A year of Rewilding
Adventures in Science, Wilderness and Entrepreneurship
The beginning — THE WHY
Rewild has just reached its first birthday. Much like any young child, it has had many new experiences that have taught him/her what they need to know survive. It is incredible to think how much we are able to absorb during these formative years. Like any loving parent, It fills my heart with pride and joy to reflect on the Journey and share with you some of our triumphs and learnings of the year.
Firstly, to give you some context, the name Rewild came through my research during my Masters in Ecological Design Thinking At Schumacher College in England, where writer, political activist and conservationist, George Monibiot significantly influenced the viewfinder in which I began to see the world. I agree with the definition by which Monbiot describes Rewilding; both as an internal (Human), and external (Macro ecosystem) process.
‘Actually, there are two definitions of rewilding that appeal to me. One is the mass restoration of ecosystems. By restoration, I really mean bringing back their trophic function. Trophic function involves feeding. It’s about eating and being eaten. Trophic function is the interactions between animals and plants in the food chain. Most of our ecosystems are very impoverished as far as those interactions are concerned. They’re missing the top predators and the big herbivores, and so they’re missing a lot of their ecological dynamism. That, above all, is what I want to restore, the second is the rewilding of our own lives, connecting and reintegrating ourselves back into the interconnected web of life”
Within the Masters we broke down as a class, what ‘Ecology’, ‘Design’ and ‘Thinking’ are. I focused my research on understanding the relationship between these parts, and how we might learn, and become inspired by the way in which large and small ecosystems function. This deep work, led me to question and become critical of our relationship to the natural world, and how we interact with this beautiful yet exceptionally complex system as a human civilization. A quote that lead me further to become more passionate about this topic, because of the societal impact it had on us, was the quote from philosopher Descartes.
‘I think therefore I am, therefore I am separate from Nature”
This insight gave a very mechanistic view of the world, giving the perspective that everything can be viewed as a machine, rather than a complex organism.
Because of their social status, philosophers of this era, easily influenced schools of thought, and therefore, has etched its way into the fabric and rules of society.
Fundamentally disagreeing with this, lead me, and ultimately Rewild on powerful course of learning, or rather ‘unlearning’.
The Earth is Not a machine — Its Alive
Within my studies, theory indicated that the loss of biodiversity worldwide is the biggest contributor to the changing conditions of our Planet GAIA. The Gaia hypothesis otherwise known as Earth System Science explained by James Lovelock is,
“The Earth and its natural cycles can be thought of like a living organism. When one natural cycle starts to go out of balance, other cycles work to bring it back, continually optimizing the conditions for life on Earth”.
An important insight within this theory to understand, is that the biota (plant life, animal life etc…) is not separate from the abiotic environment ( rocks, atmosphere, rain etc…).
‘LIFE AND THE ENVIRONMENT EVOLVE AS A SINGLE ENTITY’
These systems are in direct relationship with one another, the loss of something could cause the loss or change in something else. In other words, we (humans) could influence the environment up to a point, that might through, ‘cause and effect’, create a new regulatory state, a ‘state’ that might not be conducive to human life. Therefore, the loss of genetic diversity worldwide may have significant consequences in the future.
Below is a diagram that indicates 9 planetary boundaries. As you can see, the crash in biodiversity worldwide is our greatest threat to human civilization. Planetary boundaries is a concept of nine Earth system processes which were proposed in 2009 by a group of Earth system and environmental scientists led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Their intention was to define a “safe operating space for humanity” for the international community, including governments at all levels, international organizations, civil society, the scientific community and the private sector, as a precondition for sustainable development. The framework is based on scientific evidence that human actions since the Industrial Revolution have become the main driver of global environmental change.
Worldwide biodiversity loss has been a common narrative, as the human population has expanded. This deep work exploring science and academia , is what gave rise to my energy and passion to spend more time understanding natural systems, and begin building a personal relationship with the environment that holds a regenerative approach.
But in what shape or form could I build or be apart of a new narrative that holds a strong value system for both social and ecological systems within today’s current market economy. Some practises I took on to rewild my own personal life, was to practise farming methods like permaculture, to eat fresh foods which i was connected to through its growth ( knowing the method in how something is grown is often overlooked when buying food), learn the local birds and their habitats ( how could we mourn something that we didn't know was there?), become more aware of medicines that can be found locally, and ultimately becoming more in touch with my sense of place.
Coming back from my Masters, I went back to the bush and worked for SafariLive, where I was privileged to work within one of the last remaining wildernesses on our planet. These experiences grounded me, as i felt like my relationship to the natural world became more whole as I spent more time experiencing it, truly living it, dancing with it, feeling it. These insights helped me understand that education is congruently built through direct experience, and not solely on our rational, cognitive intelligence. Education must be a blend of experience and Enquiry.
