Editor’s note: Climate change is a symptom predicament of overshoot and is exploited by power elites to deflect from what is necessary, ending modern civilization. The slow death of nature started with civilization, it has exponentially sped up since the 1700s. The reason there are no more natural disasters is because they are all now man-made.
Rich countries have exported climate breakdown through extractive industries, creating a “carbon colonialism.”
Almost everything we buy exploits the environment and the people who depend on it to a greater or lesser extent. Almost everything we buy contributes to climate breakdown through emissions, local environmental degradation, or, most commonly, both. Yet, in a world where greenwashing is so commonplace that almost every product proclaims ecological benefits, it tends not to be seen that way. In fact, it tends not to be seen at all.
Carbon emissions and pollution are a phase that we all pass through, meaning that the ability—and crucially the money—to avoid the ratcheting risks of climate change is something we have earned, and others too will earn as each nation continues inexorably along its separate curve. Wealthy countries accept this narrative because it is comfortable and provides a logical and moral explanation of the relative safety and health of the rich world.
But what if it wasn’t true? What if one place was devastated because the other was clean? Just as carbon emissions are not acts of God, neither is exposure to the results of those emissions. In other words, you can’t remove money from the geography of disaster risk.
This is carbon colonialism: the latest incarnation of an age-old system in which natural resources continue to be extracted, exported, and profited from far from the people they used to belong to. It is, in many ways, an old story, but what is new is the hidden cost of that extraction: the carbon bill footed in inverse relation to the resource feast.
Most colonial economies were organized around extraction, providing the raw materials that drove imperial growth. As a result, even when the imperial administration is taken out, the underlying economic structures put in place by colonizers are very difficult to get away from and continue to hold newly independent countries back.
On a basic level, exporting raw materials adds less economic value to the country that does it than processing, manufacturing, and reselling those materials, so for every watt of energy, every hectare of land, and every hour of work used to make goods exported from the global North to the South, the South has to generate, use, and work many more units to pay for it.
Decolonizing Climate Change
We already have the ways and means to decolonize how we measure, mitigate, and adapt to climate change.
This task is as sizable as it is vital, but at its core are three priorities. First, carbon emissions targets based on national production must be abandoned in favor of consumption-based measures, which, though readily available, tend to be marginalized for rich nations’ political convenience. Secondly, with half of emissions in some wealthy economies now occurring overseas, environmental and emissions regulation must be applied as rigorously to supply chains as they are to domestic production.
By adopting these new viewpoints, we can aim towards a final priority: recognizing how the global factory manufactures the landscape of disaster. Our globalized economy is built on foundations designed to siphon materials and wealth to the rich world while leaving waste in its place.
Yet there is, as ever, another way. It is possible to reject the globalization of environmental value by giving voice to the people it belongs to. Environments do not have to be merely abstract commodities.
Giving greater value to how people think about their local environments is seen as a way to decolonize our environmental thinking, move away from extractivism, and perhaps forestall the slow death of nature that began in the 1700s.
Environmental Myths and How to Think Differently
One of the most widely shared myths in climate change discourse is that climate change increases the likelihood of natural disasters. This burden is ‘disproportionately’ falling upon poorer countries. Yet, it is fundamentally flawed. Climate change is not causing more natural disasters because disasters are not natural in the first place. They do not result from storms, floods, or droughts alone, but when those dangerous hazards meet vulnerability and economic inequality.
A hurricane, after all, means something completely different to the populations of Singapore and East Timor. This difference is no accident of geography but of a global economy that ensures that some parts of the world remain more vulnerable to climate change than others. Natural disasters are, therefore, economic disasters: the result of centuries of unequal trade and the specific, everyday impacts of contemporary commerce.
With rich countries doing an ever-diminishing share of their manufacturing, the responsibility to report real-world emissions is left to international corporations, which have little incentive to report accurate information on their supply chains.
The environments of the rich world are becoming cleaner and safer, even in an increasingly uncertain environment. The resources needed to tackle the challenges of climate change are accruing and being spent to protect their privileged populations.
Yet, for most of the world, the opposite is true. Natural resources continue to flow ever outward, with only meager capital returning in compensation. Forests are being degraded by big and small actors as climate and market combine to undermine traditional livelihoods. Factory workers are toiling in sweltering conditions. Fishers are facing ever-declining livelihoods.
In other words, we have all the tools we need to solve climate breakdown but lack control or visibility over the production processes that shape it. From legal challenges to climate strikes and new constitutions, people are waking up to the myths that shape our thinking on the environment. They are waking up to the fact that climate change has never been about undeveloped technologies but always about unequal power.
As the impacts of climate breakdown become ever more apparent, this can be a moment of political and social rupture, of the wheels finally beginning to come off the status quo.
Demand an end to the delays. Demand an end to tolerance for the brazenly unknown in our economy. Demand an end to carbon colonialism.
Goldman Prize Winner Murrawah Maroochy Johnson talks climate justice and inheriting a legacy of Indigenous resistance.
In 2019, Australia was on the cusp of approving a new coal mine on traditional Wirdi land in Queensland that would have extracted approximately 40 million tons of coal each year for 35 years. The Waratah coal mine would have destroyed a nature refuge and emitted 1.58 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
But that didn’t happen, thanks to the advocacy of Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, a 29-year-old Wirdi woman of the Birri Gubba Nation, who led a lawsuit against the coal company in 2021, and won.
The case was groundbreaking in many ways, but perhaps most strikingly, Johnson’s work helped set a new legal precedent that pushed members of the court to travel to where First Nations people lived in order hear their testimonies and perspectives, instead of expecting Indigenous people to travel long distances to settler courts. The lawsuit was also the first to successfully use Queensland’s new human rights law to challenge coal mining, arguing that greenhouse gas emissions from the Waratah coal mine would harm Indigenous peoples and their cultural traditions. Because of the litigation, the mine’s permit was denied in 2022, and its appeal failed last year.
Because of her work, Johnson is now among several of this year’s winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize honoring global grassroots environmental activism.
The last few years have been transformative for Johnson, who is the mother of a toddler and expecting her second baby in a few weeks. Grist spoke with her to learn about what motivates her, how she views the climate crisis, and what other young Indigenous activists can learn from her work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. You have been working on behalf of your people since you were 19 years old. What drives you to do this work?
A. It’s definitely not a choice. First contact here was just 235 years ago. At that point, terra nullius was declared, which said that the land belonged to nobody, which essentially means that the first interaction with colonizing invading powers was one of dehumanization. They saw us here, but to say that the land belonged to no one really says that we are subhuman. They deemed us of a status where we couldn’t own our own land even though they saw us here inhabiting our own lands, living and thriving. And so there’s a long legacy of resistance in first contact frontier wars but also through advocacy over the generations. I’m just a young person who gets to inherit that great legacy.
