Retreat for Leaders in the Living Climate Movement
Donation protected
We are holding a 5-day retreat for current and emerging environmental leaders who are working on soil health, a "living climate" understanding, and biodiversity as ways to build community resiliency and address water and food sovereignty, flooding, drought, heatwaves and wildfires.
Things are changing fast. New patterns are forming. We want time to think together.
The foundational agreements and regional systems that most people thought were relatively stable are rapidly reorganizing. This involves everything from rainfall patterns, to food systems, to governance and public services. Different patterns and systems will emerge, for better or for worse. Many people are panicking, and looking for new approaches and new leaders.
Those of us who have been working to understand and communicate a "living systems" approach to decision making ("the living climate", small and large water cycles, the biotic pump, the soil sponge, holistic management, and hydrological cooling) have a unique opportunity to step up and be resources during this time.
As a community of practice, we know alternative approaches (to planning. policy, and practice) that transcend divisions and adapt to real-time changes. We have knowledge and collective experience that can create healthy societies and biosystems, and provide food sovereignty, abundant clean water, and regional resiliency to fires, floods, heatwaves and drought. Our approaches can reduce forced migration and conflict over resources, address the public health crisis, and bring life back to degraded land.
We want to work together during these interesting times, to bring forward something that wasn’t possible before.
We have found each other in online spaces and begun our work. Now it’s time to nourish and sharpen our community of practice by gathering in person.
18 of us are coming together this Spring for a retreat in Vermont. We will gather for deep discussion and strategic thinking using living systems frameworks, and field trips to design flood resilience projects in the local landscape. There will also be plenty of "being" time for jumping in the pond, walks among the lilacs, music, local food, and much needed sleep and laughter.
The retreat will be led by Didi Pershouse , Founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative , and author of The Ecology of Care , and Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function . Australian scientist and systems-thinker Walter Jehne will join us via Zoom for part of the retreat. Otherwise we expect it to be entirely in person (not hybrid, and very few screens).
Here are some of the kinds of questions we will look at:
- What is becoming visible now, that has been hidden to us?
- What is of great value in this time that is being ignored?
- How do seemingly impossible situations create entirely new possibilities?
- What examples do we have that we can look to, as we design interventions and do what we need to do?
- What conditions can we set up that allow us to be mentally agile and deeply creative during this rapidly shifting time–while also slowing down to do the indirect work of growing culture, consciousness, and capability?
- What do we need to think about now to keep our systems operational? How do we make sure we can keep the basic needs of ourselves and our society met, keep foundational ecosystem processes going, and provide food, water, and shelter from the storm to our communities?
- How do we coordinate out efforts and funding towards shared goals?
- How do we show up when others are panicking and unable to think? How do we act purposefully and steadily, rather than reactively? How have we successfully bridged political divides?
- How do we awaken a sense of caring, responsibility and response-ability between neighbors (of all species)?
- How do we work in such a way that brings out the uniqueness and ongoing potential in each place, to become more of a fertile womb, rather than a silent tomb?
- What needs to be nourished?
Organizer
Didi Pershouse
Organizer
Thetford, VT