(raw) riverside_planetary_health _ feb 14, 2025 001_light_forest

12:58PM Feb 14, 2025

Speakers:

Dev Lewis

Geordan

Keywords:

Planetary health

relationships

scale

trans localism

care chains

community health

ecosystem services

First Nations wisdom

global health

web3 technology

decentralized finance

network nations

bio regionalism

social organization

system change.

Welcome to the light forest, Jordan. Thank you so much, Dev. Thank you for your generosity, and it's a pleasure to be here.

Great before we even get into our various streams that we want to get into. What time is it for you there and where in the world are you joining us from?

I'm calling in from the Swiss Jura. We're in the middle of some fields and forest here. It's 10 o'clock in the morning, but the sun is emerging, the clouds are lifting from the valley. And, yeah, I'm also just emerging, really from from a bit of offline hibernation over winter. So, yeah, it's it's been a really nice time of slowing,

lovely, well emerging. So we will allow conversations to emerge from that. I think there's, there's so much I want to talk to you about, and I know you have so much to share, but the best way to start off would be learning about planetary health.

Yeah, absolutely. So planetary health is a also an emerging movement that starts with the premise that the health of people and planet are inextricably linked. The planet is our life support system, from the water we drink to the air we breathe, and any practice of health care has to be able to link and to understand those connections, as much as our own biologies and the hospitals that we work in, so planetary health tries to really expand the concept of what health really means, and to center health in all aspects of life. We work really with two key concepts. And the first is relationships, and the second is scale. The relationship factor health is is built through through relation. It's the relation I have with my own body and the ecosystem inside me, but also the way in which health is built through our relations in community and through institutions, through the hospital system and beyond. But it's also the relationships that we have with greater than human life and the ecologies around us. So it allows us to really understand that there are these very complex and incredibly important webs that we all depend on and to operate with that complexity, and very closely related to that is scale. So we might think of health care often as individualized, but actually health needs to be able to it does anyway, and I think we need to understand that health operates across all of these scales. It's not simply an individual pursuit, but that health is something that we achieve collectively through public goods and institutions for health, the roads, if they're safe, that's a health issue, the financial system, the economic system, if that works well, if we're not poor, then we can, you know, we can be healthier so that all of those different systems and scales that surround us, we they already shape health in very complex ways and sort of engaging from from the micro op to the very macro of the planet is, is what planetary health allows us to do. It's a lens through which we can, we can see these connections.

And the word that comes sticks with me is relationship, and this idea of the relationship between the planet's health and our bodily health, and also just that, the lack of a relationship between these different systems, perhaps, is why we are facing many of the crisis that we are facing today around health.

Yes, I think if you think about it as a relationship that creates a dynamism, and what we often in the current, well, I guess capitalist mentality, we're often atomized and individualized, and often we sort of see health as a very individual thing. Everything from from from the pandemic to natural disasters teach us that, that that's really a lie. We are always in relation. I cannot be healthy until you are healthy, until my river is healthy, until the animals that surround me are healthy too. So that that relationship is very key. It sort of decenters from an individual, and it allows us to think of health as a networked state as well as a process. You know, it's not, it's not just an outcome, it's a process. And I mean, this is, this is this is not new. First Nations people, I grew up in Australia, and First Nations people in Australia know this. This is part of their cosmology. This is part of their story from from millennia ago. They know that health is not just a hospital, it's not just an outcome. It's culture, it's community, it's connections. I agree, relationship is a very important word, because it allows us to really break out of more boxed in thinking around health.

You mentioned, you know, the first world people of the first people of Australia, and so in many ways, it's planetary. Health is as a concept, it's, it's both new and it's old. And since it's sort of picking up traditional wisdoms and practices yet, bringing in, you know, scientific approaches, or bringing in something new, it's like this, this concoction, if you will.

Yes, I don't know how there are people who make that connection. And. And I agree it's absolutely that we're we're repackaging and adding a few more aspects of Western science and sort of global policy to this formulation, but it has absolutely been around and known, and I think maybe that's why, when we talk about planetary health, there's a knowing, and there's something that people feel in their bodies around this concept in a way that maybe sort of a biomedical model of healthcare hasn't, you know, that's a bit more about Disease Control and Prevention, whereas this is much more about saludogenesis, the creation of health, and also allows us to sit in that complexity, which I think is often something that we already feel and know inherently.

Yeah, you had this lovely line in the paper that you wrote about planetary health, as caring as the planet as opposed to caring for the planet. And this important linguistic determination on this difference is really key,

yes, and once again, that is also just full credit to to First Nations authors who were able to help me see that so so in Australia, there is a concept of caring as country. And I want to, I want to call out my my friend Ben Wilson here, who talks about this as well, where there's a lot of stories that tell that allow us to see how we're not really separate from we are part of. And I think caring as the planet, as opposed to caring for the planet, allows us to sort of get beyond that sort of binary of humans versus versus nature, and that sort of that impulse to kind of separate and control that we often see operating.

Yeah, I think that that I feel a lot of resonance when I read that and hear you say that and about for me, it's about finding that connections between all of life and everything in the forest as we walk through you're as a medical doctor, and you know you've been working in this field for many years. And how did you get involved in planetary health? Like, what was your journey of working within the existing systems that, as you say, perhaps were more separated or more siloed, and then coming to see that, you know, planetary health was something that was necessary and timely.

