Stories for a Wiser Forestry by Cathy Fitzgerald Ireland 26 March 2023, Edinburgh Botanic Gardens

A talk prepared by Dr Cathy Fitzgerald for Creative Carbon Scotland's Green Tease Event at

Stories for a Wiser Forestry by Cathy Fitzgerald Ireland 26 March 2023, Edinburgh Botanic Gardens

A talk prepared by Dr Cathy Fitzgerald for Creative Carbon Scotland's Green Tease Event at Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens Mon 27 March 2023 responding to the theme: The Right Tree in the Right Place.

Introduction by Cathy Fitzgerald:

The phrase ‘the right tree in the right place’ commonly repeated by politicians internationally in regards to the value of appropriate tree-planting, offers Ireland-based New Zealand artist and ecoliteracy educator Cathy Fitzgerald an opportunity to think more deeply about wiser ecological permanent forestry. With the recent 2023 IPCC report again confirming that business-as-usual is threatening the life support systems of Earth, wiser ecological forestry is urgently needed-at-scale, as an alternative to ecocidal clear-fell monoculture forestry, to foster enduring personal, collective, planetary and intergenerational well-being.

The presentation gives a sense of Fitzgerald’s creative story-telling for wiser forestry through her blogging at Hollywood Forest Story.com. Since 2008, she has through online writing, photography and video reflected on, shared and developed an audience interested in her firsthand experiences of learning how to transform a tiny 2-acre conifer plantation in rural Ireland, into a more resilient mixed-species forest (through selective tree-thinning that encourages regeneration of mixed tree species) with new-to-Ireland continuous cover forestry practices that are more developed across some areas of Europe. Fitzgerald’s ongoing Hollywood Forest Story is recognized and summarized as an innovative case study in Creative Carbon Scotland’s Library of Creative Sustainability.

The diary form of Fitzgerald’s blog (now with an archive of her creative activities) has helped her reflect over several years on the emergent story of more ecological permanent forestry worldwide. She frames this work as a shift to a more life-promoting Symbiocene era, where ecosystems flourishing are prioritized, rather than clear-fell monoculture plantation forestry that is emblematic of the entrenched life-limiting mono-extractive mindset of the Anthropocene, also aptly described by Harroway and other scholars as the Plantationocene. Through her other work to provide ecological learning -ecoliteracy- to creative professionals (at Haumea Ecoversity.ie), she also connects ecological art practices to the fore of the global cultural shift to sustainability education (ESD) and broader integrated intrinsic values needed (best expressed in the peoples and twice UNESCO-endorsed Earth Charter 2000), to guide people think and act holistically for a more just, equitable and sustainable world.

Fitzgerald’s Hollywood Forest Story, follows other pioneering ecological artists’ work, like the late Helen and Newton Harrison’s important early 1990s 'Serpentine Lattice' work, that on a larger scale, looked at the devastation of monoculture clearfell forestry in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. Fitzgerald similarly promotes creative storytelling to foster a shift in conversations for new permanent forestry practices for other landowners, and ideas for a more ecologically-sustainable national forestry policy.

This presentation also allowed New Zealand-born Fitzgerald to process the recent heartache - the solastalgia - of how climate-fuelled extreme weather from Cyclone Gabrielle (February 2023) caused monoculture clear-fell forest site waste to devastate regions and communities in NZ. In doing so, she underlines why her and others’ efforts working in NGOs are important to foster wiser forest policy and government programmes. In other words, the soliphilia -the positivity, interconnectedness and empowerment needed to advance permanent, continuous cover, more beautiful bird-song-filled forests in Ireland and elsewhere.

'Hollywood Forest Story' in Creative Carbon Scotland's Library of Creative Sustainability https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/library/the-hollywood-forest-story/

See blog

Cathy's ecoliteracy courses 

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The East Bay Sanctuary was organized in 1982 to assist refugees fleeing the terrible violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America. While refugees from El Salvador and Honduras were fleeing,

