We’re at a dire point in the human story, with temperatures higher than they’ve been in 125,000 years, but we have one secret weapon: the sudden and rapid drop in the price of energy from the sun. Bill McKibben, one of the earliest to warn of the risks of climate change decades ago and in our view the most impactful climate activist of our era, explains that we have a fleeting chance for a truly transformative reorientation of the way our world works…but we will need everyone to make it happen.
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Bill McKibben, a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a co-founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice, founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament and also won the Gandhi Peace Award as well as receiving honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written 12+ books about the environment, including his first, one of the most prescient and important books of the last 100 years, 1989’s The End of Nature. His latest book is: The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.
In this podcast episode, visionary clean energy entrepreneur Danny Kennedy explores the promise and challenges of the epic civilizational transition to renewable energy.
In this podcast episode, award-winning lawyer and climate justice organizer Colette Pichon Battle lays out a bold vision to transform the Gulf South and Appalachia away from the lethal matrix of fossil fuel extraction and extractive economics, and toward a regenerative future of clean energy democracy, and an equitable, inclusive economy.
Rising Appalachia gave two performances at Bioneers 2025. Watch their second performance below.
Rising Appalachia, the brainchild of Atlanta-raised sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, rooted in the rich musical traditions of their family and region, is an internationally touring folk ensemble with a passionate global following. Eschewing industry norms, they have independently forged their own exemplary, deeply ethical, value-driven path for 16 years, producing seven albums and conducting tours around the world while simultaneously immersing themselves in community-building, cultural exchange programs, and music gathering and sharing everywhere they go. Their most recent album (their first of carefully curated cover songs) is: Folk & Anchor.
Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia discusses making art that brings people together and responds to the times we’re in with Bioneers Arts Coordinator, Polina Smith.
Corrina Gould, tribal spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and Director of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, greets attendees to her ancestral homeland, the territory of Huchiun. In her opening welcome, Gould reminds us of the brutal history of genocide and cultural erasure faced by Indigenous Californians, but also shares their powerful resilience and the ongoing rematriation, cultural revitalization and land restoration efforts underway to heal and transform the legacies of colonization and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Corrina Gould, born and raised in the village of Huichin (now known as Oakland CA), is the Tribal Chair for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation and co-founded and is the Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native-run organization; as well as of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led organization within her ancestral territory. Through the practices of “rematriation,” cultural revitalization and land restoration, the Land Trust calls on Native and non-Native peoples to heal and transform legacies of colonization and genocide and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.
Corrina Gould, Caleen Sisk and Jessica Hutchings, three powerful Indigenous women, share “real-life” examples of rematriation, the ripple effects of these practices, and ways that we can all get involved to Indigenize the future.
California Indians have survived some of the most extreme acts of genocide committed against Native Americans. In this episode of Indigeneity Conversations, we discuss this brutal history and survivance with Corrina Gould, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. We talk about the importance of addressing that historical trauma, which caused deep wounds that still affect Indigenous Peoples today.
Katsi Cook has, for 5 decades, been a visionary leader in the defense of Indigenous women’s health, from her groundbreaking environmental research tackling PCB contamination among her people, to helping solidly reestablish traditional Indigenous midwifery in North America, to founding and/or running a number of significant organizations. Katsi’s latest mission as leader of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program is to elevate the lives, voices, and dreams of Indigenous elder women who desire to intentionally transfer their knowledge and experience to younger women. She shares stories of some of these remarkable women and what they can teach us about the Sacred Cycle of Life, covering such topics as the regeneration of Indigenous lifeways, ancestral healing, the world-building biocultural characteristics of matrilineal descent and rematriation, and addressing the maternity care crisis in Indian Country through kinship connection.
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Tekatsi:tsia’kwa Katsi Cook (Wolf Clan member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation), an Onkwehonweh traditional midwife, lifelong advocate of Indigenous midwifery and Native women’s health throughout the life-cycle (drawing from the longhouse traditionalist teaching that “woman Is the first environment”), is Executive Director of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program. Her work over many decades has spanned a range of worlds and disciplines at the intersections of environmental reproductive health and justice, research, and policy. Katsi’s groundbreaking environmental research of Mohawk mother’s milk revealed the intergenerational impact of industrial chemicals on the health of her community, and she is a major figure in a movement of matrilineal awareness and “rematriation” in Native life.
Katsi Cook shares her journey in preserving and revitalizing indigenous knowledge, emphasizing the importance of cultural respect in the use of plant medicines and her pioneering work in environmental health and justice.
Corrina Gould reminds us of the brutal history of genocide and cultural erasure faced by Indigenous Californians, but also shares their powerful resilience and the ongoing rematriation, cultural revitalization and land restoration efforts underway to heal and transform the legacies of colonization and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.
Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons shares her rage and sadness at the current national and international situation and expresses her admiration for all those resisting in whatever ways they can. She also stresses the importance of taking care of our inner health and drawing from a range of wisdom traditions in order to maintain our psycho-spiritual equilibrium. We will need to nurture our souls and our affective relationships, Nina argues, lest we burn out during what is sure to be a protracted struggle to protect the natural world and birth a genuinely compassionate, life-affirming civilization.
Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist is also co-founder of Women Bridging Worlds and Connecting Women Leading Change. She co-edited the anthology book, Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and most recently wrote Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. An award-winning social entrepreneur, Nina teaches and speaks internationally, and previously served as President of Seeds of Change and Director of Strategic Marketing for Odwalla.
Learn more about Nina Simons and her work at ninasimons.com.
From co-creators Nina Simons and Anneke Campbell, “Leading from the Feminine” is a vibrant resource in the flourishing world of leading from the heart, hands and spirit. This newsletter exists to bridge divides and celebrate connections within the rich tapestry of trailblazers who are evoking the feminine to lead with courage, vulnerability, intuition and empathy.
