Gleb Raygorodetsky's Blog

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Category: Ecology & Environment

Special Honor: Grand Prize Winner for 2017 Nautilus Season

Gleb, we are especially happy to tell you that your book has been selected both as a Gold Winner in its category, and as overall Grand Prize Winner for expression of Nautilus values among this season's entries. Congratulations!

On behalf of all the Nautilus reviewers, judges, staff, and volunteers, thank you for sending your book as an entry to the 2017 Nautilus program. May your book's message bring hope, wisdom, healing, and joy to many people. We are proud that your book's journey as a Nautilus Winner will contribute to Better Books for a Better World."

FORMER NAUTILUS (http://nautilusbookawards.com/) WINNERS:
Deepak Chopra • Barbara Kingsolver • Thich Nhat Hanh • Marianne Williamson • Caroline Myss • Gregg Braden • Lynne Twist • Jeremy Rifkin • Lynne McTaggart • Matthew Fox * Daniel James Brown • Eckhart Tolle • Joan Borysenko • Hedrick Smith • Andrew Weil • Katherine Neville • And many more ...

The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change by Gleb Raygorodetsky (Pegasus, 2017; Amazon US / Amazon UK)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscie...

This exceptionally well-written book skillfully interweaves memoir and science with good old fashioned storytelling, and gives us a sense of hope, and a course of action for how we, individually and collectively, can reverse the damage we are doing to the planet and how we can help restore what has been lost.

Our first guest today is Gleb Raygorodetsky, the author of The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change, a book published this past November by Pegasus Books. Raygorodetsky is a conservation biologist who has traveled around the world to live and work with indigenous peoples. In The Archipelago of Hope, he details his experiences with a number of Indigenous cultures and the ways their lives on their traditional territories are being reshaped by the impacts of global warming.

Raygorodetsky appears on the podcast to tell us about the book and what he thinks the rest of us can learn about climate change from the indigenous peoples of the world.

Listen to the podcast here https://news.mongabay.com/2018/01/aud...

BY AMY BRADY
DECEMBER 8, 2017
It’s no secret that climate change is wreaking havoc on some of the world’s largest cities. But less reported are its effects on more rural areas and the Indigenous peoples who live there. After living on their respective territories for millennia, Indigenous communities are experiencing unprecedented environmental changes that are forcing them to shift how they live and work on the land.

Gleb Raygorodetsky, who was born and raised in a small village on the Bering Sea coast of Kamchatka Peninsula, USSR, helps to bring greater attention to climate change’s impact on Indigenous peoples in his new book, The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change, out now on Pegasus Books. Affecting and beautifully researched, the book made it onto Library Journal’s list of “Best Sci-Tech Books of 2017.”

I spoke with Raygorodetsky about his research, the knowledge that climate scientists might gain if they better listened to Indigenous peoples, and what the rest of us can do to combat climate change and support the activism coming out of Indigenous communities.

Amy Brady

The Archipelago of Hope has little to do with actual archipelagos.

Gleb Raygorodetsky

I was fortunate to work for a few years as a Program Officer for The Christensen Fund, a private foundation based out of California that focuses its grantmaking on supporting “stewards of biocultural diversity.” One of the key lessons I took away from that project was that the source of global resilience lies within the Indigenous traditional territories, which support about 80 percent of the world’s biological diversity and contain close to a quarter of the carbon stored above ground in the world’s tropical forests (not including the carbon stored in the soil). The Archipelago of Hope is my attempt at conveying the fundamental role that Indigenous territories have in determining the future of humankind and our planet.

Amy Brady

You tell in your book a story about how you became acquainted with Indigenous cultures and the concept of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, the environmental knowledge that Indigenous peoples developed after thousands of years of working and living in their territories. What inspired you to start thinking of these communities in terms of climate change?

