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Morag Gamble:

Welcome to the Sense-Making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble, permaculture educator, and global ambassador, filmmaker, eco villager, food forester, mother, practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life, we first need to shift our thinking. The way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever and even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on, so our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection? What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking, community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you.

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the Global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I meet and speak with you today, the Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging..

It’s my great pleasure to welcome to the Sense-Making in a Changing World show today, Christina Conklin. Christina’s based in the San Francisco Bay area. She’s an artist, writer and researcher whose work investigates impermanence and possibility. She’s recently co-authored the Atlas of Disappearing Places: Our Coasts and Oceans in the Climate Crisis with Marina Psaros. They share 20 stories of the impacts of climate change around the world, particularly on cities and ask questions of how we mitigate and adapt and even consider the idea of moving where some cities are sinking and to build an enhanced local resilience. You know, sometimes these impacts are, as impacts continue, painfully hard choices will have to be made. We really need to be having these conversations now. Christina has included many beautiful maps throughout this book. Each place, Christina has included many beautiful maps of each place in this book made of seaweed and she explores throughout the book ecological concepts. Christina has also been a major supporter this year of the work that the Ethos Foundation has been doing in Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement in Uganda. So it’s my great pleasure that I introduce Christina here on the show today. Enjoy. Well, welcome to the show, Christina, it’s absolutely wonderful to have you here. Chris, for those listening, Christina and I met just recently actually through a refugee living in Uganda and we’re both part of something called the Global Regeneration CoLab and it’s through our shared support of a refugee called Bemeriki in Uganda that we got to meet and it’s through that. Then I started to uncover what Christine actually does and I’m so delighted that you’ve joined me on the show today, Christina, because you just recently released your book, which is called the Atlas of Disappearing Places, which just in the title of that, just evokes such curiosity and wonder. I wonder if you could just sort of give us a little bit of an overview of that book and where it came from to start us out and, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Christina Conklin:

Thank you so much for having me. So actually, it was the publisher who came up with the title, so they realized that there was a big gap. Four years ago, there were almost no books on sea level rise or anything to do with the ocean and the climate crisis. And so they saw this opportunity, a need and reached out to my co-author and myself and initially just wanted a book on sea level rise, but I had the thought like, could we broaden the scope of this to actually look at the whole ocean system and take a real systems thinking approach to this and have the ocean be the protagonist and not have this be all about us, right? So many climate change books are very, very anthropocentric and to me, that misses half the point. And so, luckily, the publisher agreed. And so the book is 20 place-based stories about different climate challenges in the ocean, particularly, also that affect coastal cities and communities and it’s divided into four sections, changing chemistry because we’re actually changing the fundamental chemistry of the ocean, strengthening storms, those are happening more and more as we all know, warming waters, all the impacts of melting ice and warming water and rising seas, so sea level rise. So yeah, basically every aspect of ocean life is being impacted by climate change, of course, and everything from one chapter about the microbiology of plankton in the North Atlantic ocean, and another chapter includes, deep sea mining in the Cook Islands, harmful algal blooms, you know, storms and sea level rise. So we really cover this vast array of topics. It was a very research-intensive project.

Morag Gamble:

So can you tell me a little bit about, in your, in the research that you’ve been doing for this book, what are some of the things that you’ve uncovered that you find really disturbing and that add fuel to the flame of you writing this book and bringing it to life?

Christina Conklin:

Yeah, well, the thing that I was most curious and concerned about that I needed to learn about most myself was, what’s happening in the parts of the ocean that we can’t see, right? We know about storms and sea level rise, but what is happening with ocean acidification and what is happening with, in the deep ocean and in the Arctic, I got to go to the Arctic as part of my research, which was really a thrill. But also, I’m fascinated by microscopic life and the systems that we, you know, they’re so complex and beautiful, and we can’t see them, but they’re the basis of all life. It seemed very, very important to understand what’s happening there. And so I think the things that concern me most coming out of the book are, that the changing chemistry in the warming waters, because these are things that have been unleashed now, and that will not, the genie’s not going back in the bottle. And that’s a very hard thing to know. And the extinctions that are happening in the ocean and how very little we know about life in the ocean and how much we’re going to lose before we even get a chance to know it. One study I read said, we’ve only identified 9% of the species in the ocean. We know almost nothing about the deep ocean. There’s big research projects happening now as fast as possible, but, you know, that feeling of little and latewas really strong for me, in reading all these research papers. I had not been aware also of de-oxygenation, which is one of the most critical things happening in the ocean. As water warms, it can physically hold less oxygen and so, animals that are living in these very fine thresholds of sunlight and oxygen, you know, if you imagine, like how we live in the air, it’s even more intense than the ocean. If you’re a seagoing creature surrounded by this substance, water, and it’s becoming more acidic and it has less oxygen available to you and the stress it’s putting on living systems is really profound. And I think that was what I left with was, you know, some real grief around that.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think, just as you were saying about the spaces extinctions, I mean, our focus has been so terrestrial, and I think, when you turn the globe around to that point where you just see that whole ocean, we really living on an ocean planet and it’s mostly, we’re thinking about the land systems. And so, what drew you to be, to focus mostly in this work, in the oceans? I mean, I know you live by the coast, but was there a deeper connection for you with the ocean and for that to be this sort of central thread that holds your stories together?