The East Bay Sanctuary was organized in 1982 to assist refugees fleeing the terrible violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America. While refugees from El Salvador and Honduras were fleeing, mainly political persecution, the vast majority of Guatemalan refugees were Maya, fleeing persecution on account of their race. More than 200,000 Maya fled into Mexico at the height of the violence, and many eventually made their way to the United States, crossing the southern border without papers. Currently there are around 5,000 Mam Maya living in the East Bay, and thousands more working in the fields of the Central Valley of California, the forests in Washington, the meat packing plants in Iowa and Nebraska, the blueberry fields in Michigan, and the fields in many states in the Deep South. Through the years the sanctuary has assisted thousands of indigenous Guatemalans and currently has 5 attorneys and 9 paralegals on staff, as well as numerous volunteer attorneys, law students and undergrads. This summer, sanctuary is predicted to win its 4,000th asylum case. Michael Smith is the director of the Refugee Rights Program at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant in Berkeley, CA. His background is in anthropology and archaeology, and he worked for many years on a project in Nicaragua for the National Museum. In 1984, he began work at East Bay Sanctuary and has been at sanctuary ever since. He has received awards from Helen Bamber and the Dalai Lama for his work in refugees and from Berkeley Law for his work with law students. MLF ORGANIZER Patrick O'Reilly SPEAKERS Michael Smith Director, Refugee Rights Program, East Bay Sanctuary Covenant 💯SUBSCRIBE for more VIDEOS: https://www.youtube.com/user/commonwealthclub 📆 UPCOMING EVENTS: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events 🎉 BECOME a MEMBER: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/membership 💰 DONATE NOW: https://support.commonwealthclub.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=298 📺➕📻 Watch & Listen https://www.commonwealthclub.org/watch-listen CWC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonwealthclub/ CWC Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cwclub/ CWC Twitter https://twitter.com/cwclub The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum 📣, bringing together its 20,000 members for more than 400 annual events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy.  Founded in 1903 in San Francisco California 🌉, The Commonwealth Club has played host to a diverse and distinctive array of speakers, from Teddy Roosevelt in 1911 to Hillary Clinton in 2010. Along the way, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have all given landmark speeches at the Club.

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The East Bay Sanctuary was organized in 1982 to assist refugees fleeing the terrible violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America. While refugees from El Salvador and Honduras were fleeing,

The East Bay Sanctuary was organized in 1982 to assist refugees fleeing the terrible violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America. While refugees from El Salvador and Honduras were fleeing, mainly political persecution, the vast majority of Guatemalan refugees were Maya, fleeing persecution on account of their race. More than 200,000 Maya fled into Mexico at the height of the violence, and many eventually made their way to the United States, crossing the southern border without papers. Currently there are around 5,000 Mam Maya living in the East Bay, and thousands more working in the fields of the Central Valley of California, the forests in Washington, the meat packing plants in Iowa and Nebraska, the blueberry fields in Michigan, and the fields in many states in the Deep South. Through the years the sanctuary has assisted thousands of indigenous Guatemalans and currently has 5 attorneys and 9 paralegals on staff, as well as numerous volunteer attorneys, law students and undergrads. This summer, sanctuary is predicted to win its 4,000th asylum case. Michael Smith is the director of the Refugee Rights Program at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant in Berkeley, CA. His background is in anthropology and archaeology, and he worked for many years on a project in Nicaragua for the National Museum. In 1984, he began work at East Bay Sanctuary and has been at sanctuary ever since. He has received awards from Helen Bamber and the Dalai Lama for his work in refugees and from Berkeley Law for his work with law students. MLF ORGANIZER Patrick O'Reilly, Moderator SPEAKERS Michael Smith Director, Refugee Rights Program, East Bay Sanctuary Covenant 💯SUBSCRIBE for more VIDEOS: https://www.youtube.com/user/commonwealthclub 📆 UPCOMING EVENTS: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events 🎉 BECOME a MEMBER: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/membership 💰 DONATE NOW: https://support.commonwealthclub.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=298 📺➕📻 Watch & Listen https://www.commonwealthclub.org/watch-listen CWC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonwealthclub/ CWC Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cwclub/ CWC Twitter https://twitter.com/cwclub The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum 📣, bringing together its 20,000 members for more than 400 annual events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy. Founded in 1903 in San Francisco California 🌉, The Commonwealth Club has played host to a diverse and distinctive array of speakers, from Teddy Roosevelt in 1911 to Hillary Clinton in 2010. Along the way, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have all given landmark speeches at the Club.

