nature-connection

Ethics, Design, Care

This short talk is about an economy with caring for life as its centre, rather than extraction and production. I compare earth care to modern medical care, and suggest that looking is not the same as caring. I ask what design can learn from Care Ethics – and find inspiration [continue …]

2023-03-13T09:13:02+00:00March 3rd, 2023|biodiversity, care, development, most read, nature-connection, urban-rural|

Sustainable Finance vs the Real World

These are curious times. Even as the world burns, sustainable finance and green capitalism are booming: Sustainability Reporting. Net Zero. Climate Finance. ESG. Green New Deal. By some estimates, assets invested with environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria now top £35 trillion. Why would investors put money into an asset [continue …]

2022-10-04T09:22:48+00:00August 15th, 2022|civic ecology, earth repair, green finance, nature-connection, newsletter|

From Control, to Kinship: Ecological Restoration in a More Than Human World

(Keynote talk in China) A just transition will happen when we see nature differently, relate to nature differently, and understand the purpose of development differently. So, can AI foster new ways of knowing and being in the world? Can it be medium of attention; a medium of connection; a medium of relationship with the living world?

2022-10-04T13:56:36+00:00June 10th, 2022|knowing, nature-connection|

Tonantsintlalli – a Multidimensional Mother Earth


Can indigenous knowledges help us inhabit our own places in a more adaptive and responsive ways? Can connection with these kinds of lived experience help us redefine development, and progress, in our own situations? The text here is my introduction to "Tonantsintlalli - a Multidimensional Mother Earth" in Australia

2022-10-04T13:58:38+00:00April 15th, 2022|knowing, nature-connection|

Design for Multi-Species Cities

What would it mean to practice design in the knowledge that the well-being of humans, and non-humans, is inter-connected? Here are the results of a design workshop at Milan Polytechnic: practical ways to make cities hospitable for all of life, not just human life.

2022-10-04T09:23:25+00:00March 7th, 2022|civic ecology, nature-connection|

“An inspiring design”

Twenty landscape students were given an unusual design brief: regenerate the soils of the Camargue bioregion - its rhizosphere - as a biological, living entity. Do do this, they were told, by creating new associations between, people, animals, vegetation, and weather.

2022-10-04T09:23:25+00:00February 28th, 2022|earth repair, nature-connection|

Microbes and Social Equity – conversation with Dr Sue Ishaq

Ninety nine percent of life, it turns out, is invisible - so how do we design for that? My guest in this conversation is microbiome researcher Dr. Suzanne Ishaq, founder of the Microbes and Social Equity working group

2022-10-08T14:49:54+00:00February 15th, 2022|knowing, most read, nature-connection|

How AI might be used to enhance local knowledge

(My foreward to DEDI) Indigenous peoples have a closer relationship with the ecologies of their land than those who practice ‘production agriculture’. But their intimate, fine-grained knowledge can always be enhanced. For example, biodata collected from plants could be ‘heard’ by the farmer as music.

2022-10-04T09:23:36+00:00September 11th, 2021|knowing, nature-connection|

The Anthroponaut’s Wordbook, by Karin Fink

(I wrote this Prologue) Feeling powerless to change the course of events, the inclination to switch off can feel like self-defence. Karin Fink’s response is both nimble, and wise. Rather than re-draw the whole picture at a stroke, her focus in this book is on small connections, and how to enhance them.

2022-10-04T14:04:43+00:00September 10th, 2021|earth repair, nature-connection|

Bottom-up Biodiversity

Whether connecting schools to farms in France, daylighting rivers in Mexico, or rewilding grasslands in Patagonia, we’re learning how to ‘do’ biodiversity well. (This text was commissioned by the Swiss Ministry of the Environment, FOEN).

2023-03-10T16:00:08+00:00November 27th, 2020|nature-connection|

Re-wilding the Bauhaus: what its foundation course should be like today

We lack situated and embodied experiences - a sense of interdependency with living systems. I therefore propose a new Bauhaus Vorkurs, or Foundation Course. The course would foster ecological literacy, and a whole-systems understanding of the world. It would unite wisdom traditions from other places and times, with the latest insights of systems thinking and complexity science.

2022-10-04T10:10:08+00:00April 20th, 2019|nature-connection|

Arborists Arising: From Tree Care to Tree Camping

Hundreds of cities around the world are planting trees. But planting trees is just the start. A wide variety of activities and equipment - and a lot of knowledge-sharing - are involved in the management of tree popultions. Trees have to be climbed, pruned, inspected, and surveyed. All this involves equipment and services - most of which still need to be designed.

2023-04-28T10:53:37+00:00May 7th, 2018|care, nature-connection|

When Value Arises From Relationships, Not From Things

I’ve come to an inconvenient conclusion: production is not the purpose of life. I say inconvenient because many of us depend on industrial production to meet our daily life needs. But the perpetual search for new forms of production - whether ‘clean’, ‘green’ or ‘circular’ - is not where our future lies. (Interview with Valentina Croci of Domus Magazine)

2022-10-04T10:10:12+00:00March 8th, 2018|earth repair, food systems, nature-connection|
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