Bioneer,
Community members around the world are taking action — in big and small ways — to influence the future of our planet and its inhabitants. Their collective impact is growing, giving us reason to believe that the biggest economical, political, and institutional changes in the next several years will come as the result of dedication from people like you.
Feeling empowered?
Read on to learn about how you can get involved in several campaigns while growing closer to your community and the world around you.
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Person to Know: Shannon Dosemagen
As the Founder and Executive Director of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (known as Public Lab), Shannon Dosemagen has long championed the benefits of citizen science. The organization’s mission is “democratizing science to address environmental issues that affect people.” To do so, Public Lab leverages technology for good while also setting the bar for what equitable, just and community-based environmental, social and human health work can look like. This has led to the buildout of a global network focused on developing DIY tools and technologies that allow communities to directly conduct environmental monitoring. Below is an excerpt of a conversation between Dosemagen and Bioneers Senior Director of Programs & Research Teo Grossman, in which they discuss how citizen science is becoming more mainstream.
SHANNON: There have been some really amazing strides in the right direction. Public Lab calls our work Community Science and, at the time, it was an intentional move away from the broader field of citizen science, which was quite top-down and scientist-question-asking driven, but also did not adequately represent our community, people would not always agree with the term “citizen.” We started using the concept of Community Science to indicate a form of work in which science is a thing that can support the organizing activities of communities but is not the only thing that is happening there. There really has been an interesting shift in the last few years. Even if they’re not calling it community science, organizations and projects are starting to ask, “How do we make the work that we’re doing much more responsive to the questions that people in communities are asking about their own places?”
That is really something that I’m happy with because Public Lab has been quite influential in making sure that type of shift is able to happen. There are generally a lot more people who are now aware of equitable practices across all of the different functions of their projects even if they’re not to that perfect point of everything being community driven. They’re really trying to figure out stronger ways to bridge and create partnerships that are truly in the interests of people and communities rather than only scientists or institutions.
Public Lab is very interested in social justice and environmental justice. What we’re seeing is that when you are engaged in these community science practices where you're out asking your own questions and figuring out solutions and answers, it can prompt you to be a more civically active person all around — not just in terms of these environmental problem-solving projects, but really understanding your own agency, your own power, and the ability to participate and change things that need to be changed. Read more here. |
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Apply Now to Be a Bioneers 2019 Featured Artist!
For Bioneers’ 30th anniversary, we are excited for art to play a vital, celebratory and transformational role at the conference. Our mission is to program the 2019 conference with captivating, compelling and inspiring art and we invite you to help us make this vision a reality. Want to partner with us and have your work featured at this year’s event? We’re looking for art installations, musicians, live painters, community art projects, and roving performers. Find out more and apply here now. |
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This Week on Bioneers Radio & Podcast
In neighborhoods across the country, citizens are building community resilience – one shovelful and one backyard at a time. Visionary citizen restorationists Trathen Heckman of Daily Acts and Jessie Lerner of Sustain Dane show how seemingly small acts like catching rain and growing food forests are turning green visions into action, with the help of local governments, students, businesses, artists and churches.
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Take Action: What You Can Do
Want to contribute to biodiversity science and deepen your own ecological knowledge by taking photos of all the cool plants, animals and insects you find? Nature app and website iNaturalist is building a community of citizen scientists around the world to crowdsource images and information for scientific data repositories like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. All you have to do is create an account to share your images, learn from the observations of other members, and crowdsource identifications of your findings. - For seven years, the nonprofit Daily Acts has mobilized communities across the country to come together for the environment. This year, its Community Resilience Challenge is encouraging communities to join forces to save water, grow food, conserve energy and reduce waste. Whether than means raising honeybees or harvesting rainwater, find out how you and your community can join the challenge here.
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What We’re Tracking:
Earlier this month, the Haas Institute released its first primer on “targeted universalism” written by john a. powell, Stephen Menendian and Wendy Ake, in an effort to find new and creative policy remedies for pressing social problems. (via Haas Institute) -
New surveys of farmland show that earthworm populations are in a steep decline— here's why that's worrying to the health of our soil. (Jules Howard via The Guardian)
A new Maine law that bans the use of to-go styrofoam containers from restaurants, caterers, coffee shops and grocery stores will go into effect on January 1, 2021. (Gianluca Mezzofiore via CNN) - How farmers around the world are taking up the fight to save our soil from exhaustion and depletion. (Matthew Taylor via The Guardian)
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Don’t Miss: AYA Conference & Queering Psychedelics Conference
From May 31 to June 2, don’t miss the 2019 World Ayahuasca Conference in Girona, Spain! You’ll also have the opportunity to attend more than 120 lectures and panels with visionaries in plant medicine from around the world—including Bioneers' very own J.P. Harpignies, who will be giving a talk on the ideological risks of psychedelics on Sunday. Get your tickets here!
Also on June 1 and 2, the Chacruna Institute of Psychedelic Plant Medicines will host the Queering Psychedelics Conference at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco. The two-day event will feature talks by queer psychedelics visionaries and dive into the history of psychedelics from queer and non-binary perspectives. |
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Youth Leadership Program Scholarship Applications for Bioneers 2019 Are Open!
CALLING ALL YOUNG CHANGE MAKERS: Join the Youth Leadership Program at the 2019 National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA! Each year at the Bioneers Conference, over 500 diverse young activists participate in YLP youth-led programming, as well as attend keynote talks by visionary environmental and social justice leaders, and experience the art exhibits, performances and workshops offered throughout the weekend. Want to attend? Apply now for a scholarship that will grant you full access to the three-day conference as well as a dedicated program focused on youth leadership development and strength. Learn more here. |
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The Latest on Bioneers.org:
In this excerpt from his New York Times best-selling book Falter, Bill McKibben discusses the human game and how climate change could unravel humanity as we know it. Want a free copy of Falter? Read this excerpt for information on how you can get one.
A former commercial fisherman turned restorative ocean farmer, Bren Smith channeled a career of knowledge into his new book Eat Like a Fish, which is part memoir and part manifesto. In this excerpt, he shares a bold vision for the future of food: seaweed.
This article by high school junior Lucia Garay discusses how her terrifying experience with California wildfires opened her eyes to climate change, and looks at how environmental literacy and land stewardship could help prevent biodiversity loss and promote a healthy ecosystem for generations to come.
- Bioneers caught up with Julian Brave NoiseCat (Secwepemc and St’at’imc), a 26-year-old Indigenous journalist, activist and policy analyst, to talk about his influences and aspirations, and the biggest issues facing his generation.
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