Gleb Raygorodetsky

It has not emerged out of some naïve vision of Indigenous peoples as “noble savages” or a romantic belief that somehow we must all be magicked back into the “ancestral ways” to solve our current problems. On the contrary, what has motivated me all these years is quite rational and pragmatic. In two decades of scholarly and community-based learning, observation, and participation, I have come to realize that it is the Indigenous peoples who are the true stewards of global biocultural heritage. After all, it is they who have a robust millennia-long track record of maintaining intimate relationships with the natural world, which has nourished their communities and sustained their cultures, without devouring the life-giving environment. This is the track record that they continuously strive to maintain, despite formidable odds, including fierce opposition from the “developed” world.

The “accomplishments” of modern society, however, are a lot more recent, paltry, and have had much more destructive consequences for life on Earth. The most efficient path toward enhancing climate change resilience is to secure and support Indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands and waters, so that they can continue to support the majority of Earth’s remaining biological and cultural diversity.

Amy Brady

What do you think climate scientists would learn if they better listened—perhaps even partnered with—members of Indigenous communities?

Gleb Raygorodetsky

There is a growing body of evidence in scientific and policy-making communities that show that to maintain resilience in the face of change, we must draw on the best available knowledge, regardless of its epistemological origins—whether it is Traditional Ecological Knowledge rooted in millennia of meticulous on-the-land observations of seasonal animal behavior or contemporary scientific methodologies that rely on satellites to remotely capture large-scale changes. The process of interweaving different knowledge systems creates opportunities for developing a deeper understanding of observed events and their consequences, facilitates joint assessment of information, and leads to new insights and innovations.

Amy Brady

What will it take for scientific communities to take Traditional Ecological Knowledge seriously?

Gleb Raygorodetsky

As I learned from the Skolts, synergies between traditional knowledge and conventional science have helped them maintain resilience in the face of climate change. Traditional knowledge enables the Skolt Sämi to monitor and respond directly to the changes they observe in the status of Atlantic salmon with greater expediency and efficiency than existing government programs. At the same time, the Skolts collaborate with scientists on other aspects of environmental monitoring that are outside of their own areas of expertise, such as changes in the marine portion of the salmon life-cycle. But this process of co-producing knowledge works well only when the rights of Indigenous peoples to make decisions about land use are acknowledged and respected, as required by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) that has been endorsed by 148 countries, including the United States and Canada. Recognizing the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples to be stewards of their lands and waters is key if their traditional territories are to continue to play an important role in biodiversity conservation and climate regulation.

Amy Brady

What surprised you the most during your research for this book?

Gleb Raygorodetsky

I learned a lot and continue to learn daily from work with Indigenous peoples. One of the main revelations for me was that, despite everything they have endured at the hands of the “developed world,” they are still forgiving, generous, and patient with us. Another eye-opener for me was that there is no sense of doom and gloom. Despite dire circumstances, they maintain hope for the future.

Amy Brady

What can people who are not Indigenous—but who care deeply about how we’re treating the planet and these people—do to support Indigenous cultures and the activism coming out of their communities?

Gleb Raygorodetsky

Many things. In Canada, the Truth & Reconciliation Commission developed a number of recommendations to help guide and inspire Aboriginal peoples and Canadians in a “process of renewed relationships that are based on mutual understanding and respect.” And based on my own experience I’ve tried to capture some ideas in what I call the “Pledge of a Good Ally.”

Amy Brady

What’s next for you?

Gleb Raygorodetsky

I just started a new job as an Executive Director of the Indigenous Knowledge, Community Monitoring and Citizen Science (IKCMCS) branch of Alberta Environment and Parks here in Canada. It is extremely heartening to see the Alberta Government champion the critical and challenging issue of respectful knowledge co-creation based on the synergies between Traditional Ecological Knowledge and conventional science. It is an honor and a privilege to contribute over two decades of learning, practice, and leadership experience to the evolution of this important initiative. In terms of writing, I’m working on Bardo, a YA novel I’ve been writing on and off for the last couple of years. I’m trying to explore in it similar issues I write about in The Archipelago of Hope.

