Planet: Critical

Clare Farrell is one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, a huge activist movement against climate crisis that is active in over 80 countries around the world.

She joins me to discuss the crisis, civil disobedience, politics and merging left. This is an enlightening conversation that delves into the heart of what it means to be a citizen today, and how the left can pull together to fight humanity’s impending extinction.

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Agroecology is a style of sustainable farming spreading quickly around the globe, transforming the way food is grown.

Industrial agriculture requires chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides that harm natural systems and people alike, but by working with (and even enhancing) ecosystems, agroecology provides an alternative that encompasses many familiar practices--from composting to organic gardening and seed saving--and many less widely implemented ones, like agroforestry, while bringing modern technology like mobile apps and SMS to bear.

And studies show that it can indeed feed the world's people: food systems expert and author Anna Lappé joins the show to discuss why the idea that it's a “low yield” practice is a myth and how the adoption of agroecological practices around the globe is key to a sustainable future.

And behavioral scientist Philippe Bujold of Rare Conservation’s Center for Behavior & the Environment discusses his organization’s program that employs behavioral science to encourage farmers in Colombia to adopt agroecology in the face of changing climate conditions, like drought and heat, which are causing traditional growing methods to fail. 

Episode artwork: Vegetable farmer watering plants at an organic farm in Boung Phao Village, Lao PDR, via Flickr.

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If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details.

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Blake Shaw is an artist, activist, hacker, philosopher and lifelong Marxist whose work has seen him detained at borders and censored on Facebook.

Blake joins me this week to discuss the terrible failures of the Left and how to reorganise a radical politics. He goes into great detail how free software could emancipate workers, and discusses the tool he’s building that will allow programmers and artists to completely change the framework within which they design and think. He believes this is vital for imagining and building new ways of existing in the world.

Software mentioned in the episode: Guix and Emacs

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You can follow @PlatformEnterprise on various social media. You can also find me on Twitter: @DeBeaudoir

Once drained for palm oil or other agricultural uses, Indonesia's peatlands become very fire prone, putting people and rich flora and fauna--from orchids to orangutans--at risk.

Over a million hectares of carbon-rich peatlands burned in Indonesia in 2019, creating a public health crisis not seen since 2015 when the nation's peatland restoration agency was formed to address the issue.

To understand what is being done to restore peatlands, we speak with the Deputy Head of the National Peatland Restoration Agency, Budi Wardhana, and with Dyah Puspitaloka, a researcher on the value chain, finance and investment team at CIFOR, the Center for International Forestry Research.

Restoration through agroforestry that benefits both people and planet is one positive avenue forward, which Dyah discusses in her remarks.

For more on this topic, see the recent report at Mongabay, "Indonesia renews peat restoration bid to include mangroves, but hurdles abound."

Episode artwork: Haze from fires in a peatland logging concession pollutes the air in Jambi Province, Indonesia. Image courtesy of Greenpeace Media Library.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details.

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

This week I’m joined by Matt Peterson of Woodbine. Woodbine rushed to organise around its New York community during the pandemic when local and federal government failed its constituents. Matt advocates for more self-organised spaces where communities can fulfil their own needs during this discussion on community, governance and the future of politics.

Woodbine’s website: www.woodbine.nyc

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You can follow @PlatformEnterprise on various social media. You can also find me on Twitter: @DeBeaudoir

Landscape rewilding and ecosystem restoration are likely our last/best chances to maintain life on Earth as we know it, the guests on this week's show argue.

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration just began, so we invited author Judith Schwartz to discuss her new book The Reindeer Chronicles and Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth, which documents numerous restoration projects around the globe and highlights how the global ecological restoration movement is challenging us to reconsider the way we live on the planet.

We’re also joined by Tero Mustonen, president of the Finnish NGO Snowchange Cooperative, who tells us about the group’s Landscape Rewilding Programme which is restoring & rewilding Arctic and Boreal habitats using Indigenous knowledge and science.

He previously joined us to discuss the 'dialogue' between Indigenous knowledge and western science for a popular episode in 2018, a theme we also explored with David Suzuki for another popular show about how Indigenous knowledge is critical for human survival.