It was a journey. There is something that is very difficult to describe. It's, it's, it's guttural, it's visceral. It's internal fire that I think I've always had. You know, I grew up protesting, seeking reconciliation, being really social, social justice oriented, ever since I can, can remember I would have, you know, protests about protecting the ants and all the all the way up to seeking reconciliation with Aboriginal people in Australia. So there's always been something internal. And I sort of fell into medicine because it was a really interesting kind of combination of art and science. In my mind, I loved natural sciences. I loved how the world were understanding how the world worked, physics, biology, but also then the practice of humanity and being able to really operate in a way that allowed, that bought some form of healing to people. But what I realized in the system, I mean, there's so much in this, there's not it's not all positive, it's not all negative, but the system on a whole, what I felt was this sort of isolation in that there was a rigidity of practice, and I also experienced the, I would call it violence, of the system that perpetuated the things that we were actually trying to treat. I mean, it perpetuated some of the inequalities. We perpetuated the sort of isolation that people felt from their culture or their bodies. And this was happening in big city hospitals as much as it was in Bush hospitals, where people would travel for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kilometers to be in a really kind of scary different world, which was the hospital, as much as individuals inside the system really meant well cared well were great people. The system itself often tended to not be a place of healing. And I guess then that made me think about, well, how do we, how do we actually find that space, and what are the factors that generate health and healing and so going beyond the walls of the hospital, as it were, to really seek the different factors at the community level. So whether that's going right into the center of the Australian bush and operating in a type of dual or plural health dialog with people who hold plural health understandings in Indigenous Australia, for example, that's one way I lived and worked on in on the Napa River in Peru for a long time as well. And that was looking at different forms of health care system, with community health volunteers in the most local way, with people who have had very little formal education but had very, very, very rich. Knowledge, and that allowed me to start to, I guess, initially, initially, what I thought was, oh, well, you know, they're all just small things. You know, I'm just doing small things. And I guess with with maturity, with confidence, I'm not sure what, but there was this reckoning that actually, these small things are the things that allow the groundswell of change to occur. Change will always happen in place. It doesn't always have to be a UN system, globalized change. It can be these small, decentral, localized factors. And so with that insight, I think that gave me the confidence and also the resolution to be able to start to form institutions and organizations that facilitate that change. So stemmer is an example of one of the organizations that I set up that tries to create decision support, tools for people to think in, systems to build health in their communities. Global Health disrupted was it was a much older one, but that drew in arts and creativity to be able to allow different forms of media to inspire, and then, more recently, sort of moving into the more traditional policy arena with United Health futures. But that has been a platform for mobilizing funds to support things like unexpia, which is a web three financing platform as well as Planet health, which is a broader trans local mobilization platform for planetary health. So I think, I think all of these, all of this, has been possible because of this insight of community oriented and really genuine relationships that then allow that type of change at some sort of scale, but not in a centralized way to occur. Yeah,

wow, that's, I love that. And I hear that you've been in your own journey living at all levels, then living in the bush, also, you know, walking the halls of global institutions and and technology spaces, and sort of traversing this hyper global, but also, you know, very caring local, you know, very, you know, grassroots level, you know, view which gives you these, these unique perspectives and and really living planetary health, in a sense, like living that care without that subject object, kind of dichotomy that sometimes happens in research and academia that's really beautiful, and it almost, I think, takes us nicely to your writing around trans local which I think underpins planetary health in many ways, before we even go further into that, you Tell us what is how you see trans local activity and action as being really key to planetary health movement?

Yeah, thank you so much for that question. I think when we talk about planetary health, you can, at least, I feel it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of change that is necessary, and also the pace of change that's necessary, quite frankly, to prevent catastrophic outcomes for the planet. But yeah, when we sort of think about the planetary often, there is this propensity I find in myself to think about one scale and something as like a universal solution. And actually, the process of or the lens of trans localism, allows you to think in scale and to think about change in a very different way. It's, I guess, starting with us, this, this insight that change, as I said before, change happens in place. Change can happen through, through, through, globalized, you know, systems, and it often does. But there is something that is really important about place based action, the scale of place based action, whether that's every local community regeneration, or whether that is home based change. So that's really the key insight of trans localism that I started with, once again, going back to that journey and linking it across to this inside of trans localism. What we the current, the way in which current, sort of, the dominant sort of systems of the world operate are that we have like a highly globalized system, but it's highly centralized, and it's fragile as a result, because of the hyper connectedness of these systems. And so if we think about what is a way to embrace that globalization, but decouple the highly interconnected nature of these, these world systems, into a much more distributed, anti fragile system, then you sort of start to see a pattern emerge. And something that I also write about is from the concept of planet pattern integrity, which is where there are patterns in nature and life that are robust, which are anti fragile, which are effective and so trans localism, I think, fits into that pattern, which is distributed and which allows a decentralization of actions and a place you know. Grounding of the actions, but allows us to then connect up, whether that's conceptually or physically or digitally, into sort of a space where you can share. So translocalism is about connecting up local places beyond in a way that transcends sort of national boundaries and transcends the locale. And it's as much about the pattern and the structure as it is about the process. So it is the process of connecting in that we want to be able to gate whole or create a network that is greater than the sum of its parts, because we you mentioned academia and research and previously Dev. And what we tend to do is try and sort of control and find unifying forces in research, whereas trans localism allows us to embrace diversity of perspectives and to use that as as a substrate to build something really richer and more more diverse and stronger as a result. So trans localism, as I said, it's as much about the locales as it is about the process of bringing everyone together into an assemblage of information and exchange. Yeah,