Now in its second edition, Nature, Culture and the Sacred offers practical guidance and inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership on behalf of positive change. Learn more about the book here.
What if we could understand the language of another species—one with its own culture, dialects, and deep intergenerational bonds? David Gruber, founder and President of Project CETI, shares how his team is using advanced machine learning and state-of-the-art gentle robotics to translate the clicks and codas of sperm whales.
The following is an edited transcript from David’s presentation at Bioneers 2025.
David Gruber, founder and President of Project CETI / Photo by Elias Carlson
Project CETI—the Cetacean Translation Initiative—is the largest interdisciplinary effort ever undertaken to translate the language of sperm whales. For the past five years, we’ve been working in the Eastern Caribbean, off the coast of Dominica.
But first, a bit about how I got here. I originally trained as a marine microbiologist, and I’ve always loved life in all its forms. As a kid, I was obsessed with ants—watching their little societies for hours. I remember learning about E.O. Wilson and his massive book The Ants, and thinking, Wait, you can actually make a living doing this? It was a total lightbulb moment.
Before whales, I spent years trying to get people to see how strange and amazing different animals are—jellyfish, for example. When you swim with them, you realize they’re incredibly sentient. I’ve spent a lot of time with jellyfish, as my background includes a lot of work in coral reef ecology and jellyfish are cnidarians, related to corals and sea anemones.
I took that curiosity to an intense level. But as I progressed as a marine scientist, I started to realize how disconnected the work could feel. On expeditions, we’d pull animals out of the ocean and watch them gasp for their final breaths on the deck of the boat—all while excitedly identifying new species. For a sensitive kid, it was jarring. The idea that studying an animal often meant killing it never sat right with me.
So one of the core themes of our work became: How can we study animals without harming them? That question sparked a long-standing collaboration with Rob Wood at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab—now over a decade strong. Together, we developed the gentlest robot ever created, capable of interacting with jellyfish using just one-tenth the pressure your eyelid applies to your eye.
I became increasingly obsessed with designing tools that could study these delicate animals without harming them.
I became increasingly obsessed with designing tools that could study these delicate animals without harming them. One example was an origami-inspired, rotary-actuated dodecahedron—a robotic structure we used to gently encase jellyfish in the deep sea for observation.
Now, we’re taking it even further. In collaboration with the Schmidt Ocean Institute, we’re preparing for our next expedition, Designing the Future 3. This project allows us to study jellyfish-like creatures, including siphonophores, using cutting-edge tools: 3D scanning, gentle robotic swabs to collect genomic data, and the creation of what we call digital holotypes—comprehensive, non-destructive records of individual specimens.
This approach stands in stark contrast to how the deep sea is being treated elsewhere. On one hand, we see efforts to mine the ocean floor, mowing down fragile ecosystems in pursuit of rare earth minerals like magnesium. On the other hand, a growing group of scientists is going to extraordinary lengths to study gelatinous life without causing harm.
Swell shark (Cephaloscyllium ventriosum)
Another theme that’s been central to this work is learning to see from the perspective of the other. That “other” might be sharks, or biofluorescent animals—creatures that absorb the blue light of the ocean and emit it in brilliant, unexpected colors. My earlier research focused on them. It helped me realize just how much we share this planet with a more-than-human world, and how little we really understand about how other animals perceive, feel, and experience their environment.
As part of that journey, we encountered the swell shark—not exactly the most charismatic species at first glance. But when viewed under blue light, through a lens designed to mimic a shark’s eye, something incredible appeared: intricate patterns across its body. Even more fascinating, the patterns differed between males and females.
That discovery launched us into several years of work, designing a “shark-eye” camera to see the world the way a shark might. Everyone in my lab became obsessed with this project—and with this unassuming little shark. We used every tool we had, combining Western technology and creative design to try to see the ocean from the shark’s perspective.
Now, I’m honored to serve as a steward of the Cetacean Translation Initiative. With CETI, we’re focusing on sperm whales—fellow mammals, yet vastly different from us. They’re often called the poster species of macroevolution, and for good reason.
Dominica sperm whales / Photo by Amanda Cotton
Sperm whales are deeply social animals, living in close-knit family groups made up of grandmothers, mothers, and calves. Off the coast of Dominica, there’s a matrilineal population of about 200 sperm whales that remain in the region nearly year-round.
Shane Gero, one of our collaborators, knows these whales so well that he can identify individuals by just a glimpse of their tail. He’ll say, “That’s this whale, and it’s related to that one.” It’s incredible. This kind of deep, long-term human observation and care is absolutely essential to the work.
Project CETI officially launched in 2020 with catalytic support from the TED Audacious Project. We raised $33 million to get it off the ground, and today the initiative includes a team of 50 scientists. We’ve built a 20-kilometer by 20-kilometer underwater listening and recording studio off the coast of Dominica. Of course, there’s no store where you can pick up “whale listening tech”—we had to design and build everything from scratch.
The spark for the project actually began in 2018, when I was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard. I was sharing space with 50 other fellows from a wide range of disciplines. One of them was Shafi Goldwasser, a Turing Award winner and professor at Berkeley. At the time, her team was working on aspects of Google Translate. They were discussing how it could learn to translate between human languages—not by using a Rosetta Stone, but by analyzing the mathematical shapes of languages in multi-dimensional space. So I played them these recordings of the sounds made by sperm whales.
In sperm whales, one of their two nostrils has evolved into a blowhole, but if you examine a whale skeleton, you’ll still see the second, much smaller nostril. When whales vocalize, they move air back and forth through the structures in their head. That air travels through several hundred liters of spermaceti oil. (The name sperm whale unfortunately comes from whalers who mistakenly believed the oil was part of the reproductive system. One of our long-term goals is to rename the species through this collaboration.)
