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Bioregioning: Ancient wisdom that has come of age

Click here to watch a recording of this webinar.

Presenters: Isabel Carlisle & Eduard Mueller

Hosted by Glenn Page & Michael Quinn Patton

Future resilience of our communities across the globe is a whole-systems challenge in the face of whole systems change (climate change being one of those lead systems). This webinar focused on two scales of transformation, one at the regional scale in the southwest of UK and the other at the national scale of Costa Rica. We began with the story of the Bioregional Learning Centre in South Devon, England, who have been supporting a whole region and multi-sector response for the past four years and is now moving in the next phase of the work. Isabel Carlisle talks about assessing the baseline for action and explore what is needed for seeding multi-level shifts towards resilience. Eduard Müller then introduces his work in developing a Roadmap for Regeneration for the nation of Costa Rica. The road map is a process to define the national strategic commitment to regenerative development (political outcome) that would support the co-production of a high level regenerative development plan as a living document that is deeply informed by the voices of the territories, all local communities and indigenous groups, and those most often marginalized or excluded; and dedicated funding streams for regeneration committed from government agencies, private sector, foundations, and academic sector. While ambitious, this effort in Costa Rica is being viewed very closely by other countries and networks such as the Common Earth, a partner of the Commonwealth of Nations. This webinar features an introduction by Michael Quinn Patton, lively dialogue between both Isabel and Eduard facilitated by Glenn Page who illustrates the alignment with the principles of Blue Marble Evaluation.

 

Presenter Biographies

 

For the past thirty years, Eduard Müller, President Rector of the University for International Cooperation, has been deeply involved in addressing the challenges of biodiversity and land regeneration. He has participated in the negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity, in the development of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the Earth Charter movement, and in UNESCO’s MAB Programme.  Here he speaks frankly about what humanity needs to do, and why we have thus far failed to do it, as we head into the Sixth Planetary Extinction.

Isabel Carlisle leads the team for the Bioregional Learning Centre (BLC) in South Devon. BLC is working on the ground for whole-systems change for climate resilience across all sectors. The emphasis is on multi-stakeholder design that includes civil society. Current projects include European collaboration on a course to train leaders in regional regeneration and resilience. As well as regional-scale work, Isabel has convened the UK national bioregional community of practice and BLC is working at international scale with Ecolise, Regenerative Communities Network and Ecoversities Alliance. Following a long career in the London art world that began in 1980, Isabel set up and directed the Festival of Muslim Cultures that took place across Britain throughout 2006. She then became a Creative Consultant to the University of the Arts in London and developed learning strategies for sustainability with schools in the east end of London. In 2013 she co-founded the Community Chartering Network that played a role in bringing about the Scottish government ban on fracking. She has been a part of the Transition movement since 2008, and worked in the Transition Network team as Education Coordinator from when she moved to Totnes, Devon, in 2010 until 2016. She is trained in Regenerative Development and Design (Regenesis), Education for Sustainability (Schumacher College) and Awareness Practices for Leadership (UAcademy). She is a skilled facilitator, designer of learning programmes and large-scale project manager.

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