what I'm hearing is it sounds like a forest. You know, it's one ecosystem with so much life, but there's so many systems and subsystems and, you know, going down to the soil and and mycelium networks, and they all are playing these roles, but neither one system is necessarily dominant over the other one. They may differ in size, you know, but there's still individual expressions and that are scaled up,

that's right. And I think if we think about that we have in we we've always had individual expressions and in global health and global health and development, often what we've what we've seen, is that there's, there's a movement towards standardization of intervention, standardization of approaches. And there are some, some, some things that are really adaptable, standardisable, you know, things, not to discount that. But at the same time, we do need to be able to embrace that, that diversity of, as you said, the forest and what brings people together is, or what brings these, these, these actors together is, is a common desire. So it might be planetary health, it might be education, it might be it may be economic justice. But these actors all have their own perspectives on that, and then can learn from each other in a really dynamic and enrich exchange.

Yeah, there's, there's almost this fantasy of this globalization, centralization, this, you know, this project of dominion that you know, some of our global systems operate on, and in some ways, perhaps, that centralization is responsible for the ill health of our planet and ill health for for us. I noticed that, you know, the World Health Organization's definition of health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being, not merely the absence of disease, yet it fails to capture non human life. That's my reading of it. And even if the intention was to look at something that's just not the absence of disease, but health, yet it's one global paradigm trying to go across the whole world, versus allowing for groups and ideas to emerge and systems to emerge in their own way, locally as they would.

Yeah, this is a really interesting point, and I'd love to just spend a moment on it. I mean, the creation of the World Health Organization was, this was this incredible feed in the post World War. And

I should note that we're just, we're recording a couple of days after Donald Trump has signed an executive order to for the US to to exit the who so it feels like we're at a pivotal moment on a on a macro scale, but we to go back to that moment.

But to go back to that moment. I mean, it was, it was an extraordinary moment of of political, global, shared expression and an expression of the value of health, and even for health to be enshrined in in the WHO Constitution as a very holistic vision. And aside from the headline, if you look sort of at the fuller text there, it does recognize the environment. It does recognize mental health. And so you have this, this, this incredible vision that has has been institutionalized, in a way, and and has, I think, bought with it a lot of a lot of wonderful things, alongside a lot of other sort of global institutions that had it had emerged. I mean, if we look at HIV AIDS as the shining example of that at the end of the 20th century, what we've been able to achieve in terms of reducing human suffering has been wonderful, yet at the same time, these globalized institutions, through so many factors into including corporate capture, including, you know, other sort of erosion of funding, through so many other ways, have really struggled. To deliver, not to say that they're not doing great things, but there is this, this pivotal moment of of of of struggle. And what I would say to it, to your original question or provocation, is that I think that this era of of globalized institutions was somehow necessary to bring us together, to let us to really understand and to see and to feel what health is at a global scale, rather than to be nationalistic about it or individualistic about it, but that this sort of phase is allowing us to see what's next and what's next allows us to take the foundations of globalized health institutions and to build, to build in a different way and and my hope is that that's a much more integrated way, with planetary health, with community health, with with trans localism. That's That's my hope for what we would see in the next versions of institutions.

Yeah, I really like how you put that, which is that, you know, it was this wonderful expression of global unity, which I certainly have felt as well with a background in international relations, and sort of seeing this crystallization of global trade and and this idea of like global flows of information and and money and goods, yet perhaps we've taken that to its logical extreme, To the extreme that the planet will even allow. And now we're swinging in a different direction, perhaps, and but as you say, capturing because I think we haven't lost this idea of global unity now. Now we've got this. We've felt into it. We're not isolated islands or groups of people who don't see the planet as one, we now understand that there is this planet that we're a part of, and perhaps taking that in. And, you know, we talked about Cosmo localism, and I've had Michelle on another episode as well, this idea of like being both Cosmo, which is the globe and the planet, or even cosmic, while also being local at the same time as being something that captures some of this essence,

Yes, precisely. I think that the Cosmo local framing is so congruent and so complementary and aligned with planetary health, with trans localism as well. I think if we think about where we're moving to there is, you see sort of collective expression of wanting to stay in place and to not travel, and that that we have the technological means to remain connected globally, and so to be able to really think about how these technologies allow us to do that in an exchange Where the perhaps we've been so busy kind of connecting and traveling, and, you know, doing our tourism and traveling for work and all of that, where we've actually sort of, there's a sort of a swath of population that then has not been able to have the time or the capacity to invest in caring for their their their locale. And so maybe, maybe we'll be forced into that. You know, the pandemic was, was one of the ways that we were forced into it. And, and I see sort of a lot of there will be tumultuous times ahead in terms of of these pan global health challenges. And so, so maybe we do spend more time acting Cosmo locally by force as much as by choice.

Yeah, I want to get more into the system regeneration and so and on institutional level and things that are forming. But I feel like we haven't fully put our fingers into the soil of trans, of trans localism and planetary health just yet. And I want to, carefully, you know, open it up and look at what's there. And, you know, you mentioned something about care and about assemblage, it strikes me that that's really important as well as that there's this human element. And it's not just systems and ideas and and, you know, even information and resources flowing, but there's something deeper on a human level that's part of connecting all these systems together, and you have this wonderful concept of of care chains. And please tell us more about care chains and how this fits into, into into what you've just described.