Charles Eisenstein speaks about a more ‘ beautiful world our hearts know is possible’. To begin a new narrative, requires us to make the previous model obsolete. What may we begin practising today, that may encourage us to transition towards a new standard way of living that is more congruent with the natural flows of the environment? This questioning and dreaming led to the framework of what Rewild was to become -
Elvis, Alistair and Sam — The current Team from Rewild
After Safari Live, I connected with an old friend, Alistair Daynes. He had just come back from years travelling the world. We are childhood friends, roommates at college, and now business partners in Rewild. Our shared curiosity of the natural world often lead us up table mountain to discuss all things wild.
Alistair has this remarkable ability to use both the left and right side of his brain to his advantage. He is able to to be very reasonable and rational when the moment suits, contrary to this he is exceptionally creative, and has always been a fantastic artist — he is now the creative director of the company.
Elvis is the wooden elephant that used to sit on the bonnet of my car as I used to drive through the Bush. Elephants are a keystone species. A keystone species can both be a predator and Herbivore. These species give space for many other organisms to co-exist. Elephants eat a lot of trees and bushes, therefore create open spaces within the ecosystem for other organisms to thrive.
For us at Rewild, part of our vision is to try open up and create spaces for companies that create positive impact for both social and ecological systems to thrive within the current market economy of today. We hope to achieve this, by effectively telling a global audience, through visual story telling ( short videos) what they do, why they do it, and where they where they would like to move towards as a leaders in their industry.
The more we can help facilitate spaces for these these new companies grow into the future, the greater chance we have of reaching our goal of developing postive impact for those that do not have a voice, such as animal and landscapes.
Company Strategy, Culture and Values (The what)
Building a strategy, developing a company culture and coming to an agreement regarding our value system, allows Rewild to be fully transparent towards anyone that wants to work with us. This process is constantly being re iterated as we are still very young. The question we put to our company is ‘how can we create conditions conducive to life”. The Biomimicry life’s principles, as seen below, is a skeleton of some of ways in which life tends to thrive. Biomimicry is the mimicking of life’s designs, processes and functions. This framework has allowed us to see how we may align our business to become more strategic as we align with some of the core principles that have allowed life to thrive over the last 3.8 billion years.
The culture we are busy trying to build is one that is based on exploration and curiosity. We want to attract clients and employees that are seeking to learn more about themselves in the process of ‘work’. Developing our culture, also helps us to learn more about companies that are on a similar path, And therefore our work has been directly influenced by our seeking of culture, which is a beautiful example of a feedback loop.
Values for us are more concrete, and are something that we define early on, so that we have something to fall back on, when circumstances call for us to look internally for growth and answers. This process is still very much in the growing phase, yet one core value we have is transparency. We want to at all times, to be transparent regarding with all the work we do, and how we are within our personal lives. Sometimes it is easy to say ‘ I want to be Honest, and transparent’, but how often do you mislead yourself — because you don’t want to make other people upset. Developing this value has taken time and practise. I look forward to sharing where we are a year from now.
Building a Service — Visual Storytelling (The HOW)
With a flexible framework that holds values and vision (Which will consistently be looked over through these formative years), Alistair and I realized that it was now time to enter the market economy with a service that we believe could launch us, and allow us to to begin creating impact and positive change. How could we create impact through visual storytelling?
So why visual storytelling? Storytelling is a powerful form of communication, and for hundreds of years, its been the primary way in which we learn more about ourselves and the world around us. As a company we inquired to why the art of storytelling. Why do some stories engage us more than others? How might they help us develop urgency and enlighten us to learn more about our own purposes in life. This is where it gets exciting, if we could start building content and stories that met audiences in such a way that helped them in their path to finding more purpose in their life, then surely we may be developing positive impact in people’s psychology, which would then filter into our social community. We know that we can not save the world, but could we help foster how others learn more about themselves, and the way in which they live through storytelling?
Our curiosity led us to the realization that potentially, through visual storytelling ( Film, Photography, Virtual Reality) we might be able to creatively engage a global audience to companies that have the intention to serve a global community, both human and non human.
To date, we are proud to announce that we have worked with a number of companies such as Plant the Seed Education, South Collective, the Sustainability Institute, Wild runner, WWF, Halon Energy, Nasa and New horizons, No Danger Diaries…among others, that have developed strong value systems that align with our goals.
It is also important to mention that mistakes have been rife within this exploration, and there are often times of doubt and fear. If you are also an entrepreneur reading this, don’t hide away from these things, embrace them, they are part of the journey of life. The better we can take our failures, the more we gain resilience to absorb the shocks later on. Absorb, Accept and move on. Its difficult, but it is the only way forward.
To see some of the work Rewild has done over the last year, please see our Website : www.rewildtv.com. If you are interested to learn more and collaborate, please contact me. I wish you a beautiful, wild and soulful journey. Thanks for reading.
Wild regard
Cheers for now
Sam Barrington Chevallier
sam@rewild.tv
References
monbiot, G. The Great rewilding, A coversation with George Monbiot,https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-great-rewilding/
