Global Regeneration
Redefine our relationships with world and with nature so that Earth can thrive.
Flourishing Earth already talks about how we need to regenerate Earth’s natural systems; this pattern explores how we’re working together to accomplish it.
We’ve destroyed many of Earth’s ecosystems without really understanding what was there or how to recreate them, and now we need them back.
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As with all three movements, global regeneration is well underway. There is no official movement that goes by this name (that I’m aware of), but there are people all over the world working to restore our planet to something closer to the splendor that it once had.
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Join in and help coordinate the efforts to regenerate Earth’s natural systems.
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But it’s also about changing our fundamental relationships with world and Earth. We’ve historically treated Earth as infinite in the sense that whatever we pulled out of the Earth or dumped back on it would be easily absorbed by the natural systems. Of course, now we know the Earth is finite, and we have the ability to produce waste at such a rate that the natural systems can no longer keep up. In some ways, with some people, the change is clear, and steps are being taken to reduce or eliminate waste being outsourced to Nature, but more can be done.
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We need to go beyond just protecting what’s left of Earth’s natural systems, we need to start giving them back. We need to be reclaiming land and giving it back to other species in an intelligent way. It may be that some farmland is going back to nature, but is it connected to other lands? Are the plant species growing there going to allow for other life to thrive? Are there laws in place to protect the emerging wildlife?
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Some of this is about establishing world systems that allow and support this activity, but we can also take responsibility as individuals for whatever land we can improve. That can include any land that we “own”, but if we get involved in our local area, we may find that we can affect other areas as well: public lands, or abandoned lands that are unattended.
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There’s even a movement called Gorilla Gardening that attempts to practice permaculture, even when local law doesn’t allow it.
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I think of the book The Man Who Planted Trees, and it’s a good source of inspiration. It’s a fictional account, but the ideas behind it are sound. We can apply small transformations to the tamed places we know and allow nature to start unfolding.
Therefore:
Redefine our relationships with world and with nature so that Earth can thrive.
Part of creating a World That Works is ensuring that it works for nature as well as all people