I would be delighted to talk about care chains, but started, starting with starting with care. I think care is really the life force behind all relationships for planetary health. And we have they have seen caregiving. There's so much caregiving is hard, but it is so wonderful at the same time, whether it's for an elderly person, a loved one, a child, your community, your environment, but it takes a lot of work and care. Is one of these things that we have. Through the current sort of economic system, we've had this sort of division of the type of work that happens inside the house of reproductive labor and the type of work that happens in the market, and so that's productive labor, because. Because of the way that that sort of because of that economic meta structure, you've had the systematic devaluation of a lot of the reproductive work, and I'm not calling reproductive labor is not just you do about biology. It's about reproducing ourselves, each other, our families, our communities, so that we can we can be here. We can be so. So caregiving itself is a really interesting lens through which to kind of think about, why aren't we, why aren't we getting here Forrester, it's because we have systematically devalued and invisibilized care, caregiving, labor. And so a lot of feminist economists and eco feminists will talk about this. And interestingly, eco feminist will make the parallel between care and then exploitation of care in humans, as much as the same sort of exploitation of nature and nature's care for us happens. So so people have been making these connections for a long time, but yet we still live in a world where we don't really center care. So I started to play with this concept of care chains for planetary health. I was very inspired by the original concept of care chains introduced by Arlie hothschild, where she talks about transnational caregiving labor. You have this very interesting but also very invisibilized Economy of migrant, often migrant care workers who may be hired as as a, as a nanny or as a, as a caregiver in a different country, yet have their own relationships of care, with their own children, with their own elders, with their own communities, in their in their home country. And there's this sort of transfer of caregiving labor, as well as remittances and and and other other things that sort of flow. But you sort of have this, this kind of push on, knock on effect of of who's giving care for who? So that happens, and it happens so commonly. It's often, you know, it's often migrant it's often women who are doing it. It's often women from poorer countries, often women from minorities. Happens hiding in plain sight. So I took that concept of care, care chains, and expanded it to planetary health, to really make visible and to center what care does and what it is and so and to also to really draw attention to the fact that we can't just magic or hope our way into sort of a silver bullet solution, our way into into healthy environments. This takes relationships. It takes time, it takes labor, and we should invest in that. So the care chain idea allows us to trace the way in which we give our own biologies care. So we eat well and we look after our biome. We we take care of it, we rest, we exercise those. Those things are care for ourselves. We care for each other. I care for my child, I care for my loved ones. We care for the community. The community cares for us. You know, the community center model is a classic example. But then we also care for the environment, and thinking about the places that we feel connected to and that we steward, the environment also cares for us. And so we might call this ecosystem services. I don't really like that term, but I don't have really,

yeah. Thanks. But the

wider ecologies that care for us, so this is our life support systems, of water, sun, earth, food. So it is this reciprocal relationship. So if you sort of trace it out, you sort of have these, these circular sort of relationships that sort of expand out and once again, allow you to think about relationships and scale. And so if you think about care teams, if they're exploited, then what you have is a very individualized society where you have invisible care, and you sort of have outcomes oriented focus on health and the planet. But if you think about centering care, then you often have more of a focus on process, relationship, feedback and connection and holism, rather than sort of compar mentalizing with these aspects of our world.

Yeah, and that's beautiful. I mean, care is where it starts and where it ends in healthcare itself has a good care in it. It's it's hard to imagine that. Yet, like our medical systems today, tend to feel devoid of care. You know, we mentioned relationships at the start of the conversation, right? How do you have a relationship without care as being a fundamental tenant of it? Yet we seem to be increasingly in systems that just lack that care, and what I hear is really bringing back that human element into it, and in a sense, like there is an invisible aspect to care as well. I mean, there's the invisible care that's that's care but not seen and not factored in data, perhaps, like, you know, a wife, perhaps caring by cooking food for a husband, or vice versa and different ways. But yet, there's care that cannot be measured as well. There's an innate care of being human, and that can manifest in so many ways. And perhaps this even goes to the root of of our systems today, where we talked about, you know, that just anything that cannot be seen and cannot be measured isn't really count. It on. And so much of you know the modern medical, modern science, science project of the last three, 400 years. So much based on what we can measure, missing out on this critical, invisible aspect that animates our life. You know, had a had a guest on a cat low a few weeks ago, talked about the needing to open up to the invisible, to the sixth eye, and needing to bring in that in and care seems to me really closely connect to that, to connecting us, to what makes us human.

Yeah, I think you sum Well, I don't know if I could really add anything. Just to say, I feel that is a really beautiful framing, and I agree that we are often seeking such concrete, tangible things and sitting with this intangible, sitting with this material, sitting with this this knowing that that goes beyond what we feel like we can put our finger on or put data on. It's there. And you know, I spend a lot of time in my medical career, training to be an obstetrician gynecologist. And so this moment of, this moment of of life and often death, you know, it's this very, very, very pivotal moment, and that that's, that's something that has occupied a lot of space, of of wonder, you know, and of magic, really, of these inexplicable moments between the transfer of life and the carry carriage of life and the bringing forth of life with a lot of risk in many situations in many countries, particularly that don't have access to health care. That actually is it was a really illuminating moment, because there are so many factors there that center the importance of care, but also center this, this, this intangible knowing and relationship that we can't put words to, and we can't overlay medical data on.