Christina Conklin:

Yeah, I guess I grew up going to the coast in Oregon and I think there are just people who are ocean people, right? There’s like, passionate ocean people and I’m one of them. So I think it’s just, it’s simply tha, I think they call us mermaids, you know, people who really belong to the sea. And so, yeah, I just have always felt really passionate about it, very connected to it, it feels metaphysically like this sort of infinite vessel that has been around forever and has this sort of rhythm and presence that is very comforting to me in one sense, and also awe-inspiring and fearful and another it’s, you don’t mess with the mother ocean. So, it’s all of those things, you know, the ocean up in the Pacific Northwest, where I’m from is sort of fierce and gray and then, you know, having visited the ocean in many, many places, it’s just such a multiple location, even though it is one body of water and one of the maps in the book. So I painted maps for the book, on sheets of dried seaweed, which was a challenging.

Morag Gamble:

What type of seaweed is that?

Christina Conklin:

It’s the Genus Ova, it’s sea lettuce, so these big sheets of sea lettuce.

Morag Gamble:

Oh, wow, I only get those little sea lettuce where I come from.

Christina Conklin:

Oh, yeah, no. I actually painted every map in the book on a single sheet that I got, that was probably 150 square feet. It was so massive. And so, yeah, I would haul it out of the ocean and rinse it and process it and dry it out and get these big sheets and then paint the maps.

Morag Gamble:

Let’s just rewind there. How do you process that to get it to something that you can actually paint on? Like, what was your process there?

Christina Conklin:

Yeah, I, well, it has, I don’t know. It just do, if you stretch it out in a certain way with a certain amount of give, because it will shrink and, you know, lots of trial and error, I you lay it out on large tables, it will draw into sheets and the sheets are this, you know, luminescent, translucent, green, to start, and then they fade over time into a parchment color kind of Manila color. And so you can play with that as well, which is very fun and I’m really, I’m just obsessed with playing with using all kinds of algae as my art material primarily right now.

Morag Gamble:

So did you, like, my other question that I, you know, I came into this conversation, was like, you’ve brought so many things together from arts to science to culture, and I know you’re fascinated with textiles and salt. Like, there’s so many different dimensions to the work that you do. And the point of sort of bringing this together in the book and sharing it through the voice of the ocean, but through the materials of the ocean too, this is so beautiful. So what are some of the maps that you actually, what, sorry, not all maps like this, some of them are, there’s different types of things that you’ve drawn on this material. And is that sort of the key part of the story that goes through, or is that what holds the book together? Can you tell us a bit about how they feature in the book?

Christina Conklin:

Right. So each of the 20 stories in the book has a chapter map which transcribes a scientific research map that I just, I took them straight out of research papers, because I felt that was the scientific knowledge we need to be paying attention to and transcribed it onto the seaweed, and then layer that onto a map of the place. So, for example, Shanghai, is there, the chapter is about subsidence of Delta cities and how they’ve drained their aquifers and Shanghai is now nine feet below sea level. So as sea level rises and storms come. So, the flood map of Shanghai is painted on the seaweed and then layered on top of a topo map. And so, it sort of looks like the seaweed is like eating Shanghai. So I think that’s thematic. Like the seaweed is enveloping the world throughout the book. Each chapter also has maps painted to show that particular climate impact on a global scale. So what are other cities that are subsiding? What are other cities that are at risk of sea level rise, or..

Morag Gamble:

What, how many cities did you find are subsiding? Cause this is something that I’ve been hearing about. I mean, I know Jakarta is moving and there’s lots of cities everywhere but I don’t actually hear about this very much in the now,

Christina Conklin:

No, it’s really, it’s critically bad and actually, there’s a graph of the, I think top 20 subsiding cities in the book, and most of them are in Asia. Indonesia is just doing a terrible job of managing this and they have this idea that they could just build a sea wall all around Jakarta, and that’s going to protect them, but of course, seas are going to rise for the next 500 years. Based on the carbon we’ve already put into the atmosphere unless we pull it all back out, right? So, the last time we had 420 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, seas were 50 to 80 feet higher. So this is coming and the reality of that is one of the things I really wanted to be very frank and honest about in the book, to just really look hard at the truth. We have to start telling the truth and making different decisions based on the truth. And in a way, sea level rise is one of the easiest things to deal with because all we have to do is move, right? I mean, there’s, we built all our cities right in these delta planes and things and that’s, it’s a serious amount of investment, it’s a serious amount of change on the horizon. But as I said earlier, like the thing that worries me more is these systemic changes happening in the whole ocean system.

Morag Gamble:

And just on that moving, I mean, just thinking about the number of people who are currently displaced, as what is it one and a hundred people are already displaced for one reason, or other than this, these stories that you’re sharing, not story, but, you know, the truth of what’s happening is means that that’s going to be absolutely way more this, you know, some countries will be able to move their cities. Other people are going to be kind of stuck. This is not just an environmental issue. It’s a social issue and an economic issue, it’s everything.