The sound then passes through a series of waxy structures that allow the whale to focus it very precisely. They use this sound in two main ways. One is echolocation—essentially seeing with sound in the deep sea. As a whale dives, you’ll hear a steady pattern: click, click, click, click. As it approaches prey, the clicks speed up—faster, faster—until there’s a final gulp. They’re particularly good at hunting squid.
At the surface, though, sperm whales use a different kind of sound called codas. These are rhythmic click patterns used to communicate. One of the most common in Dominica is a three-part pattern: click, click, click-click-click—we call it “1-1-3.” Remarkably, we didn’t even know sperm whales made sounds until the 1950s. Shane Gero’s research revealed that they actually have regional dialects. Among the whale clans in Dominica, for example, each clan has its own unique dialect, kind of like different accents, say British and Scottish, even though they live in the same waters.
This project is deeply inspired by past efforts—and by the human imagination itself. That sense of possibility fuels us. We often think back to the words of Carl Sagan and others who, while looking out into distant galaxies, also wondered about the mysteries right here on Earth. One idea that stays with us is the question: Could the intelligence of cetaceans be expressed in something like epic poetry, oral history, or intricate codes of social interaction?
Are whales and dolphins the equivalent of human Homers before the invention of writing, recounting great deeds from the far reaches and deep depths of the sea? Who knows? But it’s a beautiful idea—and one that motivates our work.
Dominica is the heart of this project, in part because Shane Gero has been working there for over 20 years. But also, the geography is uniquely suited to this kind of research. It’s like a volcanic Jurassic Park rising from the ocean, with waters that become incredibly deep just offshore. That means whales can swim close to land, unlike in most places where you’d need to go far out to sea to find them. And the population here is remarkably stable—many of the whales remain year-round.
And here we are—on a planet with sperm whales. There are still a few hundred thousand of them alive today, communicating in extraordinary ways we’re only just beginning to understand. We’re barely scratching the surface.
Around 2019, just before we received funding from TED Audacious, we had a breakthrough realization: this underwater recording studio we’d dreamed of? It was actually possible. Humanity had already invented all the necessary technology. We could do this. We could translate the language of sperm whales. It suddenly felt within reach, like the moment people first looked at the moon and thought, Could we really go there?
And here we are—on a planet with sperm whales. There are still a few hundred thousand of them alive today, communicating in extraordinary ways we’re only just beginning to understand. We’re barely scratching the surface.
Project CETI brings together eight different disciplines to tackle this monumental challenge. We have teams specializing in machine learning, robotics, natural language processing, network science, marine biology, and underwater acoustics. And we also have a legal team, which, honestly, might be the most important of them all. As this work unfolds, every piece—every discipline—matters.
One of our biggest breakthroughs this past year was identifying what we believe to be the sperm whale’s phonetic alphabet. That discovery is largely thanks to Jacob Andreas, a professor of natural language processing at MIT, and Pratyusha Sharma, a graduate student in his lab. Their work builds on years of collaboration with our trusted advisor, the late Roger Payne, and on tens of thousands of click recordings collected by Shane Gero.
What we’ve found is remarkable: the whales’ vocalizations appear to contain structured elements—almost musical in nature. Tempo, rhythm, even something we call rubato—subtle changes in timing. One of the most fascinating discoveries is a feature we’re calling ornamentation: small variations, like the addition of an extra click—click, click, click-click-click, click. At first, you might think it’s just noise or a mistake. But when you analyze tens of thousands—or even millions—of these codas, you begin to see patterns. Those subtle differences matter. They’re part of a complex system—perhaps even a language.
This coming year, we have so many exciting developments on the horizon. At a recent event at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, we attended a talk on elephant communication by Joyce Poole and Mickey Pardo. They shared research suggesting that elephants may use names—and even more astonishing, that one elephant might say something and receive a response 15 minutes later.
That kind of delay would be considered rude in human conversation. If I sat silently for 15 minutes before replying to you, half the audience would probably walk out. We’re so accustomed to rapid-fire, back-and-forth banter, where interrupting is rude and pauses are awkward. But that’s not how communication works for elephants—and likely not for whales either. It requires a completely different frame of reference.
In our work with sperm whales, we’ve started analyzing the “negative space” between clicks—the silences—and we’re finding vowel-like features that may represent a whole new layer of their communication system. It’s just the beginning, but it’s incredibly promising.
At CETI, we hold ourselves to a strict ethical philosophy: We never draw a drop of blood. While other researchers may collect DNA samples by taking small plugs of skin, we’ve made a deliberate choice not to. We take the extra time to care for the whales and always ask ourselves one question before moving forward: Is this work in service of the whale?
What’s so exciting—and sobering—is that these new technologies, like AI, are beginning to be applied to the study of animals. And they hold extraordinary potential. This moment could be as transformative as the invention of the telescope or the microscope.
Karen Bakker, author of The Sounds of Life, describes this beautifully: She likens the combination of AI and bioacoustics to a new kind of scientific instrument—one that can help us perceive what our unaided, Old World primate ears cannot. Just as telescopes opened up the cosmos and microscopes revealed the hidden world inside cells, these tools may allow us to hear and interpret the voices of other species.
A world of wonder, connection, and possibility awaits. But how we move into that world matters.
At CETI, we’re working from the hypothesis that technology can deepen our connection to the natural world. It’s still a question mark. But it’s one we’re pursuing with care and humility.
Curious about the ethical side of this work?
If decoding the language of sperm whales and other animals is now within reach, what responsibilities come with that power? In a companion article, legal scholar César Rodríguez-Garavito explores the ethical and legal questions raised by this emerging science—and what it means to protect the more-than-human world in the age of AI.
