Seeds of the future:
Ecological dreams rooted in past and present
With: Maria Alejandra Escalante , Arturo A. Massol-Deyá and Mela Chiponda
As feminists, land defenders and communities from the global majority we know that the climate and environmental challenges we are facing are rooted in imbalance of power, care, and creativity.
We also know that ecological transformation will not come from technical fixes or policy reform alone. It will come from reclaiming ancestral and Indigenous knowledge systems, from our ability to use our imaginative power, from how we relate to ourselves, the environment and to the more than human, and from the conviction that different futures are possible.
This powerful conversation with Maria Alejandra, Mela Chiponda from Shine Collab and Arturo Massol-Deyá from Casa Pueblo invited us to stretch “the muscle of future-making together” to revisit learnings from the past and to see how parts of this future are already alive in particular places as we learned from Mela and Arturo's work in communities in Africa and Puerto Rico.
Imagining 2076 - 50 years from now
Using the backcasting tool, one of the futures methodologies within our Feminist Futures toolkit, we were transported forward to the year 2076, where some of our dream seeds had taken root and grown. We then traced back the pathways that led us there.
In our visions of the future, by 2076:
Ecosystemic collapse has been halted
Climate grief is not buried as a historical event but honored as a living civic ritual for healing, and for connecting with nature.
Regeneration is our core model.
Economies are built on mutual aid and communal care. Use of resources is limited by ecological renewal rates. Practices of giving, receiving, degeneration, and regeneration are held in dynamic balance.
We hold an interdependent relationship with the more-than-human world.
Nature is no longer viewed as a resource to exploit but an ecosystem of life to which we belong. The agency and rights of non-human beings is recognized. We know the language of the more than human.The source of our spirituality, governance and knowledge is grounded in nature.
Our ecological stewardship is healthy and grounded in indigenous knowledge, ancestral wisdom and cultural renewal.
Indigenous languages are thriving as is their sovereignty and self-determination. Our ecological futures are drawn from ancient wisdom and cultural practices.
Nation-state borders fade into decentralized, autonomous, bioregional governance.
Energy is decoupled from fossil fuels and runs on hyper-localized, community-owned microgrids shared across territories through open-source, peer-to-peer networks
Wealth is measured by systemic health and thriving ecosystems.
A politic of abundance is held and rooted in harmony. Economies are circular, localized and organized around care. Technology is repurposed in service of the well-being of people and the planet.
Diversity of life is celebrated.
Diversity of bodies, genders, and ways of life are co-inhabiting in balance rather than competition
At the heart of these visions is a profound shift in worldview towards interdependence and harmony where we understand ourselves as part of a larger web of life and not separate from it.
Tracing our way back. How did we get there?
Working backward from 2076, we imagined a series of profound shifts:
Resources:
Self-guided Creative Pause you can come back to and do in any context of self-guided writing and reflection. (please cite and credit if used with a group)
There is a Portal - the larger healing justice and community building artwork and pedagogy this work comes from. See description slides here.
“In these times what we need to do is turn towards each other, towards ourselves, turn towards all the creativity and life that has watered us, fed us, through immense changes, that have made a path for us to be here and created a sense of rootedness, home and belonging for us to walk our path and for our dreams to flourish, even when we didn’t know what our dreams were. To remember that there were and are human and non-human beings that believed in you”
“The way one cares for a child is fundamental to the continuity of culture and community. And altering the ways that one cares for a child or is able to to care for the child is fundamental to oppression and transmission of historical trauma” When talking about being assimilated into various cultures of authority and displacing love, tenderness and care.”
“Even in the little fragments [of stories] we can find grounding and each other, and that is enough to grow something new”