NONFICTION
The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change by Gleb Raygorodetsky
Pegasus Books
Published November 7, 2017

Gleb Raygorodetsky is a Research Affiliate with the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria and the Executive Director of the Indigenous Knowledge, Community Monitoring and Citizen Science Branch of the Environmental Monitoring and Science Division within the Department of Environment and Parks, Government of Alberta. All proceeds from the sale of The Archipelago of Hope will go toward “The Archipelago of Hope Indigenous Resilience Fund,” established through Land is Life, to support the communities profiled in the book.

BY GLEB RAYGORODETSKY | NOV 28 2017 | SIERRA https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/lam...

Reprinted from The Archipelago of Hope by Gleb Raygorodetsky, published by Pegasus Books, Gleb Raygorodetsky. Excerpted with permission from the publisher. All other rights reserved.

The Kurai steppe lies between the snow-capped mountain peaks of Russia’s Altai Mountains to the south and the rolling plains of Mongolia to the east. A five-mile-long, bumpy road leads from the tiny village of Kurai—a few dozen wooden houses clustered at the foothills—to the Aktru glacier, 50 miles from Russia’s border with Mongolia. I am traveling to Aktru to learn about the impact of glacial melt on the lives of local people.

Mountain regions make up more than a quarter of the planet’s surface, providing homes for more than a billion people. The mountains harvest water from the atmosphere and store it in snowpack, glaciers, and permafrost. Released from the mountains in the spring, water flows to the lowlands, sustaining rich biodiversity and supporting agriculture. Because of their height, slope, and exposure, mountain ecosystems are more sensitive to climate change than valleys and plains at low elevations. As the air warms, mountain ecosystems are changing, with cold-tolerant alpine plants marching up the slope, as the brush and trees, adapted to the warmer climates, move in. This is happening at the same time as mountain glaciers are retreating and permafrost is melting.

Earth’s cryosphere—places on our planet where water exists in solid state, such as mountain glaciers, Arctic permafrost, and the Antarctic ice fields in the southern hemisphere—has been diminishing at unprecedented rates. Normally, the glacial ice is maintained through a dynamic equilibrium between snowfall and snowmelt in the mountains. As the temperatures rise, the scale tips more and more toward the thaw, causing the glaciers to disappear faster than they can be replaced by the winter snow. Over the last century, the European Alps have lost up to 40 percent of their ice, New Zealand, 25 percent, and Africa’s Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro as much as 60 percent. According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report—the most authoritative and influential reference on global trends of climate change published every seven years—the average rate of ice loss from glaciers around the world between 1971 and 2001 was close to 226 gigatons (billion tons) per year. And over the first decade of the new millennium, that rate of ice melt has accelerated by about 15 percent. In weight, this is equivalent to 43,000 Great (Ice) Pyramids of Giza thawing every year. Such loss of glaciers increases the likelihood of catastrophic floods and erosion, and foreshadows a rise in sea level, as the increased glacial melt reaches the ocean.

But glaciers are not just isolated slabs of ice in the inaccessible reaches of anonymous mountain ranges. They are an integral part of the local socioecological systems. Through the ages, glacial advances and retreats have not only carved the landscapes but also shaped the evolution of human societies by raising and lowering sea levels, covering and opening areas suitable for human habitation, and providing water for drinking and irrigation in otherwise inhospitable environments. Though invaluable as a source of robust scientific data, the IPCC and other scientific reports are not very helpful in conveying the true nature of climate change impacts at the local, community scale. The only way to develop such an understanding is by learning from local people who have lived with the changing conditions in the mountains for decades. I searched for this understanding among the local people of Russian Altai.