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Event hosted by CLG Europe’s Materials and Products Taskforce. The EU has recently made great strides towards meeting its climate goals. However, less focus has been placed on the key role that a

Event hosted by CLG Europe’s Materials and Products Taskforce. The EU has recently made great strides towards meeting its climate goals. However, less focus has been placed on the key role that a circular economy plays. This event highlights the critical role that building a circular European economy plays to meet the EU’s climate goals. This event is also an opportunity to showcase the work of the CLG Europe’s Taskforce for Climate Neutral and Circular Materials and Products (‘The Materials and Products Taskforce’) 12 months after its launch at COP26. Speakers included: • Eliot Whittington, Director at CLG Europe and Policy Director at CISL • Helen Ågren, Director, Ministry of Environment, Climate Department, Sweden • Chiara Martinelli, Director, CAN Europe • Anthony Abbotts – Director Group Public Affairs & Sustainability, ROCKWOOL Group • Vicente Saiso, Global Sustainability Vice President, CEMEX As part of this event, we published our paper – ‘Green Circularity: Advancing the EU’s climate goals through a Circular Economy’. The policy briefing highlights the critical role that building a circular European economy plays in meeting the EU’s climate goals. Furthermore, this paper sets out that the challenges and recommendations for policymakers to speed up the transition to a circular economy. Read the publication here: https://www.corporateleadersgroup.com/reports-evidence-and-insights/collections/reports/policy-briefing-green-circularity-advancing-eus The Materials and Products Taskforce was launched with the aim of driving forward policy action on sustainable materials by bringing together a group of progressive businesses across sectors and value chains. The group brings together companies that are actively committed to producing and using climate neutral and sustainable materials, and who want to work together to promote and support EU-wide measures to decarbonise material production and use. The Materials and Products warmly welcomed the EU’s newly proposed Ecodesign for Sustainable Product Regulation, part of the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, which can be a key framework Directive to drive change. For maximum impact, however, there is also a need to address wider issues, and to help resolve a series of challenges which businesses encounter when driving to become more circular and sustainable.

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Join us on November 19 at 6 pm for the Commonwealth Club’s Virtual Gala. Raise your glass to Good Health, as we celebrate the leadership of women in science and medicine. Visit

Join us on November 19 at 6 pm for the Commonwealth Club’s Virtual Gala. Raise your glass to Good Health, as we celebrate the leadership of women in science and medicine. Visit commonwealthclub.org/2021gala to learn more or Text Club2021 to 41444 to register and donate today! Welcome to Hearts and Minds—A QTAPI Community Conversation Series, Session Two: Asians and Pacific Islanders: Our Future Determines Our Past. "Our future determines our past" is a play on words and ideas of how people are taught that the past can determine who we are. Though people can understand the past, will they necessarily learn from it to make decisions that make the future stronger and more just and equitable? When we are ashamed of some aspects of our history, do we not speak of it or acknowledge it? In the present, our relationship to the past—how we appreciate it, amplify it, and even shine light on the darkest aspects, can determine our relationship to that past and what we do with it and how we grow and evolve as a community. How can people, in the diversity of the Asian and Pacific Islander communities, honor and embrace all of these histories? This legacy can help people know their histories about resilience and strength as they stand on the shoulders of ancestors. The future may be undetermined, but we hope this conversation inspires folks to envision what sort of future they would like for their communities to be centered in and how they might participate in achieving that vision. Funded by the CA Humanities, whose mission is “to connect Californians to ideas and one another in order to understand our shared heritage and diverse cultures, inspire civic participation, and shape our future.” That is the shared vision for Hearts and Minds: A QTAPI Community Conversation Series,” and it is to that end that GAPA Theatre’s “Hearts and Minds” program continues its work in ensuring our QTAPI stories continue to be told. About the Speakers Peter Tuiolosega Silva is the executive director of Kumukahi Health + Wellness, located on the island of Hawai'i. Peter has been an HIV advocate in the Pacific Island community for more than two decades, serving as the HIV trainer for the Pacific Islands, coordinator for the Pacific Island Jurisdictions AIDS Action Group, founder of UTOPIA Hawai'i, and prevention director of Life Foundation. Silva was most recently a public servant in the Hawai'i Department of Health’s Harm Reduction Services Branch. He currently lives in Hilo with his partner of 25 years. Amy Sueyoshi is dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. Sueyoshi holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Los Angeles and a B.A. from Barnard College and has published two books: Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi and Discriminating Sex: White Leisure and the Making of the American “Oriental.” Sueyoshi also authored “Breathing Fire,” a brief survey of queer APIDA history, for the National Parks Service’s historic LGBT Theme Study, which won the Paul E. Buchanan Award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Sueyoshi is also a founding co-curator of the GLBT History Museum, the first queer history museum in the United States, and seeded the intergenerational Dragon Fruit Oral History Project at API Equality Northern California. Helen Zia is the author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, a finalist for the prestigious Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and referred to by President Bill Clinton in two separate speeches in the Rose Garden. She coauthored, with Wen Ho Lee, My Country Versus Me, which reveals what happened to the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy for China in the “worst case since the Rosenbergs.” She was executive editor of Ms. Magazine and is a founding board co-chair of the Women's Media Center. The daughter of immigrants from China, Helen has been outspoken on issues ranging from human rights and peace to women's rights and countering hate violence and homophobia. She is a Fulbright Scholar and a graduate of Princeton University’s first coeducational class. She attended medical school but quit after completing two years, then went to work as a construction laborer, an autoworker, and a community organizer, after which she discovered her life’s work as a writer. NOTES Zia photo by Bob Hsiang_BHP San Francisco RH. OCTOBER 27, 2021 Michelle Meow Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club of California Board of Governors—Host 💯SUBSCRIBE for more VIDEOS: https://www.youtube.com/user/commonwealthclub The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum 📣, bringing together its 20,000 members for more than 400 annual events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy.