Researchers are Using AI to Understand what Animals are Saying (TIME) | This article, written by David Gruber and César Rodríguez-Garavito, explores how artificial intelligence and new technologies are unlocking the hidden languages of nonhuman animals—from whales to elephants—and the profound legal, ethical, and ecological questions that follow. It asks whether these breakthroughs will lead to deeper empathy and protection for other species—or risk new forms of exploitation if not guided by care and precaution.
As social inequities deepen, environmental breakdown intensifies, and repression moves into high gear, a new generation of changemakers is stepping up with bold vision and deep-rooted purpose. From environmental education to ecosystem restoration, these young leaders are working not only to address the damage done by previous generations but to envision something radically better.
Below, we invite you to hear Shreya Chaudhuri discuss her work decolonizing environmental education; learn the life story compelling Mahjabin Khanzada’s advocacy for Afghan women’s rights; and explore Asa Miller’s efforts to help restore coral reefs in Cuba. Help us spread the word about how youth are reshaping what’s possible for our planet and our communities.
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Shreya Chaudhuri – Reclaiming Roots: The Global Fight for Indigenous Science
For generations, Indigenous science has safeguarded ecosystems worldwide—yet mainstream environmental solutions continue to sideline it. As climate crises escalate, young activists are reclaiming these knowledge systems, challenging colonial frameworks, and forging global solidarity. Drawing from her family’s six-generation history in India’s tea industry and her work decolonizing environmental education at UC Berkeley and through her nonprofit, Project Planet, Chaudhuri explores how students and youth-led movements are reshaping the fight for climate justice by centering traditional knowledge. The future of sustainability isn’t about reinventing solutions—it’s about reclaiming the roots that have long sustained our planet. The question is: will we listen?
Mahjabin Khanzada – Courage: From Kabul to California
When the Taliban seized power, Mahjabin Khanzada’s life changed overnight. As a translator for the U.S. embassy, she narrowly escaped, but her parents were left behind. Since 2021, she has endured profound hardship, yet she has emerged as a fierce advocate for Afghan women’s rights and a dedicated force within Project Anar, helping refugees rebuild their lives. Now, as crucial funding for refugee programs faces devastating cuts and the government’s xenophobia is running rampant, her work is more urgent than ever. Khanzada shares her story as a reminder that Afghan women and refugees are still fighting for their futures—and the world cannot look away.
Asa Miller – Viva el Vivero: Finding the Best Nursery for Cuba’s Coral
Asa Miller has taken a simple yet revolutionary step toward addressing the climate crisis, one that doesn’t involve convincing others with data or investing billions in new technologies: He decided to reconnect with his roots and help restore a part of his ancestral homeland. A multi-award-winning marine conservationist and his town’s Youth Poet Laureate, Miller returned to his family’s native Cuba in an effort to help restore the country’s coral reefs. There he found communities not paralyzed by the injustices of climate change but catalyzed by their love of their land and its living things. Miller will share his challenges and rewards working with our under-resourced neighbor and the lessons he brings back to our own over-resourced world.
Living Future 2025: Join industry leaders, innovators and changemakers in creating a more sustainable world
Ready to take action on sustainability? Originally launched by longtime Bioneers speaker Jason McLennan, the 2025 edition of the long-running Living Future conference is an exciting opportunity for leaders from diverse industries to come together, share ideas and accelerate the movement toward a regenerative world. Don’t miss your chance to be part of this inspiring event—register now and help shape a living future for all! Living Future 2025 will be held May 6-8, 2025, in Portland, Oregon.
Through engaging courses led by some of the world’s foremost movement leaders, Bioneers Learning equips engaged citizens and professionals like you with the knowledge, tools, resources and networks to initiate or deepen your engagement, leading to real change in your life and community.
Biomimicry for Social Innovation: Nature’s Lessons for Movement Leaders | May 13-June 3, 2025 | This four-week experiential course reveals how biomimicry—a practice that draws on the genius of ecosystems—can inform leadership, partnership building, and decision-making for lasting, regenerative change.
The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times | Self-Paced | Discover how the Four Sacred Gifts of forgiving the unforgivable, unity, healing, and hope in action provide us with a path to our most grounded, loving, healed, and generous selves.
Regenerative Agriculture: Nourishing the Soil, Healing the Planet | Self-Paced | Be enlightened on the practical applications and impressive potential that regenerative agriculture has to revive healthy landscapes; contribute to human and animal health; create an equitable food system; and help heal the climate.
Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse | Sept 8-29, 2025 | This four-week interactive course offers a radical approach — merging nonviolent action, trauma healing, and spiritual practice to build movements rooted in connection and resilience.
Putting Biomimicry Into Action in Your Profession and Life | Oct. 9-30, 2025 | Led by Andrew Howley, Chief Editor of the Biomimicry Institute, this four-week interactive course will equip you with the tools to reframe challenges through nature’s lens and turn inspired ideas into action.
For generations, Indigenous science has safeguarded ecosystems worldwide—yet mainstream environmental solutions continue to sideline it. As climate crises escalate, young activists are reclaiming these knowledge systems, challenging colonial frameworks, and forging global solidarity. Drawing from her family’s six-generation history in India’s tea industry and her work decolonizing environmental education at UC Berkeley and through her nonprofit, Project Planet, Shreya Chaudhuri explores how students and youth-led movements are reshaping the fight for climate justice by centering Indigenous knowledge. The future of sustainability isn’t about reinventing solutions—it’s about reclaiming the roots that have long sustained our planet. The question is: will we listen?
