Welcome to the first edition of the Flourishing Monthly, a sharing of inspiration and insight for the journey towards a vibrant and healthy planet.
As Spring approaches UK shores, bringing with it an abundance of life and energy, we’ve found ourselves exploring the relationship between humanity and the lands we inhabit. In particular, looking into the many different cultural interactions with nature that illuminate the potential for humans to have a positive impact on their natural surroundings. This is an invitation to join us! Below you’ll find a collection of stories and articles, as well as a campaign and an upcoming event that further this exploration.
How “wilderness” was invented without Indigenous peoples
Research has found that humans have been reshaping at least three-quarters of the planet’s land for over 12,000 years. This adds to a growing body of research proving that the idea of “pristine wilderness” was a colonial misjudgment overlooking Indigenous Peoples’ ways of explicitly shaping their biodiverse landscapes. A myth that, when flipped on its head, opens vast new possibilities for cultivating biodiversity and reversing climate breakdown. It’s time to change the narrative.
Find out more in this article by Claudia Geib, published on Sapiens.org.
Journey into the forests of Jamaica
We’re inviting you on a journey into the biodiverse Cockpit Country with environmental anthropologist Lydia Gibson, whose on-the-ground research with Jamaica’s Maroon Peoples sheds light on an ethical, “people-centred” approach to conservation that is rooted in the interdependence between people and the places they inhabit.
On Thursday, March 31st (postponed – new date coming soon), Lydia will share her story of how this forest and the communities within it shifted her way of connecting with the living, breathing world around her. Reserve your free place.
Stand with the Maasai People of Tanzania
Over 150,000 Indigenous Maasai are facing forceful eviction from an area comprising 580 square miles of ancestral land. Through foreign investment, the Tanzanian government plans to make way for trophy hunting, elite tourism and an illusion of ‘conservation’ that negates the ways in which the Maasai’s ancestral knowledge has served to protect the ecosystem and maintain vital biodiversity.
As described in an article by Mongabay, “The Maasai have developed a symbiotic relationship that has allowed local ecology, domesticated livestock, and people to coexist in a resource-scarce environment.”
How can you help?
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- Sign and share the petition to stand with the Maasai
- Sign and share this boycott declaration
- Donate to Maasai resistance by contributing to their legal costs
Further information:
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- Details of the current plight of the Maasai in Northern Tanzania can be found in these articles from Oakland Institute, The Chanzo Inititiative, and this news piece by Al Jazeera English.
- Learn about the Maasai of Engaresero in Northern Tanzania who live in a reciprocal relationship with the Lake Natron territory of life, which is the world’s most critical breeding site for lesser flamingos.
Radically reimagining our food systems
One of the most profound elements of our human relationship with the land is that of growing food.
Ecological anthropologist, Philip Loring, puts brilliant words to the task of radically reimagining food systems, highlighting how we need a “vast patchwork quilt of smaller-scale solutions that vary dramatically from place to place, over space and over time, in an interplay with local climate, ecology and culture.”
In this article, he invites us to reconsider the ideologies that underpin the current dominant global food systems, “rather than asking whether a practice ‘scales’ — whether it works if adopted everywhere — we ought to instead ask whether a practice works in and for specific people and places…”
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