Christina Conklin:

I did a, one of my chapters is about the Mekong Delta, where they grow half of Vietnam’s food and it’s all less than a meter above sea level. And it will be gone in a hundred years or far less. And I mean, that’s, you know, they say when one meter of sea level has risen, 40% of that Delta will be gone. So that’s 20 million people and there’s already subsistence farmers and part of that chapter is about how they’re already suffering and struggling and leaving because they have to, I mean, their crop yields are down by half. And another chapter I wrote about Myanmar and the Rohingya refugees who actually, this was never part of the official story and it is just one aspect of course, but the stress caused by salination of farmland and repeated increasing numbers of typhoons was a piece of what ignited that tragedy. And they call climate change as a threat multiplier for refugee situations. And it’s as much because of ocean related issues as it is because of drought, which has gotten more attention.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. As a threat multiplies and that kind of just keeps repeating in so many different contexts, I hear. So, subsiding cities, what’s another story that you tell in the book? Another truth that you put on the table for people?

Christina Conklin:

Well, I think, another one, just to think about the cities, one that people don’t think about as often is, there are cities on rivers that are actually a fair distance from the ocean that are actually at extreme risk. London is one of them, Homburg is one of them, there is Hamburg 70 miles from the ocean, but they were both impacted in the fifties by a major storm that killed thousands. And of course another storm was coming, right? And so, they’ve built some barriers and they’ve built, you know, it’s easy in some of these, in some Western governments to spend a lot of money on dikes and flood walls, and this is happening in every major city around the world. New York’s looking at building a flood wall, St Petersburg’s already built one, but these are extremely expensive, very temporary measures that are attempting to hold on to something that can’t be held, right? Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Well, I was going to ask you, what do you, from your research, what are you seeing will be the future of somewhere like New York, for example?

Christina Conklin:

Well, what needs to happen is very different from what is happening, but what needs to happen is communities led by each other and by the government and moving to higher ground. I mean, really just building a smart, urban design on a, kind of, a hub and spokes model where you’ve got good transit and it’s above the floodplain. And there’s a lot of knowledge and urban planning circles about how this should, how this should look, and it’s just very hard for people to let go of the existing shoreline. Politicians don’t want to let go of it because of the tax base, people don’t want to let go of familiar places and neighborhoods, and it’s all understandable. But after hurricane Sandy, a few neighborhoods in Staten Island, New York got together and said, Hey, look, we’re tired of the flooding. And they had been flooded out a number of times before Sandy and they actually got as a community and moved, and there are increasing numbers of, it’s still small, but increasing numbers of communities who are working together to, with government, to find solutions like that. And it’s the scale of this is going to be enormous and that’s where the smart money is on getting ahead of it and stopping building in floodplains and only permitting building in safe areas. And so it’s happening in some places, but not nearly enough.

Morag Gamble:

No. I mean, even around here, you know, I’m still seeing lots of just broad scale, suburban development going out across really low lying land near the coast, and the brand new hospital that was built in our region is in the floodplain, it’s a minor flood. It would be on an island.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah, it’s wild. So I think one of my main purposes in writing the book was really just to say, let’s take a, this kind of broader philosophical look at our relationship with the natural world, right? We need to remember that we are one species among millions, but also, we are nature. Like, we have created a lot of systems that make us feel separate and possibly better than or safer from, or, you know, there’s all these ways in which we’ve separated ourselves from the natural world and it’s really just time to ditch all that. And to get back to other ways of thinking, which are in every cultural system around the world, I actually was a comparative religious studies major in college. So I’m fascinated by the world’s religious traditions and all the religions have this integrated understanding of man and nature in their theologies. They’re not always the parts of the traditions that we’re seeing right now in culture. But I’m really interested in what are the traditions and the strains of thought through time that we can draw on now to be smarter, you know, like we know that we need to, I mean, Pope Francis wrote his powerful paper on integral ecology. One of the chapters in the book is about the move among the world’s religious leaders to sort of turn that barge of culture toward an ecological awareness which is fascinating to me. And, yeah, there’s just so much potential for awakening this innate knowledge we have, that we’re part of nature, and we just need to start telling that story to each other instead of the other story.

Morag Gamble:

And just as you were speaking to us, and when you’re saying we are nature, I was also thinking we are, the ocean runs through us as well. You know, we are the ocean and so, the new story that you’re wanting to share, and how is it that you feel that we can be communicating this? I mean, your book is a beautiful example of how we can, that can be communicated. And I always get stuck on this idea that it’s just, the story needs to go out wider and faster, and there’s this urgency about it. How do you feel about that and how do you feel like we can shift this narrative at a pace that needs to happen, or do you have a different way of seeing that?

Christina Conklin:

No, that’s the challenge of our time, I guess I feel, I’m an optimist, I’m hopeful. I think we just each do our piece. I’ve seen such a shift in awareness and that in the four years I’ve been researching the book and, you know, climate change was sort of like occasionally there would be a little blog somewhere, but now it’s just everywhere all the time in the news and it has to be, of course. So I feel like it’s changing, it’s certainly not ever going to be fast enough. I guess I get a little bit philosophical about how the earth persists, right? What we’re doing is trying to save ourselves and vulnerable people. And so it’s really right telling the story and as many, vivid and engaging ways as possible. And there is this research that says that paradigms can shift, right? That if enough people kind of start telling a new story, there are tipping points and that, you know, cultural understandings change and that it happens in response to pressure, right? And I think, I guess I’ve heard an interesting Buckminster Fuller quote recently, which was that the change will happen when the pressure builds, right? When there’s just enough bad news.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. I guess, I guess that’s that, we don’t move unless we have to, I guess, is the thing, isn’t it. And yeah.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah. I think artists like to like, to sort of get out there and think at the edge of these questions. And so maybe that’s, I think that’s the role of art is to ask the, you know, hopefully the challenging questions about where we’re going next to how we get there.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. I was reading somewhere about your, so I was sort of thinking about art culture and my mind went to something I read about you studying the culture, ancient culture of the Gaelic language and culture. I know that was a long time ago, but was that experience that you had in Scotland, researching that has that at all informed where you’ve taken your practice, your art, your thinking?