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Shreya Chaudhuri, a senior at UC Berkeley, majoring in Environmental Science and Geography with minors in Global Poverty & Practice and Data Science, runs Project Planet, a nonprofit for decolonial environmental education, including teaching the class Decolonizing Environmentalism at Berkeley that she created. As a Climate Action Fellow at the Student Environmental Resource Center and UC Office of the President, Shreya advances equity in UC Climate Policy and leads the Decolonial Environmental Network on campus. She is also on the council for the Students of Color Environmental Collective, and, for her senior thesis, Shreya studied Indigenous ecological knowledge and climate resilience on her family’s ancestral tea farm in India.
Youth environmental activists are protesting, organizing and strategizing for the future they want to see. Learn from the perspectives, projects and aspirations of three young leaders fighting for environmental justice.
Climate-justice leader Kevin J. Patel advocates for a climate-justice movement that centers the voices of young and BIPOC people in order to realize immediate change.
Asa Miller has taken a simple yet revolutionary step to contributing to solving the climate crisis, one that doesn’t involve convincing others with data or investing billions in new technologies: he decided to reconnect with his roots and help restore a part of his ancestral homeland. A multi-award-winning marine conservationist and his town’s Youth Poet Laureate, Asa returned to his native Cuba in an effort to help restore the country’s coral reefs, and found there communities not paralyzed by the injustices of climate change but catalyzed by their love of their land and its living things. Asa shares his challenges and rewards working with our under-resourced neighbor, and the lessons he brings back to our own over-resourced world.
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Asa Miller, 18, a marine science researcher and Greenburgh, NY’s Youth Poet Laureate, is an international leader in marine conservation who combines an acute knowledge of the issues facing marine ecosystems with the sensibility and creativity of a poet. He has conducted coral reef conservation in both his native Cuba and in Israel, each time working with teams whose collaborations transcended conflicts and borders. His documentary short “Coral Reef Restoration” has screened and won awards at 26 international film festivals. He is a winner of the Brower Youth, National Marine Educators Association Youth Leadership in Marine Conservation, and Blue Hatchling Youth awards.
Youth environmental activists are protesting, organizing and strategizing for the future they want to see. Learn from the perspectives, projects and aspirations of three young leaders fighting for environmental justice.
Climate-justice leader Kevin J. Patel advocates for a climate-justice movement that centers the voices of young and BIPOC people in order to realize immediate change.
When the Taliban seized power, Mahjabin Khanzada’s life changed overnight. As a translator for the U.S. embassy, she narrowly escaped, but her parents were left behind. Since 2021, she has endured profound hardship, yet she has emerged as a fierce advocate for Afghan women’s rights and a dedicated force within Project Anar, helping refugees rebuild their lives. Now, as crucial funding for refugee programs faces devastating cuts, her work is more urgent than ever. She shares her story as a reminder that Afghan women and refugees are still fighting for their futures—and the world cannot look away.
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Mahjabin Khanzada, a young Afghan woman, a former interpreter for the U.S. embassy, fled her homeland during the Taliban takeover in 2021 and has worked in the face of great challenges to rebuild her life in the Bay Area. She has become a passionate activist for Afghani women’s rights and an advocate for her community and has been working with the Immigration Justice organization Project Anar to help newly arrived Afghan refugees resettle successfully. Mahjabin has also worked for three years with Crescent Moon Theater Productions, sharing her story through the documentary theater project: “Hold On, When Everything Changes in a Flash.”
Over the last 20 years, the Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program has served as an incubator for thousands of youth and educators to deepen their passion and power through self-expression, skills development, mentorship and deep relationship building within the broader community of Bioneers. The program has produced some of the most dynamic, engaging, and cutting edge programming within the Bioneers kaleidoscope and it continues to shape the work of youth movements, activism and education.
Erik Ohlsen is a master of regenerative design, an internationally recognized Permaculture teacher, a landscape contractor, author, farmer, herbalist, storyteller, and practitioner of Nordic folk traditions. He is the founder of organizations that regenerate ecosystems including the award-winning design and build company Permaculture Artisans as well as the Permaculture Skills Center where thousands of students learn ecological landscaping and regenerative agriculture. Ohlsen has worked globally for decades repairing ecosystems and connecting people with the land.
In this interview with Arty Mangan of Bioneers, Erik talks about his activism and how a healing crisis redirected his life and put him on the path to become a permaculture designer and entrepreneur. He also shares his approach to landscape design and how humans can become a keystone ecological species and a positive force on the land.
ARTY MANGAN: In the foreword of your book,The Regenerative Landscaper,Permaculturist Penny Livingston wrote that when you were 19 years old, she saw in you certain qualities. These qualities are based on the “seven sacred attributes” from the Lakota Nation shared with Penny by Gilbert Walking Bull.
ERIK OHLSEN: It tickles me that she feels like she saw that when I was a 19 year old. I think I was able to show her my ability to perceive ecology and landscape without being told. Later Penny told me about the mentoring tests that she had for me. She said that she asked me questions, that she knew the answers to, as a test to see what I had observed.
ARTY: One of the sacred attributes is positive power, overwhelming heartfelt joy, childlike state of wonder and delight. How does that inform your work as a designer?
ERIK: I think it connects in the way that young male deer will hop around and lock antlers together, and the way that a butterfly moves from one flower to the next, and the way the fox kits will jump and bounce off a tree trunk. It’s how we move through the space of being in wonder.
From a design point of view, there is a good amount of data, like landscape data, ecological information that comes from the state of wonder. There is almost no better state to receive ecological information than the state of wonder. It unlocks all of your blocks and containers and boxes. It allows you to be in a momentary experience where the wonder of the world can enter into you, and then you know that you are nature.
ARTY: Your approach to assessing a landscape that you will be working with is to look at a place not knowing, leaving the knowing behind. It reminded me of the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind book by Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Sōtō Zen Monk who helped introduce Zen Buddhism in the US in the 1960s. The message of the book is to see things with a completely open mind, a clean slate of mind, not judging.