I was raised by very strong parents. My father, my grandfather, my great grandparents, were all resistance fighters. There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with inheriting that legacy and feeling like you need to do your part. But also, I feel like it’s not a choice because at the end of the day, what’s real is our people, our law, our custom — no matter the colonial apparatus attempts to disappear us, dilute us, absorb us into homogenous Australian mainstream and complete the assimilation process. To me, that’s continued injustice that our people face. And every First Nations person, I feel, every Indigenous person, has an obligation to resist that as well. Because at the end of the day, we First Nations people here in Australia, we are the oldest continuous living culture on the planet, and what comes with that is the fact that we have the oldest living creation stories, we have the oldest living law and custom. That in and of itself is so significant that we can’t just allow it to be washed away. I think that there has to be a continued active effort, by my generation and all future generations, to maintain our ways.
For us, colonial, Western, white contact is just such a small blip in time for how long our people have been here and how long we’ve maintained our ways and law and custom and culture. We have to collectively acknowledge that we have a duty of care and responsibility to maintain the way of our people. I’m really proud of being able to inherit that and also having a responsibility to protect and maintain it.
Q. Can you tell me about your perspective on climate change?
A. It’s always called human-induced climate change, but I think that that term doesn’t allow for colonial powers to be held accountable, or big polluters. I think it’s actually more accurate to say that it’s colonial-induced climate change, because it’s actually the process of colonization violently extracting and exploiting the resources of Indigenous nations, peoples’ land, especially in the Global South, that’s resulted in the crisis of climate change that we face today.
I see climate change not just as a crisis, but also an opportunity. In one sense, if what remains of our cultural knowledge is so intimately dependent on our land, and having access to our lands and waters, then climate change is a huge threat. For example, in the Torres Strait and throughout the Pacific, what do you actually do when your country, your homelands, your territory disappears because of the impacts of climate change? What does that mean for our identity that actually derives from being the people of that unique country and that unique place? Climate change could really signal finality of our diverse and distinct and unique cultural identities as Indigenous and First Nations people in the sense that land may become so changed or so disappeared that our people are no longer able to resonate or recognize or identify with it anymore or learn from it anymore. So that’s really scary.
But I think the other side is an opportunity because climate change creates a sense of urgency. It’s that sense of urgency that is going to be pushing our peoples to work collectively as Indigenous and First Nations people around the world, to highlight the importance of the shift required to address climate change, but also to recenter our traditional systems of caring for country and sustainability and living in harmony with the land as a solution to climate change — really combat this normalization of colonial history and the global system and power systems as unquestionable.
Q. That reminds me of how, on the video announcing your Goldman Prize, you mentioned that “there’s a lot to be learned from our ways of being.” Can you expand on that idea?
A. We’re at this moment where we can really take the best of our traditional ways of being and really use that to influence the decisions that we make about our future. What real climate justice is, to me, is really drawing on the greatest strengths that we have in terms of our traditional law and custom, using that as a guidance system in terms of the decisions we make about what the future looks like.
If you’re going to shift the entire global economy and global structure of how business is done, then you want to be talking to the experts. So you want to be talking to First Nations people and knowledge holders. I think climate change will ultimately lead those who are committed to the current system to be forced to be exposed to the reality that a lot of First Nations people have been living with for a long time: that this current global system doesn’t work for us. In the context of capitalism, it’s designed to work against us and facilitate outcomes for very few.
Climate change is here because of the current global systems, and that means that, eventually, the system will become obsolete. It already is when it comes to the survival of humanity. I think that ultimately people will come to see that the system doesn’t work for them. It’s never been designed to work for the masses.
So, I really see a huge shift toward leadership from First Nations people. Indigenous or non-Indigenous, people — this is my hope here in Australia — start to act in accordance with traditional principles of caring for country law and custom and really reestablishing old ways, governing ways, of these lands. I think that’s the only way to really address climate change. And maybe I’ve got a huge imagination, but I see it as part of my responsibility to work as hard as I can toward that goal of creating that reality, one in which a modern society essentially adheres to First Nations law and custom in a modern context.
Q. You’ve talked a lot about the importance of drawing from traditional knowledge. When I think about what it means to be Indigenous, I think about both the knowledge we have and also the challenge in bringing that forward because of how colonialism has eroded our ties to both culture and land. What would you say to Indigenous people who care about land and culture, but are feeling disconnected from both? How do they find their way back?
A. This is one that I actually really struggle with sometimes because in the Australian context here, we had the Stolen Generation, when Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their parents and indoctrinated. So you have whole generations that have been dispossessed of their cultural inheritance, of their families, and also their peoples have been dispossessed of future generations as well. The colonial process was a finely tuned machine by the time it came through the South Pacific and Australia. In one sense, we’re fortunate that it was only just over 230 years ago first contact happened, but at the same time, this colonial apparatus was so finely tuned that they didn’t need as long to do as much damage as they’ve been able to do.
Being in a settler colony, we’re dealing with mass incarceration, mass suicide rates, and the disappearing of our people. It feels like it’s hard to catch up. We can’t take a break or catch our breath because we’re dealing with the very real, frontier issues of losing our people. But at the same time, what’s required for healing and to actually rebuild our cultural strength is time. And actually being able to take the time to be on country, to sit with country, to learn, and to reconnect.
It’s this really delicate tug of war that all First Peoples who have been subject to colonialism have to face, and we have to sort of grapple with on a daily basis, what do we put our energy into? Am I fighting forced child removals and assimilation on the daily? Am I fighting the education system? Am I doing land and country work and going through the legal system? Or am I just sort of operating as an individual, sovereign person, under our own law and custom and that’s how I resist and maintain my strength? It’s so vast in terms of how we have to split ourselves up in a way to deal with the issues at hand, which essentially is the disappearance of our people, but also our way of life and custom.
At the end of the day, for me, I just have to take heed from my ancestors and my own people that we’ve seen the end of the world before. My great grandparents and their generation saw the end of their world already, and they’ve been fighting. They were in the physical frontier on the front line, and survived that, and saw everything that they knew to be ripped away from them. So I have to just acknowledge that I’m very lucky to be born in the generation I’m born in, with so much more opportunity. But at the same time, there is that huge gap in familiarity with culture and our ways.
Q. Before your successful litigation against the Warratah mine, you fought against the Carmichael mine, filing lawsuit after lawsuit. But the mine still opened in 2021 and is now in operation. How do you handle such setbacks, and the grief of climate trauma and colonialism? What would you say to other Indigenous activists who are dealing with similar challenges?