Christina Conklin:

You know, I’ve wondered about that lately, and I think, actually, the link is that, that was an indigenous culture of Europe. And so I studied a number, I mean, as well as alongside the Gaelic, all the different indigenous languages and cultures of Europe, like that’s there too, right? We talk about indigenous as if they’re native American or Aboriginal, but there’s indigenous knowledge running through all of us and I really believe that we’re not, I don’t like, you know, sort of demonizing Western culture, I just think there’s the kind of extractive consumer culture, yes. Let’s purge that, but you know, there are wonderful traditions throughout the world that are very, very rooted and tied to nature. I mean, you know, really, only our grandparents or great grandparents knew how to live in these cycles. Right? They ate food seasonally and they traveled less frequently and they lived in a much more integrated way with their environment. And I think if we’re smart right now, we get to keep the things like, medicine and the things that really have created the, health and wellbeing that we value, but we can let go of a lot of the aspects of, you know, I guess you’d call it culture, but there has to be another word for it, right? The entertainment industry or whatever it is that really is, is not adding value to the lived experience.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. And I think you’re right. We all have that ancestry that connects us deeply somewhere in place and culture. And I think in a way, remembering, finding a way to remember that, connect with that, and to feel that deep connectedness I think is really valuable, but also talking with local indigenous elders here, that sense of really finding ways to connect. We’ll never become indigenous in this land, but we can really connect deeply, and feel the richness of this place and the story of the place and the language of the plants and the language of the seasons. And actually, like, as you were describing the oceans, I’m sort of imagining how I interact with this place and the rivers and the forests here and feeling part of that cycle. So, you know, I guess it’s, it’s really one of the things that we can be doing is, deeply connecting where we are in a way that moves us to act in whatever way we can. And I wonder, in your community, in your region, so in Half Moon Bay, where you’re based, what are the sorts of things that the community there is engaging in?

Christina Conklin:

Hm, well, it’s, we chose to live there because it’s a small town and near a large airport, which is nice, because we have family all over the world, but, you know, it’s a farming town. Going back 150 years, which is, you know, fairly old in California terms and so, we get to buy local food and be part of a, for years, I was a part of you pick farm, know your farmer, know where your food is grown. That’s really, really critical and yeah, I think, you know, we’re also a community that is 50% native Latin American, mostly Mexican and my kids went through an immersion school program, which, you know, was about cultural and linguistic sharing. That was really valuable. And I think, in our own, California is a lovely place to be. I mean, we’ve got solar panels and electric cars and I know not everywhere has this same orientation. And one of the things I’m really interested in and concerned about is how do we, you know, in America, there’s this polarization that’s going on these days, how to, the sense of community building can happen anywhere, right? We can all own, like our relationship with our local farmers. We can all own, building strong schools. We can all be part of building these sort of strong communities and strong communities, resilient communities is what’s going to see us through the challenges to come. And so, it starts with relationships and it starts with our neighbors. And so I guess I’ve just tried to be an active community member and find the ways to be the good neighbor that you would want somebody to be for you.

Morag Gamble:

So that’s a local level. And just to wrap up, that’s a very big question that I’m going to ask you. It’s like, what would you like to see shifts and change that, you know, like, is it a positive policy level or is it, what is the, where is it that the change needs to happen that can help create the pace and scale of change that we need to care for the oceans, for example, like where do you see the beginning of change?

Christina Conklin:

I see a lot of hope in the Rights of Nature Movement, the Legal Rights of Nature. Of course, that’s been advanced in New Zealand, in particular and other places. There are green tribunals. I wrote about India’s green tribunal in one of our chapters, in the chapter on the Cook Islands. My hope for the future is that the law they passed in 2017 to protect their territorial waters from, and to protect them for sustainable development. Unfortunately the current prime minister is allowing deep sea mineral mining to go on, manganese mining. It’s a travesty, so my hope is that in some cases that the legal protection of large scale areas of nature will create some breathing space, right, for those ecosystems and environments. Policy leaders tend to not be leaders that we do need, I think this has to come as this awakening of people and organizations and movements all over the world. It does seem to be happening. If you know, I think my hope is that people engage in whatever way they can in that kind of biggest, most heartfelt creative, you know, somebody put it this way, like, what’s your superpower and what do you care most about and go do that, right? So, everybody’s got a skill and if we all start rowing our boats in the same direction, we’re going to create space for nature to recover and for us to build our relationship back with nature again, in a way that will transform things, oh gosh. And this really, to this really beautiful place that I think the part of the challenge is figuring out how to imagine this place, right?, how to draw that picture. My next challenge for myself is that is like, okay, so working with other artists to try to create this vision of where we’re going to, and why is it so compellingly beautiful that we’re just pulled seamlessly, irrevocably toward it?

