S8 Ep25: Reinventing Regenerative Systems Through Bio-Regional Approach in Education with Dr. Laird Christensen
“You can't leave the question of justice out of sustainability. Because if large numbers of people feel disempowered, or left out of the process, there's nothing sustainable about that.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
Building a sustainable and regenerative future requires innovative education and community engagement. When educational programs empower people with practical knowledge of their local ecosystems and economies, they gain the tools to strengthen food systems, land use, and social networks where they live.
Dr. Laird Christensen is an award-winning instructor and administrator at Prescott College, where he directs innovative graduate programs focused on sustainability and resilience. Through story-based and project-centered learning, his curricula empower professionals to create just and sustainable communities.
Tune in as Justine and Dr. Christensen cover critical issues on empowering students to address challenges in their regions through bio-regional and solutions-based approaches, the need for inclusive solutions that benefit all people as energy systems transition away from fossil fuels, overcoming climate anxiety, and reinventing systems in a more regenerative and equitable manner.
Connect with Laird:
Laird Christensen is an award-winning instructor, writer, and administrator. As the director of the Master of Science in Resilient and Sustainable Communities program at Prescott College, he has developed innovative project-based curricula and interdisciplinary programs focused on how stories shape the interaction of human communities and their environments. With over 10 years of experience directing online graduate programs, Laird is passionate about empowering working professionals to build more sustainable and just communities through place-based and solutions-oriented learning.
Episode Highlights:
04:35 A Focus on Solutions-Based Learning
08:38 Student Innovation Builds Sustainable Food System
14:51 Creating Systemic Resiliency Through Education and Community Engagement
19:31 Understanding Different Perspectives to Address Social and Environmental Issues
23:33 Communication Strategies for Creating a Regenerative Future
Resources:
Books
Website
Tweets:
The key to creating just and resilient local food systems starts with education. Join @jreichman and sustainability expert, Dr. Laird Christensen as they discuss strategies for building sustainable communities through solutions-focused education. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season8 #Sustainability #Resilience #FoodSystems #ClimateChange #CommunityEngagement #PlaceBasedLearning #SystemsThinking #RegenerativeAgriculture #EnergyTransition
Inspirational Quotes:
03:57 “Trust the way that you feel called to, and trust also that there are other people who are going to be called to address some of the other challenges because one thing's for sure: there's no shortage of challenges facing us, as we try to become more sustainable and resilient.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
05:28 “Climate change can be so heavy and so disempowering that we need to put the emphasis on the solutions— and that requires defining some of the challenges first” —Dr. Laird Christensen
06:05 “Being solution-oriented and surrounding yourself with other people that can share insight gives us a greater power to better solve the problem at hand.” —Justine Reichman
07:55 “Bringing those fears out into the open makes them a lot less threatening.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
08:26 “There's nothing that empowers us more than taking even a small action, and seeing that it has an impact. And doing so reinforces our willingness to take the next action.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
14:24 “Let’s focus on our neighborhood because the problem is, if you deal with larger scales, you start to run into obstacles and you feel disempowered. And disempowerment is one of the biggest threats to creating the kind of world that we want to live in and we want future generations to live in.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
15:45 “To do this work, we have to figure out how to make sure that everybody can benefit from that.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
18:41 “The most important step forward is to move past the polarization by engaging with other people in our communities as human beings, not as enemies.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
23:31 “You can't leave the question of justice out of sustainability. Because if large numbers of people feel disempowered, or left out of the process, there's nothing sustainable about that.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Laird Christensen, and he is an expert in sustainability.
Welcome, Laird.
Laird Christensen: Hi, thank you so much, Justine. I'm happy to be here.
Justine Reichman: I'm happy to have you here. It's so exciting to learn from you a little bit about the programs that you're working on, and the impact and sustainability that you're currently having, as well as what you hope for in the future. So for those that are not familiar with you, can you just maybe state your name, your title, and what you do?
Laird Christensen: Sure. My name is Laird Christensen. I work at Prescott College in Arizona where I direct the Master of Science in resilient and sustainable communities, as well as the Master of Science and Environmental Studies. And these are online programs designed for working professionals to be able to add graduate degrees to their credentials and their experience while they're working and whatever their responsibilities at home may be. But the way that we make that work for folks is through what we call a bio regional approach to distance education, so that students in the courses that they're taking apply everything that they're learning to the places where they live. So they're really becoming experts in those places, whether they're studying projections of climate change impact, or energy possibilities, or social inequities, or our food systems. Whatever it may be in those areas, people are focusing everything on their own backyards to make them more connected.