ERIK: For me, one of the most foundational approaches to good design is not to be a designer; it’s to put design away. Put that self away. Look at all these little selves that come up. You’re the father, and you’re the teacher, you’re the interviewer, you’re the organizer, and you call upon those selves at different times. But when you go out on the land for the first time, if you put the designer self on, you’re going to miss so much.
But it took almost 20 years of doing professional design work to realize that. There’s an egoic joy in knowing, in designing, coming up with cool, creative ideas. Especially for a younger person or if you haven’t done inner work, what you’re after is to be seen for your creativity and what you bring to the table. But so much is missed when you do that. You only get an understanding of maybe 50 percent of a site, of an ecosystem, if that is the only way you approach it.
ARTY: Another sacred attribute is the sacred state of health, soundness of mind, body and spirit. You have gone through serious burnout; talk about this attribute in terms of your experience.
ERIK: I certainly carry chronic nervous system stuff, for almost 20 years now, and that still kind of dictates how I approach my day-to-day life schedule. I schedule around some chronic issues that I deal with. I don’t regret having a chronic health situation because the path that it led me down, in terms of inner growth, understanding, and learning. When I hit burnout, and my nervous system collapses, all of these symptoms come on. It is scary.
The first time the chronic health thing cropped up was in 2004, and between 1999 and 2004, I was a hardcore global justice activist, and bringing permaculture to the streets, and organizing and being part of civil disobedience projects around the world, following the World Trade Organization, or the G8, or the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas]. Then we would plant big gardens in the streets, and do other things as a way to say there’s an alternative to global corporate privatization of water, seeds and food.
2004 was the first time that chronic health thing cropped up. What was terrible and powerful about that moment was that I couldn’t do activism anymore. I couldn’t go to the meetings. I couldn’t travel. My entire identity was shattered, and I went through a process of feeling like I was completely unworthy of the world because my whole identity was the guy who puts himself on the line. I sacrifice myself to do the good work. I put my body, heart, mind, and soul on the line for the work. But I couldn’t do it. My body said no, this isn’t sustainable; you have to do something different.
This was how my first business was born. For those four years, I lived off of activist fundraising. I started an organization called Adopt an Activist. It was an early form of crowd-funding, where people would adopt a frontline activist and help pay their expenses.
Then the second burnout happened in 2017, and I had to go on a sabbatical because it was just too intense. But burnout has been a great lesson because every time that I had burnout, I learned something great in my life—I learned a new skill, I learned something new about myself. And when I was able to come back out into the world, I could bring those gifts.
ARTY: It’s not easy to appreciate a healing crisis, and surrender to it. A lot of times people want to go to a health practitioner so that they can get well enough to go back to the things that made them sick.
ERIK: What’s fascinating about that is the first big burnout when the health crisis emerged, I spent two years in depression because of this shattering of my identity. At that time, all I could think about was how it felt before this happened, and how invincible I was, and all I could think about was: How can I go back to that? But I had to see through and find a totally different path.
ARTY: The wound can become an opportunity, if you surrender to it rather than resist it by wanting to recapture the past instead of following where it’s taking you.The disorder, or disease or malady is a discipline. By restricting you it puts you on a different path. But It’s hard for people to understand that.
ERIK: It really is. And it takes a lot of letting go and shedding. When doing the good work of restoring land and communities, the big question is: How do we sustain that without killing ourselves? I see it a lot. There’s a certain part in the activist culture which is actually pretty unhealthy. We’re actually not creating a culture where people’s bodies and hearts and minds are held in a sacred way.
ARTY: At an Eco Farm Conference a few years ago, Valentin Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, talked about the Creator giving the Amah Mutsun a mandate to care for all creation. He gave the example of caring for the bear. And what that means is learning what they eat, and then making sure those plants are cared for. It is an expression of how ecological stewardship is derived from a spiritual cosmology that is based on interrelationships.
Photo Credit: Michael Litwin
ERIK: In reality, we human beings are nature; we are a particular function of nature which is to be stewards, caretakers of the webs of relationships.
In my work, I talk a lot about relationship design. Instead of designing things, we design relationships and steward those relationships over time, through cyclical time, through successional time, through evolutionary time.
A question that we often ask ourselves on a project is: When are we? This points to the idea that every site is in some sort of succession of evolution. Are we right after a fire has hit? If so, we’re in a pioneer phase. Are we inside an old-growth redwood forest that is at total maturity? When are we speaks to what needs to be cared for now in this particular moment in time, knowing it’s going to change and evolve, and then we’re setting ourselves up for that next phase.
That’s the beauty of the hands and minds of humans. We get to tend ecosystems as the choreographers of ecological relationships, and it’s a privilege. It’s a gift to be able to do that.
ARTY: This is a quote from the book, “When people understand that they are keystone species, they can learn to behave like a probiotic on the earth, restoring ecosystem health one garden at a time.” What does it mean for people to embrace their role as a keystone species rather than being an unaware, destructive force? I don’t think there’s many people whose goal is to destroy, but the collateral damage that’s being done by the way that we do things now certainly is catastrophically destructive.
ERIK: There’s three parts to this. One part is how traditional cultures live on the land in a harmonious web of relationships. Indigenous Peoples have been managing lands in California for 10,000-plus years. One way to be a positive force on the land is to lean on traditional knowledge.
Secondly, when we walk out on the land and be perceptive enough to know where our feet go. To understand where I step means something. A footstep is a powerful act. Do I crush a seed head with my footstep? Do I compact the edge of an eroding waterway with my footstep? These are very practical, tangible things. What direction am I taking through the forest or across the land? What’s my purpose? What’s my mind frame like? We have these bodies and senses that are powerful in their ability to perceive the connections and activities of nature. We are an instrument to understand ecological data and moment-to-moment changes in the environment. We have sensors all over our bodies that constantly tell us all this information. Do we use that or not? And if we do use it for restoration and integration as humans in nature, wondrous things happen.
