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This article first appeared in our Restoration Revolution issue of MyGreenPod Magazine, distributed with The Guardian on 06 Sept 2019. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Main image: International Tree Foundation
What does it mean to live in right relationship with nature? When we have been conditioned away from our innate, instinctual interdependence with the living systems that breathe us, how do we make the journey home? When our culture has normalised dominance over living systems and a short-termism that values money over the future of our children, how do we turn ourselves around?
In a world finally awaking to the climate emergency, TreeSisters is calling for a consciously chosen shift of human identity; the goal is for ecological restoration to become as fundamental to every human life as consumption currently is.
‘We’ve been taught to think, perceive and act as if we are separate from our planetary ecosystem’, says Clare Dubois, founder of TreeSisters. ‘That misperception has caused the creation of an economic system that requires the death of nature in order to thrive. There is no viable future for this system; there is only the total recreation of ourselves and what it means to be human.’
TreeSisters is a feminine response to climate change. Instead of looking to technology to sequester excess atmospheric carbon, it regenerates the mechanisms nature herself created to do the job perfectly: forests.
The UK-based charity focuses on community-led ecosystem restoration through tropical reforestation and assisted natural regeneration. It rebuilds human relationship with the trees while giving nature back to herself so that she can do what is needed to rebuild, restore balance and recreate planetary health and wellbeing.
To date, TreeSisters has planted over five million native trees across ecosystems in Madagascar, Nepal, Cameroon, India, Kenya and Brazil.
TreeSisters combines five of today’s big-ticket issues – gender, consciousness shift, behaviour change, climate and ecological restoration – to form a unique offering for our time. ‘We don’t just plant trees’, says Clare. ‘We invite everyone to experience themselves as climate solutions who can have a massive impact on our world through the conscious choice to give back to nature.’
By campaigning to normalise reciprocity and the act of giving back to nature, TreeSisters is looking to all of us to help build a global social change mechanism that drives global reforestation through massive grassroots giving.
This is about each and every one of us – every family, company, church, community, city and country – recognising that the time of taking from nature without thought for the consequences is over.
‘Nature has given us everything and we have taken it all for granted’, Clare explains. ‘If we want the privilege of a habitable climate for our children, then we need to help create it. That’s why we’re asking literally everyone to start giving monthly to reforest our world.’
The climate crisis provides the pivot point for our awakening back into relationship with the trees. It’s time to enter the age of restoration and radical generosity towards the natural world, together.
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