Yeah, that's beautiful and and perhaps the direction we move into is something that's more integrated, that, you know, there's ways where we're able to see and those revalue what we value. It always strikes me that so many of the caregivers of our economy are not actually valued economically. You know, nurses, you know, other kinds of labor that just bring a lot of care. Gardeners to plants, stewards of our forest. You know, indigenous groups who are stewarding our forest. There's so much care involved, yet, like our economic systems, don't seem to value that, and even perhaps ourselves. I think we can't ignore our own role in just not valuing that. It's almost like we need a revaluation of what's what's important to us, starting with ourselves, that we need to take care of ourselves, and then inside, taking care of our of, well, starting to be the care of the planet rather than taking care of the separate planet.

That's that's so true. So yes, this idea that systematically we have institutionalized like a devaluation, of those who are doing the most care get the least recognition, even if you get paid to do caregiving. That's true, and we see that the world over, David grieber started to explore this, and he he started to look at class and care, and he made some really interesting insights around how, actually people who are in working class, working class, they operate with this caring ethos in a way that is almost like because of or despite the systematic kind of oppression

that the working class us against them, almost Yeah, yeah. And

so. So while you have sort of this this individualization and this uncaring operating and more like the financialized classes of this working class ethos of, like, really looking out for each other, up to the point of unionizing, food, banking, sharing, care and labor. You know that that's, that's, that's, that's, that's operated consistently. I wanted to make another point, but now I've just, I've just

and care. And when I hear trans local as well. It seems like trans local care has to just be embedded in trans local without even trying. Thinking on a global scale, you almost need to plan and say, we need to put care into this. But at a local level, care is in it, as you just described, like the workers in a mine, they're there, they're next to each other. They're dealing with the same oppressive conditions, so the care for each other is the same, versus people living in different separated by time and space, where then the care doesn't emerge as spontaneously or as naturally, and so trans local, as though as a movement, as you know, where care is allowed to flow from that level and then scaled up.

Yes. So thank you for saying that care work is it takes time and space, and I think we are, yes. You go back to that idea that there is a sort of innateness to our caregiving, but somehow, either institutionally, like in the. System. It's not that people operating in the health systems don't want to give care. It's just that they're time poor, and there's a, you know, there's an economic incentive that's operating against that. So finding time and space is a real passion of mine, like thinking about, what are the structures that withhold these forces that are trying to kind of expropriate? All of our time into like, productive units, and to actually, like, allow for that time and space to happen, for care to happen. And, you know, we're not going to have time to be able to kind of care for our locale. If we are, you know, working three jobs and feeling stressed out, maybe we would. That's superhuman. But we need, I believe that we need to be able to think about these sort of radically reconfigured social spaces that allow us to really re discover what caregiving is. And so often that means that it is like a local thing, but the caregiving relationship that we're now able to develop trans locally with people across the other side of the world. Once again, I think this has happened through, like a technological, sort of a wave of technology that allows us really to sort of see and feel and you know, this is, this is a really distressing example, but something that I think is very pivotal, if you think about the pivotal moments that we're in, and that is the Gaza war that we have seen in real time, the live streaming of what's been called a genocide, and at the same time feeling like utterly helpless in many ways, and absolutely distraught, at least personally, that's that's what I've been feeling. So that has, at least in my mind, ignited in a very different way, trans, trans, locally, transnationally, than than we've we've seen in the past, that care and that this desire for peace that many have have expressed, has operated in this, this very strong, transnational way. And it's not the story, and it's not it's not the it's not the end, it's just the beginning, really, of this. But I do feel that in the face of seeing so much suffering, that we're actually confronted by trans, trans local care really, really daily, and part of the next stage of our planet, I think, will be this continual confrontation with, how do we how do we provide care in the Face of, often, a lot of violence as well. That's happening, maybe not to just people, but the planet as well.

Wow, yeah, I really like how you just put this of how trans localism and care is already, you know, moving in ways that sometimes not always recognizing us. That is what it is, but it's then we are, you know, listening and watching, and, as you said, feeling grief, you know, for what, for what's happening in Gaza and and in a way, it's care doesn't observe national borders. You know, care in the same way, Nature doesn't obey national borders. And so we have this sort of natural force that's coming out and manifesting. And what I hear of planetary health as well, of trans local is we have to, in ways like follow nature's patterns, but in doing that, we bump our heads with the institutional borders and walls that we've created because we, at one point thought it brought us the safety and security and the prosperity that we thought we wanted. But today, this paradigm is sort of butting heads. This paradigm is sort of on its stress point, and the world that we're moving towards is something that we'll have to find some some new ways to allow the care to flow in ways that you know, perhaps our institutions don't support, and maybe that's a nice segue to then thinking about, like, how do systems change? Like, there are if the system itself is broken and the system itself doesn't want to recognize is not capable, doesn't have the agency, doesn't have the will. How do we? Yeah, how do we? How do you think about system change?