A. Being a young person, going through that, it’s really hard. You’re up against the actual powers that be of the colonial apparatus: the state government, the federal government, the mining lobby itself, and this idea that our traditional lands should be destroyed for extraction and exploitation for the benefit of everybody else. For the benefit of the state in terms of royalties, and for the benefit of the rest of settler Australia, where we, the people and our lands, are the collateral damage. And so for a long time I was very heartbroken, very depressed. For a long time I didn’t know what my next steps were.
But the reality is that I feel very much so guarded by my ancestors and all our people. I had time to mourn and get back on my feet before the opportunity to join the Youth Verdict case against the Waratah coal mine came along.
All I can say is we kept going. We’re fighting for our people, every single day. And something that I was always reminded of along the way was that even though it might not be the silver bullet that makes significant change, it’s still important that we create our own legacy of resistance and that we do our best every day to maintain what we hold dear.
We’ve got to do the work because we’ve got to do the work. It stands on its own and it’s our obligation as traditional custodians every day to do the work of maintaining and protecting country. We put on the record that we don’t consent, this isn’t free, prior, and informed consent as we are entitled under the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And every step of the way, just maintaining that resistance, even if it’s just telling our story and challenging the prevailing, dominant, colonial narrative, I think is important to do every single day.
So in terms of advice, I think it’s to keep going. Take a break when you need to. And have a cry, because I cried for like eight years straight, but I think just knowing what some of my own people have been through and the horrors that they had to deal with, it’s the responsibility that we inherit to maintain the fight and continue on as best we can.
We might not be able to solve everything in one or two generations. But again, we’re the oldest living culture on the face of the earth. So, in that respect, we’ve been here the longest and, as long as my generation and our future generations maintain our own identities, cultural identities, and resistance as best as we can, we’ll be here long into the future as well.
Editor’s Note: The Kurdish people of Rojava have been building a grassroots democracy based around self-organizing communes, valuing relationships with nature and women’s liberation. To a large extent, these communes aim for what we believe the world should be: localized food systems, ecological living, and non-hierarchical societal structures. However, they face many challenges from neighboring states. We have covered this previously in many of our posts and podcasts. The following is a part of the report by Make Rojava Green Again. You can find the full report here.
For more on the communes of Rojava, please watch this video:
“We Will Defend This Life, We Will Resist on This Land”: Building Social-Ecology under Attacks in Rojava
The revolutionary process in Rojava, based on the pillars of grassroots democracy, women’s liberation and social-ecology, is progressing while at the same time is threaten by the continuous war carried on by the Turkish state. The Turkish army is not responsible only for killing civilians and political representatives but for a planned ecocide and attacks on basic civil infrastructure.
Rojava is one of the four parts in which Kurdistan has been divided with the creation of nation states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Rojava is the Syrian part.
The history of the Kurdistan, the ecological way of life of the people, the effects of the attacks, and the methods of resistance, are intrinsically related. In order to make them more understandable, we focused on the area of Koçerata. This region, its people and civil infrastructures in particular, were heavily targeted by Turkish airstrikes in winter 2023-2024.
Ecocide is a warfare of the Turkish fascism against the people. Long-term effects continue to harden the life of the people and will do so for the time to come. Still the people as well as the autonomous administration are focusing on finding creative and collective methods.
The creation of a new life on the basis of old heritages
Koçerata, the “Land of the Nomads”, is a plain land with some hills and, due to the Tigris’ river, very fertile. For hundreds of years Kurdish nomads have moved in the region, until the construction of nation states borders. Not being willing to give up on their ancestors’ way of life too fast, a lot of the people continued to move in the plain until around 1945, when Syrian state was built up. Syria wanted to create an urbanized, industrialized society. In this framework intensive monoculture practices were imposed. Koçerata in particular became of high interest because of the rich oil deposits, and until now represent one of the main pillars of energy suppliance for the region. One of the biggest power plants of North-East-Syria is also based here, in Siwedî. It was built in 1983 by a French company, and was the main gas and power station of whole North-East-Syria, serving between 4 and 5 million people, until the winter attacks.
Rûken Şêxo, spokesperson of the peoples council in the village Girê Sor describes the life of the people and the creation of social-ecology in the region: “The life of the Koçer [kurd. Half-nomads] is very simple and beautiful. We don’t need a lot from the outside. In every house you will find a small garden, where the families are growing vegetables, herbs and plants, for example tomatoes, onion, salad. Some will also raise cows, chicken and turkeys”. “We make things ourselves, especially yogurt, cheese and milk. From our childhood onward we learned to create everything by ourselves, from the things we have. This is also what we are going to teach to our children.”
Today the people of Koçerata are living mostly in villages, organizing their life as a part of the self-administration of North-East Syria. Still carrying on cultural heritage, the life is rather humble and self-contained. A life close to nature and communality has passed on through generations. People of Koçerata mostly rely on agriculture and also shepherding still plays a role.
While the communes are the foundation of the organizing of the everyday life on the village level, the peoples council are solving regional problems. The communes are the cells of the society and the councils are its body. Both of them elect two co-chairs, a woman and a man to apply decisions. At the same time, the Municipalities, which are responsible to organize infrastructural needs in the region, such as water and electricity supplies are under the control of the Peoples Council. The level of organization in the region is very strong, based on the long-time ties between the people and the freedom movement, as well as the lively communal culture. Connecting heritage and local culture with grassroots democracy and popular self-defense, the people of the region of Koçerata have set strong foundations for developing social-ecology.
Turkey’s war against Rojava: An attack on the development of social-ecology
Even though, in November 2022, heavy attacks were executed, targeting in particular the infrastructure for basic life needs (water and electricity), the most recent bombardments, from October 6th 2023 to January 18th 2024, mark the worst escalation since 2019. In this period the Turkish army carried on more than 650 strikes (with drones and fighting jet), hitting more than 250 places, many of them being hit several times. In this huge operation, 56 people have been killed (among which two children, 10-11 years old), while at least 75 people have been injured. Among them, workers at their work site or collecting cotton in fields. The airstrikes have mainly targeted essential infrastructure, 18 water stations, 17 electricity plant, sites for cooking gas, and oil, but also schools, hospitals, factories, industrial sites, agricultural and food production facilities, storage centers for oil, grain and construction materials and medical facilities, villages.
The purpose of destroying the basis of people’s life became even more explicit and clear. Beside the physical destruction, these attacks aim to harm society’s psychological status and destabilize the region, in order to stop the democratic process that is going on within the Autonomous Administration.
One of the most critical infrastructural targets have been the electricity plant of Siwedî. “Being the main gas and power station of whole North-East Syria, when there is problems within the plant it effects the whole region” told us Rûken Şexo, spokesperson of Girê Sor village. “After that shelling almost 4 to 5 million people have been affected”, and, in Cizîrê region, where 50% of the regular electricity comes from this plant, two million residents have been left without municipal services, electricity, power, and water.
