Bioneers Overview

by Joy Gardner

Image by Kalalani

You can choose to believe that you are powerless in this world, or you can choose to believe that you have far more collective power than you ever thought possible. It is your choice. Which do you choose, and how will you proceed?

I would like to recommend the Bioneers, a large collective of people of all ages, skills, colors, and nationalities, who have a great respect for women and indigenous people, and who are in the process of sculpting a powerful vision that is both practical and spiritual, and are actively engaged in a wide variety of exciting and inspiring activities.  The Bioneers have been thriving since 1990. To quote from their website at http://www.bioneers.org:

"Bioneers are biological pioneers who are working with nature to heal nature and ourselves. They have peered deep into the heart of living systems to devise strategies for restoration based on nature's own operating instructions. They come from many cultures and perspectives, and all walks of life.

"Bioneers are scientists and artists, gardeners and economists, activists and public servants, architects and ecologists, farmers and journalists, priests and shamans, policymakers and citizens. They are everyday people committed to preserving and supporting the future of life on Earth. They herald a dawning Age of Restoration founded in natural principles of kinship, interdependence, cooperation, reciprocity, and community.

"Above all, Bioneers represent a culture of solutions. Their stories demonstrate that just as people have created the environmental and social problems we face, people can solve them - through a reciprocal partnership with nature. Over and over, they show how great a difference the actions of one individual can make."

You could start by listening to Bioneers—Revolution from the Heart of Nature on the radio. You can do a Google Search for the station and time in your area. Or you can watch Meet the Bioneers, 2004, produced by Patsy Northcutt. This is a 14-minute introductory DVD with excerpts from presentations by a variety of presenters at the 2004 Bioneers Conference, available from http://www.bioneers.org. Here are some quotes from those speakers:

Janine Benyus, Life Sciences author of Biomimicry

The criteria of success is that you keep yourself alive, and you keep your offspring alive. But it’s not just your offspring, it’s your offspring’s offspring’s offspring—ten thousand years from now. And because you can’t be there to take care of that offspring, the only thing you can do is to take care of the place that takes care of your offspring.

David Suzuki, PhD, Scientist, Author, and Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia

We’ve framed the environmental problems the wrong way. There is no environment out there and we’re here and we’ve gotta regulate our interaction with it. We are the environment. There is no destinction. And what we are doing to our surroundings, we are doing directly to ourselves…
You can’t draw a line and say, “The air ends here and I begin there.” There is no line. The air is in us, it’s fused to us, and it’s circulating through out bodies. We are the air, in the most profound way.”

Kenny Ausubel, Founder, President, and Co-Producer of the Bioneers

The Bioneers appear deep into the heart of living systems, to see what we can learn from four billion years of evolution. What they’re unearthing is a revolution from the heart of nature, following in the footsteps of ancient indigenous traditions…. The solutions residing in nature consistently surpass our concept of what’s even possible.
If we let our hearts guide us, we won’t go wrong. Time is of the essence. The worst failure we can have is a failure of the imagination.

Tom Hayden, former California Senator and Editor, The Nation Magazine

There’s a thing that’s unseen…that there’s a rising in the world, a new movement in the world, that is perhaps the largest in a hundred years.

Report:

Jeff Coates at Cornell has found a way to take excess CO2 and turn it into biodegradable plastics.

Paul Stamets, author & president, Fungi Perfecti

We did a competitive trial against four other companies up at Bellingham, Washington, to break down diesel-contaminated soil. So we mixed our oyster mushrooms in, and four weeks later everybody came back to look at each pile.
And the bacterial people still had a stinky pile; the people using enzymes still had a stinky pile; all the chemical remedies still had a stinky, lifeless pile.
They came back to our pile—pulled back the tarps—and it was covered by hundreds and hundreds of oyster mushrooms. As the mushrooms sporulated they attracted insects, and pretty soon birds would be coming in, attracted to larvae. And so our pile became the only pile that became an oasis of life.
Fact: The oyster mushrooms broke down PAH’s [chemical compounds that are known or suspected carcinogens] from 10,000 to 200 parts per million in 8 weeks.

Boge Gebre, Founder, Kembatta Women’s Self-Help Center, Ethiopia

Until we empower women, we never activate the paradigm needed to heal our environment; until we educate women, we never end the cycle of famine and build sustainable economy.

Van Jones, Founder & Educative Director, Ella Baker Center, California

Fact: California spends $80,000 per year per juvenile prisoner and has a 91% recidivism rate.
What if we all stood together and said we want green jobs—clean energy jobs—not jails, as a solution for California? A movement that’s willing to take that position; that’s willing to bring together the eco-innovators with the working-class whites, with the peope of color—that movement could say to the prisoners, ‘Come out the jailhouse. There’s work for you to do. We need you.”
And at the crossroads, restorative justice, restoarative economics can make our communities bloom again. Our neighborhoods wouldn’t have to be battlegrounds anymore. Because you would have healing coming from the economy and healing coming from the government. At the crossroads, there’s hope.

Nina Simons, Executive Driector and Co-Produce, Bioneers

The proliferation of these alternative ways of living and relating, emerging throughout the world, is the most hopeful reality we’ve go to build on. And as Anna Lappe noted, we must stop looking for hope outside ourselves; we are hope.

Paul Hawken, Entrepreneur & Author, Natural Capitalism

It is our right to dream….I dream of a United States that actually has an energy plan and a climate plan; a hundred-year plan—not a mid-term election plan; a water plan to get rid of all the corporate pollutants…a biodiversity plan, a plan to elminate povery, illiteracy, a plan that insures that no child, here, or anywhere, goes to bed hungry.
Freedom—that’s what sustainability is all about. Freedom from typranny, freedom from empire, freedom from corporate rule, freedom to honor life to create—in Jeanine Benyus’ memorable phrase, ‘a world that is conducive to life.’

Find out more about the Bioneers - go to http://www.bioneers.org

You can make a difference!!!