Yeah, thank you. That's a really great segue into into thinking about different forms of systems building and systems change. Once again, I think with the enormity of the challenge, there is this propensity, at least I find in myself, to kind of all yell in the one direction, which is like the dominant system is not working, and then you, sort of, you tend to, like, take up so much brain space and psychic space and spiritual space, about, like, trying to fight against the dominant system. Whereas, like, I don't believe that that's the only way. And like, some people are really good at that, and that's, that's their role. But there are other ways of building different forms of system that are, that are sort of a radical reaction, maybe not reaction, but like a radical antidote to the ills of the current system. And that provide an alternative for people to step into. Because if you think about history and revolutions, like what, what happens after the change? I mean, when we do have revolutions, when we do have overthrow, when we do. Have these dramatic, seismic shifts in the way that we see the world. We also need to have tried and tested means of stepping into new things and in that void people, people often will be able to play an experiment. But I am also really interested in thinking about building these, these systems based tools for people to step in as we sort of see the decline and the decline of Empire and the crumbling of institutions, everything that we're sort of these sort of massive, sort of tremors that we're seeing through the world right now. I've often used the two loops, systems change model that has helped, helped me a lot, which is basically lays out the arc of a dominant system, kind of coming into into, actually, into its peak, and then and declining, and then the emergence of new systems, sort of underneath this two systems model doesn't sort of explain how or why. It just explains our roles in those systems. And so some people are very good at keeping the dominant system to account, and some people are good at when the dominant system is in decline, providing hospice or palliation or or translating aspects of the dominant system across. So those are all really important parts of the chorus of what people can can do, but this emergent system then then comes up. So people are starting to name these ideas, and people starting to connect the dots, and then starting to concretize them and network them and prototype them into sort of a stronger system. And that sort of subterranean emergence is probably where I it's probably where I kind of, you know, more relate to what, what I what I've been playing with a lot, as a concept as resistance, as resistance, because going back to this earlier framing that I don't necessarily believe in, that always fighting the dominant system. It's sort of like it's always an against force, whereas, if we sort of think about what we want to build for and just start building it as an alternative for people to step into, I think that creates, like, a lot more spaciousness and possibility. So, so, so that's where, that's where, that's where sort of a lot of my work has been operating now is this sort of resistance as resistance space.

I like that framework because I think it allows for both, as you said, people to do what is best with the dominant system, because it's still needed. It has roles to play, but importantly, creating that space for something new to emerge, and that's certainly something that animates light forest work and my feeling as well, and my resonance in terms of what role do I play, what role in this regeneration and creating new spaces for people to hospice as they leave the the traumatic mainstream paradigm, or just seek that care, or seek inspiration, or just seek hope that things are possible. I mean, I know, as I went to my own learning journey of unlearning over the last few years, of feeling like, Okay, this dominant system is problematic. We need something radically new. And where do I go, and finding podcasts or finding books, or finding people like yourself, or building organizations where one can go and learn, but also, you know, creating space for actually creating the new systems to emerge. What are some of the maybe examples projects that you're involved perhaps, where planetary health, trans localism, these kinds of ideas are manifesting into real systems, organizations, products, yeah, what does that world look like today?

Yeah, that's got a lot of components, and it's also kind of emergent. I don't think we ever set out to do this, but I think the way that we've ended up, we my partner, my my my colleagues, my loved ones. In life and work, we've ended up sort of creating an ecosystem approach where there's certain organizations that have particular functions and that allow us to redistribute resource in a way that allows the time and space to dream and to have these spaces. So this ecosystem as it were, you know, it's more of a traditional organization like United Health futures, which does a lot more policy consulting work and technical analysis and research, and that allows us to generate an income and to reinvest that the profits in projects that you know are creative and loved and otherwise wouldn't be be funded. And so that's one of the really key components that we've been, yeah, we've been, it's just been very catalytic, really, to have that the the other aspect of this system is, is next year, which we where that allowed us to really sort of lean into web three technology and to really see that as a pattern for for rethinking the way that we resource global health projects around the world, just to think about distributed finance and to think about distributed technologies that could facilitate different forms of finance for health and then, and this is sort of like the most well loved and well known which is, which is planet health and planet health is. A global trans local network, which brings together people who are feeling the sentiments that you express, this sense of questioning and trying to understand planetary health. We're trying to create a space of imagination and prototyping for what could be possible for planetary health. And that's that's everything from bringing together a network that focuses on indigenous knowledge and two eyed seeings and food systems with seven different actors in seven different countries around the world. That's an example of trans localism through planet health. Another example is to try and create these spaces of radical reconfiguration at a planetary scale. There's colleagues of ours in the network who are from Alaska and from the Pacific. And they're talking about, what do we do with that Pacific corridor, the whales, the whale corridors like that is another example of how these these world, we bring these worlds together to create and to put forward systemic alternatives. But one of the things that we're focusing on, particularly now, is, then, what is the what is the technology stack, as it were, that helps us? So trans localism is often something that is done manually, or has been done very manually in the past, there's some really amazing examples of global action networks that have done this trans localism in person, on the phone, on web calls. But what I'm particularly interested in now is the fact that networks like planet health can do this manually. But also there is the potential to bring in a suite of decentralized technologies that allow us to to have a sovereign a sovereign form of mobilization. Translate, which

are the ones that are most tangible today?