Due to the cut of water from Turkey, the water situation was already very heavy. The rivers flow that was allowed to cross into Rojava decreased severely obviously affecting all aspects of life, drinking, hygiene and health, agriculture and food production, animal’s life, economy, education and gender dynamics. In addition, the Turkish state has also altered the water quality, releasing contaminant sewage residues in the few water still flowing into North-East Syria.
“The shellings are hurting the people of Koçerata, in all aspects of life” told us Xoşnav Hesen from the village of Girê Kendal. “These are from the attacks” he said, while showing us the deep cracks on the walls of his house. Without electricity the water pumps that secure the water supplying from the ground can’t work, the water can’t be extracted from the wells and distribute to the villages. While this is in general a fundamental problem for human’s life, in the region it is even more crucial due to the agriculture-based life of the people.
“Most of the people live from the products of the earth and the animals that they raise themselves.” told us Rûken Şexo, spokesperson of Girê Sor village. “Without water, the plants are dying and the animals can not drink. The cultures are affected, the animal’s life is affected. The base of people’s economy, of families’ economy in the region is based on this. Now the families are having economic problems, because they used a lot of money to plant and now everything is gone, the animals are dying because of lack of water”. These military operations aim to create fear and frustration. “Creating, building up, is not a problem, the problem is war. You work so much, create so much, invest so many resources, and then, in one second it gets destroyed” said Delal Şêxo from the village of Hamza Beg.
“We don’t leave our land, we organize ourselves” – Resistance of the people on their land
The current attacks led by the Turkish State must be understood in the broader context of war and ecology. The Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria encourages the establishment of cooperatives, agro-ecology, like the production of organic fertilizers, and eco-industries based on the cooperative system and on a circular approach to production and consumption. Plans regarding the use of different source of energy (solar, biogas from animal manure and organic wastes or wind energy), recovery of soil and groundwater characteristics, are made. However, these could not develop on a large scale due to the systematic destruction of basic infrastructure. This attacks forced the administration and the whole economy of North-East Syria to devote themselves toward continuous works of reparation and rebuilding, in order to reply to emergency and immediate consequences of war. The embargo also represents another significant obstacle to the development of ecological projects.
In spite of all these hardships attempts are made to foster the ability of people to organize their own forces. Despite external factors such as embargo and war creating obstacles for the progress of social-ecology, the strength of the social network resists the enemy’s attempts at displacement and psychological warfare.
People are showing a strong solidarity, the determination to stay on the lands and the population has develop its ways to withstand collectively the hardships. The municipality visits the different Communes to inform them, share evaluations about the situation, listen to their needs, try to find solution together, and to organize collectively the whole society, make every one taking responsibility for it. The people of Koçerata pull their resources in times of difficulty. Neighbors share generators and water pumps during electricity shortages, or collect funds for the installation of local generators. Some villages deliberately limit their electricity for hours to support others. Certain families combine financial resources to afford a communal water pump system independent from electricity. During the airstrikes in late December, the Koçerata community mobilized to create human shield to protect the Siwedî power plant. While the priority is to set up an emergency plan, for their long-term strategy towards social-ecology the force of solution is already here: initiative from the base, self-organization, and decentralization.
The ecological crisis and the increase of global conflicts, often for the sake of natural resources and their exploitations, are showing every day more how solutions cannot be found neither in State politics or in technology alone. Especially in times and areas of conflict, the social-ecological problems tend to be seen as second rank of importance. Opposite to this approach, the attempts made by the autonomous administration emphasize how, even in times of attacks, social-ecology can represent an answer for both the problems. As we witness, against wars and environmental destruction, social-ecological models, self-sustainability and decentralization can really constitute a solution for a lasting peace in the region. In this framework, the reality of Koçerata must be known as a meaningful and inspiring example of resistance. This is not just an example of theory but it is, in first place, an example of practice of resistance and self-organization. Against the current centralized, urbanized and mono-culture global system, based on exploiting human-land relationships, Koçerata can suggest sustainable ways of living, working and producing. This region is at the same time unique, for its history and specificity, but not alone. Every place, every community can recover its democratic heritage, and, on this basis, build strong communities and a life in harmony with nature. Values of resistance, connection with the land, communality and freedom are not limited to one geography but parts of our life, of our being part of humanity, being part of Nature. Telling about Koçerata also creates connection with many other struggles, carried on by people around the world to defend the land and build a democratic life. Understanding that the resistance in one place, however important, cannot be really successful alone. Local solutions and global changes, toward a social-ecological model, are both needed. The example of Koçerata wants to be a source of strength, hope and inspiration to think also about how we can resist and defend our territories, how we can build alliances with struggles in other geographies, communities and free life.
Editor’s Note: Last November, an Ecuadorean appeals court ruled to return the land back to the ownership of Siekopai People. Since the early 20th century, the Siekopai have suffered due to rubber plantation, drawing of an international border through their land, oil exploration, deforestation for pastures and monocultures, Christian missionaries, among many others. A return of their land is a landmark judgment, and came after years of organizing. The following is a brief story that came out soon after the return of their land.
For a more historical background on the issue, check this story.
Amazon defenders [last November] cheered what one group called “an invaluable precedent for all Indigenous peoples fighting to recover their lands” after an Ecuadorean appeals court ruled in favor of the Siekopai Nation’s ownership claim over its ancestral homeland.
The November 24 decision by a three-judge panel of the Sucumbios Provincial Court of Justice gives Ecuador’s Ministry of the Environment 45 days to hand over title to more than 104,000 acres of land along the country’s border with Peru.
“Today is a great day for our nation,” Siokepai Nation President Elias Piyahuaje said following the ruling. “Until the end of time, this land will be ours.”
The Siekopai—who call their homeland Pë’këya—were forcibly displaced from the region, one of the most biodiverse on the planet, in 1941 during the first of three border wars between Peru and Ecuador. They were then prevented from returning home as the Ecuadorean government unilaterally claimed ownership of Pë’këya.
The ruling marks the first time that an Ecuadorean court has ordered the return of land stolen from Indigenous people.
Amazon Frontlines—a San Francisco-based advocacy group that helped the Siekopai with their case—explained:
With a population of barely 800 in Ecuador and 1,200 in Peru, the Siekopai are on the brink of cultural and physical extinction. On both sides of the border, the Siekopai are currently waging legal battles to recover more than a half-million acres of land that were stolen from their ancestors. The Siekopai’s court victory recognizing Pë’këyamarks a major stepping stone in this binational struggle for the reunification of their ancestral territory. After centuries of violence, racism, and conquest by colonizing missions, rubber corporations, and governments, the court’s recognition of the Siekopai as the owners of Pë’këya is an indispensable step towards restoring justice and guaranteeing their collective survival and the continuity of their culture.