I stop for the night at Oleg Boltokov’s zelenyi dom, Russian for “green house,” as locals call this type of hostel—the only place for weary travelers to spend the night and grab a bite on their way to Aktru glacier. Our dinner is served outside, on a long communal table next to the kitchen. Oleg has just returned from taking a group of tourists to the glacier and, over dinner, we talk about climate change. Born and raised in Kurai, Oleg is in his early 40s and still remembers how, when he was little, there used to be one massive Aktru glacier. As the ice melted, the glacier split into two separate tongues, now almost half a mile apart. As I learn later, the number of Altai glaciers has increased by 25 percent since the 1970s, because the massive ice shield of old split into smaller segments as the ice melted. At the same time, the amount of ice locked in these glaciers decreased by about a quarter over the same period.

“Certainly climate is changing,” Oleg says with the same conviction of an eyewitness I have heard from different Indigenous peoples I have talked to while working on the book The Archipelago of Hope. “In the past, everybody knew when winter was coming and what to expect during the spring. We could predict what the weather would be like and plan when and where to move our cattle and sheep. That’s getting much harder to do now.” Oleg describes how last winter came early, but it was mild and with little snow. As a result, the spring pastures remained dry, which made it hard for locals to keep their cattle healthy. Strong winds used to be uncommon, but over the last few years they have been getting stronger, more frequent, and less predictable. In many places, the strong winds hardened the snow, making it difficult for the cattle to move around and find grass.

“The rains are now short, but they come down very hard,” Oleg continues, comparing the recent downpours to the prolonged drizzles common in the past. “Still, for the last three years it was very dry, the grass burned, and there was nothing for the cattle to eat. We kept our sheep for food, but had to sell all of the cattle.” Maybe it is because there is less ice in the mountains now, muses Oleg, though different people have different opinions about this. Some even blame it on the rockets being launched into space from the Baikonur in neighboring Kazakhstan. But most locals, especially elders, talk about the poor attitude that people now have toward nature as the root cause of all our environmental troubles.

The Aktru glacier is the most accessible glacier in southern Siberia, Oleg explains, and, in July, tourists can easily walk up to it. Many come from different parts of Russia, drawn by the “untouched wilderness” and a bit of local culture. Oleg himself hosted more than 300 people last year. But the 13,200-foot-tall Aktru Mountain, which gives birth to the Aktru glacier, is a sacred site for the local people, and the tourists coming here do not behave in a respectful way, Oleg grumbles. They booze, climb all over the place, and make a racket, showing little regard for local people and their traditions. More troublesome is their lack of respect for the spirits, or “bosses,” of these sacred places, says Oleg. In addition to the physical impact, the visitors’ insolence leaves a heavy spiritual imprint on the land. When they leave, it is the local people who must deal with the consequences of their actions. This includes local shamans carrying out traditional ceremonies to restore the balance between local people, the glaciers, the mountains, and Altai. Ultimately, Oleg concludes, climate change is a symptom of people’s ignorant actions upsetting the natural balance of life on Earth.

In the Altai traditional worldview, all natural things—whether plants or planets, bees or boulders, spiders or spirits—are recognized as conscious living beings, endowed with all the functions, feelings, and follies of a person. For Oleg and his kin, Altai is a breathing and sensuous living entity, with which they must keep their relationship in balance if they want to have a good life. If nature is not treated with reverence, reciprocity, respect, and restraint, the relationship becomes compromised, leading to environmental imbalance, such as climate change. Altai people support this relationship through cultural practices and ceremonies that restore and maintain their bonds with local animals and plants, sacred mountains and springs, wind and water. Traditional rituals have always been conducted throughout Altai, even during the repressive Soviet epoch. Each village has an ancient altar that has been used for such ceremonies for generations. To this day, ancestral Altai clans preserve and pass on the lore of their intimate relationships with totem animals and plants, sacred mountains and lakes, their ancestors and spirits.

Indigenous peoples, as well as scientists, recognize, however, that Earth’s self-regulation is not limitless. If certain conditions within the system change too significantly, or rapidly, the system can pass a tipping point and flip into a new, potentially irreversible, state a lot less supportive of human well-being. According to these insights, climate change is an indicator of the Earth’s affliction, a warning that our planet’s life-sustaining prowess is being compromised.

