Worldviews, Women, and Reckoning, with Osprey Orielle Lake
My guest today, Osprey Orielle Lake, speaks clearly about the limits and possibilities of this moment on our planet. In this conversation, we talk about how dominant culture needs to shift in order for us to respond more intelligently to what the Earth is communicating to us. We also discuss women’s role in this work, Indigenous leadership, and exciting possibilities happening in the climate justice movement.
About Osprey:
Founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), Osprey Orielle Lake works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean- energy future. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. She is the author of the award-winning book Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature and her latest book, The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis. Osprey holds an MA in Culture and Environmental Studies from Holy Names University in Oakland and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area on Coast Miwok lands.
To connect with Osprey, visit:
https://ospreyoriellelake.earth/
https://www.wecaninternational.org/
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Megan: Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today.
Hi friend, and welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm delighted to be here with you in the mid summer period, but we're just about to transition into late summer, the final chapter of the summer season. The sun will move into the sign of Virgo in a couple of days, and that will really quicken transition the transition that we might feel between summer and fall, there's still certainly summer to be had, but we will begin to notice more and more in the landscape around us that things are shifting. And you might just note how you feel about that change. Without any, you know, need to put a lot of labels on it.
Just how does it feel in your body to know that we're changing seasons again? And what has the growing season been like for you so far since this spring and summer, you know, what has made itself known to you in your life? What has ripened? What became so Clear and obvious that you had to share it with others and is there anything else that you want to bloom in your life before the real dark and quiet of fall comes in. I Just want to invite you to do a sweet little check in with yourself in this period if that resonates with you it's always nice to do that as the seasons shift because we can then participate in them more consciously and with more intention, which really feeds us as human beings who live on this living planet that moves through seasons.
And the earth is responding to the sun's slow waning as we go deeper into the dark part of the year. And we can find a lot of reassurance in how steady and adaptable the land is. It has a lot to adapt to right now. We all do. And there's no better source of stability and assurance than the great big earth that can hold all of this and is sustaining us somehow, even as we Mistreat her and, uh, overdo things in terms of human culture and consumption.
So the summer season of the show has been all about communicating with the earth. And we've had some lovely conversations about what that means on a personal level, in our own individual experiences, and also in our, Human and more than human communities on a smaller scale. And my conversation today is with someone who does this work on a wider scale, not only the personal level, which is so essential, and this is all fractal.
So what happens at the personal happens at the collective level and so on. But Osprey Orielle Lake is my guest today. And Osprey is involved in work that is happening at levels that I haven't been at before with a vantage point that I don't have. And so I wanted to invite her on to talk about her book and also to talk about the work that she's involved in globally and how we can sort of step out of our own personal experience, but understand what it means to communicate with the earth, you know, across borders and time zones and on a more globally connected scale. So let me introduce Osprey to you. Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder of Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, or WECAN, an organization whose mission is to protect and defend the planet, particularly through the work of women who have typically been unheard And undervalued by policymakers, her book, the story is in our bones, how worldviews and climate justice can remake a world in crisis casts a wide net that embraces global indigenous perspectives and modern science to discuss topics such as humanity's origin, society's relationship to nature and the imperative need to halt and reverse climate change.
So I'm really honored to have Osprey on as a guest this week. I hope you really love this conversation. It really helped me to think about things differently and to feel more connected in this web of people all across the globe, across languages and cultures who love this space. and are so actively devoting their lives to tending to her and maintaining the relationship they have with her so that we might, Survive and so that perhaps mass extinctions will slow or climate change can be, you know, maybe even halted and reversed.
So I think you'll really enjoy the conversation and get a lot out of it, even if you're not involved in, you know, environmental justice in a, an obvious way. Before I bring Osprey on, I just want to share a couple of quick announcements. The first is that my class on the origins of capitalism, called Composting Capitalism, starts October 2nd.
So, this is a class that I've run twice now. This will be the third time this year. It is my favorite class I've ever taught, and we move through a book called Caliban and the Witch that was written by Silvia Federici, and it's about the origins of capitalism in Western Europe in the 15th century, and this book is called iteration of the class is a little bit different because it's going to include some more practical application and some more folk magic, land reconnection, generous exchange, some key ways that we can really bring in antidotes to capitalism and quicken its composting.