But let’s face it, we’re not living in traditional place-based cultures anymore. Most people aren’t using the sensory powers of their body to be walking through the land as a web weaver of the ecosystem. So the third one is this: How do we embrace the power of the modern world to transition us back into some kind of place-based culture that can be a one that regenerates the world around us through the activity of living? And the only way that I have discovered to be able to do that, currently, is through economic means.
Half of all Americans say they are living paycheck-to-paycheck. With that in mind, in the current context of our situation, I’ve come to a conclusion that we need an economic way of reweaving ourselves into the patterns of the Earth. I’m interested in harnessing the power of economic structures to become truly regenerative as a society, because if we can create an entire industry of jobs that are literally building soil, growing food, catching water, healing the landscape, healing the land, that is our path to being beneficial organisms on the planet again.
Photo by Erik Ohlsen
ARTY: What are some of the key principles for learning to listen to the land and to read the land?
ERIK: As I mentioned, one of the most important principles is to put away knowledge, to put away knowing when you want to read the land. Step onto the land not as a designer. Step onto the land not as a scientist. Step onto the land with pure wonder in an open way.
I suggest that people wander. I’m a very big fan of wandering. If you want to learn about a landscape, let’s say you’re doing a design for a farm or a landscape or homestead, one of the first things I would do is wander, and then hang out and sit somewhere for a while, then get up and wander again. Don’t judge anything that’s happening; only absorb information. Have experiences. Follow birds. Follow insects. Feel the texture of the bark on a tree. Use all your senses in this process of wandering and exploration, because what happens through that process is when you don’t put anything about the land in the container of your mind, and you just experience it with wonder, that’s when the most important information is shared with you; that’s when the land speaks to you.
And the other one is to focus mostly on relationships. What are the interactions between things, not the things themselves? Think in terms of interactive processes, not just the shape. What does the shape do? How does the shape interact with wind, with terrain, with fur, whatever? That’s where the real information is.
ARTY: You’ve said that biodiversity is the best measure of success. Allan Savory, the originator of holistic grazing, has had some impressive results in Africa, for the most part, where he transformed arid places by significantly increasing biodiversity. He was criticized because he didn’t track the science and carbon sequestration rates and his success has been discounted in some scientific circles due to lack of scientific methodology in spite of the empirical evidence of regenerating ecosystems. Talk about biodiversity as the measure of success.
ERIK: Before there was science, people were living in relative ecological harmony around the world for thousands and thousands of years. They did so through their ability to be an active participant in the relationship processes of life. The reason why I say biodiversity is the measure of success is because it is inherently a representation of complexity, and the only way that a system can hold that level of complexity is because there’s more resources there and there are more exchanges happening between the resources, whether that be carbon, nitrogen, water, soil microbiology, sunlight, photosynthetic powers, whatever it might be. So when you have a system that before could only sustain three species of birds and five species of insects and three species of mammals, and all of a sudden there’s 75 species of birds, and where there was one type of butterfly now there’s four different kinds of butterflies, you’ve developed a system that’s so thriving in its ecological complexity that it can provide for that much life.
ARTY: In an era of unprecedented climate events that results in life-changing catastrophes, what are the most important ways to build resiliency in our natural world, and in our built world?
ERIK: The first and most important thing to do is trust nature; trust the wisdom of the ecology. When the big fires hit in Sonoma County in 2017, the town I grew up in, Santa Rosa, burned. I was west of Santa Rosa, and all my Santa Rosa family, my siblings and nieces and everybody evacuated to stay with us. A lot of beloved places burned to the ground, places that I grew up in.
The first narrative of that that came out, for most people, was this was unprecedented and never should have happened. But spending time with some of my Indigenous friends and being in a listening space, I learned that Indigenous folks had literally been tracking fire in that area for about 12,000 years. And my friend Red Bird said, “Let me show you something.”
So he took me to a place where the narrative is fire never should have hit this, the flatland. It came out of the mountain and blew out onto the flatland. He said, “Erik, do you know there were five square miles of dogbane that Indigenous folks have been cultivating for thousands of years? When fire comes through, it takes away competition and the resprouts of the dogbane are longer, straighter stalks. It takes about 60,000 stalks to make a family’s fishing net.” The local Indigenous people make their cordage out of dogbane. He took me to a place where about two2 acres of dogbane were growing, the remnants of what was once a five-square mile patch. “This is what’s left, that’s been preserved. This was specifically cultivated here to receive the fire.”
Think about a place-based culture that is so perceptive and in relationship to the local ecology that big disturbance events, like a wildfire, are actually used in a utilitarian way. That comes from an understanding that these events have been happening for a very long time. Clearly, we live in an accelerated process of climate catastrophe, but some ecosystems may survive the extremes of climate change.
So what do we do?First of all, we continue to do the things that serve life—managing water in an ecological way, managing the cycles of plants and seeds in a way that continues to thrive and build biodiversity. These all become buffer systems. In cities and towns, from an emergency preparedness point of view, we need to be growing food in our backyards and in our neighborhoods; we need to have stores of freshwater, which could be rain caught water; and we need those social relationships and the kind of mutual aid that we saw during the pandemic, when neighbors came together caring for each other. These are all part of our resilience.
But from a natural point of view, the Earth has been changing and evolving forever. There’s never been a time where it became stagnant. And now that process is being accelerated, and we are moving away from mitigation to adaptation. Ten years ago we were talking about mitigation. But the climate crisis seems like a runaway train now. So how do we adapt?