Justine Reichman: I think it's great to be able to take a tangible approach to use the area that you're in and implement different strategies as a way to build a more sustainable community. As you know, we're focused on food, we're focused on the impact of food, how we can change things, how we can innovate in that space to create greater access to better for you food, both for the impact it has for our future families, the children, our welfare, our health, all those things. So I'd love to just kick off the conversation before we even dig into the food system, and sustainability, and just understand a little bit about your background.
Laird Christensen: Yeah. I came to sustainability from a more environmental studies background. I was an environmental activist and a writer for much of my career working in ancient forest defense out in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up. And it wasn't until I began to see the forests in the places where I was damaged by the impacts of climate change that I realized, oh, part of my work needs to be with people in the cities with people in industry who are having an impact on these wild areas thousand of miles away through their carbon emissions. And so when I had the opportunity to design this, the Master of Science and Resilient Sustainable Communities, I went into it a little grudgingly, because my focus was really more on environmental studies. But over the years, it's been 10 years now that I've been directing this program. I get so much inspiration from my students who are scattered all over the world. Not just the US, but I've got students in Peru, Italy, South Korea, all over the place. We're sharing with each other in every class what we're learning about our own communities, and just seeing those people doing the good work that they are in their own places, provides me with fresh inspiration all the time. People are drawn to a particular aspect of creating sustainability or resilience. And I try to assure my students to trust the way that you feel called to, and trust also that there are other people who are going to be called to address some of the other challenges. Because one thing's for sure, there's no shortage of challenges facing us as we try to become more sustainable and resilient.
Justine Reichman: And I think allowing your programme extends, and because you have access to these folks have access to each other, one another. And they can share these stories and share what's going on for them. It allows people to look at it through different lenses, and equally be able to maybe innovate, be inspired, share different resources or ideas that they have that they may not ever have ever considered.
“Climate change can be so heavy and so disempowering that we need to put the emphasis on the solutions— and that requires defining some of the challenges first” —Dr. Laird Christensen
Laird Christensen: Exactly. I will give you an example of that. One of the courses students take in this program is called Land Use Planning and Policy. And so for example, if somebody wanted to rip out their front lawn and put a garden in their front lawn, but there were local zoning ordinances prohibiting them from doing that, they would be finding out from other students around the world that, okay, there are other kinds have policies in other places, some of those might serve as models, might be examples of a more progressive sort of policy. But then they're also learning how to engage with the local processes. How do you go about proposing revisions to existing regulations? So we want to empower students. And actually, that's a shift that we've seen over the 10 years that I've been directing this program, a move towards solutions based learning because climate change can be so heavy and so disempowering that we really found we needed to put the emphasis on the solutions. Of course, that requires defining some of the problems. Some of the challenges at first, but most of the emphasis in the courses is on the solutions, and what are the skills. What is the knowledge the students will need to actually help bring about those solutions?
“Being solution-oriented and surrounding yourself with other people that can share insight gives us a greater power to better solve the problem at hand.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: Well, I think that's a great way to frame something as well. Because so often, we have problems and we react or respond either in fear, or because we don't have a better answer. And being solution oriented and surrounding yourself with other people that maybe can shed insight or share insight gives us a greater power to better solve the problem at hand.
Laird Christensen: That place of despair, or what often called climate anxiety really emerged as a problem around the same time as we were going through the pandemic. So folks were in lockdown, they were dealing with feelings of isolation or disconnection anyhow. We really started to see an uptick in people reaching out to me and saying, Laird, I love this programme. But it's just too much for me to deal with all of the different challenges. I'm going to need to take some time away. So that was about 2022 that we began to see that. So one of the things that I did was to begin offering sort of workshops or training through Teach-in and that sort of thing, and Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstones Active Hope, which is just a four step process that leads people from despair to empowerment. And it starts with giving thanks for the things in your life that you are grateful for, because that creates a sense of personal resilience. And then the second step, which is what really throws people, is honoring our pain for the world. And then that doesn't come intuitively, right? The idea that, oh, I'm feeling anger, I'm feeling grief, I'm feeling despair. We don't think about honoring that. But those are really functioning as negative feedback loops telling us something is wrong, and we need to act. It's like the warning bell on the Titanic heading for the iceberg. We need to honor the fact that that's working. And when we share that with others, this is one of the things I do in the workshops.
