. This is a moment where we need to move beyond just being rewarded as talent, which often happens.
You know, when I first started publishing, the first thing when I got my first contract and I talked to my parents about it, the first thing my dad said to me is like, you know, Son, I’m proud of you; you know, Penguin Random House is a reputable publisher and I’m glad they’re going to put your book out, but let me just say this, and I want you to remember this always: You need to think like Master P. I don’t know if you all know who Master P is. He’s an older rapper and entrepreneur, but for the younger people, but, you know, he was one of these pioneers where he was just like, look, it’s not just about making music, it’s about ownership; it’s about creating your own labels, it’s about controlling, it’s about self-determination.
And so, in many ways, now that I have my publishing in print, sure, it’s still under Penguin Random House, but like honestly, I’m looking at it as like a prestigious and well-paid internship because the goal for me is to learn about the internal logic, the structure, like the way that publishing operates so that I can eventually have my own independent publishing company and not even have to rely on like some big multinational corporation doing the work.
Host: Bryant Terry has received the James Beard and NAACP awards for his writing and activism. He is currently the chef-in-residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco where he also creates public programming at the intersection of food, farming, health, activism, art, and culture..
When we return… Can a broken food system that systematically disadvantages low-income communities actually be transformed? Can community-based wealth creation challenge the concentration of corporate power over our food? And how do we begin to build a more just economic system and a healthier food system? It comes down to power.
I’m Neil Harvey. You’re listening to The Bioneers…
You can visit bioneers.org to subscribe to our newsletters and podcasts, check out Deep Dives on the topics that matter to you most, and learn about our events. That’s bioneers.org…
Access to healthy, affordable food is a basic human right. Yet 34 million people in the US suffer from food insecurity – in other words, hunger. Black households experience food insecurity at almost three times the rate of white families.
The term food desert is used to describe the countless communities where healthy food is flat-out unavailable. But Karen Washington says “food desert” is an outsider term imposed on communities which have been held back by structural racism.
She has, instead, coined the term “food apartheid.” It signifies the institutional inequities that result in poverty, hunger and lousy food access. Just bringing in a food store to these communities doesn’t change the underlying causes of injustice.
KW: 7.8 billion people on this Earth, but a handful of companies control the food, the water, the land, the seeds, and we sat back and let it happen. We’ve become so complacent and so silent, and yet a handful, predominantly white men control the food system of 7.8 billion people on this planet. When do we wake up to grab our power? Where is the urgency for us to collectively I talk about social capital and communal wealth. I don’t want a hand out, I want a hand in. The system has to change so that we have the power to make decisions within our own community. But we’re not doing that. We sit back and let politicians and other outside organizations make change for us. The time is now for us to start coming together collectively, collectively to shift the power back into our hands. And we can do it.
From seed to grocery shelf, corporate consolidation stands against the ability of communities to produce, process and distribute healthy, affordable, culturally-appropriate food.
Karen Washington and Bryant Terry both call for a shift of power into the hands of local communities.
BT: The things that we often look at when we talk about health, food and farming issues is, you know, the things that I think are seemingly apolitical, like growing food, like cooking meals, like building around the table and eating with people in our formal and informal kinship networks. These are highly political, dare I say radical, in a food system that’s controlled by five multinational food corporations that largely control our food system. They don’t want us growing our own food. They want us buying their crappy food that they’re producing on these big farms. They don’t want us cooking. They don’t want us deepening our cooking practice because they want us buying their ready-made processed packaged foods, fast foods.
And I’m not blaming the victim, because structurally I understand why people are going to fast food restaurants and getting industrialized foods. But what I’m saying is that in the face of that, doing things like making—growing your own food in rural areas, in urban areas, making meals from scratch, building around a table, they want us eating our food in our car, over our sink, when we leave one low-paying job to the next low-paying job.
So I think that it’s important to understand that these are radical acts of resistance that we can do on a daily basis, and I think that cooking is a very powerful and radical act where we can exert our agency over how we feed ourselves.
Host: Karen Washington says that as crucial as food pantries and soup kitchens are for people’s survival, they are also part of the problem because they’re baked into the system.
