The Water Revolution in the Andes
How a Small Town in Ecuador is Combining Ancestral Wisdom and Community Action to Regenerate its Valley. VILCABAMBA, Ecuador — While the world debates the climate crisis, in a small valley in Ecuador, an international community is taking action. Their tool: ancient knowledge that could transform modern agriculture. In southern Ecuador, there is a valley […]
El Paso Community Gets a Boost for Environmental Health and Justice
Para leer esta historia en Español, ir a La Comunidad de El Paso Recibe un Impulso para la Salud y Justicia Ambiental. Traducido por Scott Powell para El Proyecto Esperanza. For years, residents of El Paso’s south-central Chamizal area have waged battles against pollution and public health threats, including hazards stemming from a commercial rail yard, […]
Third Annual Prayer Horse Ride traverses Native mine-affected communities in Nevada
Walkers, runners, riders join to honor memory of journalist, a defender of land and culture Josh Dini learned and practiced his calling as a water protector under the tutelage of Myron Dewey, his elder brother. Dewey was a beloved Paiute Shoshone filmmaker, photojournalist and drone pilot who founded Digital Smoke Signals. This independent media outlet […]
Waste Pickers to Recyclers: Reimagining a Scorned Sector
Waste pickers sort and sell recyclables from open-air landfills. One municipality made the position official — a move that could transform the industry. By Ena Aguilar Peláez, Global Press México. SAN LORENZO CACAOTEPEC, MEXICO — Marisol Mendoza leaves home on her motorcycle at 5:45 a.m. She rides down a brush-lined dirt road and over a […]
A Mexican Entrepreneur With a Painful Past Is Finding New Purpose With a Recycling Startup
By Maya Piedra, Global Press Mexico. Eleno Ulloa endured ridicule, rejection, drug and alcohol addiction, and two deportations from the United States. Today, he is his family’s breadwinner and, with his recycling business, a sign of hope for many in Nayarit. PASO DE LAS PALMAS, MEXICO — Eleno Ulloa inherited his interest in recycling from […]
Maya Villagers Resist Mega Hog Farms in Yucatán
“The smell was what woke us up. The green flies, the mosquitoes. The headaches. The pestilence, which at night no longer lets us sleep. Then something appeared in the fruit, as if it were smoke. The bushes looked sad and would soon dry up. When we realized it, the Kekén farm had already been running for a year.
Permaculture for Climate Change Resilience in Mexico
Tikkun Eco Center works with Mexican villages to solve water crisis
Botany as archaeology, to save a sacred site from a lithium mine
Nikki Hill is a “first foods” specialist who has studied the patterns of pre-colonial horticulture throughout the American West — most controversially above the largest known lithium deposit of its kind. Thacker Pass, Nevada, or Peehee Mu’huh by its Paiute name, was fast-tracked by Donald Trump for a large lithium mine in the last days […]
Tikkun Eco Center : Spreading seeds of change
SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, MÉXICO – Victoria Collier and Ben Ptashnik are a couple with a vision: they want to teach how to create self-sustaining ecological community where people can grow food, disengage from destructive systems with the use of renewable energy and green building, and create community projects that benefit everyone while raising the […]
Small-town citizens get creative in Black Hills uranium mine fight
This summer, Hot Springs citizens scored a breakthrough: They collected enough signatures to obtain a ballot measure that would declare mining a “nuisance” in Fall River County.
Call of the Turtle Mini Vision Council at a Glance
For those of you who joined us this weekend for the epic Call of the Turtle Mini Vision Council, and indeed for any of the brilliant EcoSapiens who shared their stories and insights with us during the monthlong Restoring Sacred Culture in the Americas Convergence, we are so grateful to you. You, in fact, are […]
LIVE TODAY at 11 am CDT: Gaia University founder Liora Adler on 'Retrotopia'
Since the turn of the century humans have been building communities structured on technological and industrial practices that are steadily destroying the ecosystems that support life on this planet. “Retrotopia”** is an alternative vision that supports the re-emergence of sustainable community living focused on ecosystem regeneration and restoration. Register HERE to join us for this weekend’s lineup […]
EcoSapien Speaker Series + 'Call of the Turtle' Mini Vision Council
This monumental monthlong convergence features conversations with indigenous visionaries and activists, eco-elders in the fields of bioregionalism, ecovillage design, permaculture, earth-regeneration and humans we see as helping us connect to our animist roots while restoring elements of sacred culture.