So we will move through the book, we will move through what this needs to look like in your own Life and work right now. What is, how are you being asked to compost capitalism in your own life? Um, and I think it's going to be ironically a lot of fun. Um, so you can learn more about that at a wild new work. com . The class is 200, but in line with generous exchange, if that feels like too much for you right now, there's discount codes available. I'm also open to some kind of trade or exchange. I don't want money to be the reason that anyone is kept out of this course. Um, it's a really beautiful, um, Class and has attracted just the most wonderful people.
So if you feel any inkling to join us, I would count you among those wonderful people and I hope you will.
My second announcement is that I'm writing and publishing a journal for the autumn season. It's called Living the Seasons, a journal for surviving capitalism and bringing the medicine of autumn into your life. And, um, I have loved this little project. It kind of surprised me this summer, but I really wanted to create something that would help you track your own seasonal transformation. So rather than me just telling you what I think the autumn is about and how I think it can change us, I wanted to create something that was both Like a sturdy enough container with some information about the season and the medicine of each point in the cycle of the season, but that was geared toward helping you track what the autumn is right around you, how it's showing up in the land and how it's showing up in you.
And we can really become the seasons we can become the autumn season if we know how to, and if we can sync up with the land. so much. And in my experience, myself, and in working with people, there's not really a more potent avenue to change and growth than this. Becoming like the seasons again. So I'm really excited to share this journal with you all.
I hope it really serves you in this community. I'm thinking about this as the first of four journals. The autumn is the beginning of the cycle in so many ways. And my friend, Sasha Davies, who has been on the show previously and wrote a book, a great book about menopause. Um, Sasha is helping me to do this.
It's kind of more authentically, so she's really helping me bring this project to life. And one of her ideas was, you know, since it's the first time around, could I do it in a more intimate way and be in conversation with you so that I know which parts of the journal are helpful or not helpful. So everyone 15th can come to these three seasonal check in calls where I'll talk about the particular medicine of that point in the season. And I'd love to hear from you what you're noticing about that point in the season, how the journal is working for you, what's coming up, just as a way to, for us to connect in real time and move through the season really together. So thank you. I'd love to have you there. If you feel the call, if this sounds useful to you, the cost for the journalist, 30, which includes shipping, and you can check it out at a wild new work. com slash shop. Finally, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has supported the show financially by pitching in at buy me a coffee. com. I feel your support. I cherish it. Thank you so much. Okay, so with that we will move into our opening invocation. So wherever you are, just noticing your body today.
I don't know if you've taken a deep breath in a while, but that's always a good idea. You might want to let out a heavy sigh if it's been a day. May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors, known and unknown. And may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with.
I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible. And I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
All right, well, Osprey, thank you so much for being with us today.
I'd love to start by hearing about your sense of the larger kind of dominant worldview that we're in right now, the sort of story that we were enculturated inside of that is, as you talk a lot about in your book has sort of led us to have these more harmful relationships with the earth and has kind of led to climate change and devastation. How would you characterize the sort of dominant narrative or worldview that is at play right now and is so harmful?
Osprey: Yeah. Thank you for that question. You know, it's, it's interesting because, as you mentioned in my introduction, I'm the founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network or WECAN .
And so a lot of the work I do every day is very, Seated in very practical solutions, whether that's reforestation work or protecting old growth forests or working on food sovereignty for frontline communities or negotiating at the climate talks annually, um, you know, a wide range of policy research and briefs that we put out.
So there's a lot of work that we're doing that. is sort of hands on and immediate to deal with what many scholars are calling a polycrisis, you know, which is economic, ecological, um, you know, it's vast in its scope, really what we're facing right now. And so when I was working on the book, I really wanted to go upstream and sort of to get at your question around, you know, Why are we in this gigantic crisis?
We have this gorgeous, beautiful planet. Um, nature is astounding us every day with awe and beauty. And here we are, you know, destroying the earth, killing each other. And living in such harmful practices. And so, I really did a deep dive in looking at worldviews. Like, how did we, as a dominant society, arrive here?
And when we're looking at dominant worldviews, to be really explicit, we're looking at these systems of oppression, of capitalism, colonization, racism, and patriarchy. And how they're really interwoven together. And sort of when you tug on one, you tug on the rest of them. So, it's really a discussion about Worldview what kind of worldviews created these systems of oppression.