KW: Folks, it’s emergency purposes only. It’s not people’s way of living. And I tell the nonprofits to get out of the way and let people start thinking about self-sufficient and self-reliance, and that means having the economic power or thinking about social capital and communal wealth, teaching people how to flourish in terms of economics, financial education, entrepreneurship, owning their own businesses, having money and resources that are being made by the community coming back into the community, and teaching communities the power of giving and loving and sharing.
Host: To build a food system with those values, Karen Washington and a group of fellow New Yorkers developed a plan to empower those at the very heart of the food system. It’s called the Black Farmers Fund. Instead of waiting for the government, the Fund is designed to empower and support economic development, entrepreneurship, jobs, ownership, and community wealth building.
But Washington also believes we need to rethink the very concept of ownership that led us to this predicament.
KW: And I’d rather say instead of saying ownership, we should say stewards, because that’s what we are. We’re stewards of the land because I don’t believe you can own anything. You don’t live long enough on Earth to own anything. You know, why is it that we’re always trying to go against nature instead of working with nature?
But if you say that you want land so you can steward the land, so that you can work with nature so that the land is an element that’s part of this whole ecosystem, then it makes sense, and it’s not threatening because you’re not grabbing it to hold onto it, you’re using it as a way to preserve this ecosystem that we’re all part of.
When we left the land, we lost our power. We lost who we are. And I tell people of color, look at the color of your skin because the color of your skin is soil. And when you look at that color, when I put my hands in that soil, Bryant baby, and I look at that brown skin, I say hello, ancestors. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And we’ve got to start thinking about that and start embracing us, embracing us together. Don’t let people separate us. Think about us collectively as a group of power. We stand on the shoulders of kings and queens. And I tell my young people sometimes when your crown is crooked, go in that mirror and make sure that crown is straight, because you are the remnants of kings and queens on this Earth.
In 2020, the United Nations published an alarming report, stating that in the last two decades — despite all of the global conferences and initiatives that took place to set agreements to stop the destruction of the natural world and to protect biodiversity, not a single goal was met.
In the months and years since, we’ve seen a global realization of the high stakes inherent in ignoring these goals. It’s an essential understanding that everything is connected: the mass extinction crisis, climate chaos, the collapse of the world’s coral reefs, sea level rise, and refugees fleeing the loss of their lands and ability to grow food.
The good news is we know what we need to do. From landscape conservation to carbon reserves and drawdown tactics, the answers are within reach. But this is a global crisis, which raises big questions about how decisions are made. How are we going to create more protected land? What does protection mean?Who gets to decide which initiatives take priority and where the resources come from to address those initiatives?
We also know what hasn’t worked before. There is a tacit agreement among most biodiversity protectors that the solution isn’t to turn large swathes of land into national parks and kick out the people living on it. Restoring ecosystems or leaving them intact doesn’t inherently require a ban on hunting or farming. While the old, outdated concept of “wilderness” was defined by the U.S. government as “a place where humans may visit, but do not remain,” we now know that a healthy symbiosis between humans, plants, and animals can make ecosystems thrive. There are 9 billion of us on the planet — we have to learn to co-exist.
Unsurprisingly, an estimated 80% of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity is on traditional lands, where indigenous people have developed traditional ecological knowledge over thousands of years. Honoring and taking cues from this knowledge may very well hold the key to a future in which all of us not only co-exist, but thrive.
Conserving the Amazon with Indigenous Communities at the Helm
NASA calls the Amazon Rainforest the engine of the global weather system. Indigenous Peoples call it the heart of the world. According to Greenpeace, “As an ecosystem, the Amazon is one of the most biodiverse places on earth. Over 3 million species live in the rainforest, and over 2,500 tree species (or one-third of all tropical trees that exist on earth) help to create and sustain this vibrant ecosystem.”
Development and extractive industry gravely threaten the Amazon, making immediate conservation efforts absolutely essential.
“Every tree in the Amazon lifts up about a thousand liters of water a day into the atmosphere. The area, which is collectively larger than the continental United States, lifts up a river larger than the Amazon River every day, into the sky,” says Atossa Soltani, founder and board president of Amazon Watch. “That atmospheric river summons the rain into the continent of South America, and also the rest of the world. It’s as if it is the engine of the global weather system, pulsating the rain, moisture, and vapor that makes the South American continent so green.”
Soltani served as Amazon Watch’s first Executive Director for 18 years. She’s been documenting and publicizing forest destruction and human rights abuses caused by extractive industries and large-scale energy projects throughout the Amazon, and she’s led successful campaigns to convince oil companies and international financial institutions to adopt stronger environmental and social standards.