The next morning, we leave Oleg’s place and head for Aktru. The road snakes along the fields and pastures, past some ancient kurgans. Hugging the undulating foothills, it gains in elevation and turns rougher as we climb. Every tree root and boulder along the way threatens to break our axle in half or throw us from the vehicle. Eventually, we enter the pine forest, which quickly transitions into alpine meadows. Finally, we are crossing moraines—ridges of gravel and rocks deposited by melting glaciers—furrowed by glacial streams.

At the mountaineering camp near the Aktru glacier, we meet Oleg’s friend Alexander Dibesov, a warden and my guide for the day. From the camp, we follow a narrow foot pass snaking among giant boulders to the crest of a gully carved out by glaciers over millennia. At the cusp of the ridge, Alexander stops and pulls out a pair of binoculars to scan the slopes above us for signs of Argali mountain sheep. In the azure-blue sky, the sparkling arc of a rainbow hangs over a small waterfall. The mist drifting toward us from the cascading water feels refreshing.

“Every summer when I was a kid,” recalls Alexander, turning toward me, his closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair sparkling in the sun, “my family would travel on horseback from Kurai up here to Aktru, so that we could sled down the glacier.” There is a tinge of nostalgia in his voice and a shadow of a frown on his brow. “The ice used to come all the way down here,” he says, pointing to a spot directly below us. “Look where it is now,” he continues, moving his arm in a wide arc to point at a soiled tongue of ice, barely visible at the head of the valley, more than a mile away.

“My kids will never sled down Aktru.” He sighs. His gaze is unfocused, as if he is trying to recall the sight of the glacier in all its former glory. With a grunt, he gets up from the ground and heads downslope. In my mind, his lament for Aktru glacier is echoing throughout mountain valleys the world over.

November 8, 2017 - by Emily Gertz

For two decades Canadian conservation biologist Gleb Raygorodetsky has worked on environmental projects with indigenous peoples from the tropics to the Arctic, in the Americas, Europe, Russia and the Pacific. The resilience of these communities — which, despite centuries of political, social and ecological upheavals, have maintained their deep, ancient relationships with their historic lands and waters — convinced him that their knowledge offers valuable guidance to the world for dealing with the greatest environmental crisis in human history: climate change.

“The more I learned from the science, the more I felt there’s this hole that is not being filled by science,” says Raygorodetsky, “the sort of intimate, spiritual relationship with the land, with the planet, that science lacks. So I gravitated toward that more holistic way of relating to the land, the animals and our place in this planet.”

In his new book Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change (Pegasus Books, $28.95), published this week, Raygorodetsky recounts how indigenous communities living on the front lines of climate change have begun to collaborate with scientists and nongovernmental organizations to document emerging environmental conditions, inform those studies with traditional knowledge, and combine the two toward their own physical and cultural survival. He also describes how activists and some indigenous communities are successfully fighting back when governments and corporations ignore indigenous needs and rights in their pursuit of economic ventures. “With indigenous groups there’s a natural law by which the world works. It’s not something that we invented,” he says. “We have to breathe. We have to have water, air, sunlight. Otherwise we don’t survive, as individuals or as a species.”

There has been a longstanding disdain for indigenous environmental knowledge among many scientists, perhaps because that knowledge is bound up with their spiritual beliefs and practices, which goes against the grain of modern science’s foundation in the western Enlightenment. Is that attitude changing?

I think there’s more of a realization that if we are truly trying to tackle the issues of today — climate change, industrial development, quality of life — then we need to look at the experiences and best practices of people who have actually be around the block for much longer than our modern civilization without destroying our home.

There are a number of fields that try to use different lenses of interpreting the world around us, fields like biocultural diversity and resilience thinking. Ecology is all about the interdependence of different processes and elements of the web of life. At the metaphysical level, more thinking is going into parallels between what quantum physics and cosmology tell us about how the world works, and how indigenous worldviews interpret how the world works.