“There's nothing that empowers us more than taking even a small action, and seeing that it has an impact. And doing so reinforces our willingness to take the next action.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
As we all use little post-it and talk about, here's what I'm feeling, bringing those fears out into the open makes them a lot less threatening. They don't just fester inside of us. We see that other people have the same kinds of fears. And there's something about creating that sense of community where we're all working from this place. That makes it a little less disabling. And then the next two steps are moving into how we see ourselves through a different framework in terms of other communities that are doing good work, finding inspiration. And finally, how do we take action because there's nothing that empowers us more than taking even a small action, and seeing that it has an impact, it has an effect. And doing so reinforces our willingness to take the next action. So we've started offering those, we've built climate solutions into all of our courses. And a programme like this needs to continue to evolve as new challenges arise, the climate despair.
Justine Reichman: So I know that you work on sustainability. I know that there is another program that focuses on food in particular, as we embark on this conversation, sustainability, and in its entirety is at the root of a lot of this. So you've created this program where they participate from all over the world and they can share stories. So I'd love to hear from you as it relates specifically to food and sustainability within the food sector. How have these students innovated or created change as a result of your program?
Laird Christensen: Sure, sure. I would be happy to. And let me frame that by noting that when we first were developing this program back in 2011 or so, we had a tropical storm hit Vermont where I was teaching at the time that wiped out our roads as Tropical Storm Irene. And suddenly, the area that we lived in had no roads coming to it from the east.
Justine Reichman: Oh, yeah, I was in New York. I got evacuated. I experienced that.
Laird Christensen: We suddenly realized how vulnerable our food system was because the trucks couldn't get through to the grocery store. Very basic example of that sort of vulnerability. And the opposite of vulnerability is resilience. So we have lots of students who are working on creating more resilient food systems. And some of that has to do with understanding climate models. What kind of changes can we expect to see not only in heat, but in precipitation. But students also learn about their soil systems, about frost free zones, plant hardiness zones, that sort of thing. So they're really understanding, A, here are the ecological conditions in which local food can be grown. And B, here's how that is likely to change in the coming decades so that people can either figure out things like season extension, if necessary, or bringing in different food systems. But the idea of a resilient food system, which our students are engaging with is not necessarily that. It's entirely self sufficient, although it probably better be capable of self sufficiency for at least particular periods of time. But we all benefit from the ability to get coffee from Central America, or chocolate, or whatever that may be.
So we're not talking about a purist sort of self sufficiency necessarily, but that's where resilience begins. How do we provide as much of our own needs as possible? So for some students, that means working with schools to help teach them about soil, about plants to get them out into gardens, create school yard gardens, that sort of thing, to create community gardens. We see that quite a bit where students for their capstone in this program create a project and apply it in their own community. And a lot of them are drawn towards community gardens in general, or creating plans. We have an ecological design course where students are able to actually look very carefully using digital mapping technology and that sort of thing at the possibilities for the region that they live in, or the block that they live on, or the yard that they live in and figure out what could do well here. What's the drainage like here? What's the angle of the sun here as well?
Justine Reichman: So by doing that, have they shared any significant impacts that they've seen as a result?
Laird Christensen: It's a great question. And I hope that you'll have a chance to ask that question of the director of the sustainable food systems program because they have a particular emphasis on impact measurement, which isn't as much built into my program. But certainly, anytime you get a kid who thinks that food comes from the grocery store out there with her hands in the dirt, seeing the worms crawling through the dirt, seeing the seedling start in the classroom and be transplanted out there, the kinds of changes that we're talking about are probably difficult to assess in terms of mere metrics. But that's a lesson that's going to stay with that student.
Justine Reichman: What are you most hopeful for as you teach these programs and you give people the opportunity to share their insights and their experience?