“Just to give you an idea of the size of the Amazon, the flow of the Amazon River at the mouth is 209,000 cubic meters per second, which is the same as the next six largest rivers of the world combined,” says Soltani. “Imagine a river 20% bigger than that that’s lifted off the forest every day and into the atmosphere. What they’re calling ‘the sacred headwaters of the Amazon’ is an area that’s larger than Oregon. It’s 74 million acres, where you have incredibly rich biodiversity, but also incredible amounts of threat. This area is also majority indigenous lands. If business as usual were allowed to go on, this area would be converted to mostly oil and mining reserves or cattle ranching or agribusiness.”
Somewhere around 20% of the rainforest has been destroyed, and Soltani says that we can expect to see a collapse or unraveling of the ecological systems in the region with just 5% more deforestation.
So how do we stop this terrible trajectory and restore the forests and biodiversity? Soltani says the first step is to finally let the indigenous people who live on the land lead the way.
A coalition of indigenous peoples created an unprecedented collaboration to protect the crucial bioregion shared by Ecuador and Peru.
Soltani is the director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, working to protect one of the most biodiverse rainforests on Earth in an alliance with Amazonian indigenous nations of Ecuador and Peru and partners in civil society. It would permanently protect 80% of the Amazon rainforest by 2025 — that’s 34 million hectares of the Amazon forest that would be off limits to fossil fuel extraction, access roads, and mega-infrastructure projects. The initiative also requires that indigenous peoples be deeply involved in all policy decisions about their territories.
“It’s an area in which the carbon in the trees and the carbon that’s in the oil reserves combined would be over almost six billion tons. That’s carbon that we could be conserving,” says Soltani. “Plus it would be the most biodiverse rainforest on the planet.”
In practical terms, what does it mean to protect this area? “One of the keys has been to create an alliance in which Indigenous Peoples are calling for no further major resource extraction, no industrial-scale anything, no dams, no roads, nothing that is at odds with the fabric of life,” says Soltani. “But it’s not just about protecting or conserving. It’s also about governing these territories from a life-centric view. It’s a community-collective vision articulated through many, many participatory activities that help define the future vision for the territory.”
Ocean Conservation that Recognizes Community Impacts
Our planet’s oceans sequester carbon at scales similar to those of rainforests. Despite the history of conservation and the role oceans play in biodiversity, a small percentage of oceans are protected from commercial exploitation. There are about 17,000 marine-protected areas covering the surface of the ocean, but that only represents about 8% of the ocean’s surface. And even for that 8%, what does “protection” really mean?
Rod Fujita is a marine ecologist and highly effective ocean conservationist. He is Senior Scientist and Director of Research and Development for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Oceans Innovations Program.
“When you really get down to looking at how these marine-protected areas are functioning, are they actually prohibiting killing? Are they actually preventing pollution? Are they actually preventing oil and gas extraction? The answer is no, not really,” says Fujita. “Less than 2% of those 17,000 marine-protected areas are functional. 8% is not enough, and 2% is definitely not enough if we’re going to save the ocean and allow it to contribute to the carbon drawdown.”
Fujita has studied ocean ecosystems all over the world and worked to preserve them for more than 30 years. When it comes to protecting and restoring oceans, Fujita says, we need to set goals that will actually help save ourselves and the planet. He’s helped protect over 10,000 square miles of ocean habitat, created a novel financing system for sustainability, and developed innovative tools for improving the wellbeing of the ocean and the humans that depend on it.
Fujita says that one reason conservation of the oceans is not scaling as we would like is that we are not aligning the value of conservation with the value of people whose livelihoods depend on fishing.
“Consider creating a marine reserve in a place where people are impoverished, and fishing is the employer of last resort,” says Fujita. “The proposition that we’re giving these folks is, hey, why don’t you stop fishing in your best fishing grounds so that stuff can grow, and so that I, in the United States or in Europe, can enjoy the biodiversity. It’s a terrible value proposition, and that’s why conservation is not scaling in the ocean.”
Fujita suggests approaching ocean conservation with a keen eye toward the needs of affected communities. “We have to align their incentives and their needs with the conservation proposition,” he says. “The way to do that is to embed these marine-protected areas within areas that are secure, that are reserved for the use of the people who are paying the conservation price so that they can reap the benefits of their own conservation action. That’s the key. The people who pay the cost need to get the benefits.”
