Upcoming Conversations

Imagining and Building Life-Affirming Climate Futures

with Maria Alejandra Escalante, Mela Chiponda and Dr. Arturo A. Massol-Deyá

June 17, 10am-11:30am ET 

This conversation will both envision alternative futures and surface concrete examples and emerging strategies that can support more just and life-affirming ecological futures!

Maria Alejandra Escalante is a queer Colombian feminist leader and systems designer with over 15 years of experience in climate and social justice. Her work combines academic expertise in feminist political ecology and popular education to analyze power dynamics and grow the power of intersectional gender, climate, environmental, and economic justice movements.

Mela Chiponda is the Director of Shine Collab, an organzation advancing gender-just, community-led energy and climate solutions. Her  work centres Indigenous knowledge systems, frontline women’s leadership and care-centred economies as critical foundations for transformative change. She has led multi-country initiatives across Africa and the Global South, convening regional ecofeminist gatherings, shaping global climate dialogues and co-designing decentralised renewable energy pilots with mining-affected communities. She writes extensively on African ecofeminism, critical minerals and people-powered transitions.

Dr. Arturo A. Massol-Deyáis one of the main organizers of Casa Pueblo in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico - a community self-management project advancing community-owned renewable energy, forest regeneration, and social enterprise.  Casa Pueblo has been active in creating and managingnew forest reserves, El Bosque del Pueblo and Bosque La Olimpia,. These actions transformed Puerto Rico’s forestry policy and helped expand protected areas from just 3.7% to the current 17% of the island’s surface and as part of the process of transforming Puerto Rico’s dependence on fossil fuels into a sustainable model powered by renewable energy sources.