Posts tagged with "environment"

Monkey business

Spaces inbetween

I have spent my week since Blair Atholl in lots of different settings and environments, which have made me think a lot about how spaces and places affect our mood. After an amazing weekend in a place of stunning beauty, where I (eventually) felt calm and nurtured,  I then spent five days rushing around, finding myself in: three busy airports; London - enough said;  a nightclub venue doubling as a conference space for one of our major events; the official opening of a massive new high-tech office conversion and then - the ultimate - the new chimp house at the zoo for a meeting!!

In amongst them all were my office and home, and the spaces inbetween them. What struck me, by the end of the week, was how affected I was by my different environments - they had an impact on how I felt, how I behaved and how I spoke to, and behaved, towards others. I worked hard to fight against that ghastly tension in London, where so few strangers are kind to each other, and so made a point of looking people in the eye, smiling and saying thank you in cafe’s and shops. I was heartened by the reaction - warmth every time.

At our event in the nightclub, a large part of the atmosphere was of our own making - our job was to create a space and environment where young people would feel comfortable and confident, able to take part and express themselves, to talk about the future of their country and their aspirations for it (the good news is the environment came up - lots).

And there there was the zoo - it’s the Budongo Trail in Edinburgh, where they have cleverly built a boardroom right in the middle of the pods where the chimpanzees live. One wall of the meeting room is glass, so we found ourselves in the middle of earnest discussion only to look up and see a chimp intently looking at us, observing what was going on. It was fantastic - great on a basic level to be so close - but even better was the impact it had on people’s way of being. People approached the meeting with a different outlook and - dare I suggest - maybe even reacted to each other differently. By moving to that space - where we were so closely linked to wildness - it completely altered our mood and approach.

I don’t suppose any of these observations are rocket science, but my point is that I am becoming much more aware of my surroundings and THEIR impact on ME - much more. If I can feel so soothed and centred by being in the wilderness, then the opposite must be true of a big city. The trick is how to take the wilderness with you, how to keep its sustaining power as part of your daily urban life? Big questions, but right now, I’m off to fill up the bird feeder again…

Leaders to follow?

This project has a strand in it about developing leadership in driving change. Our conversations as a group have often centred around iconic change heroes: Ghandi, Mandela, Obama.

More immediately role models have been harder to find. Last month Time magazine ran a special double issue report on ‘Heroes of the Environment.’

Here is a selection for googling and emulating.

Wang Yongchen

A journalist with China National Radio, she co-founded Green Earth Volunteers in 1996. Now 50,000 people have joined programmes such as environmental classes and trips to the wilderness. Sound familiar? She says, “When children grow up to be bosses and have to weigh growing the economy and protecting the environment, they’ll have a different response than people who haven’t experienced nature”

Annie Leonard

Maker of the viral online film “The Story of Stuff’

See here: http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor

After 7 years in humanitarian relief for the UN he joined a pressure group, wrote a newsletter, reported on trips in the destitute forest villages, and uncovered a scandal; President Charles Taylor was using logging profits to fund his civil war. This led to the UN ban on Liberian timber, leading to evidence against Taylor for his war crimes trial. Taking Siakor’s cue in 2005 the newly elected president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf makes forest protection a key government policy, cancels all Liberian logging concessions, and protects 11.8 million acres of the last virgin forests in West Africa. All in less than a decade.

Can we change, yes we can.

You want more……….

Jean Francois and Jean Charles Decaux

Brothers of the JCDecaux outdoor advertising dynasty (just check a bus shelter near you) they are also the founders of Velib a self service bike rental scheme in Paris. They have rented 30 million bike rides since July 2007 and by the end of this year will have rolled out Velib like schemes in 49 cities. If 200,000 Parisiens can take out one year Velib subscriptions so can we in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen…If we demand our ‘toon cooncilers’ to demand a Velib service.

Kevin Conrad

Papua New Guinea’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, who last December at the UN Climate Change Conference challenged the US with these words. “If, for some reason, you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us…Please get out of the way!” Within minutes the US had backed down and the road map for the post Kyoto 2012 climate treaty, the ‘Bali Action Plan’ could then be agreed.

Soren Hermansen

He helped the Danish island of Samso go carbon free. How? Harnessing the power of community leaders and at times free beer!

Where our greatest gladness meets the hunger of the world

Your greatest calling

“is the place where your deep gladness

and the world’s deep hunger meet.”          Frederick Buechner

With this quote uppermost in our minds we set out on our second solo.  Much shorter, just an afternoon till dusk.  Much colder.  Damper and darker.

 I return to the forest stream.  To reflect more deeply on the need to rebalance things. 

 Seeing the view again I’m more struck with the symbolism of the summit ridge, taking me far away from the homely forest bank in my life.  How can I stay more ‘in sight’ of it? How can I find more time? Use less resources, need less stuff, share more?