In Belize, Fujita and his colleagues witnessed fishermen who were staunchly opposed to expanding marine-protected areas to benefit ocean ecosystems. That dynamic only shifted once a “territorial use right” for fishing was established. “It turns out the reason the fishermen were opposing these no-take reserves is not because they’re not interested in stewardship,” says Fujita. “It’s just that they were asked to pay the costs of not fishing while illegal fishermen from other countries and other places were coming and taking the fish. [The territorial use right] completely changed the political dynamics. It aligned the economics and the incentives with conservation, and Belize has tripled the size of its no-take reserves.”
The successful model in Belize of granting territorial rights could potentially be applied in fishing areas around the world. Though one larger scale challenge is that there are stark wealth inequalities between countries around the world, and the reality that climate change is shifting access to fish populations in favor of the Global North.
Cooperation on a large scale is crucial to address the crisis in biodiversity that we are witnessing. Scaling up successful models where collaborations and techniques are working can be a reminder that humans are part of nature and that restoration is possible. Fujita says there are examples like in Bristol Bay, where the state works with Indigenous communities to preserve the largest salmon run in the world because they understand that seeing the fish as a commodity is what got us in this situation in the first place.
Restoring whale populations is another success story. Once the international community agreed to stop killing whales, the dire situation turned around.
“The humpbacks are more abundant now. Blue whales still have a ways to go, but they are returning,” says Fujita. “When we get these big creatures back, all kinds of good things will happen. Big whales make big poop. And big poop falls down into the ocean, and that sequesters carbon. It’s a very important part of the biological pump that is saving us from even more severe climate change.”
Firing on All Cylinders: A Global Conservation Initiative
“People from all corners of the world agree that we actually need much more audacious and ambitious conservation targets than we currently have,” says Carly Vynne, an ecologist and Director of the Biodiversity and Climate Program at the nonprofit RESOLVE. “But it turns out that if your goal is to save most of life on Earth or provide essential ecosystems services or just regulate the climate, you’re going to need close to half of nature intact, if not conserved.”
Vynne is a key innovator in finding ways to develop maps of ecosystems to help other scientists, activists, and policymakers identify priority areas for protection and conservation attention.
Vynne is a key innovator in finding ways to develop maps of ecosystems to help other scientists, activists, and policymakers identify priority areas for protection and conservation attention.
Earlier in her career, she co-led a project in South Africa to reintroduce lions on private lands and studied maned wolves, jaguars, pumas, giant anteaters, armadillos, and tapirs in the Brazilian Cerrado. At the U.S. National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Vynne helped launch several corridor initiatives to help large mammal movements in the West, creating the Northern Great Plains program to protect the underrepresented grasslands.
She co-authored the book The Global Deal for Nature, which calls for an ambitious, time-bound set of nature-based targets that must be achieved if we are to solve the climate and extinction crises.
Vynne has been working in the world of conservation long enough to have seen and participated in a variety of approaches as the global situation has grown more and more dire. There seems to be a consensus that many dramatic approaches are necessary.
“In biodiversity conservation, we’ve treated our prioritization efforts as sort of ‘how do we get the most for the least?’” she says. “How do we conserve the most knowing that globally flexible conservation dollars are very rare? With the climate science coming on board and the threat of ecosystem disruption being so much greater than any of us imagined, we actually can’t give up anything else if we’re going to be successful at stabilizing the climate and/or stopping the biodiversity crisis. All of those approaches are important; all of them are necessary.”
That also means pulling together data and strategies from areas around the world to create a collective vision and a way to implement it. Vynne and her colleagues have consulted with people in regions that don’t map along the official lines of counties, or states, or even countries. Instead, these are realistic maps of living systems, ecoregions where the biodiversity of flora, fauna, and ecosystems tend to be distinct and usually cross over state and county lines.
“There have been eco-region-based approaches for a while,” says Vynne. “There are a variety of approaches to setting conservation. Because we wanted a comprehensive strategy for the whole Earth, where anyone and everywhere would necessarily be a part of designing strategies and contributing to that, it seemed like an eco-region-based approach really made sense.”