“For over 80 years, we have been fighting to get our land back,” Piyahuaje said. “Despite all the evidence regarding our land title claim—even historians testified that our ancestors dwelled in the area since the time of conquest—the Ecuadorian government failed to uphold our land rights time and time again.”
“We are fighting for the preservation of our culture on this planet. Without this territory, we cannot exist as Siekopai people,” he added.
Amazon Frontlines attorney Maria Espinosa said that “this victory has been decades in the making, it has been a very long struggle against the government.”
“Now, finally, the Siekopai’s dream of recovering their ancestral territory has been achieved,” Espinosa added. “This groundbreaking precedent paves the way for other Indigenous communities who dream of recovering their territories within protected areas.”
Editor’s note: As a director of conservation organisation African Parks, Prince Harry is an elite philantropist whose “good” intentions turn evil. The charity is complicit in beating to death, raping and torturing indigenous people who went into their forests to gather medicine and hunt for food.
An armed militia abused the Baka people, formerly known as the Pygmies, over years and chased them out of their ancestral home, the Congolese rainforest in Makouagonda.
But Prince Harry shouldn’t be our focus – he is just one of many who is involved in the conservation efforts which are deeply broken. According to Survival International, indigenous people are pushed out of nature “while mining, oil, and logging companies, and trophy hunters, are considered ‘partners’ of conservation and allowed to carry on with business as usual.”
Prince Harry’s charity is funded by the European Union, US and other philanthropists. Our focus should be on supporting grassroots movements, through donations or active participation, which collaborate with peasants, farmers and other groups defending their land.
The rich build a wall of militias around nature, so that only they themselves are able to enjoy it, because they don’t care about how they are harming people.
They also harm nature, while portraying themselves as “into the wild” with flowery words and photos in annual reports to convince the masses that they care.
Nature is more intricate than humans can even imagine. It is only nature, not humans, who can “manage” the forests. Many indigenous people know this. They are the ones who have learned to live in harmony with nature. Corporate-funded conservation groups across the world have been promoting nature management in the guise of conservation. Unfortunately there are some indigenous people who have bought onto this as well. The following story is a press release about African Parks, a noncharity that is currently being investigated about abuses against indigenous people. DGR strongly condemns the alleged torture and rapes. This Congo rainforest is a protected area – not a battlefield. Any extractive human activity (industrial or indigenous) should be prohibited in it.
A charity with strong ties to Prince Harry has been funding rangers responsible for horrific abuses against Indigenous people in the Congo, including torture and rape, according to a major investigation published in the UK’s Mail on Sunday.
The abuses have taken place in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo, which is managed by African Parks – Prince Harry is a member of their Board of Directors, a position to which he was “elevated” in 2023, after having served as their President for six years.
The investigation has uncovered evidence of countless atrocities committed by African Parks’ “armed militia” against local Baka people. The organization has known for years that the abuses were taking place, but they have continued unabated.
One Baka man told the Mail on Sunday’s Ian Birrell: “African Parks are killing us slowly. We’re suffering so much that we might as well be dead.”
Another said: “The past was far better for us – and the reason is all down to African Parks.”
A Baka man, Moyambi Fulbert, quoted in the report, had this message for Prince Harry: “I’d tell him to stop supporting African Parks. He is a powerful man. He eats well and lives well – but we don’t have anything now and it’s all because of African Parks.”
The Baka and other hunter-gatherers who have lived in and cared for the Congo Rainforest since time immemorial have seen much of their land stolen and turned into National Parks and other Protected Areas.
They have been pushed out, and now live in dire conditions, landless and dependent on others, or turned into ‘tourist attractions.’
They are banned from entering the rainforest they once called home, while mining, oil, and logging companies, and trophy hunters, are considered “partners” of conservation and allowed to carry on with business as usual.
Survival International Director Caroline Pearce said today: “African Parks, along with other big conservation organizations like WWF, takes Indigenous land to turn it into militarized parks or reserves – and then their guards attack people like the Baka just for trying to live their lives. Prince Harry can help stop this.”
“We’re calling on him to step down as a director of African Parks. He needs to distance himself from an organization that is complicit in evictions and the heinous abuse of Indigenous people.
The organization’s funders must withdraw their funding until the Baka are allowed to return to the park and their land ownership rights are recognized.
The abuses that the Mail on Sunday has uncovered are being repeated across Africa and Asia – this is not a one-off. The entire conservation model as practiced by the big conservation organizations is built on the theft of Indigenous land, and the dispossession of the people who are its rightful owners – just as in the colonial era. It’s time to decolonize conservation.”
Editor’s Note: A polycrisis is a situation where multiple interrelated crises hit at the same time, similar to the geopolitical, ecological and social crisis that we are witnessing now. In this piece, Micheal Lerner explains the concept of polycrisis while introducing some of the systems to understand the polycrisis and a possible way to deal with it. This piece was written in July, 2023. Recent changes, namely the Israel-Palestine war, are not mentioned here.
How can we explain the explosive emergence of global awareness of the polycrisis over the past year, 2022-2023? Three years ago, almost no one had heard of the polycrisis.
What happened?
What Is the Polycrisis?
First, let’s roughly define the polycrisis. Some claim it is nothing new. We believe the polycrisis is new. We believe a confluence of environmental, social, technological, financial-economic, natural and other forces are interacting with ever increasing unpredictability, rapidity and power. We believe these unpredictable interactions are causing future shocks of ever greater frequency and amplitude.
Because the polycrisis looks different, feels different, and is explained differently everywhere, there won’t be any single understanding of it. Think of the polycrisis as a global weather system. Weather everywhere is deeply interrelated, but local weather looks different in each place.
The polycrisis has many names—cascading crises, the metacrisis, the permacrisis, the great unraveling, the great simplification, “the end of the world as we know it” [TEOTWAWKI], and more. In Latin America it’s called “eco-social collapse.” The French call it “collapsologie.” Or one can simply call it turbulent times or a rapidly changing world.
It doesn’t matter much what we call the polycrisis. What matters is whether we recognize that it is real, that we are living in it, and that it is changing our lives. If we accept that much, we will recognize that we have to navigate it—and that good maps are essential to skillful navigation.
Navigating the Great Unraveling
Our friends Asher Miller and Richard Heinberg at the Post Carbon Institute and Resilience.org use this powerful phrase for the task ahead for all of us: “Navigating the great unraveling.” Resilience.org is focused on energy, economy, environment, food and water, and society. Its tagline is “insight and inspiration in turbulent times.” In my judgment, Post Carbon Institute and Resilience.org are among the best and most accessible polycrisis resources in the United States.