Morag Gamble:

Oh, fantastic. You know, I think that’s actually one of the key things, isn’t it? That we need to have a sense of what’s possible and a future, that’s not this sort of apocalyptic vision, but something that like, why is it worth making the change? Why is it worth fighting for the planet? Why is it worth, you know, all of these things that we keep talking about, why, Why?

Christina Conklin:

Well, every chapter in the book actually has a little, a section called the view from 2050. So we actually do that in each of the chapters. We, in combination with some of the hard things that are going to happen, you know, the flood that’s going to come to New York or Shanghai or wherever, we talk about what’s possible. So, what are the things we can be doing right now? Basically, it’s a way to propose, what should we do right now, so that we, you know, change the arc of the story over the rest of the century and beyond. So all sorts of hopeful things. I mean,

Morag Gamble:

Gosh, this sounds like a book that needs to be in every single school as well.

Christina Conklin:

I really do hope it has some educational application. You know, it’s really appropriate for anything from, I would say middle school up and it’s fairly accessible. And yeah, because I think it is, it’s about framing this idea, I’m planting enough ideas. I wanted to just plant some seeds so that if somebody reads the book in 10 years, they’re like, oh, there’s an idea I could pursue.

Morag Gamble:

That’s the combination of the truth telling, and the scientific research with the image of what’s possible in the future, andalso the perspective that you’re bringing the perspective from the ocean and the material used, you know, all of those different, like the messages in the matter as well, isn’t it? The way in which you’re presenting this and, you know, powerful perception shifts can come through engaging with a piece of work like that. Thank you so much for, I can’t wait to get a hold of a copy and have a look myself. So when it gets to Australia, eventually I’m going to be so excited.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah. Very soon. Very soon.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Well, thank you so, so much for joining me today in conversation on the show, and I..

Christina Conklin:

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, and anyone who’s listening, we’re going to be putting all the links, remember down below, so you can find out references to Christina’s work and her artwork, and also to the book of course. And, yeah, thank you again, Christina, it’s been an absolute delight to have you here chatting today and very thought provoking. You’ve got my mind buzzing, thinking about a number of different ways that I can maybe reconceptualize the way that I communicate the sorts of things that I do. So thank you for that.

Christina Conklin:

Oh, delightful. Thank you so much.

Morag Gamble:

Thank you. All right, I’ll stop it there. Brilliant. Oh, thank you so much. Wonderful.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah. It was great. I should have brought the good news earlier on the future parts, or we really did try every story to have like, you know, good news.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, you know, no, that’s great. It’s a lovely way to end it to say, oh, there’s all that good news. Yeah. So I just wanted to quickly touch base about Bemeriki. So yeah, he’s doing really well there. I mean, he’s been in lockdown for 42 days or,

Christina Conklin:

Oh, okay.

Morag Gamble:

I think it’s almost ending, or maybe they’ve expanded a bit, but yeah. So he’s continuing on doing, he’s just about to build an extra little classroom and, uh, gosh,

Christina Conklin:

I guess one question is what is the, like the yeah, physical space that he’s got to work with?

Morag Gamble:

Okay. He has a, this is the next thing that I need to really try and work, to support him in finding the funds for, because it was his land. So he’s got this piece of land and on that land, he wants to build a classroom, so it’s like a learning center. So they have a space where they’re demonstrating all the different aspects and, you know, by a classroom, it means sort of a pagoda type of thing. It’s nothing very complex but then also a storeroom to store all their tools safely and demonstrate water collection and water purification, soil improvement strategies, having a seed bank is one of the biggest things that he wants to do, like create a seed farm. So he has this land and then in the middle of, so that’s on the edge of the camp and in the middle of the camp, he managed to get a piece of land, little piece where he’s built some mud brick classroom. And he’s just, the government’s just given him a little bit next to it, the camp manager so he can build an extra classroom for young women to have micro, what are they doing? Like a sewing workshop..

Christina Conklin:

Yeah, sewing workshops to sew some. Yeah .

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So all of that kind of stuff and then have a little garden around that too. So that’s kind of, so he has these two spaces and then from there, running programs for women, for youth, foster carers. We’ve just been supporting him to get some funds to build a piggery for, like, so each of those groups that were part of who you supported, they’ve come together and said, well, this is the project together that we want to create, which is, one is a, like a permaculture designed, food and farming system that includes some pigs and they will be paying it forward with the pigs. And another one is with mushrooms. And the mushroom one really excites me because it’s so small-scale and has the potential for so much, you know, like abundance and nutrition out of that. But also the materials can then go straight back into the gardens. And so the idea with that is, it’s a community enterprise rather than giving each individual person something. He says that just disappears, whereas this way it’s going to actually continue on. So, and then they become hubs that then teach others and there’s people doing like rocket stoves, all very simple, appropriate technologies, but I’m just not there, you know, you kind of, I kind of assume that they would be because, you know, these ideas have been around for such a long time. There’s nothing really rocket science about any of this, but yet it just, I guess it’s sort of all tied up in the trauma of the displacement and not having access to the resources or the funds or their tools or if they’re in a different climate and they’re just kind of in a waiting space. So it’s kind of activating that, because some of them have been there for such a long, like he’s been there what, 15 years, but he’s doing really well with this connection so that he connects people all across east Africa through his conversations a couple of times a week, I think it’s two or three times a week. So he runs sort of like an online course to fill in the gaps and to keep them connecting and talking.