So things like this idea of dominion over nature that humans have dominion over nature versus the fact that we're in this collective beautiful web of life that were part and particle of nature that we are nature. We're not separate from nature. How did we. Generate this ideology and sense that we're separate from nature, which is not true, but it's a lived experience as if we are.
And how do we look at that and unpack that and unlearn that so we can relearn how to be what I like to think of as remembering that we're her. In this earth lineage that we that belong to the nature in this deep belonging that we so much long for. And so this is one aspect. Another is again with this ideology of dominion over nature.
There's also men having dominion over women, which is this idea of patriarchy and hierarchy and gender. Um, this idea of white supremacy, that white people are more important than indigenous black and brown communities. And so this whole notion of these worldviews of hierarchy and dominion and supremacy are so incredibly violent and dangerous.
And have led to, uh, the polycrisis that we're in. And so these are the kinds of things that I wanted to analyze and look at in the book, but also done through story, And through experience, um, so that we can walk on a journey together, creating this map with the idea that if we can map out. And name how we got into this crisis.
We are in much better position to resolve it and to be able to transform society and transform these norms that are so detrimental because it's sort of like when you go to the doctor, if you don't actually get the correct diagnosis, it's hard to heal it. So this is why it's so important to name these things and go on this journey so that we can collectively build the future we all know is possible and really want for ourselves and future generations.
Megan: Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. I have, in my learning of the human trajectory, what I've learned is that so many of these systems of hierarchy originated in the shift into agricultural society and civilization. And I'm curious what your sense is of where some of these systems of hierarchy originated from.
Are they innate to human nature? Are they just one expression of human societies? Could you tell us a little bit about your thoughts around the origins of some of these?
Osprey: Yeah. I mean, I think that, um, you know, we can point to indicators of origin, but can we actually know, you know, the great mysteries of life and how, how these patterns play out?
No, I don't think that humans are innately tending towards bad practices or towards harming each other on the earth. I think this is something that has developed and it's part of very, you know, immature adolescence aspect of the dominant culture, but I don't think it's innate or has to have been expressed to the point that we're actually looking at this level of species extinction, destruction to our ecosystems, and our own demise as a species, our own existential crisis that we are in right now.
So, You know, the origins, I think, have a lot to do with the rise of patriarchy and this idea of separation when humanity went on this course of, uh, casting down the goddess from the gods instead of seeing egalitarian, uh, spiritualities and with the fall down of this understanding of the spiritual realm of egalitarianism, we also see the downfall of women and how that happened all over the world in different ways.
In the dominant societies, and as soon as you begin to create hierarchies instead of a circle of life and this sense of reciprocity and equality and justice for all and accountability, it just leads to more and more. Of these, uh, supremacies and hierarchies, including colonization, racism, et cetera. And, you know, disrespect for gender diverse peoples.
It goes on and on. And I think this is incredibly dangerous. And so we, we need to look, um, back to our pre patriarchal and pre colonized times. And this is something I really emphasize in the book that it's so important in the process of generating a healthy society. Um, we need to also remember who we are, because if we think all who we are is from this sort of corrupt past of colonization, uh, genocides, of Dominion over.
It's very difficult to generate a healing path forward because there's so much trauma connected to that and we need to name those things and take responsibility for those things and look internally at our own racism as at our own ideas of colonization. Um, our own ideas of supremacy and privilege. So it's a very personal journey, but it's also a cultural and societal journey where we look internally and have our deep homework to do that can be very uncomfortable, but is necessary and healing in the long run for the earth and all peoples, but also look at society and how we need to dismantle these harmful systems and transform them.
And that's very important to then be able to reach back to our pre patriarchal and pre colonized. Ancestries to remember that we did live in egalitarian societies. We did live close to the land. We did have reciprocal practices. And how do we reclaim those and regenerate those in a modern context, I think, is one of the big questions of our time.
And, you know, I'm always a little bit. Wary of naming it was agriculture. It was this. I think it's a whole worldview that's intersectional and interlocking that arrived at this point because we do see as an example indigenous peoples today who are intact, who are not part of the dominant society or the dominant worldview that have done agriculture forever and did not end up in the same place as the dominant society.