Sacred Earth: Gathering the voices of the protectors of Amerikua
An interview with Ivan Sawyer, founder of Voices of Amerikua, on Sacred Earth, his new series on Indigenous Ecology
Editor’s note: As we first published this story (May 3, 2022), author John McLeod and his family in rural New Mexico were evacuated from their home and farm due to the Hermit’s Peak / Calf Canyon fire that started not far from their home. “This is what Climate Change looks like,” he wrote, “making the […]
Pablo Alarcón and his luminous environmentalism
True, legitimate, deep environmentalism is, above all, a luminous act where the human being gives himself body and soul to the defense of life. It is luminous because it lights flames of hope in a world of darkness. Pablo Alarcón Chaires was an exceptional environmentalist whose career left a trail of light. His very arrival […]
Moira Millán: 'A telluric movement is awakening the women of the Earth'
Moira Millán is a force to be reckoned with — a weychafe in the Mapuche tradition, or as she explains it, a warrior, a fighter, a defender. “To be a Weychafe is to be the defense of the territory, the defense of life. And that is the spirit that inhabits me.” Moira had just traveled […]
AMLO Comes to Temaca, the Town That Refuses to Drown
Saturday, Aug. 14, was a day that would be marked as a turning point in the history of Temaca. And the Carbajal sisters, together with scores of other defenders of the historic village, would be ready.
Nature, Covid-19 and Species Fear
We are living in a dangerous time, where everything depends on humanity managing to overcome what is the second period of maximum risk in its history (the first occurred when the Homo sapiens population was reduced to a minimum and trapped on the coasts of South Africa due to the effects of extreme freezing weather).
The promise of restoration lives within us
“Today let’s start a new decade, one in which we finally make peace with nature and secure a better future for all,” declared António Gutterres, the UN Secretary General, during the virtual opening event of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration in June. With environmental degradation already affecting almost half of humanity, and with every […]
Miller Dussán is one of those rare people who can just as comfortably traverse the traditional fishing villages and small farms of the countryside as he can the halls of research and policy-making institutions. In Colombia, a dynamic, water-rich country that is highly dependent on increasingly controversial hydropower, Dussán plays a vital role in these two spaces. In […]
As Odysseus prepared to depart to the Trojan War, he left the supervision of his son Telemachus’s education to an old and trusted friend, Mentor. Many of us have had the gift of a mentor or mentors, whose words and deeds coupled with a personal relationship have guided and inspired our lives and our activism […]
Monkeys Reaching for the Moon: An Environmental Parable for Our Times
A few months ago my karate sensei shared with his students the Zen story of The Monkeys Reaching for the Moon. If you haven’t heard it, there are many versions. Here’s mine:
México: The 4th Transformation in a Global Context
It is becoming clear that the future of the planet is red and green. It is equally clear that Mexico’s situation is neither exclusive nor unique, but rather replicates what is happening on a global scale, where the citizens of the world take on diverse forces in order to reduce, stop or suppress the double exploitation that a minority of minorities is imposing on the work of humans and of nature. The enormous ignorance prevailing among leaders and theorists of Mexican emancipation about what is taking place in the rest of the world, limits and reveals them. It is not only about keeping in mind the social and environmental struggles of Latin America, but of many other regions.
May 13th, a Day to Do Nothing for the Climate
The climate needs us to do more nothing—as it is our pursuit of growth and more, more, more (whether profit, stuff, or children) that is at the heart of our sustainability crisis.
No More Sacrificed Communities
A soon-to-be-released feature film exemplifies how independent media initiatives can be powerful tools for social and environmental justice organizing. Challenging the isolation and impotence that many are feeling in the face of the current health and racial crises, the internationally acclaimed documentary The Condor & The Eagle and its impact campaign “No More Sacrificed Communities” bring us […]
Native leaders, civic groups blast rollback of bedrock environmental law
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Creature from the Black Lagoon loomed over the offices of the Interior Department last week as non-profit consumer advocate Public Citizen joined the chorus of voices condemning the proposed rollback of the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. “Trump’s Interior Secretary is an Oil Lobbyist,” declared the giant video […]
The Devastation of the Chiquitanía in the decline of Evo Morales
The year that is coming to an end will be remembered in Bolivia not only for the hurricane winds that drove the fall of Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president; but also because of the fires those winds brought with them. They burned forests, ecological reserves, indigenous territories and national parks in eight of […]
Turning trash into groceries in Oaxaca
A “pet” is a PET-type plastic bottle. Its worth is equivalent to about a penny, and gathering together several of them you can purchase some basic food items through a project developed by a university student and implemented by his local government.
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