Adapting means tapping into our inner nature
When it comes to regenerating our city (and planet!), we need to look at what makes us human: our ability to learn and transform, and our connection to nature and each other. In her first Field Note, Yasmina Dkhissi, Regen Melbourne’s new Adaptive Futures Lead, explores what it will take for us to work together, find common ground, and ask the right questions as we make our way through the climate and biodiversity crises.
Do we love what we value or value what we love?
This might be one of those ‘chicken and egg’ conundrums. It’s one of the knots that my mind has been circling around, trying to find a way out of. I’m now three weeks into my role as Regen Melbourne’s Adaptive Futures Lead and onboard with the intention to channel my energy on what deeply matters, so I have been asking myself: What will it take for us to collectively care for our future?
Finding common ground
I know that there are many things that we do not know and cannot know. That’s okay. Part of working in an innovative space is learning to let go – again and again – of that illusion of control and fixed solutions.
One thing I have confidence in is that we cannot care for the future alone. It is just not a job that one hero-like character can tackle. On top of being unrealistic, it can also get pretty lonely. It’s also not a responsibility that only a handful of people can carry. The job is everyone’s. Everyone is responsible and we all have a role to play. Actually, it’s most likely we all play multiple different roles; I find Carol Sanford’s Regenerative Society Enneagram framework and non-heroic, nine nodal roles a helpful way to frame this idea.
Whichever roles we find ourselves in, to work together, we need to find common ground. So what do we all have in common?
We are human beings. And ultimately, most humans care for their health and wellbeing and that of their loved ones. I believe that when we remember that we, humans, are part of nature, we can relearn to connect to one another and to who we are. This reconnection with our nature, our human nature, will bring us home. To a home we care for and cares for us.
From one human to another
In the spirit of walking the talk, here’s my story – or more so, one of the stories I tell myself and how I am connecting it to what makes sense to me today. The only honest thing I can do as a human is to provide a human’s perspective on a multifaceted challenge. Because this is where I’m coming from: a belief that adapting is tapping into our inner nature, our multiple facets that can help us connect with other humans and their intentions and actions.
Inspired by nature
I find nature’s beauty and genius deeply awe-inspiring. Over the past 3.8 billion years, life has worked out how to test, learn from experience and adapt. As the brilliant Janine Benyus says: ‘life creates the conditions conducive to life’. It evolves to survive, responds to the movements of the sun and short feedback loops, integrates the unexpected, and sometimes even shuts down to gain strength.
It was a curiosity to understand life and a felt responsibility to protect it that first got me into studying chemistry. (Imagine my excitement now, decades later, when I find myself part of an organisation exploring the use of a periodic table as its strategy!) This led me to designing solar cells with the intention to bring people affordable, renewable power. Reflections on where my energy and efforts were best placed led me down the path of sustainable innovation strategy.
At its roots, innovation, whether in a lab or through the chemistry of life, is about experimenting and our ability to embrace emergent change in ever-evolving sets of conditions. We keep on learning and we initiate transformative change by doing and being the change we want to see in the world. As the poet Antonio Machado knows: we ‘lay down a path in walking’.
This is the posture I try to hold, day after day, putting one foot in front of the other. Never preaching or pretending to have all the answers (this might be when you know you’re about to join a cult!), but trying to remain grounded in asking the right questions, which hopefully help us move forward with intention.
My current assumptions are that:
the climate and biodiversity crisis we face is, at its roots, a crisis of separation;
by reconnecting to our nature and creating systems that help us do so, we can reconnect with one another and design a better future together
I love structure. Nature does too. Below is my current offering to guide our exploration of the field of Adaptive Futures through questions.
Adaptive Infrastructure
From my lived experience working on a range of climate change, mitigation, adaptation and resilience programs across the public and private sectors, I’ve seen firsthand that there is a need for stronger adaptive infrastructure, whether physical or social.
Speaking Bill Sharpe’s language of Horizons, the first branch of Adaptive Infrastructure focuses on addressing what needs to happen to respond to the ongoing crisis (Horizon 1).
The change in the existing infrastructure that enables us to better adapt to climate change risks and impacts. With nature as our mentor, this could be explored through the lens of life and biomimicry principles, founded on cooperation, diversity and local expertise to enhance resilience.
The question we can investigate is:
How might we prepare and adapt for the climate change risks and impacts on Greater Melbourne?
Adaptive Capacity
As the daughter of two teachers, education has always played a prominent role in my life, so we might be coming home with this one!
Adaptive Capacity is the bridge to meeting people where they are to support our collective capacity to adapt (Horizon 2). We might lean towards infrastructure or shift towards connectedness based on what is needed. This is part of the posture systems change requires of us: to be able to adapt. To be able to move towards wisdom or action.
The change lies in our ability to respond and adapt to changing conditions. This is about equipping people with the skills they need to see and question the system they’re part of and develop the empathy, leadership and agency to imagine what could be. This can be done inclusively, through experiential learning to open up different ways of knowing.
The question we’d ask:
How might we build our collective capacity to adapt to changing conditions and trends?
Adaptive Connectedness
Some might say I have a slight (healthy, I promise!) obsession with my close friends, the trees. What can I say, tree bark brings me delight!
“Go among the standing people and learn from nature’s wisdom.”
– Indigenous peoples’ proverb
Being among the ‘standing people’ grounds me deeply and that’s something I’d like us to explore.
We know that community connection is a major determinant in the resilience of a community when hit by climate disasters. More broadly, we see that many Australians suffer from loneliness, which is now recognised as the next public health priority by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Reconnecting with nature and one another is cornerstone to our wellbeing and that of our ecosystem.
In Adaptive Connectedness lies the potential for the abundance we seek to bring to life and nourish the regenerative future we hope to create together (Horizon 3).
The change moves through the way we relate to ourselves, one another and other sentient beings. It is a shift in stance towards the natural world; one where we become humble enough to learn from nature and to grow through relationality, while better understanding ourselves and others.
The question we can unfurl:
How might we shift our relationship and connection to nature – the way we view and value nature?
Which takes us back to the beginning: What will it take for us to collectively care for our future? I believe the answer might lie somewhere in our collective capacity to remember that we are nature.
Leaving you in tune with one last note that I learnt at my local pub choir: ‘you gotta put one foot in front of the other and lead with love’! – One Foot/Lead with Love, song and lyrics by Melanie DeMore
If you want to come and play, learn and unlearn with us, you can find me at yasmina@regen.melbourne.
(Caution: If your idea involves tree time, or to grow and ground like a tree, we are likely to become friends!)