Elementally Sustaining People & Planet: Earth, Fire, Water, Air.
A bit of context…
This is one of Unstitution’s (7) overarching societal coalition living lab themes.
Each theme is multi-layered and multi-faceted, toward co-catalyzing, supporting and building upon many people already working diligently to advance important work.
With overlapping synergies between and among us, we can spawn wider and deeper, connecting and fortifying multitudes of efforts and initiatives — toward life-affirming patterns that can helps us all.
Unstitution’s driving theme and purpose can serve as an integrative support, potentially amplifying the work of many others. A reciprocal and symbiotic interdependence is at play. Over time — and beyond our own work and lifetimes — we can collectively contribute to rebooting society’s operating system. Activating shifts toward flourishing on a finite planet needs us all with gifts differing reconstituting the commons in a variety of ways.
Patterned as a collaborative commons, we can contribute to the integrity and resilience of any and all initiatives within and across our nested and interconnected ecosystems.
Theme descriptions are not carved in stone. Since initiatives spawn organically and by design, we’re always adaptively balancing strategy thinking with co-creative emergent learning. As people co-catalyze and engage, we’ll collectively shape and adapt the trajectory in more granular and tangible context-based and place-sourced ways that bring it to life.
Overview…yeah it’s complex and complicated…but we gotta cut through…
There are many overlapping and layered issues, challenges and opportunities supported by extensive scientific research and longstanding Indigenous wisdom that concern the regenerative health and biodiversity of the planet for human survival and thriveability.
Viably sustaining people and planet requires significant systemic context-based and place-sourced shifts in how we attend to all the elements: earth, fire, water and air. While there is growing convergence on the relevance and gravity of many issues and excellent guiding principles, strategies and methods that already exist with initiatives underway:
📚 The range, variability and magnitude of issues and challenges are vast
📚 When scientists, academia, advocates, activists, and interest groups focus on decontextualized parts of the elephant, no definitive consensus is reached among and between them, on the most viable (trans)contextual pathways forward
📚 Some polarization persists even among many of those who share concerns, regarding the climate crisis and mitigation priorities
📚 Labelling and binary debate dilute efforts and greatly sub-optimize the impact and momentum of initiatives actively or potentially pursued
📚 The scientific, social, economic, cultural, Indigenous and political factors that make up the whole picture [elephant] — easily become siloed in echo chambers, if not warring factions
📚 Divisiveness perpetuates policy and predatory industry delay and green washing — e.g. when the experts disagree, stall tactics persist
📚 Strategies and solutions must be tailored, adapted and right scaled to address context-based and place-sourced bioregional ecological, cultural and socio-economic needs and differences
📚 Greater awareness, education, active participation and support among and across communities and citizens — are needed to make meaningful, tangible progress
Initiatives that cut across and build bridges within this overarching coalition theme
Dysfunctional human system patterns, blatantly and insidiously, continue to pose some of our most challenging barriers that impede needed shifts.
Our work is focused on omni-partial bridge building — collaboratively and co-creatively engaging with several global and local organizations, practitioners and initiatives who bring overlapping and differentiated perspectives, expertise, capabilities and lived experience.
We work with several global and local/bioregional and civic organizations and initiatives who bring overlapping and differentiated perspectives, expertise, capabilities and lived experience. These span multiple elemental aspects of sustainability, regeneration and climate. Coalition initiatives potentially bring together and build upon any and all of these interconnected elements:
🌳 Earth: soil health; regenerative agriculture; eco-restoration; land use; crops; carbon storage and sequestration; agroforestry; rainforests; (de)forestation…
🔥 Fire: forest fires across the globe; fire management (Indigenous methods); burning of fossil fuels; impact on global warming…
💦 Water: biotic pump function of climate, water quality and availability; drinking water; pollution of rivers and streams, watersheds, lakes, coastal regions, oceans; clean-up; ocean acidification and temperature; receding glaciers; flooding…
💨 Air: air quality; fires making air quality dangerous; pollution from burning fossil fuels; improperly managed waste; global warming; weather and geological events — tornadoes and hurricanes…
Connected to -
🌏 Biodiversity: loss connected to environmental degradation and climate issues, food sources, systems and quality; wildlife protection and rewilding; endangered species and consequences; cascading planetary impacts…
🌍 Energy Transition: solar; wind; hydrogen; nuclear fusion; innovation; new technology; cascading geopolitical and economic impacts…
🌎 Food Security and Sovereignty: food systems; nutrient density; healthy nutrition sources; food waste; food less travelled; farm-to-table…
🌏 Circular Economy: shift away from consumerist society; bio-regional place-sourced regeneration; nature-based materials and solutions; sustainability performance metrics; accounting for externalities; end-to-end systemic supply-chain value models; zero waste etc…
🌍 The Built Environment: reimagining, revitalizing, repurposing and retrofitting urban centres towards regenerative design/architecture, nature-based products, sustainable buildings and infrastructure, healthy communities, work systems, social cohesion; sense of belonging; wellbeing economies and planetary flourishing; involves affordable housing, healthy commercial buildings, land use/ownership, green spaces and community place-making etc…
⚙️ Linking to Justice-Led Social Wellbeing through — Initiatives that address food poverty and sovereignty, community, infrastructure and social services, employment decline, rise in social inequality, othering and belonging, migration, mental health, healthcare, aging well, etc.