Christina Conklin:

You know, I had sent you a link, there’s another group in Rwamwanja that has like a big fancy building and it was called Xavier Project or something like that. Is that what it was called? It was,

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. What was that?

Christina Conklin:

I looked into it and I guess I just wondered because they’re doing like computer classes and they have a building and some classrooms and things. And I didn’t know if there’s any value in partnering with them or reaching out to them. It appears to be a project that was started by a British guy who did a year, you know, kind of a Peace Corps sort of thing, and then went back and stayed and built this project out. And they have a few different locations. Anyway, I just thought, since they’re in the same district, same camp, there might be something there. In terms of collaboration though, I know that could be complicated for any number of political reasons.

Morag Gamble:

Well, you don’t know until you try, that’s the thing, is that you can just, yeah.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah, well, yeah. They had to see that. I think they had a, a women’s sewing workshop, um, on their website as well, which was, I, I guess what made me think about it? Um, um, I know it’s a big enough camp that, you know, it might be on the far side of, you know, wherever,

Morag Gamble:

Um, I’ll, I’ll check it out with him because I do remember you saying that, sorry, you did.

Christina Conklin:

No, I’m just curious. And if there, you know, what are other ways to support this work that are already in there in some way or what can, and what sort of fundraising techniques do you use and what are the, like other, and I also know that Laureline Simon in Germany is supporting in some way. And I guess I just wondered, like what’s the kind of the ecosystem of support and fundraising and different things.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So basically, all the funding has been coming through the work that, so it’s been coming through the Ethos Foundation so far, which is that, and he just got $900, I think from another organization called Yes Uganda, which is based Uganda and they got money from reliance. So I’m part of this reliance network, which is people who are working in humanitarian work with ecological focus and permaculture focus rather than kind of the big humanitarian organizations. So I think there was a little bit of a trickle of money that got to him for that, which was, he’s been out of the finished building of his structure. But most of the else is crowdfunding. So basically I shared the story about what Bemeriki is doing. So whenever I’m doing a masterclass or talk or anything, any public appearance or through my newsletter, I’ll share a story about something that they’re doing. And I’ve got the little website that keep, that needs a lot of work to update it, but that’s where people can donate the money to there. So I get this sort of regular amount of money that’s coming in. Some people are donating monthly, some people just do one off and then the beautiful people

Christina Conklin:

So what’s the website?

Morag Gamble:

ethosfoundation.org.au

And so I really am looking at trying to, I need to take the time to do better storytelling. You know, mostly it’s just going out in little emails and things, but I just get so many every morning, I open it up, I could spend my day sharing the stories of what they’ve been doing. And it’s also finding the audience for that, which is hard. You know, when my audience that I’d grown all these years has been around permaculture living, permaculture gardening, you know, sustainable living. And then when you start to bring in stories about refugees, there’s only so much that people want to hear before they go, Yeah, I’m going to go and look over there. And it’s, it’s so disappointing really, you know, but understandable at the same time because people just don’t want to hear too much about things. So I’m trying to find different ways. And so Laureline and I, and Bemeriki are quite often having conversations. So she’s put on her website that they’re supporting. So basically what she’s doing at the moment, there’s no funding that is coming through that, what she’s doing is trying to connect. And so one of the recent connections she managed to do was connect up with Alight, which is an organization, which does have some presence in another camp, Nagavali. And where our land is from who trains with Bemeriki. But there’s not, I don’t think there’s much happening yet with any of that relation, but they’re talking, which is good, that starts to connect up. The interesting thing that’s happened with them, Lauraline’s connections so far is a relationship with a man called Marco Bollinger, who is an American, Peruvian, cinematographer, who, he’s photographed Obama, Beyonce, all these kind of famous people, but he also has a passion for telling stories of what people are doing locally and to raise awareness about that. So he’s agreed to actually do a 10 minute documentary story on Bemeriki’s work, which is going to be phenomenal because the quality of his work is really great. So we just, so that just, I found that yesterday, so we had a few conversations. We met with him, Bemeriki met with him, and I sort of helped try and explain a bit more what Bemeriki is talking about and just to sort of fill in the gaps. So I think the story is just going to be basically about Bemeriki and his work. And then I’ll sort of be there as an advisor to help flesh out some of the extra information around permaculture and global connections. So it’s, that’s positive and so a lot of the connection that’s happening through the groups that I’ve found has been around that, you know, I’m out of money again. I just, you know, it’s just trickles, so I need to sort of dedicate a series of time. I just, I’m putting it out there in my mind that, I would just be able to get a hundred thousand from somewhere that would be so amazing because I know that’s impossible, but that’s kind of what I’m putting in my mind because what’s happening is Bemeriki is, you know, he’s got the projects that are there and then he’s trained the next layer of teachers who are then wanting to start their projects, which will then start. And so, as it my ciliates, it’s, you know, the stretch, the idea is to try and get so as these micro enterprises start, they will, he’s designing them so that he’s not going to ask for more money. That one we’ll see the next one, which we’ll see the next one, but it’s like, you know, when you’re starting a community garden or any project in your local community, like everyone puts out for some seed funding to keep started. So there’s still, and also to do the training, you know, people need to be trained.