At every level, we must learn to navigate the polycrisis. We have no choice. The only choice is whether we prepare to navigate it consciously—or just let it unfold and respond as it does.
“The future is already here,” the great science fiction writer William Gibson has said. “It’s just not very evenly distributed.” We know that all over the world millions of people have lived under polycrisis conditions for a very long time. The polycrisis is not new to them. It’s just now coming home to roost everywhere.
What Are the Best Maps and Charts of the Polycrisis?
Let’s look at how some experts are seeking to understand and map the polycrisis. I will be using three overlapping terms to describe these maps. The first is world view maps. The second is systems analysis maps. And the third is narrative maps. These are very crude concepts since all the maps tend to include all these elements in different ways.
The comprehensive worldview maps include orientations like techno-optimism, neo-Marxism, critiques of colonialism and imperialism, religious or spiritual understandings, and many more. It matters whether you believe in an enlightened spiritual future or a future that belongs to the powerful. It matters whether you think we will be governed by humans or trans-humans or algorithms. It matters whether you see the future as hopeful or tragic or perhaps both.
Then there are the systems analysis maps. Unlike worldview maps, systems analysis maps seek to be analytically neutral—albeit there are often deeply embedded biases.
The concerned capitalists of the world and their powerful friends gather annually at the World Economic Forum in Davos to opine on the state of the world. Their Global Risks Report 2023 is extensive and their prognosis dire. They offer a top 10 list of global risks for the next two years and the next ten years, along with a global risks landscape map. An additional Global Risks map puts global risks at the center surrounded by natural ecosystems, security, human health, economic stability, and digital rights. The outer circle then lists perhaps one hundred specific issues.
Kate Raworth’s “Donut Economics” is a highly influential systems map. “Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend—such as a stable climate, fertile soils, and a protective ozone layer. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human progress this century.”
The elegant donut diagram has an outer circle of an ecological ceiling for nine sectors (climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution and the like.) It has an inner circle of social foundation that lists human needs by sector (food, water, health, education and the like). The map elegantly allows her to show where we have already exceeded the ecological ceiling and where we have undercut the social foundation of human needs.
A third systems analysis comes from Thomas Homer-Dixon and his colleagues at the Cascade Institute in British Columbia. Homer-Dixon is among the foremost analysts of the polycrisis. In books like “The Upside of Down” and “Command Hope,” he has explored the polycrisis in depth. His thinking is deeply influential in Canada and internationally. I can’t point to a single map because Cascade Institute has produced multiple maps. In my judgment Homer-Dixon shows what sophisticated scholarly study of the polycrisis looks like—and why governments and others around the world should invest in it.
A fourth systems map comes from the Fan Initiative which also has a strong team of scientific experts behind it. The Fan has an influential categorization of twelve “blades” of the fan that interact. They include toxification, soils, population, oceans, health, governance, freshwater, energy, economy, climate, biodiversity and behavior.
There are academic centers focused on variants of the polycrisis like the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. Their research interests include biotechnology, artificial intelligence, technology risks more generally, environmental risks, and justice risks. Unlike the other projects above, they are less comprehensive on the polycrisis and more focused on explicitly existential risks to human survival.
Another outstanding contributor to polycrisis understanding is Nate Hagens’ The Great Simplification and his podcasts, Frankly. His tagline is “people, society and earth’s systems midway through the carbon pulse.” Here’s an example of his thinking: “How do the catalysts triggering the SVB collapse compare to the 2008 financial crisis? What might world financial market reactions indicate as we move closer to The Great Simplification?.. One thing I’m pretty confident of: world governments and central banks are gonna need bigger boats as more and more entities require bailouts and guarantees. Eventually that ‘boat’ may become so large that it will be ‘Too Big to Save.’”
A major recent development in the field is the United Nation (UN) Foundation’s Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment. “The UN Foundation announced today the new Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA), to be led by Ruth Richardson as its inaugural Executive Director. The three-year initiative is designed to contribute to the emerging field of systemic risk analysis with particular attention to helping leaders and practitioners—especially those in the public sector—better understand, assess, and incorporate sensitivity to systemic risks into their decision-making. It will work closely with practitioners, multilaterals, academics, the public and private sectors, as well as other partners across institutions, sectors, and geographies.”
Historically, one of the most influential of all systems analyses of the polycrisis came from Donella Meadows and her colleagues in their report to the Club of Rome, “Limits to Growth” in 1972. What is remarkable about their model is that it has proven highly accurate for fifty years.
These are simply examples. What they have in common is their effort to understand the underlying drivers of the polycrisis and their interactions in some systematic way.
Narrative Maps
There is another way of thinking about the polycrisis that we might call narrative maps. We are taking this approach in our Omega Resilience Awards project, which focuses on exploring polycrisis maps with younger leaders in the Global South.
This approach focuses on exploring different narratives of the polycrisis as they are understood in different places and different situations. These are not necessarily systematic maps. This is story telling or meaning-making in a vast variety of forms.
Many contemporary commentators offer us narrative maps—though these maps are also often systematic. The Columbia historian Adam Tooze, the New York Times contributor Ezra Klein and the Financial Times Chief Economics Commentator Martin Wolff are analysts whose ongoing analyses of different dimensions of the polycrisis are widely respected.
Science fiction—or speculative fiction—offers another influential example of a narrative approach. “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson is a brilliant example of the genre of speculative utopian fiction that examines in detail how the climate crisis could actually be resolved.
Poets, novelists, film-makers, artists, and video game producers are among the many creative people who are telling stories and making narrative maps of the polycrisis.
A Map of Ten Top Polycrisis Drivers
What I offer below is a phenomenological map focused on issues as they emerge in the informed public media. This map is designed to change as the global polycrisis “weather system” changes. It is a kind of “polycrisis weather report.” My map is a mix of a worldview, systems and narrative map.
My starting point is the question I posed at the start. Why did the polycrisis explode into global awareness this year? I suggest that the polycrisis emerged as three principle drivers accelerated in sequence—climate, COVID, and the Ukraine war.
First, public attention was focused on the climate emergency. Then COVID turned the world upside down. Then a completely unexpected land war erupted in the middle of Europe. That war forced a great power confrontation, scrambled alliances around the world, and accelerated the last phase of the breakdown of American global hegemony. These three developments unfolding in sequence are, I believe, what brought the polycrisis to global attention.
Once the polycrisis was firmly established in the informed media and public mind, new developments kept confirming the increasing pace of global change and the reality of the polycrisis.
The new United States-China cold war is a classic example of the inevitable conflict between a rising power and a declining hegemon. The United States—unwisely from a geopolitical perspective—undertook to confront both Russia and China at the same time, hence driving these two great powers into alliance.
