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The Inclusive Economy
Ecotrust’s 20th Anniversary
By Lauren Stebbins on 10/04/2011 @ 04:15 PM
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following are highlights from CFED Founder and Board Chair Bob Friedman on EcoTrust's 20th Anniversary Celebration last month.
I had a fantastic time celebrating Ecotrust’s 20th Anniversary Celebration these last four days, and thought you might be interested in some of the highlights (though I doubt that I can do them justice).
Ecotrust chose to celebrate by inviting bioregional leaders, mostly indigenous people, from around the world to discuss Resilience Regions and explore what they might do together, and then to party with great regional food, wine and Storm Large.
The people, in their global diversity, starred, among them:
- President Anote Tong of the Pacific atoll nation of Kurabati, erect of carriage and spirit, like Mandela and Obama, explained how climate change is not a theoretical matter in his country: the average elevation of the nation is 2 meters and will be underwater in 30 years. He already has to find new homes for 10,000 of the 100,000.
- Cecil Paul, elder of the Haisla First Nation of British Columbia, stood at the end of President Tong’s public address, and, moved, dedicated himself to making Kuribati’s cause his. Cecil led the Haisla to work with Ecotrust 20 years ago to save the Kitlope – the largest intact piece of temperate rainforest left in the world – which the Haisla now steward, with the BC government. Despite being taken from his family in early childhood to a residential school where he was abused and becoming an alcoholic for many years, Cecil is now the most generous, wise and soulful of human beings.
- Leitanthem Meitei, the third generation of his family to lead the fight for the rights of his people in Manipur, India, who has already been imprisoned for several years. At age 14, he told his grandfather he wanted to join the guerilla fighters. His grandfather asked him what the range of an AK-47 was? He answered, “100 meters, maybe 200-400.” Then his grandfather handed him a pen, asked what it’s range was, and then said the choice was his.
- Dr. Tero Mustonen works with indigenous communities in the Arctic, sang the oldest song of their culture while noting that, like for the Kurabatis, there is nothing prospective at climate change – the permafrost is melting beneath them.
- Peter Yu and Paul Lane, aboriginal leaders in Northern Australia, bonded with the Melanesians in their common fight for rights, ownership of land, and the future of peoples whose ancestral memory extends 50,000 years.
- So many more – Buzz Hollings, the ecologist who first published on ecological breakdown and the need to build resilience in 1973.
- All the folks at Ecotrust, Ecotrust Canada and the new Ecotrust Australia – from Spencer Beebe, President on, including Ian Gill, Bettina von Hagen, Astrid Scholtz, and Board members Cam Healy (founder, Kettle Chips), Kat Taylor (Chair, OnePacific Bank etc.), Mary Houghton.
Ecotrust has bet its future more than once – when Spencer et. al. decided to buy and redevelop the Natural Capital Center; again when, after the first 10 years, Ecotrust decided conservation-based development “in the rainforests of home,” wouldn’t result in a sufficient scale of change and chose to dedicate itself to creating the conservation economy in Salmon Nation, totally reorganized, went through 2-3 different presidents, then generated new sectoral initiatives and triple-bottom line investment funds in food and farms, fisheries, forests, etc. Though I didn’t realize until late, I think Ecotrust just re-invented itself again, creating a new network of global bioregional initiatives and services.
The Idea of Ecotrust – that economy, ecology and equity are inherently linked, and we can fashion “triple-E” solutions, has only grown stronger, even if huge questions remain on what is possible, how to understand it, and whether the needed changes can come in time. I came away more certain than ever that economic, environmental and social breakdown are linked, and so must our responses.
The Saturday night party was superb. I must say that the highlight for me was Storm Large, who I had never heard of before, but brought down the house. Kat Taylor had taken Storm in when she was homeless and working on her first album, and asked her to perform. She pierced the family-friendly provision which Ecotrust thought they had to put in with a version of Cole Porter’s Under My Skin, the likes of which we’d never heard before. She closed her set with 8 Miles Wide, at which Spencer wondered whether Ecotrust would collapse on the back of a song. I replied, “but what a way to go.”
(At the end, Spencer asked me if I would agree to go back on the Board, and I said yes.)
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