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RSA Food, Farming & Countryside Commission & City University Centre for Food Policy Food Thinkers Seminars present the EAT-Lancet Commission London Launch. Can we feed a future population of 10

RSA Food, Farming & Countryside Commission & City University Centre for Food Policy Food Thinkers Seminars present the EAT-Lancet Commission London Launch. Can we feed a future population of 10 billion people a healthy diet within planetary boundaries? To answer this question, EAT gathered 37 of the planet’s foremost experts who, for the first time ever, propose scientific targets for what constitutes a healthy diet from a sustainable food system – as published in the EAT-Lancet ‘Food in the Anthropocene’ report. These targets have polarised opinions across the food, farming and public health sectors. One of the most widely touted challenges to the report is the applicability of the global set of recommendations at a local level – how might different countries respond? SUBSCRIBE to our channel! Follow the RSA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RSAEvents Like RSA Events on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rsaeventsofficial Listen to RSA podcasts: https://soundcloud.com/the_rsa See RSA Events behind the scenes: https://instagram.com/rsa_events/

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This interview is an episode from ‪@The-Well our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation. Subscribe to The Well on YouTube ►

This interview is an episode from ‪@The-Well our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation. Subscribe to The Well on YouTube ► https://bit.ly/thewell-youtube Watch Mary Helen’s next interview ► The powers of transcendent thinking, explained by a neuroscientist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxoVhcvun7g Can the power of community transform our educational systems for the better? This neuroscientist says absolutely. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is a neuroscientist and USC professor, and she has spent her career studying education and the ways we can enhance it. Her findings claim that diversity has a huge impact on brain growth and even life experience. She explains that similarly to how fabric is composed of thousands of intricately woven threads, our schools need the active coordination of many people and skills, making them stronger together. Immordino-Yang stresses the importance of this strong social fabric, explaining that spending time around those who differ from us can help us become adaptable and truly deepen our understanding of the world around us. This idea calls for a new approach to education, where teachers and students work together to create systems of learning that help them grow alongside one another, instead of on confined and isolated paths. Read the full video transcript: https://bigthink.com/the-well/human-development-principles-could-unleash-our-collective-potential ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Mary Helen Immordino-Yang: Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD, is an expert on the psychological and neurobiological foundations of social emotion, self-awareness, and culture, and how they impact learning, development, and education. She is a Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education, a Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, a faculty member in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at the University of Southern California, and the Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning, and Education (CANDLE). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About The Well Do we inhabit a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is love? Is evolution directional? There are no simple answers to life’s biggest questions, and that’s why they’re the questions occupying the world’s brightest minds. Together, let's learn from them. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter ► https://bit.ly/thewellemailsignup ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Well on your favorite platforms: ► Facebook: https://bit.ly/thewellFB ► Instagram: https://bit.ly/thewellIG

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