There is alchemical magic in collaboration. When we each bring our own unique strengths, experience and insights to serve a common purpose, we make magic together. We offer what is uniquely ours and at the same time merge our efforts into wider processes involving other people contributing their own particular talents, skills and perspectives. When these efforts flow generatively, our co-creations as collectives far surpass what any of us could achieve alone.
November 11th marks Armistice Day, on which the First European War of 1914-1918 officially came to an end, with millions dead. This “war to end all wars” did not end war; and this month’s newsletter is written with a heavy heart as violent armed conflict accelerates across our continent and in west Asia. The trauma caused by war is far reaching. Its immense harms shatter societies for generations. War targets not only people but our environment, causing violence to human and animal bodies, soil, water, and air, including through the deployment of military "forever chemicals" and because so many armaments remain unexploded in the ground, where they are a menace for decades to come.
There was a flutter of excitement in my Cape Town neighbourhood when a lone baboon settled himself on the rooftops adjoining our house. It wasn’t long until the neighbourhood WhatsApp group crackled with comments. Having just moved suburbs, this was a new experience for me and I was slightly surprised at the intensity and tone of some of the posts. It tends to be a conversation that really polarises people but does it have to?
I am delighted to have joined Mycelium Media Colab a couple of months ago. This came following years-long collaboration and mentoring with one of the amazing members of the Network, Vanessa Farr. It was finally the right time to make a stronger North-Africa-South-Africa cross-continent connection. The ties that bind us, beyond belonging to the same beautiful continent, are rooted in shared struggles and common destinies. As I embark on this journey by becoming a mushroom of the mycelium, I am very concerned by the pressing reality of climate change, an undeniable force reshaping our lives and challenging our very existence.
We are now deep into one of the coldest and wettest winters experienced for some time in the Western Cape, with persistent warnings of ‘disruptive rain’ that may result in flooding of roads and informal settlements, disruption to essential services, dangerous rock and mudslides and the potential for remote communities to be cut off from assistance. As our government drafts its first Climate Change Bill, we’re more aware than ever that climate change is not on the horizon, but already our lived experience.
Reading through the stories and notices in this month’s newsletter, I am struck by how much is being done around the world to try and shift humanity onto a transitional pathway to a better life for all, including nature and all the life forms it supports. And then, as always, I spend way too much time pondering why nothing is changing or at least changing fast enough to avert the ecological – and subsequent social collapse – that we know is coming. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the level at which work is done or the level at which it is reported. There are big international programmes and projects, national level commitments to activities and then millions of people-led and often grassroots initiatives – but where is the middle?
Winter is really upon us in Cape Town, with the solstice just around the corner. Somehow that is always a psychological shift for me, even though it’s cold, the sun doesn’t dip behind the mountain quite so early as it is doing at the moment. We have had some good rainfall, the rivers are flowing, the wetlands filling and aquifers recharging, human settlements flooding, potholes appearing in the roads. Working on water related projects has given me a much deeper understanding of where and how and why water and waste flows around our city, as well as the government bodies, city departments, academic institutions and organisations who are involved with managing, maintaining and understanding these flows. In theory this should happen in a way that is least damaging to environmental and human wellbeing, but it’s a very complex balancing act, enmeshed in legislation, politics, economics and wicked problems that seem insurmountable.
As we merge into a new season in Cape Town, (as I’m sure is happening in other parts of the world too) I feel the energy shift. More quiet autumn days, less light, a bite in the air…. When the seasons change like this, it makes me think of the writing of Joanna Macy when she speaks of ‘the Great Turning.’ A time of change. She describes this as a societal shift away from an industrial growth society to a more sustainable society which is life-sustaining and committed the recovery of our world. Macy’s work draws from deep ecology, spiritual traditions such as Buddhism and living systems theory and her work acts as a compass or map that gives us the courage in the face of great change and breakdown that we are currently experiencing in the world. I find her writing very helpful, when I feel a bit lost in the magnitude of what is to come.
If you leave your veg cuttings in the tupperware on your kitchen counter for too long, you land up with a mouldy mess. Yet when they quickly make their way to the compost heap in your garden, they turn into wonderful, rich humus, full of microbes. Microbes are a whole world unto themselves … there are millions of bodies at work, but we can’t see them with our naked eye, we can only see the outcomes of what occurred.
It feels as if life is getting faster with the advent of more and more technological fixes (see our stories on AI and gaming for farming success) and more and more interventions to try and stave off ecological collapse (carbon credit markets and grass proteins). Sometimes in that fastness, we can forget the importance of slow things – encouraging the emergence of community voices, creating equitable and safe spaces for discussions about our common future and remembering that sustainability will only come about through living with the natural systems that surround us, not despite them.