Christina Conklin:

Do you have some documents that, I mean, that sort of map that in terms of, you know, that it becomes a self-sustaining enterprise. I mean, I’m just trying to think in terms of fundraising, there are places I, I don’t know how it works internationally with, but I know in the US, you can often get seed funding for a thing, and it’s the maintenance funding that’s tricky. So if there’s a document that actually shows, you know, the story so far and the sort of trajectory to a self-sustaining, fiscally responsible, blah, blah, you know, kind of showing that whole arc, that just seems like that would be a great thing to be able to give a funder.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, and I totally agree. I need to actually find a way to bring together all the different threads and work out how to communicate it more effectively because that’s, you know, if I start to write it, there’s so many different threads and I think I just get a little bit confused on how to tell the story. I find it easier to tell the story verbally because I can keep going here and when you’re riding it, it has to be. So I’m wondering how visually it almost needs to be a map. And when you said mapping it, all of a sudden my mind went to, well, actually it can be a really beautiful visual diagram that shows where it’s come from, how it’s gone, because there’s links that are going all over the place and this sort of spread that’s going on in all directions.

Christina Conklin:

There are people who, I don’t do this, I don’t know how to, but people who draw these amazing sort of systems maps where you sort of show the connections. And I wonder if there’s anybody in GRC who, I think there is, and I’m trying to think who it is and I’m drawing a blank, but you know, who can kind of, ask Dave.

Morag Gamble:

So like, if I’ve told the story to them, if I spoke it out to them, they then map it?

Christina Conklin:

They could then do this thing that would be coherent, but also it shows complexity and simplicity like magically in the same thing. And it might be a way to, right? Just sort of synthesize and simplify, like how do you take all of this?

Morag Gamble:

 

Christina Conklin:

Well, you know who it is though. Have you met Nanad? So he actually, he asked me to, GRC had a mission statement that was like four pages long. And he said, can you look at this like it’s something that anybody would ever want to read. So I helped him with that and he said, what he wanted to do was work with somebody who knows, who does this sort of simple visual, he has a word for it, visual synthesis, graphical interface, like, you know what we’re talking about, like a way to simply convey a story, a complex piece of information. And that was a few months ago and I haven’t, I mean, I sort of did my piece and contributed back and I don’t know, but I know he knows somebody who does that kind of work. So maybe there’s a connection there becauseI do feel like this is very hard, I mean, it’s just a very hard thing for people to visualize and put themselves. I mean, I think, some of his videos or reports and things are great, cause now I feel like I can picture and I’ve been to Africa before, so I have a little bit of context. Like I can kind of picture the color of the soil and the different things. But I think, organizationally and you know, strategic plan, whatever that kind of, that piece of it, it’d be great to have an engaging imagery-based.

Morag Gamble:

And that’s the piece that I’m missing because I know that that is what’s going to help to communicate more effectively what this is all about and that’s where I’ve got stuck. So I think you’re right. I need to find someone else who can do that. I don’t have the skills to do that bit, but I..

Christina Conklin:

I really do think, I bet somebody in GRC, whether either the person that I know or putting out a kind of a call, this seems to be kind of a skill set that is trending right now in this kind of graphical, dynamic drawing thing that people do. And so that, and then I, so Ethos Foundation, the foundation, I mean, is that sort of you and your projects or is that something else?

Morag Gamble:

Like, okay so I have an ecology of organizations. So the main one that I run is called the Permaculture Education Institute. And that’s where I run the courses and the global learning community and anyone who’s, you know, refugee is also welcome to come in there and be part of that as a contributing member then to support their projects, I have the Ethos Foundation, which is a registered charity. And so that’s the kind of the pool of money that a hundred percent goes to the refugee projects, but also some indigenous projects that I’m working with. And I’m not always refugees, but vulnerable communities like these women’s projects I’m working with in Kenya as well. And so some, you know, a lot of the people who are part of the Permaculture Education Institute, who know me and have met the refugees and the other members of the community go, well, yeah, I will support them. So they kind of put some money in regularly. And then people like yourself will also donate into that. And then that goes across. And then there’s the permayouth, which kind of sits aside as well. And that is, basically that was born out of the Permaculture Education Institute as well, because there was, I gave scholarships to a number of young people and I was asking them how it was all going. They said, it’s great, but I’d love to meet some other young people to kind of talk about this. And so I put out a call and then this sort of started to merge. And now it’s a youth-led movement that’s got hubs all over the place and it’s starting to birth itself as really a quite significant global movement. And that’s, they have monthly festivas,l online festivals where they get together and they share the music from Somali or Roland, and they have slam poetry. The artists I’ve just had a photographic exhibition with people from Bangladesh to Spain, to wherever. And my daughter made a virtual gallery that you could walk through to see the pictures with all the information. An, we managed to get a little bit of money together. I put some money in front of the Permaculture Education Institute and Hannah from Abundant Earth to offer some prize money for them. And so that will then help them buy some camera equipment. And then there’s some of the young people who were part of Bmeriki’s network who were, and like, he’s, I think, we’ve been able, through the Ethos Foundation, Permayouth, and like those three organizations together have been able to support a thousand people to get trained this year in permaculture. So wonderful. And it’s yeah, it’s this trio that works together. Yeah.