Laird Christensen: Well, I guess what I'm most hopeful for is the capacity for people to move as Rob Hopkins from the transition movement says, from what is to what if. The very fact that visualizing a more sustainable future, a more resilient future, a more regenerative future, more enjoyable future. That is a necessary step towards actually saying, okay, how can we bring this into being? What are the obstacles? How can we either remove those obstacles, get them out of the way, overflow of those obstacles and bring this into being. I do have an enormous amount of faith in the capacity of the human imagination to create better circumstances than we find ourselves in personally. Obviously, there are lots of obstacles to that happening, and we could talk more about the political system and how that's not necessarily serving us well right now. But that's another advantage of the regional approach is by breaking it down to a smaller scale. We begin to engage in our communities at a scale where we can actually have an impact where we can have an effect. And sometimes, if I have students in large urban areas, I'll say, let's zoom in a little bit. Let's focus on your neighborhood. What do you want to see happen in your neighborhood? Because the problem is if you start to deal with larger scales, you start to run into these obstacles and you feel disempowered, and disempowerment is, I think, one of the biggest threats that we have to creating the kind of world that we want to live in and we want future generations to live in.
Justine Reichman: Is there something like one key thing you'd want to be able to tell folks innovating in this space to consider to be mindful of to make sure to incorporate?
Laird Christensen: Absolutely. So I came out of a local foods movement. I worked in food coops for many years, board of directors, volunteer, whatever, up and down. And I've come to realize, and I mentioned this in the blog post that I wrote for you as well, that there was something really privileged about that and really a sense of exclusivity that I wanted to reject the mainstream food system and engage in something that felt more authentic. And over time, I came to realize that, wow, that leaves out a lot of people who are still victimized by the mainstream food system as it is who cannot afford to choose organic foods or locally sourced foods. And so the one thing I guess I would like to leave people with is to do this work. We really have to figure out how to make sure that everybody can benefit from that. And that probably requires different pricing mechanisms, or different subsidies, or whatever it may be. These are problems that have solutions. And once we can define the problems, we can begin to strategize around the solutions. But if our solutions leave out large segments of the population, there's nothing sustainable about that.
Justine Reichman: As you're supporting these folks to go out and find solutions, people go to, and they do a whole lot of different things, they have different ways of thinking their narratives are different in their head, is there some tool or resource that you might be able to share that would help those individuals, maybe not in your classroom, but that are trying to have an impact in their own community?
“The most important step forward is to move past the polarization by engaging with other people in our communities as human beings, not as enemies.” —Dr. Laird Christensen
Laird Christensen: I think so. And the thing that comes most immediately to mind is just empathy for the positions of different stakeholders. So not only the folks that you're trying to help out, but the folks who have some investment in keeping things the way that they are. I worked in, or I led a class around Syrian refugee resettlement and the resistance of local communities to refugee resettlement. And the most impactful work that we did was teaching students to listen without judgment well enough to actually understand the positions that other people were coming from. And in doing that, and in echoing it back and making it clear that those people felt heard, that began to clear a space in which actual communication could take place, it wasn't just oppositional anymore. And I think that that's what we need to do. Recognise that there are people who are very much invested in the food systems that exist today. Understand their points of view, understand where they're coming from, show them that we understand that. Also, represent the people who are being left out, or who are suffering, who live in areas where convenient stores are the only place where they can buy food for their family and to be able to share those stories to bring those stories together. Because if we begin to hear each other's stories, we begin to function as a community in ways that we don't when we have a polarized political atmosphere that comes. As you said earlier, of a place of fear. Feeling threatened, oh, I don't want you to change the system because I'm paying my bills this way, and that sort of thing. But instead, all we're asking is if people listen to what this person has to say that's non threatening, it takes a lot of work. And there are techniques to learn to make that happen in ways that feel safe and make it possible to be vulnerable. And I could tell you more stories, but I think we're limited on time about that. But I think that's the most important step forward to move past the polarization by engaging with other people in our communities, as human beings, not as enemies or antagonists.
Justine Reichman: I think personally, I love that sentiment. And I love that idea. But what I initially think is like, wow, it's easier said than done, right? Because I think that to change somebody's behavior, to change the way they think takes time. It takes trust. And so I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for that because it's not easy to get people to change their minds or change the way they think. People don't always like new things. Some people are constant learners. They're always looking to do things. And then there's a lot of people that don't like change. So what do you say to them?
Laird Christensen: Well, first off, Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind, which looks at how different people process information through different moral frameworks. So we can't expect everybody to find the same moral lesson in a set of information that we do that's really helpful to figure out where other people might be coming from. And then I use the process of nonviolent communication to instill in students the listening skills that they need to even begin that conversation. And in that particular case with the refugee resettlement, we created a website that did nothing other than gather stories from people with different points of view so that they can be heard. So that when people started to have actual conversations about policy or practices, they could say, well, how is that going to feel to this person based on what we know. So that can happen there.
