Restoring Trust Among Regenerative Leaders
I want to talk about a topic that quietly resides in the shadows — yet has significant consequences in the world as time goes by. As a visible leader in the regenerative movement, I have participated in and observed various conflicts throughout the last several years.
Rifts arose in the social fabric that remained invisible to people who care about regenerating landscapes and communities all over the world. Hidden divisions remained in the field of relationships causing harm that no one could see. Earlier this year, I was part of a visible rift that took place on Twitter between myself and members of the Regen Foundation. There were ripples that spread to other groups and confusion arose about who to trust and what was going on.
My purpose today is not to rehash what happened. Instead it is to speak about the importance of restoring trust among regenerative leaders so that our movement doesn’t become divided against itself. I want to take this opportunity to publicly apologize for saying that the Regen Foundation had disappointed me and that I no longer trusted them to hold relationships with integrity. There may (or may not) have been legitimate basis for saying what I said that day. But there is no legitimacy in creating social rot in the field when we all have very important work to do together.
This quote is from me. I often write, speak, and practice community engagements around the need to regenerate trust in the social field as a fundamental part of building the human capacities to cooperate with soils, forests, rivers, and landscapes overall. So today I declare my intention to regenerate trust in the field.
Humanity is in a precarious moment of planetary history. We have crossed several boundaries for safety in the loss of biodiversity, with climate change, in air and water pollution, and several other areas. Extinction is a real possibility for our species. And we only have one chance to get this right. So we need to restore trust and cooperation where it can be done.
I may not work with Regen Foundation again. Or maybe I will. It’s too early to tell. But what I want to do now is declare to everyone that we are allies in the work of regenerating the Earth. I would say the same thing about Regen Network, Commonland Foundation, EcoAgriculture Partners, and hundreds of other regenerative groups.
As leaders of the regenerative movement, we have a responsibility to role-model the kinds of behavior that make regeneration possible. I am doing this today by writing this letter. Please join me in healing wounds in our movement. Let us find our way into harmony with each other. Then let us move on to finding harmony with the rest of nature with whom we are kin.
Onward, fellow humans.