A lot of it also has to do with power, and who is telling the story. Science is complaining that they’re not at the heart of decision-making. Well, they can certainly understand how indigenous people feel, because they haven’t been at the decision-making table for centuries.

Why are indigenous views and practices a source of hope when it comes to dealing with climate change?

We depend on biodiversity, or as we call it “ecosystem services.” Eighty percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity is on the territories of indigenous peoples, and most of them have a clear understanding of what’s happening on that land or that sea, and what needs to be done to protect it. That’s reassuring to me. If the majority of our collective wealth and natural capital would be in the hands of corporations, then I’d be worried.

The hope also comes from the fact that they’ve been dealt so many blows through social and environmental change, and despite that there’s resilience in how they see themselves on the land now, and how they think about the future. They’re not trapped in the past but rooted in that generations-long relationship with the land, and the responsibility for maintaining it for future generations.

What’s an example of that from the communities that you write about in the book?

Look at the Karen people of Hin Lad Nai, in northern Thailand. They’ve been displaced. Their traditional forests have been clear-cut. But they manage to cling to whatever is left, and continue to practice their traditional agriculture. Now that land is restored to a point where the government sees it as an example of good stewardship and wants to establish a park in that area, which is obviously not what communities would really appreciate, because they would rather see strengthening of their rights and how they look after their traditional forest.

Why wouldn’t a park be the best solution for protecting these northern Thailand forests and the Hin Lad Nai?

In that particular case, a park would be setting aside area where it “conserves biodiversity” within the perimeter of the park, and most of the traditional activities, like slash-and-burn agriculture — something that actually enriches biodiversity of the forest and sustains those communities — would be prohibited. Which would change the dynamic of how the forest grows, how animals disperse through the territory, and obviously communities are not going to be able to live on that traditional territory and would have to move out to urban centers, where their cultures would eventually dissipate.

A lot of it is about, “yes, if you want to establish a park, let us be at the decision-making table. Because it’s our territory, let us decide about what’s going to happen where, and not the other way around.”

This is not unique to developing countries. It’s happening all over Canada, and all over the States. And to take it back to climate change, one of the reasons for intensifying fires throughout North America is changes to the fire regime, because those forests and shrublands were traditionally managed with fire. Something that’s been stopped and suppressed under the imposed management regime.

What indigenous people want is to find a way to restore some of those practices. But it’s impossible to do if you are not really in charge of what’s happening on your traditional territory.

It struck me how every indigenous community you write about is struggling to survive and thrive, even in countries that recognize their rights. In Ecuador the government treated the Sapara respectfully. But as soon as it became more economically feasible for oil companies to get at the oil under their forest land, that fight began again.

In Ecuador, yes, they are recognized. But they have to fight off the government and corporations having their own agenda to get access to their territory. Those fights about the rights to the land and the resources are an ongoing battle. But without it, it’d just be a green light for development to go in and do whatever they want. Even in countries that recognize indigenous rights and have land claims settled with indigenous groups, there’s still surface versus subsurface rights, providing access.

Even the REDD program, “Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation,” a climate-change mitigation effort that many international organizations and governments promote, amounts to projects that actually do more harm than good at the local level. Because the decision-makers, the policymakers and even the researchers are looking just at a small piece of the puzzle, compared to how indigenous people look at that relationship with the forest.

Right now, with climate change mitigation discussions, the focus is on getting CO2 out of the atmosphere, minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, rather than looking at the whole problem holistically. If you look at the forest just as a carbon bank, then we’re missing multiple other dimensions. That’s something that indigenous peoples have been trying to tell us on a variety of issues, but particularly on climate change, from the very beginning. A lot of mitigation projects that are being proposed or developed have severe consequences that undermine communities’ abilities to adapt.

Like what?

Like hydroelectric projects. We are supposedly switching from a carbon-based economy to a renewable economy. But in the process, we’re changing water flow regimes in watersheds such that people downstream cannot have access to their traditional hunting and fishing territories.