So I do think there's components of what happened with agriculture. There are components of what happened with world religions. There's components of societal constructs. Those are sort of after the fact of the world view that implemented a dangerous course. Because of this dominion, hierarchy, supremacy notion that then gets enacted in society.
In other words, you can grow food and become sedentary, but how you do it and where you're coming from is what makes all the difference.
Megan: Thank you. That's really clarifying. I'm gonna have to chew on that idea that Maybe the worldview came first, not that there's one or the other, but like thinking about how the worldview shifted and how and how that then gave life to all of these ways of relating to one another.
Yeah. Thank you. And you've sort of alluded to it all throughout our conversation thus far, but what components do you see as necessary in order to reshape our worldview. What kind of worldview or story do we need in order to keep going in a good way that, again, like you said, honors who we are and where we came from.
Osprey: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's, uh, you know, along the lines of some of this internal work that we're talking about. I think people, um, need to, especially white people need to do a deep internal dive about the water that we're swimming in. And what does that look like? And look at our privilege. And look at our own ancestral histories and understand, uh, the struggles of, uh, Indigenous Black and Brown communities, the struggle of the environment, and, um, to place ourselves in context.
I think it's really an important journey we're on as a society. Um, I think we need to look to Indigenous and Black Brown leadership. And there's all kinds of trainings that are going on. Um, by many names of how to look at these matters and how to learn and community so we don't do it alone. I think it's really important to work together as we are on this, this journey of unlearning and unpacking and dismantling and transforming.
I think it's also really important to remember that. We also need to really get connected to the places we live and get very grounded in nature. It's not just an intellectual or philosophical or ideology practice. It's also how do we heal ourselves and get connected to the land? Because I think that, you know, one of the reasons we're in, in these multiple interlocking crises is, you know, when, when we feel that we're orphaned from the earth.
That we're not part of the belonging of the places where we live, wherever they are, for the city or in the country or wherever we live, there's earth under our feet and the sky over our head and the birds flying through the sky and the food that we eat. We are in this beautiful, Living Earth. And one of the things that I think is so important about connecting with our pre patriarchal and pre colonized ancestry is to bring forward this deep need to be in an animate cosmology, a living Earth cosmology, not seeing, um, the Earth as dead matter.
But, you know, that the stones and the rivers and the forest and the mountains are all alive and we're part of this beautiful symphony of this living earth. And I think it's one of the most healing things we can do right now is connect ourselves to the earth and really recognize this animate cosmology, this living earth, and however we want to do that.
Whether that's through gardening or finding tree friends outside of our homes or on the street corners where we live. And taking that time in nature and really listening to Mother Earth and recognizing that, that this is a place of learning. You know, we're in the great university of life in nature and really having nature as model, nature as friend, nature as our living companion.
And I think this is something that is critical to the process we're in as well. you Um, and I would just, you know, close by saying that in, you know, the beginning of the book, I go through this, you know, story of our origin story in the universe to help us change the narrative that we're in, meaning that, you know, most of the time we don't think about the, the genesis of our planet.
You know, and how the earth came into being and the scientific story, which is actually quite spiritual. Um, around, you know, how the, the universe came into being, how our solar system came into being. And when we place ourselves in that lineage, I think it also is quite healing and also gives us a proper perspective and the, and a broader worldview to approach this moment in time.
So not doing it sort of just as a, uh, something that might be considered to be Superfluous, but actually as a political exercise as something that is part of our advocacy, it is part of reclaiming who we are and how we can live is to understand we actually need to understand our origins, that all the elements that came from the stars, literally to the earth are the components of our bodies and the plants and animals and how that really helps us understand that we're all relatives.
That we're all relatives with the plants and the animals or rivers in the forest and the mountains. And so this helps change our worldview to really dig deep into our origin stories as a species. And I think this is something we're really missing and can help be part of the journey going forward.
Megan: Definitely. Yeah, I really resonate with everything you said and I really appreciated that throughout the book you're pulling through your own personal journey and the ways that you have sort of unwinded the origins like you just referred to, but also I really appreciated hearing about your own exploration of your pre patriarchal ancestors and how you brought back, you know, you shared the example of how People would bury the egg at planting time and these reciprocal relationships.
