paul hawken interview with grant makers association 2003

8/14/2019 Paul Hawken Interview With Grant Makers Association 2003

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NORTHERN CALIFORNIAGRANTMAKERSASSOCIATION

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL HAWKEN

In January 2003, NCG hosted its annual meeting on the Interdependence of Natureand Peopleat the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Two of our featured speakers wereprominent local figures Paul Hawken and Michael Lerner who shared their insights and

wisdom with the Northern California philanthropic community.

That was over six months ago. Today, through this interview, we hope to revisit theissues raised by Paul, deepen our understanding of the connection between these issuesand what we do through our grant making, and get an update on the evolution of his own

work on the interdependence of people and nature since he spoke with us earlier thisyear.

1. What are some of the new, exciting developments in the arena of theinterdependence of nature and people that you are currently witnessing?

There are several areas. One, teachers around the world are bringing nature, food,gardens, and the living world back into the classroom. The State of Vermont teachessustainability every year from K-12. This augurs well for the future. The second is the riseof regional and local food webs, the slow food movement started by Carlo Petrini in Italy,

and the extraordinary demand and increase for organically grown food throughout NorthAmerica, Europe, and Japan. Third is the specific application of biomimicry principles indozens of new enterprises and research projects. Literally, people are using nature to re-imagine the world. Fourth, is climate change. It is no longer an abstraction to people.

Weird weather is going global. And that is radicalizing whole countries.

2. How would you make the case for supporting the "interdependence of natureand people" to those who say, We dont fund the environment?

It is amazing that people walked out of the NCG meeting saying, We dont fund theenvironment. It is like saying we dont fund mothers, or life. This ghettoization ofdisciplines is a western trait that ill serves us in these times. Sustainability is about the

relationship between the two most complex systems on earth human and livingsystems. Show me anythingart, music, medicine, economic developmentthat isntabout the relationship between human beings and nature. The interrelationship betweenthese two systems marks every persons existence and underlines the rise and fall ofevery civilization. While the word sustainability is relatively new, every culture hasconfronted this relationship for better or ill. Historically, no civilization has reversed itstracks with respect to the environment but rather has declined and disappeared becauseit forfeited its own habitat. For the first time in history, a civilizationits people,companies, and governmentsare trying to arrest this slide and understand how to live


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on earth. This is a watershed in human existence. To walk out of the room is impossible.The environment is the room and every that happens to it affects the welfare of human

beings.

It is not hyperbole to say that the world is turning inside out, shedding its life, and dying.A once familiar world is transforming into the unwanted and unimagined. As I write,

European glaciers are melting like ice cream cones, London baked like a pizza in 101degree summer days and thousands of people died in heat waves in France. Disturbingnew forms of life are being created by corporations and released into the environment.Human clones are rumored. Food has been reduced to molecular nutrients and patented.

Water rights are bought and sold like oil reserves. We are at war on the basis of a wink, anod, and a smirk. All of these events, political and environmental, are the result ofconsuming life instead of considering it. In each instance, large corporations benefithugely from the loss of ecological stability and living systems.

3. What advice would you give to funders about making grants to organizationsthat are leading the charge for a sustainable and just world?

Start funding people and ideas, not just programs and in so doing take a hint from theright wing. Fund Fritjof Capra, Paulo Lugari, Janine Benyus, Anuradha Mittal, theBioneers conference, and other brilliance. Create a hundred small think tanks. Fund alarge progressive think tank in the beltway. Fund innovation. Trust your grantees more,and make longer-term grants. Fund the environment as if we are going to win, notsimply put our fingers in the dike. Try to create more turnover of grant officers. Mix it upand dont become grant-giving professionals. Stop meeting in fancy hotels like the EGAand COF do and cut the expense accounts. Have a funders' meeting in Nogales for threedays and study trade, or South Central and focus on sustainable economic development.Stay in a roach motel and eat at the local Dennys. Make the process more accountableand transparent. Stop being so conservative, take off the power ties, roll up the sleeves,get out of the office and celebrate nature by getting in it. Get the fuddy-duddies off the

board. Old money doesnt have to mean old rigid minds. Get youth on boards ofdirectors. Get America on the boards of directors. You cant solve the problems of

America if America is outside the window. No more token people-of-color appointments.Make 30-40 percent of foundation boards people of color. In California, make it 50percent. This century is all we have. Stop pretending that nothing is wrong. Belly up tothe bar and give away more than 5% (not counting your overhead). Stop saving for rainydays; these are the rainy days.

4. What are some of your latest efforts/projects designed to move us closertoward a live sustaining future?

I am working on creating a series of companies involving an innovative principle of fluid

dynamics (it is pure biomimicry) that we will apply to turbine, marine, water, andelectronics that will save significant amounts of energy. All fluidic and energy gradientsin nature follow the path of least resistance. Industry does the opposite. Thesetechnologies, when applied ubiquitously can save nearly 20% of the worlds energy. So itis a great sandbox to play in. I am writing a book with a working title We Interrupt This

Empire that is about the growing resistance to corporatization. We are doing tworesearch projects at the Natural Capital Institute. One of them is about creating the firstdatabase of all socially responsible (SRI) mutual funds in the world. And using differentcriteria than is used by the SRI funds, we are compiling a list of the 100 best companies


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in the world, a list which I think will surprise people because they wont recognize thenames of most companies, and because the old familiar names wont be on it. We arelooking at what a companys true purpose is. Being the biggest junk food purveyor or

being a software robber baron doesnt qualify (the biggest holding in SRI funds isMicrosoft). We think individuals, foundations, and many high net worth individualsreally do want their money to make a difference, and we are hoping this map will help

point the way.