But I do want to say one other thing about that, that we find ourselves in a moment, right now with climate change, occurring at a faster rate than we thought where there is urgent action that needs to be taken. And that is curving our carbon emissions to zero as quickly as we possibly can. Whatever we can do. Political pressure, subsidies, different sorts of carbon pricing, whatever we need to do. Stopping pipelines from being built, buying food more locally so that we don't have thousands of miles to bring our organic lettuce from California or wherever it may be. That's really urgent. The other kinds of changes that you're talking about, and that I'm talking about here are longer term changes. This is the work of adaptation. And it may take generations in some cases. But other places, it begins as soon as we have a conversation with that person down the street who we know may be ideologically opposed to where we are, but we have a conversation about their kids, or that tree over there looks like it's not doing too well or whatever like that. When we can get past depicting each other as enemies, and instead be neighbors, neighbors who disagree are a lot different than dealing with evil people or something like that. So the adaptation will take a long time, but it can start with the next conversation that we have.
Justine Reichman: Are there any hard hitting statistics you could state in regards to understanding people's culture around the world and the impact it has on building a more sustainable future with regards to food and climate, etcetera?
Laird Christensen: Well, I don't know that I have statistics as much other than just to gesture to the Yale programme on climate change communication, which tracks the degree to which people are concerned about climate change, alarmed, dismissive. And every year, we see that dismissive number gets smaller and smaller. Most people by now understand that. Yes, we're starting to feel the impacts of climate change. And it puts us in a situation where we have to figure out how to do things differently. We're coming to the end of the fossil fuel age, which was stretched out longer than it needs to be. We have to come up with alternatives in terms of energy production, infrastructure, and food systems as well. And that creates an unparalleled opportunity for us to figure out, well, if we have to recreate this system anyway, how do we do that in a way that is more sustainable? And I'm going to use the term regenerative here because my students love the term regenerative and actually would prefer that to a term like sustainability. And the metaphor there of being able to actually enrich the soil through the process of agriculture is a wonderful metaphor. It hasn't caught on as widely yet, as I would like it to. But we have the opportunity to create systems that are regenerative, and that are just and you can't leave the question of justice out of sustainability. Because if large numbers of people feel disempowered,or left out of the process, there's nothing sustainable about that. Another crisis waiting to happen so we have an unparalleled opportunity to think carefully to talk together about, how might our culture? How might our communities look different in 20 years than they do now? And what can we do to bring that into being?
Justine Reichman: Amazing. I think he just weld it down so that we can give hope and inspiration to those folks trying to create change. And I think for the most part, people see what's going on. Obviously, there are people that don't. But to be able to provide a lens to look through to better understand, to identify how to have those communications in a respectful way is going to help people collaborate, innovate, and create change for the future that could create that would be beneficial both for health, wellness, and sustainability.
Laird Christensen: I hope so. And that's really what draws students to our programs is this belief that there's an opportunity now. They want to do work that feels meaningful. It's clear that we're at a pivotal point. And forgive me for sounding dramatic, but a pivotal point in the evolution of human culture. We've had a couple hundred years now of petroleum fueled or fossil fueled industrial growth, which has created expectations that are probably not sustainable in the long term. They've given us some great things, and none of us want to lose those benefits of industrialization. But we need a post carbon world now that we're moving into. And if the students can make a living, doing work that feels meaningful, helping bring that into being, learning the skills and the knowledge along the way that allow them to be really effective in the work that they're doing, it just takes so much inspiration. And especially in younger generations who have grown up more digitally immersed than I have, who see possibilities and connections that wouldn't necessarily even occur to me. And there's something almost playful. I think about that digital mindset that I think some of the future lies down that path. And some of it lies in old fashioned things, lending libraries for tools for people who want to start a garden but don't have a shovel or don't have a picker. The transition movement is great for this. I encourage your listeners to check out Transition US if they're in the United States.
Justine Reichman: You mentioned a couple of different resources, a couple of different books, so I'm going to make sure that we add those into our show notes as resources for folks, as well as any information about your program because it sounds like it's a great resource, potentially for people that are already out in the world doing business that want to understand better. How they can continue to build a more sustainable future through collaboration, through the classroom, through their community. So Laird, thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time.
Laird Christensen: Well, thanks for having me Justine. That's been fun.
