“We need to find local ways of solving global problems.”

David is the founder of carbon credit company the 2030 HUB and a creative, big picture connector and communicator with experience across international responsible business boundaries.

He has worked with leading businesses around the world on CSR / sustainability plans, created the award-winning charity for Everton Football Club and is also a +SocialGood Advisor for the UN Foundation.

We chat about how businesses can have more accountability and how they can work to be more inclusive, transparent and conscious of their profitability. Why is it important to work with local communities and so much more.

Hossein has a background in nutrition/personal training and sports massage therapy

His passion is for healing and growth, and he knows a lot about how fungi can help both humans and the environment.

We speak about the physical role of mushrooms on both the environment and the body. But also about mushrooms as medicine and the resurgence of psychedelics and plant medicine for the healing of trauma and addiction.

Links to sources mentioned in the interview:

“Fantastic Fungi: -Paul Stamets, netflix

“Entagled Life” - Merlin Sheldrake

“The Wisdom of Trauma” - Gabor Maté,  https://thewisdomoftrauma.com

"Mycelium Running" -  Paul Stamets

“How to Change your Mind” - Michael Pollan, netflix

https://www.dosedmovie.com/

instagram: osmose_labs

Subject: We have to acknowledge the crisis we are living in in order to make a change in the first place.

The indigenous story tells that the forest is on fire, and all the animals are fleeing to safety. All except the hummingbird. She is flying towards the fire with a drop of water in her beak. “Silly little bird,” shouts the eagle, looking down at her. “Don’t you see that you’ll never put out the fire all by yourself?”

“You’re right,” says the hummingbird. “I’ll never put it out all by myself. But I’m doing my part.”

This is what Iracambi is about. Iracambi is a community of people around the world whose vision is to see the beautiful Brazilian Atlantic Forest restored, with prosperous communities living in a flourishing landscape.

We talked to Binka, who is an inspiring woman who stands behind this beautiful organization. Co-founder of Iracambi, Binka was trained in classical music and languages. After raising her family on five continents, Binka and her husband headed to Brazil to found a forest farm and see for themselves whether sustainability was real or even possible. One thing led to another, and today they work at the Iracambi Rainforest Research Center, along with their bright young team, focusing on environmental restoration, research, education and public policy.

We speak about her journey from the US all the way to the Brazilian rainforest, the challenges the rainforest and the environment in Brazil are facing on a daily basis and the importance of diversity both in people, opinions and nature.

“When you do something completely manually you realize there is a different kind of energy that you put into your products. It’s your body energy.”

Shanti owns a sustainable leather business called Meracu Leather Goods, which sells handmade bags and other items. Her ethos is centred around a circular system within the production industry and reusing waste leather which is the primary product she works with. Once upon a time, she used to be a tree planter herself and nowadays, she donates 10% of her profits to reforestation projects within Gone West.

Why is it important to know the processes and the materials in the things we buy? How your body's energy is connected with your work?

"Sustainability indicates that we want keep doing what we have now. But we don’t, we want to make it better."

Helen is international permaculture, agroforestry and land regeneration practitioner based in southern Portugal.

Born in the UK, Helen has travelled extensively and has lived and worked in a number of countries scattered around the world, including Finland, India, Papua New Guinea, the US, Mexico, Cuba and Peru.

She has been a paleoclimate research scientist, conservationist, rural agriculture extension officer, marine conservation programme director, and since 2010, more broadly, a permaculturist.

We speak about the principles of agroforestry and syntropic agriculture. But also about belonging and understanding the physical landscape where we belong and how we should see ourselves as part of nature and its processes. We are debating human influence on the environment and how catastrophic it is or is not. And what does sustainability actually mean?

Grian is a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion Spain and organized the People's Climate March in Edinburgh in 2014. He is a Doctor in Educational Sciences from the University of Granada and he received a degree in Psychology from the University of Valencia. He is also a founder of the Avalon Project and The Earth Stories Collection. The first global bank of myths, legends and traditional stories from around the world.

We discuss the concept of deep ecology, the interconnection between spirituality and activism and how what is needed for system change is a worldview change. Is environmental and social activism our only hope for the future?

Today we have with us One Tree Planted’s UK and European Forest Manager, Karl McGrory. One Tree Planted is a not for profit organisation whose focus is on global reforestation and who have partnered with Gone West. We caught up with Karl about the work that One Tree Planted does, planting trees across the world, as well as more philosophically the social and environmental impact of such work and what we can be doing in our one personal lives.

'To create a healthy ecological ecosystem, you need a social ecosystem.'

Restore Nature Foundation focuses on restoring nature through rewilding landscapes and planting trees. We talk about how we can work with the Earth rather than just on it.

How to connect people back to the landscape and the cycle of nature? Did we lose our moral compass? How can we improve our relationship with nature? These are the questions Mattie is trying to answer through his work and this Foundation.

"We only have one chance in life to be honest with each other."

In this first episode of our brand new podcast, we sat down with James, our managing director. The man who started it all. We talked about his vision and motivation, how important social justice is in our fight against climate change, why we need to work together to achieve great things, and why we need to make other people’s lives better in order to be able to do something about climate change.