Well, I'm thinking about I'm also getting up against the sort of limits of my knowledge here, but I'm thinking about what we're seeing emerging in web three and regen space. So daos as a really important tool for managing resource different forms of governance, where we can rethink democracy as it were, we can rethink the way in which we engage with each other and make decisions in in in a digital in a digital space, and also knowledge sharing technology. So I feel very ambivalent and skeptical about AI, but the fact that there are technologies that allow us to share information, to reconfigure that information and to sense make collectively, there is something there that is that is very, very important too. So knowledge and resource sharing, as well as decision making, sharing and essentially like mapping on the different distributed technologies to each of those functions, I think is going to be a real I find, I feel very hopeful and very, very that that's like an area of importance for Planet health, as well as some other forms of trans, local mobilizing.

Yeah, you surface technology and the technology stack. And I think it's, I find it really great that you know some of the work that you're doing is also closely connected to some of these emerging technology projects, which I feel have a lot of potential, but perhaps are seeking for that Guiding Light in terms of, what do we build? Yes, we can build it, maybe. But what do we build it. What do we build and why? And I think you know everything you've described as ways that we can purpose technology in these ways. I mean, we met as well in a somewhat web three context at one of the pop up cities in Chiang Mai as part of the nature health node. And so it seems like web three from my exploration, as well as is a source of funding, a source of ideas, a source of technology that is a force for regeneration in this direction, while it still has a lot to work out of and that's still happening. And perhaps some of the ideas that I've come across, and maybe you've dealt with them more things like network nations or bio regions as concept as new ways of organizing. What's your opinion on these?

We love both of these endeavors. I first learned of bio regionalism through sort of working and operating the funding the commons in earth, common space, and deeply admire this type of thinking where we're sort of realigning towards natural units of social organization. I've also been really moved by watershed based social movements. So Casa Rio as an example, in Rio Plato in South America is a example, a shining example of that. They're a river based social and arts organization that is distributed. It basically does distributed conservation practice across the river. And the river crosses a lot of national borders and is a source of great importance in terms of carbon. G on that continent. And so their work is is inherently trans local in a river based pattern, but it's also by original in that it's naturally. It's using the river and the watershed as a natural unit of of organization and of justice, as it were. So. So that has been a source of a lot of inspiration. Network nations is also something that is very close to my heart. And it was a movement that an event that was happening alongside nature and health when we were in Edge city in Chiang, Mai, in October. And what I see happening in some conversations I've had had recently is that the network nations pattern and and, and the the infrastructure that people in in that world are are articulating is very aligned with the pattern of work that planet health is already doing, and the Tran the need for trans local coordination. And as I understand it, to the two are often in harmony, and that the people who are bringing ideas around technology and the vision there, and I hope I don't mind they don't mind me paraphrasing the hope there that I see is that it's adaptable and it's, it's, it's, it's contextualisable, and it's not designed to be like a one size fits all model. It's designed to be a flexible approach to developing these sovereign communities of practice and of trans localism. And so I find great hope in that. And I think if I was to sort of put a hope or commitment out into the world today, it would be that we would start to bring these worlds together, and to really articulate how these these trans local technologies that are articulated by those who are working in spaces like network nations, to really ground them in practical examples, using groups like the planet Health Network, who have these really incredible roots, the people that we've worked with and in Planet health are doing enormous, enormous things in their communities. They're often facing their own struggles, their human rights defenders who are operating underground, or they're they're fighting. They're fighting. One organization that we're working with is focused on on migrant work, the migrant workforce and Migrant Justice and in the US, and they're facing enormous challenges right now. And so being able to bring this, this, this incredible work that is just so brave and so superhuman, and happens all the time in sort of manual sense, and bring that into sort of bridge that with the world of technologies that I see as possible through web three is really, is really a desire and hope that that I will be working on for the coming time, however long it takes.

Yeah. I mean, just last week, my guest Greg Pettis, who lives in an eco village called pan, pan and on heat. The point he was bringing out about living in regulation and about giving nature, and whether it's a forest or rivers, giving them seeing them as living and giving them agency. And indigenous communities did it in their own ways in the past, and we've humanities done it in different ways in the past, but now we have systems that need to bring on board these non human actors, and it's really cool and fascinating to see how that's emerging and forming. And it strikes me as looking at, I'm no expert on the history of trans local movements, but I've been recently looking at some of the ecovillage movement and looking at some of these regenerative farms. And it strikes me is that over the last couple of decades, while they've been doing tremendous work, they've been quite disconnected from technology. They have actively or passively not been very hands on for their own reasons. And I'm not here to say that was right or wrong, and perhaps that struggle. They struggle to scale, and they struggle to really connect on a global level, to connect to the struggle to perhaps raise resources in ways. And maybe this is this nexus of web three and new emerging technologies, with this trans local movements, with planetary health movements, strikes me as something that can use technology towards that same Yeah, these, these similar goals and aims.

