How do we address the global imperative of building a strong and enduring global resistance against very powerful forces that are wrecking our lives and the planet and at the same time constituting another world if we are divided?

The entire enterprise of reducing a rainforest or mangroves to so many tonnes of carbon is left brain bias par excellence. The complex web of symbiotic human and non-human life co-evolving from moment to moment in an unbroken chain which goes back hundreds of millions of years is reduced to a single metric - CO2. All so that companies can call themselves “carbon neutral” - another typically left-brain concept.

"The case for cities adopting a beyond-sustainability regenerative approach is profoundly compelling. Pragmatic in their orientation, closely connected to the concerns of their residents, cities also contain the seeds of their own regeneration. However, historically cities have been planned, developed and built primarily through taking the male experience as the reference. As a result, cities tend to function better for men than they do for women."

This working list of invitations for “steps back” and “steps forward” was created to assist individuals and groups in the global north to address some of the contemporary challenges of bringing people together to respond to local and global challenges.

"I don’t write to announce the end of the world or to change the minds of those who are convinced that the world as we have known it can be saved or made sustainable. I write for anyone who has found themselves, as I have, needing to make sense of what is ending, how we can talk about it and what tasks are worth taking on in whatever time it turns out that we have."