If I’m going to have the weather of San Diego in Sonoma County by 2080, I’m planting avocado trees. I’m figuring out what Indigenous folks in San Diego were doing to live for thousands of years, and I’m applying that methodology in Sonoma County, and I’m teaching my children that.
We can be the keystone species that supports an ecological transition as climate shifts and use that role to establish a new way of being with climate as we move forward.
We need to transform how we interact with one another and the world — but how can we achieve the required level of change without working together? Once a year, at the annual Bioneers Conference, thousands of us gather in person to hear from visionary thinkers, doers, and creators working in myriad ways to address the many crises facing us at this critical juncture. It’s a heartening reminder that new ways forward are possible — and that in coming together, we can help turn ideas into meaningful action.
We’re excited to begin sharing the brilliant solutions discussed at Bioneers 2025 with the wider world, giving everyone a chance to experience the powerful insights from these truly inspiring leaders. To start, we’re releasing three incredible talks today (with more to come in the future). Imagine a city that functions like a forest with “Godmother of Biomimicry” Janine Benyus, explore how recognizing our interdependence can change our perspective with storyteller Baratunde Thurston, and learn about the Indigenous-led movement that led to the removal of four dams on the Klamath River from Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group Executive Director Amy Bowers Cordalis. Watch, learn, and share these visions for a more just and regenerative future.
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Janine Benyus – Becoming a Welcome Species: Biomimicry and the Art of Generous Design
If humans are to come home to this planet, we need to become a welcome species, a gift-giver to the places we inhabit. Janine Benyus, the world-renowned “Godmother of Biomimicry,” and her colleagues at Biomimicry 3.8 have been demonstrating what it takes to design human settlements—cities, villages, homes, and businesses—that create the same ecological gifts as the wildlands next door. In her presentation, Benyus helps us imagine a city that functions like a forest—storing the same amount of water, cleaning and cooling the same amount of air, cycling as many nutrients, and nurturing as much biodiversity. She also shares inspiring news about some of Biomimicry 3.8’s “Project Positive” initiatives that reveal that this regenerative vision is indeed achievable and within our reach, if we are able to quiet our human cleverness sufficiently to be able to ask: What would Nature do here?
Baratunde Thurston – From Me to We, A Story of Interdependence
We are facing so many crises—climatological, technological, “democratilogical”—that even the use of the word “crisis” has reached crisis levels. While there are of course policies and investments and direct actions we need to fervently work on in response, we also need to pay attention to the story, because what we tell ourselves about ourselves shapes how we show up in these times. Baratunde Thurston, Writer, Producer, Proud Earthling, creator of the How To Citizen and Life with Machines podcasts and author of the comedic memoir How to Be Black, shares stories he has been unearthing about our relationships with the natural world, our fellow humans, and even with machines that provide strong hints of where we need to go and how to get there.
Amy Bowers Cordalis – The Water Remembers: Year Zero
In 2024, the removal of four dams on the Klamath River marked a historic victory for an Indigenous-led movement, achieving the largest river restoration project in history. A revolutionary approach is underway, blending Indigenous knowledge, modern science, and sustainable practices, and the early results are remarkable—salmon are returning in unexpected abundance to spawning grounds that have been inaccessible for 100 years. In her presentation, Amy Bowers Cordalis, mother, fisherwoman, Executive Director, Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group and former general counsel of the Yurok Tribe who has played a major role in this struggle, highlights the Indigenous values and lessons from the Klamath, showcasing nature-based solutions that heal the land, waters, and people while benefiting the economy. The goal is to restore the river as a living relative, ensuring its health for generations. The Klamath’s renewal is not just history—it’s a path forward for all.
Turn Ideas into Impact: Apply Now for the 2025 J.M.K. Innovation Prize
With the consequences of climate change, cultural loss, and systemic injustice at our doorstep, the urgency for social-impact organizations and community leaders to act has never been greater. The J.M. Kaplan Fund believes in the power of innovators to reshape our future — and knows that this work is already underway in unexpected places and through nascent projects across the country.
The Fund created the J.M.K. Innovation Prize to help transform these ideas into lasting impact. The prize seeks to identify and support bold problem-solvers leading transformative, early-stage projects in the fields of heritage conservation, the environment, and social justice. In 2025, the Fund will award up to 10 Prizes, each including a cash award of $150,000 over three years and $25,000 in technical assistance funds. Awardees will also receive guidance through the Fund’s resource network, accessing hands-on training and support to help turn their ideas into sustainable growth and impact.
Through engaging courses led by some of the world’s foremost movement leaders, Bioneers Learning equips engaged citizens and professionals like you with the knowledge, tools, resources and networks to initiate or deepen your engagement, leading to real change in your life and community. Together, we will cultivate our inner awareness, learn to harness nature’s timeless strategies to drive social transformation, and explore how regenerative agriculture can heal the planet.
EveryWoman’s Leadership: Cultivating Ourselves for Full-Spectrum Flourishing | April 16-May 7, 2025 | Guided by Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, this four-week experiential program invites women, female-identifying individuals, and allies into a transformative space to cultivate inner awareness, relational intelligence, and clarity of purpose.
Biomimicry for Social Innovation: Nature’s Lessons for Movement Leaders | May 13-June 3, 2025 | This four-week experiential course reveals how biomimicry—a practice that draws on the genius of ecosystems—can inform leadership, partnership building, and decision-making for lasting, regenerative change.
The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times | Self-Paced | Discover how the Four Sacred Gifts of forgiving the unforgivable, unity, healing, and hope in action provide us with a path to our most grounded, loving, healed, and generous selves.
Regenerative Agriculture: Nourishing the Soil, Healing the Planet | Self-Paced | Be enlightened on the practical applications and impressive potential that regenerative agriculture has to revive healthy landscapes; contribute to human and animal health; create an equitable food system; and help heal the climate.