Episode artwork: Reindeer calf at Lake Inari in northern Finland © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace. 

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details.

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Hydrologist, Heather Scott, joins me this week to explain the devastating effect the fashion industry has on the world’s waterways, and what we can do about it. Heather calls brands out for greenwashing, for illusory sustainability policies, and ultimately confirms the planet—and people—will never be healthy if we don’t change our attitude towards consumption.

Heather’s educational Instagram: @im_not_a_sob

Visit www.platformenterprise.com for all episodes and articles.

Subscribe to receive projects that protect the planet and empower people delivered straight to your inbox.

You can follow @PlatformEnterprise on various social media. You can also find me on Twitter: @DeBeaudoir

The Sumatran rhino is a ridiculously cute but cryptic species that teeters on the brink: with an estimated 80 individuals left in the wilds of its super dense rainforest home, experts are also divided on *where* they are. With conflicting and sometimes misleading data on their whereabouts, it is exceedingly difficult to track them down, and to therefore protect them.

To discuss this 'rhino search and rescue' as she calls it, host Mike DiGirolamo contacted repeat guest Wulan Pusparini, who studied them as a species conservation specialist with the Wildlife Conservation Society before pursuing her Ph.D. in Environmental Conservation at Oxford University.

Articles discussed in this episode:

• Rarely seen Sumatran rhinos are now even more elusive as threats close in
• Signs, but no sightings: The phantom rhinos of Sumatra’s Bukit Barisan Selatan

Episode artwork: Rosa is the wild-born female Sumatran rhino noted by Wulan during the interview who now lives at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park. Image courtesy of Terri Roth/Cincinnati Zoo.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts. We also offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, providing instant access to our latest episodes and previous ones.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details.

See all of our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Episode 9 features Nika Dubrovsky on creating The Museum of Care and how to build a society built on the principles of care. You can listen on your chosen podcast app, or listen on the Platform Enterprise Youtube channel.

Nika Dubrovsky has been working at the intersection of anarchy, community and climate justice for years with her art. She often worked in tandem with her husband, the anarchist anthropologist, David Graeber. In this interview, Nika discusses The Museum of Care, the last project she started with David before his untimely death. She goes on to explore how society can organise around the principles of caregiving as a means of escaping patriarchal capitalism.

www.platformenterprise.com Museum of Care:

https://museum.care/

Nika Dubrovsky was born in 1967 in Leningrad, USSR. She grew up among the artistic bohemia of the late USSR within the unofficial cultural scenes of squats and samizdat. Having immigrated to the West in 1990, Nika was formed in a contradictory space of hierarchical practices of contemporary art and the open-source/blogging culture of early 2000.

Nika wrote for e-flux, artnet, colta, moscow Художественный Журнал and others. As an artist, she has exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum, Israel, St. Petersburg Manège. Russia, GaleriaNova Zagreb, Croatia, ShowRoom Gallery London, UK, MediaUdar, Moscow, Russia and other places. Her books within the project of A4kids.org have been published in Finnish, English, Russian, German and Polish.

In a series of articles #artcommunism, written in collaboration with her husband, David Graeber, she reflects on the possibility of a world in which the very idea of having an SV becomes meaningless: a world where everyone could become an artist. After her husband, David Graeber, unexpected death in 2020, Nika and friends organized Carnival4David to celebrate his life and mourn his death, which took place in 250 places worldwide. Carnival4David was transformed into an informal community: Museum of Care that combines off-line residencies and many on-line projects; all run DIY by the people who join the network.

Clare Rewcastle Brown is the journalist who single-handedly investigated and exposed billions of dollars stolen from the Malaysian people to fund lavish parties and Hollywood films—like The Wolf of Wall Street. The 1MDB scandal exposed a global network of corrupt elite, including household Hollywood names, Trump staff, and Goldman Sachs' executives.  Clare reveals all in this explosive interview—and drops an exclusive halfway through.

Wolf Catcher: https://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Catcher-exposed-worlds-biggest/dp/152724475X

The Sarawak Report: https://www.amazon.com/Sarawak-Report-Inside-Story-Expos%C3%A9/dp/1527219364

Platform Enterprise Newsletter: stories.platformenterprise.com