 Perhaps here is the way to find that ‘greatest gladness?’  Maybe finding it needs me to kick back against giving in to the prevailing cultural structures that push us too hard to provide.  I need to reposition myself in the economic and ecological landscape, much closer to family and keeping work in line of sight, in calling distance.

 Applying what I think I now understand is receptive consciousness; drinking in details from around your immediate environment and finding their realignment to what you know intuitively, was a very clarifying experience.  I wasn’t learning anything new.  I’ve known for ages that I need a more balance in my life.  Projecting my needs into the environment just gave it a potency that I hope will spur me into action to begin meeting the hunger of the world.

From Knoydart to Blair Atholl

 I’m writing this blog in the second phase of the Natural Change Project. This time we are based in Forest Lodge on the Blair Atholl Estate. The landscape is quite different here compared with Knoydart. I am in a deep valley, eight miles up a dirt track road, with steep hills all around. No mobile phone reception, internet or television. 

Forest Lodge

The weekend has been extremely stimulating and challenging. We have discussed many world issues with a special focus upon environmental concerns and how we can change things for the better. We have debated what human qualities are required to bring about this change.

 Today we were outside for most of the time, examining the natural environment and local habitats in a bid to inspire us in our quest to bring more people to a sense of appreciation and care for the beautiful world that surrounds us.

 We have looked at our own interactions with nature and related these to our own lives in a bid to understand our deepest personal emotions and thoughts for nature. By drawing from this spiritual base, peoples affinity and passion for change is driven more directly than by more conventional ways such as “telling people how best to approach change”

The noise of the fast flowing river was a dominant feature at Forest Lodge

The relationships within the Natural Change group are very strong and the passion for change overwhelming. We all feel very privileged to be part of this research and I feel I am developing enhanced skills of observation and knowledge of the environment.

How will I relate this to the education of our young people in schools?

I think there is a place for Eco Psychology within the school curriculum and it can be used to complement the current excellence within environmental education.

Over the next few weeks I will be collecting data and comments on the role of Eco Psychology in Education.

If you have any thoughts or information on this, please contact me through the blog comment section and I will get back to you to enable us to share thoughts and ideas.

Thanks. Roseleen

Autumn dog walk

Now, when I take my dog for her walk along the usual pathway route on the Kelvin Walkway, I make sure I don’t miss all the little details. So much outdoor stuff. Where once there was: mud, grass, trees. There are now so many autumn berries; hawthorn, elder, cotoneaster, alder buckthorn and blackberries. So many trees, shrubs, I must learn them. My illiteracy of nature in my locality has really surprised me.

So I have been making a gallery of images to try and capture the wonderlets of autumn just minutes from my home. Revelling in the aesthetic is all very well and as I have been doing this I realised the dog’s view may be different. Although the level sensory appreciation available to dogs is denied us (probably just as well!) it struck me that what dogs see may be besmirched by our lack of regard for the environment. Here are some of the dog’s findings.

What’s it all about, Alfie?

“What’s it all about, Alfie?

Is it just for the moment we live?

What’s it all about, when you sort it out, Alfie?

Are we meant to take more than we give?

Or are we meant to be kind?”

Ah, Cilla. What a legend. And wise before her time it would appear. Surprise, surprise*, this was the song running through my head, over and over, when I was out on my solo day, and keeps making a return visit to my frontal lobe every so often, as if to remind me of my time in the forest.

It’s the biggest question we face of course, and if nothing else, this project is making me think big, prompting questions far beyond “is my washing up liquid environmentally friendly?” Any exercise which starts by making you look at your own values and needs will do that – but what’s interesting is the number of other people I’m finding who want to have similar conversations. Whether that’s to do with imminent planetary disaster or the financial turmoil hitting the headlines every day, I’m not sure, but the doomsday scenarios that are piling up around us do appear to be making us question all sorts of things we previously took for granted. Gotta be a good thing, right? Right?

I’m reading lots of commentators who are saying this situation simply must result in fundamental change worldwide – and that change could provide an opportunity for larger scale measures to tackle mass poverty and sustainability. Sounds a bit of a stretch I know, but I had a fascinating conversation with an economist last week at an event at Edinburgh Castle, who set out an entirely believable rationale as to how this could happen, if we had the collective will, globally. Very simplistically, the key will be in what are the measures – fiscal and otherwise – that allow us to rebuild, and rebuild in balance – not continuing to take more than we give?

To do that, more people need to understand and value that balance – which gives me a nice circular argument back to my main bugbear of how you persuade people that there is an alternative. Here comes Cilla again:

“I know there’s something much more

Something even non-believers can believe in”

So how do we start having these conversations with “non-believers”? Where would you start from? Give me a clue…

* Did you see what I did there? Did ya?