Vynne and her colleagues have assessed the locally determined conservation needs of all 846 eco-regions with the understanding that the needs of each area will vary. “At the end of the day, the regions will need to look at what the goals are and how do they conserve the species for that place.”
Setting the priorities for each region is key, and it’s where the complications lie. There’s conserving and protecting areas that haven’t been wrecked, restoring lands and biodiversity where it has been wrecked, focusing on areas to help stabilize climate, and finding ways to sequester carbon, to name a few.
In one-quarter of the world, only 4 percent of habitat remains. With such a staggering reality of destruction, the real goal is clearly restoration, not conservation. But in the other three-quarters of the world, protection and restoration where it’s needed would be the goal. Vynne says the intact habitat maps that they’re able to generate show those areas have enough habitat to do that right now. It’s also where the concept of climate stabilization comes into play.
“There are large areas of intact forests that might not be the highest priorities,” says Vynne. “They might not be biodiversity hotspots, but they’re really important for climate regulation. What if we consider maintaining them intact or, when necessary, doing restoration or management to promote their ability to store and sequester carbon, and finance and manage them accordingly?”
Tools are needed to make it as easy as possible to track our changing landscapes in real-time. To that end, Vynne co-created a cloud-based mapping tool called TerrAdapt, which helps decision-makers understand the landscape-scale impacts of their local land-use decisions on regional species and ecosystems. She says now is the time for everyone to dive into land-based restoration and that policies in the U.S. and other places could provide good training and jobs around restoration and monitoring and management.
“There’s a lot that we don’t know,” says Vynne, “but we do know that we need to adhere to the basic principles of conservation biology, which we’ve known since long before the climate was changing. I think we’ve got to hope that some of the worst-case scenarios don’t come to fruition. In the meantime, we’ve got to do all the good work that we know how to do as people who think about large landscapes on the ground.”
“We’ve described over 7,000 species, but we haven’t even scraped the surface.”
Robin Moore, the Vice President of Communications and Marketing for Re:wild, turned his childhood fascination with frogs into a career in conservation. In this conversation with Bioneers’ Teo Grossman, he talks about growing up in Edinburgh and spending his summers in the Highlands, where he had a passionate connection with the frogs and other wildlife in his backyard. He went on to study zoology and ecology, eventually earning a Ph.D. and studying a species of frog in Majorca, Spain. After realizing the extent of the threat facing amphibians, he became more involved in frog conservation efforts and spearheaded a project called The Search for Lost Frogs at Conservation International.
TEO: As a child, what intrigued you most about frogs?
ROBIN: A couple of years ago, my younger brother dug up a diary of mine from when I was 7 years old. He took photos and posted them all over Facebook. One of those pictures was a drawing I had done of me emptying frog spawn into a large tank, and that pretty much summed up my childhood. I spent a lot of my waking hours out looking for frogs and newts.
I think what intrigued me the most was I was able to get intimate with them. I tried catching mice and they bit me. Birds would fly away. But with amphibians, I was able actually to get in there. I was able to collect spawn. I was able to raise them in my bedroom and watch this incredible transformation from egg to tadpole to frog. It was almost like watching evolution on speed. In three weeks, you had this incredible transformation.
As soon as I learned more about them, that these animals had been around since the dinosaurs … I mean, what kid isn’t fascinated by dinosaurs? Here you’ve got a creature on your doorstep, in your backyard, that was actually around alongside the dinosaurs and is still with us. That, for me, was just absolutely fascinating.
TEO: So you lived within collecting distance of a number of frogs?
ROBIN: Yeah. I grew up in Edinburgh. We would spend our summer holidays in the Highlands. That, for me, was heaven because I would roam the moors in these peat bogs. My grandparents’ neighbors had a pond, and I would climb onto my grandparents’ wall and sit there watching these frogs. I had this sort of intimate connection to wildlife right in the backyard.
TEO: Did that follow you all the way through? Did you go to college for it?
ROBIN: You know, I never planned a career in frogs, but it did follow me through. At school, when you’re really into this kind of thing, you’re sort of a weirdo. What I realized later in life is that the weirdos who hold onto that fascination are the most interesting. One of the biggest gifts you can have is to stay a child, keep your childlike sense of wonder and awe. I was lucky that I had the opportunity.