⚙️ Linking to Amplifying Youth-Led Social Change through — University, school and community projects that support youth leadership, agency, learning and creative activation, address eco-anxiety, build cross-generational collaboration etc.
⚙️ Linking to Shifting Economics for Societal Value through — Developing, assessing, experimenting with alternative multicapital models, initiatives that advance commons-based ecosystems for regenerative development, establishing alternative funding, value exchange and flows, rewarding positive regenerative sustainable impact etc.
Integrally connected to everything!
Education and Learning and Arts and Culture are fundamental multimodal building blocks that can help shift toward integrated holistic ways of being, bring more left and right brain balance to everything. Extending reach, inspiring, developing capabilities and mobilizing social change — these are woven into all coalition living lab themes and the functions that make up our evolving Living Operating System.
We welcome people whose creative work will help to embody and embed learning, art, culture, spirituality, inspiration and innovation — to participate. Cultural creatives, progressive learning modalities and holistic approaches are increasingly moving beyond the fringes and margins.
This spirited emergent work is the life blood of movement making…inspiring new stories, joyful resilience, and a (reframed) sense of belonging, with people everywhere and anywhere moving in little and big ways. Bring it on! The regenerative (r)evolution is manifesting in many forms — a dance of emergence and strategy.
Yeah, we know. It all sounds rather grand as described.
Navigating between worlds and deep SHfT is fraught with difficult challenges, with many of us (still) dependent on conventional economics — affected by the very issues we are trying to overcome. There are many pressures and tensions that reinforce dysfunctional dynamics — holding onto control and domination-oppression patterns.
It’s not easy to be in this world and live by and into different rules of engagement and ways of being — to uphold and stay true to healthy collaborative partnership ways.
The good news…it’s underway.
There’s a growing reservoir of regenerative agriculture, eco-restoration, food systems, education, economics, publications and resources with pioneers and practitioners shaping the way. We celebrate, draw from, support, share and build collaboratively from these.
On a planet of 8 billion people, we need to widen the pathways for multitudes of (g)local initiatives to flourish for the common good. A spirit of generosity, reciprocity and enabling value flows will lift us all.
A long way to go! However, it’s especially encouraging to see collaborative progress gaining legs.
Various pioneering efforts — research, projects and pilots — are underway, opening and widening pathways and potential for many others to undertake critical learning, restoration and revitalization.
Essential shifts toward stewarding and safeguarding regeneration can shape sustainability patterns and practices that are conducive to life for humanity and the living planet we call home. New and ongoing focused place-sourced and intersecting efforts are gaining legs around the world.
Together, working collaboratively — you and we can all be unstitutional. Reconstituting the commons into the living fabric of society is an ongoing humbling learning journey.
*This article was lightly updated June 2024, reflecting ongoing action research and additional links, as we continue to observe, listen, assimilate, curate and adapt.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze collaborative communities, initiatives and coalitions where people from across sectors, disciplines, cultures, generations and walks-of-life work together on mission critical issues. From readiness through to regenerative progress — moving beyond polarization — is how we roll. The links embedded throughout this article are a warm invitation to go a bit deeper, at any time. For more insights reflecting our ongoing journey, our suite of Unstitution articles are published on Medium. They portray a small sample of the ways we are adapting and contributing among ever-expanding commons-based communities and initiatives inspired and fuelled by citizens — perhaps better described as denizens — anywhere in the world — living into the principles and spirit that govern our collaborative work.
You can follow Unstitution and engage with us on LinkedIn. Many of our posts and perspectives also pop up under hashtags #messyhumanness and #wisdomwithteeth.
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