The new breakout developments in artificial intelligence (AI) are again transforming the world. Bill Gates has likened this new technology to the development of the computer in terms of its significance.
Almost every few months, a new salient polycrisis driver seems to emerge. You can’t fully grasp this process with abstract systems maps alone. You need a “changing global weather systems” map that tracks the phenomenological developments in the public media and public mind.
The Polycrisis Pop Charts
What I attempt here is a phenomenological map of what informed Western media are throwing up the “Polycrisis Pop Charts.” I borrow the “pop charts” analogy from popular music where the pop charts track the popularity of different songs. Polycrisis drivers are like pop songs that move up and down the polycrisis pop charts of public attention. Some stay at or near the top for long periods of time. Others enjoy only a brief stay.
Here are seven diverse candidates to add to a potential high level public awareness threat matrix for a “Polycrisis Top 10.” (climate, COVID, and conflicts without end are already on the Top Ten list.)
The end of American hegemony. The multi-centric geopolitical realignment of the world is taking place rapidly. Russia, China, Iran and other countries have aligned against Western domination. India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, and other countries are asserting their own independent interests, often playing both sides off against each other. The end of American hegemony is coinciding with the end of 500 years of Western domination of the world. It also coincides with the end of Western colonialism and imperialism. While these interlinked forms of dominance have been eroding for decades, the rapidity of developments now is astonishing
The resurgence of autocratic regimes. The western democratic model of free markets and representative democracy has never worked everywhere. (One can argue it never worked anywhere, but that is a different conversation.) Newly empowered by technologies of mass surveillance, a growing number of autocratic leaders of “illiberal democracies” and more totalitarian regimes are asserting themselves. They are far less constrained today by eroding democratic norms. They are far less concerned about American or Western disapproval. They regard the Western democracies as weak and decadent. They are more assertive of shared cross-ideological interests. In many places, the autocrats have strong, or at least majoritarian, support from their home populations. It may be true that the impulse toward freedom is universal. But that aspiration must be measured against other goods provided by regimes that meet essential human needs—for food, energy, shelter, economic progress, health, education, safety and the like. China is an excellent example. In a polycrisis world, it is an open question as to what forms of governance will actually work best in the interests of the people of different nations.
The explosion of AI technologies. Brought to public awareness by GP-Chatbox, Microsoft, Meta, Google, and others, the developers of AI technologies have abandoned caution—even as hundreds of scientists signed a letter urging a moratorium based on potentially catastrophic risks. A survey of AI scientists found them estimating a 10% chance that AI could ultimately wipe out human life on earth. AI is not alone. Biotech, nanotech, and robotics are what Bill Joy famously called the three “technologies of mass destruction.” The difference between these technologies of mass destruction and weapons of mass destruction, Joy said, was that the weapons required a large industrial base while the technologies could be cooked up by someone working out of their bedroom and posted to the Internet. This category is actually a stand-in for all the explosive technological developments transforming our world literally beyond understanding.
Global financial system chaos. Economic researchers warn that the global debt overhang may soon be “too big to avoid failure.” The likelihood of a global recession, or worse, is believed to be increasing. The fight to control inflation without ending growth puts central banks in a quandary. On the other hand, ending conventional growth as we know it is essential to a better future. The dollar as the dominant global currency may well be coming to an end. It is overdue in historical terms.
The migration crisis. Over 100 million forcibly displaced people are desperately seeking refuge as barriers to safe havens go up everywhere. The number will continue to grow exponentially. The migration crisis is among the greatest human tragedies of the polycrisis. No one has compassionate solutions that are politically acceptable in the West—or elsewhere for that matter. But mitigation strategies are profoundly important—curbing climate change, improving food production, reducing conflict, making home countries safer, aiding those caught at frontiers, and much more.
The risk of a nuclear accident or tactical nuclear arms use. The focus is Ukraine, but the risk is global. So is the risk of the use of dirty bombs or the deliberate targeting of nuclear plants by terrorists or a nuclear meltdown caused by an electric grid going down from a terrorist attack or other causes.
World food, water, work and safety deficits. Billions of people around the world are at increasing risk for the basics of life. This is more an outcome measure than a primary driver, except that this outcome drives all kinds of other feedback loops.
This list is, as I said, highly arbitrary. My list is heavy on the end of American hegemony, the rise of new autocracies, financial chaos, the migration crisis, nuclear risk, and the global food, water, and safety deficits. I add these seven to the list that set off polycrisis awareness—climate, COVID, and conflict without end.
What seems incontrovertible is that the number of polycrisis drivers keeps increasing and their interactions are every more rapid, unpredictable, and powerful.
Disaster Capitalism and Other Opportunities
The other side of any global threat matrix list consists of the global opportunities for advantage that countries, corporations, communities, and non-state actors are exploring on all sides. Whether it is disaster capitalism, opportunities for criminal gangs, cybercrimes, or legitimate new markets, the opportunists are enlivened everywhere. Likewise there are truly hopeful developments. We have to keep in mind breakout developments on the upside. Whatever the future brings, there will be winners and losers—even if the winners inhabit a devastated planet of universal scarcities.
The Thucydides Trap–the Prospect for U.S.-China War
The Chinese-mediated detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia has underscored China’s new role as a global power broker.
French President Macron was criticized by allies for his China visit and his explicit push for European geopolitical and economic autonomy. But many other European Union leaders think along Macron’s lines. Europe has no intention of giving up trade with China. Volkswagen and the chemical giant BSF are planning major expansions in China to offset the high cost of operating in Europe. The better European environmental regulations, the more attractive markets and manufacturing bases like China become.
Both Europe and China have lasting strategic reasons to build economic and political ties that lessen the threat to both an unreliable and fading global hegemon. Both China and Europe are caught for now balancing their conflicts over the Ukraine and Taiwan against their long-term interests in economic ties and strategic autonomy. But in the longer run, both know the Ukraine war will end, the Taiwan conflict will resolve, and they need each other in the new multi-polar world.
The Biden administration’s call for a global alliance of democracies against authoritarians rings increasingly hollow to people around the world. There is too long a history of what 500 years of Western hegemony has wrought. There is too much awareness of America’s classic hegemonic descent. The U.S. has wasted blood and treasure in foreign wars, devastated counties in the name of defending democracy, overturned democratic governments that threatened U.S. interests, and moved from soft power supporting shared interests to hard power for increasingly nationalistic goals. This is the well known trajectory of fading hegemons.
The U.S.-China confrontation is also the classic “Thucydides Trap.” In 12 of 16 past cases, the confrontation between a ruling power and a rising power led to war. The world has a great deal at stake in avoiding it.
A Multi-Centric Sci-fi Future?