I went to study zoology, and then I went on to a Master’s in ecology, and then I went on to do a Ph.D., and I got to study a species of frog in Majorca, Spain, which was a pretty beautiful place to spend your summers measuring tadpoles. Shortly after I finished my Ph.D. was when I really found out what was happening to frogs around the world. So I got more involved in actual conservation.
I realized that my research was getting more and more obscure. Probably fewer and fewer people were reading these obscure papers. I wanted to be more active in trying to see what I could do to contribute to protecting amphibians, because at that point in 2004, the first comprehensive global assessment of amphibians had been done. It showed that a third of all species were threatened with extinction: over 6,000 species. That, to me, was just alarming. Growing up, extinction was something that happened to the dinosaurs. I had no idea that these animals in my backyard could be in trouble. The idea that they could one day be gone never even crossed my mind.
TEO: People talk about frogs and amphibians as the canary in the coal mine. You said you sort of have problems with that general way of thinking about it. I wonder if you could tell us about that.
ROBIN: I think it’s a useful metaphor. I think metaphors resonate with people. The canary in the coal mine analogy was good to get people aware of the crisis affecting amphibians. And it tied it directly back to us. It made people see that what was happening to amphibians was an indicator.
And amphibians are, generally, particularly sensitive to change. They have permeable skin, they have unprotected eggs, they generally have very small ranges, they’re tied to both freshwater and terrestrial. So they’re sensitive to changes in any of that. They’re cold-blooded, so they rely on the environment to regulate their own temperature and their breeding cycles.
My problem with the idea that they are the canary in the coal mine is that people don’t ever go down to the coal mine to save the canary. They die so we don’t have to. People would talk about amphibians being an early warning, but it wasn’t so early for them. I think it’s a very useful metaphor for getting people involved, but I think when you dig deeper, people first must actually care about the implications for amphibians and not just about what they’re telling us about our world.
TEO: This relates to the different motivations for conservation: the intrinsic value of the species, the right for the rest of nature to exist, which I think is really important.
ROBIN: Yes, there are different values that people attribute. For me, the intrinsic value is important. I recognize that it’s not for everyone; that we need to be appealing to all different values and speaking the languages of different audiences.
TEO: Can you tell me some stories or just kind of paint me a picture of what it is that you find so wondrous about frogs?
ROBIN: For one thing, there’s a never-ending array of diversity within frogs. Even having spent a childhood obsessing over them, a career studying them, I still learn things about them that blow me away. I saw a tiger tree frog in Colombia for the first time a few years ago. It was newly described. Incredible green and black stripes. I just thought that was incredible. It’s a living work of art. It would be like discovering a Picasso that nobody’s seen.
We’ve described over 7,000 species, but we haven’t even scraped the surface. In Madagascar alone, there are over 400 species described, but at least 150 species have not been described.
I did my Master’s thesis in Trinidad, where I was looking at different reproductive strategies of amphibians. It’s incredible the adaptations they have to different environments. In a single pond, you can have one frog that lays full nests on the top of the water with many, many eggs. And then you can have another frog that digs into the mud and lays its full nest, and then they go into this arrested development and wait for the rain to fill it, and the tadpoles come out.
The gastric brooding frog in Australia, which went extinct in the mid-80s, would ingest the eggs, turn off its stomach acid, paralyze its stomach muscles, and turn its stomach into a womb. The eggs would turn into tadpoles, the tadpoles would metamorphose into little frogs, and the little frogs would jump out of the frog’s mouth. For me, that’s just incredible. It’s the stuff of your childhood imagination. You couldn’t dream up those kinds of things.
TEO: At Conservation International, you spearheaded a project called The Search for Lost Frogs. Will you tell me a little about that?
ROBIN: When I joined Conservation International, it was right when we realized the dark predicament amphibians were in. I spent my first few there trying to get that message out. Then I realized it was even depressing me. It’s hard when you’re just hitting people over the head with these bleak, apocalyptic predictions of where we’re going.
I realized that I needed to do something that was a little more positive and hopeful. Despair is not a good motivator. If you’re making people feel hopeless, they feel powerless, and they tend to go back into their comfort zone and do whatever it is that makes them feel safe and secure. I wanted to motivate people by inspiring them.
My colleagues and I came up with this idea of putting together a list of lost species that hadn’t been seen in years or decades. I put together a little wanted-style poster of the top 10 and found out that people really liked it. The communications team at Conservation International loved it and helped me to roll out over six months this global search for lost frogs.