Christina Conklin:

And I’m just wondering in the US, just given that we’re, you know, a bigger place than Australia. Are you, so you’re working with Hannah, do you have anything like fundraising, you know, structures here at all or?

Morag Gamble:

No, I wish. Yeah. There was a woman who started, I’m having a meeting with her today or tomorrow who put her hand up to start a Permayouth hub in America. It’s called Permies America. But I think she’s sort of very kind of localized and she works with, she’s doing work with the Pine Ridge Reservation, so that’s kind of her thing, but she’s called it permayouth America whereas I think really it should just be more localized. So I think we’re going to try and see if we can scale up and create a more meta picture there. And so Hannah and I are talking about how we can manage that process because I think another thing we’re doing is trying to create a round table of youth movements and bring them all together and start. So I’ve gotJane Goodall’s roots and shoots, you know, there’ll be [inaudible], Permayouth, Strained Youth for Climate, you know, and bringing in people, talking with people like Vanessa Nakate, I think is surname, who was with Gretta in Europe. And she was the one who got chopped off the picture. I don’t know if you ever saw that, there was a bit of a drama, there were all of these sort of lovely white faces. And then there was her and she got chopped off, and she was so upset about this and there was, and, but I think the photography just went well, there was sort of bad background and I think it just all got messed up, but anyway, so she started up this whole other movement called the Rise Up Movement and it’s a youth climate action movement. And so it’s really just about looking at how we can connect young people talking about climate, about conservation, about oceans, about all these different social issues and connect it in with permaculture as well as something that’s very sort of practical, community-based, food-based and think together, I guess is the thing.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah. Okay. Well, I haven’t had a one-on-one meeting with Hannah yet, but I’ve been meaning to, but I mean, anyway, I’m just, you know, keep me in the loop and I can, I’m happy to talk over ideas or give feedback or edit or help with some of the storytelling or, I don’t think I’ve got much of a platform or network in this country yet, but I might.

Morag Gamble:

You might. Well, you it’s, who knows?

Christina Conklin:

Nobody knows. I mean, it’s yeah, who knows, but, yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Your publisher has given you a big speaking commitment.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah. I mean, I did a bunch of radio stuff in the past two weeks. I’ve got some podcasts coming up. We’ve got, you know, some good reviews. They say it’s going very well. I mean, you know, it’s a big noisy country. Like it’s, you know, hard to break through, but apparently the book is doing well. And so yeah, we just keep going andI do really have an interest in some sort of curricular aspect to it because I feel like it would really, it would fit. And I just haven’t, you know, I’m not sure how to move that forward, but you know, we’ll see, there’s lots of possibilities on the horizon.

Morag Gamble:

Absolutely. And well, I can imagine that. Well, I wonder, I’m just thinking about curriculum links here in Australia. There’s something called CoolAustralia. And I know Australia is like a small fry compared to America, but there’s this program called Cool Australia and they have these modules, which they, so something like the 2040 movie, which Brian was in then got taken and they created a series of curriculum links for different groups. And then teachers can go in there and pick that up. And it connects in with, you know, instead of doing a module about something not environmental, they take this and put that in there instead. And so, you know, schools can pick this up, it’s ready to go. And that’s an Australia-wide thing and.

Christina Conklin:

Oh, cool. Yeah. That’s good. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, I’m not a super techie person. And so it’s always a little bit misfiring to me, like how, how this is a little bit magic, like, but there are people who know how to do these things, so yeah. So, well that’s part of the conversation with Brian in a few minutes actually.

Morag Gamble:

Oh, I’ll let you go. Yes.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah, he’s apparently talking with, there’s some Australian, oh gosh, I’m going to, what’s his name? He mentioned Damon Gameau?

Morag Gamble:

Damon Gameau, who’s the producer of the 2040 movie that I just mentioned.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah. So anyway, they’ve got something going on and I might get looped into that, so yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Fantastic. Well, that would be wonderful. I think that’s because he’s very, he’s great. He’s really, really good. I think.

Christina Conklin:

Oh, good. Okay.

Morag Gamble: (01:09:39)
To be connected with something with him, that would be it. He creates beautiful films. Have you seen the 2040 movies?

Christina Conklin:

I haven’t yet. No, I need to.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, that would be something to check out.

Christina Conklin:

Yeah, for sure. Okay. On the list

Morag Gamble:

Well, I’m sure you’ve got many things on the list and so many things,

Christina Conklin:

Well, great. Well thanks. And yeah, just like I said, give me a shout whenever I can be of help.

Morag Gamble:

That’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining me. If you like a copy of my top 10 books to read, click the link below, pop in your email and I’ll send it straight to you. You can also watch this interview over on my YouTube channel. I’ll put the link below as well, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a comment. And if you’ve enjoyed it, please consider giving me a star rating. Believe it or not, the more people do this. The more podcasts bots will discover this little podcast. So thanks again. And I’ll see you again next week.

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The world needs more permaculture teachers everywhere – local teachers share local ways for one planet living. Let’s work toward a climate-safe future through design, resilience and connection. For you that may be through film and story, kids clubs, workplace education, or hands-in the earth. Whatever the way that moves you to speak up and share, I wholeheartedly encourage.

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Much love,

Morag

I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live and work – the Gubbi Gubbi people. And I pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging.

• Podcast Audio: Rhiannon Gamble
• Podcast Music: Kim Kirkman