Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

Treehuggers, Earth Acupuncture and Community Forests. Los Angeles as a lighthouse of environmental restoration? You bet. After 40 years of increasingly connected neighborhood actions restoring the landscape of the City of Angels, Andy Lipkis and TreePeople, the legendary group he founded, are ready to scale up. After catalyzing the first major urban Department of the Watershed, TreePeople and friends are motivating millions of Angelenos to grow environmental and community interconnectedness across the entire L.A. watershed. Next destination: all Southern California.

Power Over or Power To? The future belongs to women. Around the world, women are inspiring each other to envision a world where women lead, but quite differently. Women are spontaneously redefining power and shaping it in novel ways. According to social justice advocate Gloria Feldt and community advocate Reinette Senum, leadership begins inside with power to rather than power over. How is the leadership of women benefitting us all?

Rainbow in the Heart: Dr. Jane Goodalls Reasons for Hope. The visionary primatologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall revolutionized primatology and helped us realize how close our kinship is with the animal kin-dom. It has been 50 years since Dr. Jane, as shes affectionately known, began her intensive solitary studies of chimp behavior In Africas Gombe National Forest and inspired the world to save the rapidly dwindling populations and their habitats. Today her compelling vision in action to restore people, animals and planet is delivering real hope.

A popular character on a Spanish-language soap opera resonates so deeply with viewers that they become empowered and educated about reproductive health. Avatars in the virtual world called Second Life enable people of all faiths to better understand and respect Islamic culture. A global communications network crosses the digital divide to help women around the world share solutions for improving everyday life. Digital and media entrepreneurs Jensine Larsen and William Ryerson effectively use innovative media for social change. Digital citizen diplomats Joshua S. Fouts and Rita J. King design virtual games that help foster vibrant community and culture in the physical world. Theyre all demonstrating the game-changing power of technology to change the world for the better.

Our misbegotten industrial food system is one of our greatest vulnerabilities. Its dangerously fossil-fueled, toxic, monocultural and centralized. The real cost of cheap food is very high to both people and planet. Urban food innovators are designing vibrant new local food economies built on environmental and ecological integrity, sustainability, diversity and equity. Join author Michael Pollan, Fair Food Foundation CEO Oran Hesterman, faith-based change-maker James Ella James and student leader Victoria Carter for a smorgasbord of nourishing morsels from the emerging locavore movement.

We live in a society dependent on toxic chemicals. Today about 287 such chemicals trespass inside the blood of newborns and inside all of us - without our consent. Despite the odds, ecologist, author and mother Sandra Steingraber is an optimist. Shes betting that the burgeoning global environmental human rights movement will free us from our deadly dependency. She believes our grandchildren will look back on us and marvel that our economy was once dependent on toxic chemicals - and they will think of it as unthinkable.

When a culture is disintegrating and the stories everybody believed in no longer fit, its time to rekindle our connection to ancient wisdom and universal truths. Mythologist, author and storyteller Michael Meade, founder of the Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, reminds us that the word apocalypse - which has come to mean the end of the world, actually means an unveiling. Once we penetrate that veil, its not the end - but the beginning of a new story the a new beginning to the old story.

Forty years ago when a logging road was blasted deep into the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, the outside world discovered the Surui people. Contact with the Western world led to their decimation by disease, warfare and illegal logging and mining. The Surui organized to save themselves and their homeland by electing a young leader to tell their story to the world. Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui traveled from the Amazon rainforest to the Google-plex to ask for help to bring his people back from the brink of extinction and save their precious rainforest. The collaboration with Google Earth Outreach manager Rebecca Moore has helped map a next world that marries the best of tradition and conservation with the best of high technology. Translation by Vasco van Roosmalen.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have long been held as the inalienable rights of the American people. Then why is it that corporate personhood consistently overrides the legal rights of citizens? And what about the rights of nature?Do rivers, mountains, whales or ecosystems - have inalienable rights that guarantee their interests? Join innovative environmental attorneys Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil for breakthroughs on the ground that are redefining democracy. In the 21st century, is it time to move from a Declaration of Independence to a Declaration of Interdependence?

Half of Americans cannot name one component of the water cycle upon which all life depends. Yet water is at the root of every human endeavor - from manufacturing to agriculture, energy production and waste management. No water, no life. Join master permaculture designers Darren J. Doherty and Brock Dolman for both practical and poetic ways to re-educate earthlings in soil and water literacy. Their practical vision for regenerating ecological integrity and social resiliency prepares us for the challenges of climate change and environmental stress. But above all, they illuminate inspired pathways for restoring nature and people in the re-enchantment of Earth.