I hope so. I don't think of myself as like a techno solutionist or a techno optimist even, but I do, I do find, I do find a lot of potential in this sort of just this, this glimmer of space. It's not, it's not the entire web three space at all, but there is a glimmer of conversations that is really, really potent. And I would, I would say that good for them, like, I think actually eco villages and other movements that have opted out of being online to relocalise. And just to recreate a pattern of life that that works for them, I think that's that's that's so important, and maybe there is a way to do that that doesn't need complete opt out. And I hope that's the case, is to try and find those patterns and that integrity, that an integrity with these, these wider patterns, that that allows us to sort of wrap any technology, whether it's a very basic or whether it's digital or what have you. But you know that sort of whatever we bring in, enhances the sort of original pattern there. And you do see, you do see some attempts, for example, in the Eco village network, owass and traditional dream factory, trying to bring in the tech layer and to connect up and to bring a web three approach to eco village building. So people are trying to make these bridges, and it's wonderful to see that, that that is happening. And I think, yes, the more bridge builders between these two sort of insights in my mind, the better that we can sort of bring it forth, that groundswell of a few different prototypes or proof of concepts that sort of allow people to really sort of understand what it is. Because, I mean, part of the gap I've seen is that a lot of people in, say, the global health and development space, they think of web three as, as you know, meme coin, crypto, and they don't, they don't really see the it through the lens of distributed organ, social organization. So being able to sort of just prove that, or to like, demonstrate that by doing it would be, would be, would be so important. And there's, there's a ton of potential in community mobilization, education, environment and health that these bridge builders, I think, will start to kind of help Well,

I'm conscious that we're reaching the end of our time. And there's many directs to take it in, to end it, but maybe on this point, because you live this multi hyphenated life, co founders of, you know, United Health futures and planetary health and and unexa, and being involved in so many projects that I don't have, you know, fully represented here either. And you straddle, you know the dominant systems, and you know the walls of the World Health Organization and medical world as well as these. You know new liminal spaces that we just talked about. How have you seen or felt the differences over the last few years, with regards to the people that you met, particularly in the spaces where you know those systems are failing. How have you seen people start to see that we need to change, we need to shift. Have you noticed an acceleration, or what's been the trends that you've observed in these various roles that you that you hold?

I feel a really deep hunger and a deep longing, which, you know, I feel it, but I believe that it's actually like a collective hunger and a collective longing for something different to what we currently operate in. And I've observed such compassion and such humanity and such even like a depth of spirituality operating in the most unlikely, you know, places in more traditional or, you know, hard, harder institutions. And so it's, it's there, it is. It is really there. And I think that brings me back to kind of this, this conviction that these, these different systems just need a little bit of maturation and practice for people to step into. Because I do, I do feel that there is a longing for change and a deep humanity, and people have different tools available to them to be able to bring forth that care in the world. And people are using it, you know, even a traditional policy instrument like a report from the WHO that has an enormous amount of insight and care and spirit, really, that that people are bringing into that, even though it sort of gets kind of reduced into, like a very technical document. So, so it's there, and I think it's just finding ways in which we can sort of allow people to step into, you know, as you said this, what is this liminal space, and allowing people their confidence to to play with that liminality and that change? Yeah,

well, for listeners tuning in, some of them who may be quite plugged in, or some of them who may be newer, what might be some of the resources or places that one could go to to learn more about planetary health, to learn more about these new spaces that you're involved in, or those that inspire you, that people can learn more about these directions,

yes, to learn more about planetary health. The planetary Health Alliance is a really good starting piece, place for resourcing. It has a great library, and it allows you to sort of read to your heart's content and understand the framing. I'd also encourage listening to First Nations voices, elders in the space who have been saying this stuff for a very, very, very long time. So whatever, wherever you are, tapping into that knowledge, I think is really key too. So it's may not be sort of available in a digital library, but just really. Speaking to people who hold that knowledge. I will leave I'm happy to send through the links to all of our work. Planet health club is planet health, and we're always delighted to think and to collaborate. You can check out our work as well through edge city and other pop up cities that will be emerging. So coming and joining us at these hubs to learn more about planetary health would be another way to step into this. And I love talking about this. So happy to happy to always continue conversations with people,

beautiful, yeah, we'll definitely drop all the links in the show notes and share them in the best possible ways, and perhaps links to your own writing on medium and other academic spaces where you write your papers and you publish and you know surfaced at the start of our conversation about about relations and nature and place. You've recently moved to Switzerland, what has been your favorite parts of nature there that have felt spoken to you and that you felt connected to.

We feel very at home in Switzerland. There, where we are is in the Jura, in the Azure region. And it sounds the word Azure in French sounds very much like joie, like joy. So there is this. It's a very interesting region because it's had this very recent movement for independence as a canton in Switzerland. It's very influenced by Catholicism, and it's far it's very agricultural here. So it felt great joy in tapping into all of this in the region. I walk often with my son, but pretty much every day in the hills, and I think that's one of the sources of great energy and joy, and the forests that interplay between forests and the fields here is something that I think I particularly value in that there is a lot of right scale agriculture that seems to be happening here, a lot of ecological, biological kind of practices. And it's not big farming or industrial farming, and the interplay between that and so walking through these fields and then walking through the forest and having these nature belts, and then continuing on the journey and the pattern is something that I've really appreciated, yeah, and it's, it's small scale. The valley is small. The farming is small. The forests sort of envelop us. That's the thing that I have loved here.

Well, thank you, Jordan, for sharing that local slice of your of your new home, and for sharing so much of your knowledge and your wisdom and your experiences over the years I'm so much to grasp honestly about this system level change and the you know, the kinds of you know, the kinds of shifts that need to happen. But I think listening to you, I definitely feel calmer knowing that there are people like you involved in thinking and dreaming and creating, and also that, as you said, you're feeling this energy of change, of shifting. You know, we enter into the year of the snake, a symbol of transformation and shedding old and bringing in new. Yeah, grateful for everything that you've shared with us on this walk to the light forest.

Thank you so much, Dave, it's been such a pleasure. You're You're an incredible host, and yes, echoing, bringing in snake energy. I.