We supported 33 teams in 20 countries looking for lost species. We kind of invited people along for the journey. Having a six-month timeline on it helped keep the momentum on it. Then we had this platform to talk about occasional rediscoveries, but also to open the dialogue to conversation and the more nuanced aspects of this story. ‘Yes, we found these species, but, wow, there are 200 that we have on this list that are missing, that are gone, that may be extinct.’ It helped us to raise a profile and create flagships for conservation.
You know, we often elevate polar bears, pandas, tigers, and these icons of conservation. They can be important, but the reality is that most people are never going to see a polar bear in the wild. They’re never going to see a panda. So they don’t have that immediate connection. Whereas most people are never too far from a log under which a salamander might be curled or a pond with frogs. You can generate pride. If you go into an area and say you have a frog here that lives only here, and it’s yours, I think that’s a powerful motivator for protecting it and protecting its environment.
What we found with some of the lost species that were found is they went from these symbols of extinction to symbols of hope if you give nature a chance. There was one frog in Israel that disappeared for 55 years, and it was written off as being extinct. They re-flooded its habitat because it had been drained, and 10 years after it was re-flooded, the frog was found. It somehow had been hanging on. No one knows where it was.
That’s part of it. It’s the mystery, right? It’s the sort of unanswered questions that bring people in.
TEO: That’s an example of getting real-time feedback on the kind of the cultural success of a conservation project. You’re a widely exhibited and distributed photographer now. Do you hear from people about the emotional or even conservational impact of the photos that you’re producing?
ROBIN: I guess a recent example of that was when I was contacted by some partners in Jamaica saying that the government wanted to sell the largest protected area in the country to a corrupt conglomerate who were going to build a port, basically ripping apart the mangroves and flattening two islands. These were the home of one of the rarest lizards in the world – the Jamaican Iguana. They contacted me and asked for help in raising the profile of this issue. Nobody outside of Jamaica had heard about it.
I went down there, and I took photos. My last day there, I met a local Jamaican researcher working with the lizards named Booms. For me, it was kind of like, ‘This is the face of the struggle here.’ He had grown up in Kingston, and he’d moved seven years ago to start working on these iguanas that had changed his life. I came back, and I did a story on Booms. I used my images, and they got into National Geographic and The Guardian. Ziggy Marley shared the photos and the video. One day I looked, and it had 25,000 plays. We didn’t get much feedback on it though. The government was tight-lipped.
I went back a year and a half later to keep their feet to the fire, to try and reengage, and this time we produced a higher-production film. A filmmaker came with me to tell the story. Again, we got it out there. I actually did an Instagram takeover of National Geographic, and that was a real-time way of getting the story out to people. It created buzz within Jamaica.
I was posting 24 or 40 hours behind so that I didn’t alert the authorities to where I was. I was told if they knew where I was, they would likely intervene. When I got back, I projected the film onto the Jamaican Embassy in Washington, D.C., with a #savegoatislands hashtag. I basically did this whole campaign around #savegoatislands.
Again, it just went quiet. This was a $1.5 billion investment, so it was really sort of David and Goliath story. None of us were that hopeful. But later, the prime minister of Jamaica was in New York in a town hall meeting, and someone put their hand up and said, “What’s happening with Goat Islands?” And he said they had scrapped that project because of the environmental concerns.
I don’t know the impact that the images had on that decision, but I think they helped. From what I’ve heard, they had an impact. They helped get the word out there. There were some images I got of baby iguanas coming out of someone’s hand, and it brought you face-to-face with the issue.
TEO: Do you think there is more room for the arts in environmental and social justice movements? Is there more that you think we could be doing?
ROBIN: I think there’s much more room. Success, for me, would be a much closer relationship between the sciences and the arts. We have all these amazing scientists out there doing amazing stuff, but many of them are not communicating their work in a way that’s resonating with people. I think artists can take the findings and transform them into something that’s got cultural resonance, contextualize it in this broader picture of what’s happening, and can engage people.
When we try to communicate environmental issues, it’s easy to preach. It’s easy to point fingers. Art can deliver messages in a way that’s not preaching or guilting people. It’s opening a dialogue. Art has that emotional resonance, and that’s how you’re going to bring people in and motivate them to do something.
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