Coming friday may 17th there will be a viewing of the last film I made on the restoration project. This 28 minutes documentary highlights the experiences, developments and testimonies of STINAPA staff, fishermen and other stakeholders in the Bonairean community,  over the past three years. The film demonstrates what has been achieved, what the setbacks were and it brings up the question; What should be the future policy on Conch restoration/protection?

It’s a question nature organisation STINAPA wishes to share with the community so we have invited organizations, agencies and members of the Bonairean community to come and watch and join the discussion about the Conch future after the screening.

I am looking forward to the screening and discussion and really hope to see many people from the community. It’s not easy to get people to come and share their ideas and opinions. It is something of the culture but in all my years on Bonaire I still can’t really grasp the reason. I have experienced many people in het community that weren’t shy to share their opinions on camera but when it comes to public meetings it’s a different story. It’s a very small island, maybe people are afraid of the social consequences of sharing their ideas in public. Maybe it’s because sharing ideas, expressing yourself in public, being heard has never been part of the school system, or maybe it’s due to bad experiences in the past.

One of the former fisherman Doei Diaz opened his backyard for us to show the film in public so I hope many people will show up and feel welcome and at ease. Because in the end, this project was never initiated as a biological or ecological project only. This project was initiated to revive the possibility to enjoy some of Bonaire’s important traditions again; the conch fishery. To restore the conch population to such an extend that the whole community of Bonaire can enjoy catching and eating conch again.

I have heard all sorts of reasons why certain people in the community keep catching conch. For economic reasons, because they are certain that the conch cannot dissapear because God created it for humans and God will never fail, because some are fueled by hatred towards the nature-organisations because they interfere with the way people have always made use of natural resources whenever they wanted, and some simply because they just feel like eating conch. The majority of people don’t catch conch anymore. But there is a small group that fanaticly continues to catch them. The conch they catch are being sold, are being eaten. So the community does have the power to make these people stop by simply not buying or eating it anymore. Could it be that simple?

Doei Diaz said something interesting when I interviewed him. He said ‘a lot of the people that are here to protect our species, to protect our nature, come from countries where they have lost a lot of that. So they probably know what they’re talking about. Here we have to learn still, but we will learn it’.

You would think we all want to learn from people who have certain experiences and therefore we don’t need to travel the same road; well, my experience is although we take other people’s experiences into account, we all want to invent the wheel ourselves, over and over again. From those experiences some of us learn and some of us don’t. And in the end, we all have a right to do so.

I sincerely hope that this viewing on friday 17th will be attended by a wide variety of people from the community and that it can contribute in bringing people closer. That seeds can be planted for constructive cooperation, mutual understanding and sharing of knowledge in order to set the parameters for the future of the conch and the future of this island’s unique, awesome and wonderful natural treasures that I have come to love so dearly over the past 15 years.

Bio-rights is an innovative financing mechanism for reconciling poverty alleviation and environmental conservation. By providing micro-credits for sustainable development, the approach enables local communities to refrain from unsustainable practices and be actively involved in environmental conservation and restoration.

This is the first of three stories on the Biorights approach. More to come soon!

>> Watch the video

Mr Jurriaan Van Stigt is a Dutch architect heavily involved in the development of the Mopti Region, especially the “Dogon Country”.

His foundation has done very good work in this part of the Mopti Region. Among its many accomplishments we have:

• The construction of 22 schools (built 100% with stabilized mud)

• 97 wells and dams built

• Organization of water management

• Promotion of improved stoves and solar lights

• Tree Planting

• Fighting against malaria

• Dunes stabilization

• etc..

This first contact with Mr Jurriaan gave me a very good impression. Previously, he contacted me after seeing my films on the “What If We Change” project website. He’ll be back in Holland this week and intends to meet the staff of “What If We Change” to explore possibilities for a future collaboration.

>> Watch the video

A Collection of Essays: Available Summer 2013
Edited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh was asked
what we need to do to save our world.
“What we most need to do,” he replied,
“is to hear within us the sound of the earth crying.”

Our present ecological crisis is the greatest man-made disaster this planet has ever faced—its accelerating climate change, species depletion, pollution and acidification of the oceans. A central but rarely addressed aspect of this crisis is our forgetfulness of the sacred nature of creation, and how this affects our relationship to the environment. There is a pressing need to articulate a spiritual response to this ecological crisis. This is vital and necessary if we are to help bring the world as a living whole back into balance.

Contributors include: Chief Oren Lyons, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sandra Ingerman, Joanna Macy, Sister Miriam MacGillis, Satish Kumar, Vandana Shiva, Fr. Richard Rohr, Bill Plotkin, Jules Cashford, Wendell Berry, Winona LaDuke, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Brian Swimme, and others.

You can read my review of “Spiritual Ecology” here:

Published by The Golden Sufi Center, July 1, 2013
280 pages hardcover: ISBN 978-1-890350-46-8, $24.95
paperback: ISBN 978-1-890350-45-1, $15.95
PDF and other e-book formats will also be available.
Press contact: Seana Quinn, seana@spiritualecology.org, 415-633-0100

The Tucavaca Natural Reserve is a large valley including the Santiago sierra neighboring the Kaa Iya National Park. This reserve shares most of its influence zones with the Kaa Iya park and is also key for the conservation of water sources and wildlife in the whole east side of Santa Cruz Department.

People from Santiago de Chiquitos united to reject several mining projects inside the Reserve; an example to all communities threatened by large scale “open pit” mining in the world.

>> Watch the interview with Rosy Pacheco

This comes together with the continued success of “Green Gold”, co-produced, broadcast and distributed by VPRO and the delivery of 24 episodes to the “What if We Change?” television series broadcast on Citizen TV in East Africa. (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe). In addition the EEMP has ongoing broadcasting with Central Chinese Television (CCTV) (60 Programs in the last year) in cooperation with TVE International, and further programming with Tianjin TV.

Click on the picture to see the film:

“What if we Change” is very happy that through this collaboration with the Permaculture Research Institute we can share this film on the website and in the broadcast series in Africa, China, the U.S.A. and beyond.

>> Watch the film