The world simply isn’t buying the American narrative any longer. There are too many persuasive counter-narratives emerging from the Global South, from neo-Marxism, from post-colonial writers, and indeed from the internal critiques within the Global North and within America—to say nothing of counter-narratives from right wing nationalist parties, which appeal to very large numbers of people in countries around the world.
Yet, in a multi-centric world, it’s hard to see how the narrative we need—for new global governance structures that bring us together in the urgent global cause—will attract sufficient support.
It looks more and more to this observer as if the future will be a multi-centric world of ever-shifting alliances in which hybrid warfare and lower level conflicts among state, corporate, and non-state actors will launch us into an entirely unpredictable sci-fi future. That’s only one scenario, but in my mind it is the most likely one.
Archipelagos – Linking Islands of Coherence in a Sea of Chaos
There are hopeful trends. Many of the global stressors have substantial upsides. Systems theory makes it clear that we can create virtuous cascades as well as endure negative ones. This is a central thesis of Homer-Dixon’s work at the Cascade Institute.
At a recent Commonweal conference with leaders of our Omega Resilience Awards hubs in India, Nigeria and Argentina, Mark Valentine mentioned Ilya Priogene’s observation on the power of “islands of coherence” in a complex system in chaos. Here’s the quote:
“Ilya Priogene demonstrated scientifically that when complex systems are far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence can shift the entire system to a higher order.”
We liked this concept of focusing on creating “linked islands of coherence” at the grassroots level and at every possible level. It’s doable, achievable, and hopeful. Many of the Nordic countries are engaged in conscious efforts to create societal resilience in the polycrisis. So is Switzerland, so is New Zealand. They may become islands of coherence that offer hope and models for others.
Local communities, grassroots social movements, service organizations, and local governments are slowly coming to grips with the reality of the polycrisis. And they are crafting solutions. New economy theorists and practitioners are imagining ways to strengthen resilient local economies based on self-help, local currencies, and more.
Polycrisis Thinking as a Lens for Exploring Resilience
We believe the polycrisis cannot generate a single strategic agenda. Unlike the climate emergency, or the fight against hunger, the polycrisis doesn’t lend itself to universal shared objectives and solutions.
Rather, polycrisis awareness is a lens through which we can assess the most effective strategies for whatever we are working on. As one colleague put it, “if you don’t factor in the polycrisis, your strategies are far more likely to fail.”
For example, imagine that the power grid goes down whether from a cyberattack or other causes. Or imagine that the food system breaks down leaving people dependent on local food resources. Or imagine a financial collapse takes place and we enter a new global depression. Who would be prepared to respond—and how?
One of the lessons from past disasters is how rapidly the structures that sustain life can collapse. Most people don’t have the bandwidth to think about these questions. Their survival needs or personal concerns are too urgent. But it helps if in every community or organization at least some people think this way.
Cultivating a “Polycrisis Eye”
It is entirely possible to cultivate a “polycrisis eye” that enables you to watch developments across many spheres and witness the unfolding of the polycrisis in all its complexity and unpredictability. When I read the news I am constantly tracking these intersections.
If Russian gas is cut back in the EU, Norway becomes the bloc’s primary supplier despite cries of anguish from its environmental community. Likewise Biden breaks a pledge and allows new oil development in the Alaskan wildlife refuge. Germany closes its last three nuclear plants which makes it more dependent on fossil fuels and renewables. The constant eruption of new developments continuously reconfigures whatever sector they appear in and those changes flow out to other sectors as well.
So it’s not just the polycrisis world view maps, the polycrisis systems maps, and the polycrisis narrative maps that help us navigate. It’s cultivating a “polycrisis eye” with which to watch as this accelerating global weather system evolves, changing local weather conditions everywhere. A “polycrisis eye” refines our ability to use a “polycrisis lens” to understand and navigate this turbulent time.
A Caveat
Though I have continuously referenced polycrisis analyses emanating from the Global South and the emerging multicentric world, this essay has drawn primarily from Global North examples of polycrisis maps and thinking. The principal reason is that while the Global South and the multi-centric world have experienced by far the greatest burden of the polycrisis,the polycrisis analysis has developed primarily in Europe (where the term first emerged) and the United States. That said, one of our principle goals at Omega and the Omega Resilience Awards is to support polycrisis analyses and narratives emerging in Africa, India and Latin America. Those analyses will be the subject of later essays.
A Crown of Feminine Design
We can hold the ultimate hope—the real hope—that we will emerge from this time of chaos and peril to build a better world. It might ideally be, as Randy Hayes, the founder of Rainforest Action Network proposes, a world of continental networks of bio-regional economies.
The critical question for global governance is whether a new set of global institutions can emerge to replace the Bretton Woods institutions from World War II. There may be a remote possibility that this will happen—as it does in “Ministry for the Future.” But in a polycentric world of widely diverse interests, it will be hard to achieve.
At the community level, most disaster preparedness has common themes. Communities need to be able to meet basic human needs for food, water, clothing, shelter, energy, safety, communications, and the spirit and tools to rebuild a better way of life. Building this capacity builds resilient communities—islands of coherence that could shift the whole chaotic system toward a higher level of functioning.
We know what local and regional self-reliance and resilience look like. Less than a century ago, community self-reliance was a way of life all around the world. It is still practiced in many communities today. If we can remember those lessons we’ll have a better chance, come what may. This is what Nate Hagens envisions as “the great simplification.”
All around the world people are coming together in the face of all the challenges to create communities of hope and resilience. They work with the skills and tools available to them. The fight for a better world is never won. It goes on forever. We’ll do that best if we are clear-eyed about what we are facing.
Whatever happens, our consciousness will have a powerful impact on how we face whatever is coming. Like all great life crises, the polycrisis has the potential to awaken us to what really matters in our lives. Perhaps the polycrisis could even stimulate a great global awakening of what we all need to do together to create a more liveable world. It’s possible.
I close with this line from the great Indian saint Sri Aurobindo, “the future, if there is to be a future, must wear a crown of feminine design.” The structures of wealth and power that we have built in this world are mostly of masculine design. We might amend Aurobindo and say that the future, if it is to be a compassionate one, must honor Mother Earth and evoke the feminine in us all.
That’s a thought worth holding.
Michael Lerner is the president and co-founder of Commonweal, a nonprofit center in Bolinas, California. Commonweal works in health and healing, education and the arts, and environment and justice with more than 40 programs. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. Michael received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983. He is co-founder and president emeritus of the Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts in Washington, D.C. He is president of the Jenifer Altman Foundation. He is co-founder and chair emeritus of the Health and Environmental Funders Network. He lives with his wife and colleague Sharyle Patton in Bolinas and on Whidbey Island north of Seattle.