5. Why do you continue to work on these seemingly intractable issues? (Whatsustains you/gives you hope?)

I have never been so hopeful. Realistically, the planet is going to most likely tank thiscentury due to global warming. Nothing else comes close to the enormity of this threat.The rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheets could very likely shut down the Atlanticgyre and freeze out European agriculture. The predicted warming in this century will beten times greater than the last hundred years and even now, as Kenny Ausubel haspointed out, the Weather Channel is becoming more like the Adventure Channel. So why

be hopeful? Because a crisis is coming. And that is what is needed to rid ourselves of the

vapid leadership and musty values that inform corporate and national governance. Thesolutions are here, both socially and technologically. The leaders are also here. The will is

building. Sven Lindqvist, the author ofA History of Bombing, wrote, "You already knowenough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage tounderstand what we know and to draw conclusions." More and more people are drawingconclusions.

Many modernists think technology will deliver us. Apologists want to go back a fewdecades or centuries. But an entirely new set of voices is creating a biological know-howthat defies the conventional idea of what technology is. If biotechnology is graffiti in the

book of life, these are the beginnings of illuminated manuscripts, biological strategiesthat carefully attend to the complexity of life and re-imagine what it means to be ahuman being on this planet, at this time, given the real constraints. The inventors arepioneers like John Todd, Paulo Lugari, and Paul Stamets. The sages include JanineBenyus, Lynn Margulis, Dave Foreman and David Suzuki. The beneficiaries arepotentially all the people on earth. Martha Graham, the great dancer and choreographer,once described the creative process as a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrestkeeps us marching and makes us more alive... The world is becoming blessedly restless.This is a good sign.

6. Is there anything else you would like to share that you did not get a chance tosay in this interview?

Along with this group of biological pioneers is a stunning grassroots movement

addressing sustainability that flies under the radar of the media, a movement the likes ofwhich the world has never seen. It is not centralized or charismatic. It consists of at least100,000 organizations. It is quiet and real and powerful and it will link up in our lifetimeand nothing will ever be the same. The two most complex systems in the world are livingand human systems. The study of how human commercial activity is linked to livingsystems (resources) is consigned primarily to economics. The relationship is starting to

be addressed by every discipline and every sector of society. The practice of


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sustainability, as nascent and wobbly as it may be, is essentially the study of thisrelationship from a new perspective. Language is critical because all of us have aresponsibility to enlarge the conversation the world is having about what it means to be ahuman at a time when every living system on earth is declining, and the rate of decline isaccelerating. Again, no one can walk out of the room. They can only shutter theirperception.

The proponents of sustainability do not agree on everythingnor should theybutremarkably, they share a basic set of fundamental understandings about the Earth, howit functions, and the necessity of fairness and equity for all people in partaking andpreservation of the Earth's life-giving systems. They believe that water and air belong tous all, not just to the rich. They believe seeds and life itself cannot be owned or patented

by corporations. They believe that nature is the basis of true prosperity and must behonored. This shared understanding is arising spontaneously from different economicsectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts. And it is growing and spreading, withoutexception, throughout this country and worldwide. No one started this worldview, noone is in charge of it, and no orthodoxy is restraining it. It is the fastest and mostpowerful movement in the world today, unrecognizable to the American media because itis not centralized, based on power, or led by charismatic white, male vertebrates. As

external conditions continue to worsen socially, environmentally, and politically,organizations working toward sustainability multiply and gain increasing numbers ofsupporters.

As Vclav Havel, writer, dissenter, and first President of the Czech Republic has said,weare at the brink of a new world because the old world is no longer valid. It is no longer

valid for America, with 4 -1/2 percent of the world's population, to consume 30 percentof the world's resources. If we are losing our legacy forests, our fossil water, our criticalhabitat, and the sanctuaries where the wild and untouched can live and thrive, theneverything must change. We will not be able to bring back what we have lost. It will takemillions of years to restore the diversity of lost species. Nevertheless, in this century wecan begin to undertake the very necessary work of restoration. We can begin to reduce

carbon in the atmosphere; recharge aquifers; bring back lands that have been taken bydeserts; create habitat corridors for buffalo, panthers, and gray wolves; and thicken ourpaper-thin topsoil. Ironically, the way to save this earth is to focus on its people, andparticularly those people who pay the highest price: women, children, communities ofcolor, and the localized poor.

The sustainability movement without forsaking its understanding of living systems,resources, conservation, and biology is moving from a resource flow model of savingthe earth to a model based on human rights, the rights to food, the rights to livelihood,the rights to culture, community and self-sufficiency. Those rights establish carryingcapacity and environmental stewardship. Without those rights, corporations seeking thehighest return on capital will privatize the commons and scarcity will haunt us to ourcollective grave. The environmental movement is becoming, albeit slowly, a civil rights

movement, a human rights movement. And in so doing, and only in so doing, can webring out the end of the war on earth that started five hundred years ago. We can andwill do this because it is the only way we can be fully human, and it is the only wayearths grace will sustain us.

paul hawken interview with grant makers association 2003

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