The same thing with reforestation. “We’re gonna fly over this deforested area and just bomb it with seed pellets, and in 10 years it’s gonna be a lush green forest. Isn’t that great?” Well it isn’t, because you’re going to end up with a really simplified forest structure: one age class, little biodiversity.

From your perspective as a scientist informed by indigenous world-views, why aren’t global and regional pacts to deal with climate change more effective?

The problem with all this stuff, from my ill-informed perch, is that the solutions are coming from the same cesspool of ideas as everything else, based on the same economic model. We think that the economy can just continue to grow.

Even when we talk about renewables, we conveniently look away from where the minerals are coming from, where all the technology to generate that renewable energy is coming from, and what the impact of that is in local communities.

Why is it happening? Again, because decision-making is disconnected from the places where those decisions are having an impact, and the people who have to live with the consequences of those decisions.

Globally more people live in cities now than in the countryside, and that trend is expected to continue for decades to come. Won’t that undercut whatever impact a more holistic approach to climate change could have?

Except that trend cannot exist without the countryside. Cities without support of everything around them would just collapse. One of the lessons from resilience thinking is that for the society to be resilient, you need to have diversity. Diversity is undermined by a design where everything is concentrated in one place.

At a more conceptual level, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in an urban or rural environment. You’re still dependent on the web of life, and being cognizant of those relationships and treating them in a respectful way. Farm-to-table, community markets, understanding where your food comes from and the relationship between food and well-being, all that stuff is also informed by some of the concepts that resonate with indigenous worldviews. The relationship between the prey and the hunter, and the gatherer and plants, it’s all in there.

There is value in looking at institutions that have regulated our interaction with the environment for millennia, without undermining that balance, and learning from it.

These are the messages that are coming from indigenous communities. Without them we wouldn’t even be talking about these implications. So that’s another source of hope.

© 2017 Emily Gertz. All rights reserved.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

- The Archipelago of Hope is released.

- The Assembly of First Nations joins the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, for the first time.

- Vicky Tauli-corpuz and yours truly talk to WNYC Radio about how Indigenous peoples support global climate change solutions http://www.wnyc.org/story/archipelago... .

LISTEN, SHARE, AND GET YOUR FRIENDS TO BUY THE BOOK HERE http://archipelagohope.com/order-book/

All proceeds from the sale of The Archipelago of Hope will go toward “The Archipelago of Hope Indigenous Resilience Fund,” established through Land is Life (www.landislife.org), which will support the communities profiled in the book.

Here's a teaser for your reading pleasure - an excerpt from the The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change Prologue "Thousands of Stories."

"We, the Maasai,” says Mr. Olood Saitaga, a respected community elder, “are completely dependent on our cattle. When the cattle die, we die too.” Even Mr. Saitaga’s skin, the color of dark-roast coffee, seems to offer little protection from the scorching heat of the Kenyan sun. He tucks the traditional crimson-blue shúkà robe between his legs and, folding his lanky, angular frame, squats in the mottled shade of a small acacia tree. From the welcome coolness, he looks out toward the distant mountains—a shimmering blue band suspended between the vast expanse of hazy sky and scorched savannah streaked with the rippling plumes of acacia trees. Mr. Saitaga delicately positions his wide-brimmed leather hat on his right knee. With the palm of his large sinewy hand, he brushes his close-cropped hair, the color of the large, silver hoops stretching his earlobes.

“We used to know when it would rain,” he says softly. “Now it is hard to predict whether it will rain or not. We haven’t had long or short rains for years and are suffering in the extreme.”

Mr. Saitaga’s metal bracelets clink as, clearing his throat, he wipes his parched lips with the back of his hand. “Animals, women, children, and men—all have suffered greatly. Most of our animals have died,” he says, gesturing toward the mummified carcass of a cow a few yards away, its teeth protruding through sun-withered lips in a ghostly snarl. The flies buzz incessantly over the cow’s carcass, as the unyielding sun continues to roast the savannah, vaporizing Mr. Saitaga’s quiet lament.