And I'd love to hear a little bit more about your own personal journey to this work. How did you come to write a book about our worldviews and climate justice? And what are some of the major steps that have led you to this moment?
Osprey: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think like a lot of us, um, you know, we're very concerned at the highest level of alert about the future of our planet and our children and current generations to me, people are suffering now from so much harms from the climate crisis and environmental degradation on top of environmental races on top of racism overall, a top of colonization.
Top of gender inequality, and so that's what really led me to write the book to kind of map out, you know, the learnings I've had, which are also based on my work at the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, you know, from having, you know, seeing so many of the women leaders in our network. You know, go through incredible hardships, whether that's, you know, fossil fuel pipelines going through their territories and destroying water and rice beds to deforestation in the Amazon and huge oil explosions that destroy the land, you know, it goes on and on. And so, you know, this is a time of reckoning, a time of reparations. And so, you know, to just talk maybe a little bit about some practical things that we're doing at WeCan that are also shared in the book, I think it would be good to maybe, you know, ground some of these ideas into a practical application.
So just to share one example, um, we have this really a wonderful project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we've been working with over a thousand women now, uh, with our coordinator, a wonderful woman named Nima Namadamu, who's Congolese. And we're working in the Atome Rainforest where the land there has been completely decimated through slash and burn techniques of land management, which are just awful.
I mean, it destroys everything. There's like no green on this land. It's just destroyed. And, um, for over eight years now, we've been reforesting and it's all women led. 25 percent of the trees are for human use and 75 percent of the trees are to rewild and bring back. The forest and it's just been so exciting because now, you know, eight years in, we've grown enough trees where we're able to protect 1. 6 million acres of old growth forest. Um, which is very important to biodiversity, to climate mitigation. And, um, you know, slowly, but surely we, you know, we're not totally there, but we're getting the local communities and the indigenous communities. off of the old growth forest and just using the trees that we've grown.
And then the 75 percent of the trees, as I say, are rewilding. And what's been amazing and more, more quickly than the scientists who are working with or foresters were working with thought is because the trees that we're growing are bringing back so much moisture. And calling in the rain and creating a different biome that now there's all these wild nurseries popping up, you know, we have all of our nurseries, but now nature's receding herself rather quickly.
And so it's very exciting to see, you know, if we move towards nature, how much nature will reciprocate and regenerate herself. And it's been really thrilling. Some listeners might know that the DR Congo is one of the most violent places in the world for women to live because of conflict, again, over resource extraction and our extractive economy, you know, it's all intertwined, which leads further to gender inequality and violence against women.
But because of this reforestation work, the women are able to not travel off into the woods to get Uh, daily needs and they're just, you know, being able to use the trees near their homes. So it's cutting back on violence. It's empowering the women in their communities because they're leading this project and it's helping change the social structure.
And I mention all this because I think it's so important that we think holistically about how we become a life enhancing species. How, how do we change our destructive patterns and look at these projects and look in a very practical way about our daily actions and how we run programs if we're involved in organizations to generate this idea of being life enhancing instead of life destructive and looking at things very holistically and intersectionally I think is really a big part of it.
Megan: Yeah, I remember that from the book and I really appreciate how in so many of these projects, or if not all, there's so many of these layered effects. It's not just like one tree is planted, it's, it has a whole ripple effect on the, you know, region and, and community. And I think that's usually when we know we've done a good thing is that it has these multiple multiplying effects.
And I'm curious what you kind of look for as you and your organization discerns which projects to take on or to support. Are there elements of, um, if a community comes with an idea, there are elements that you look for that you found to be particularly useful. If, if people come and say, we, we need this, and this is what we're thinking to do.
I'm just curious if you've seen recurring themes in that regard.
Osprey: Well, I think, you know, sadly, one of the recurring themes is around, you know, uh, especially like with indigenous people, we work with a lot of indigenous peoples, a lot of women is, you know, that their basic rights are not being recognized.
So, uh, there is the framework of the, uh, Uh, Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that all governments agreed to, and it's violated all the time. And like these Indigenous rights have within them something called free, prior, and informed consent, which is Indigenous people have the right to not have their territories intruded upon without first having a consultation, and then very importantly, consent.
And many times when we see mining projects or any kind of extractive projects, whether it's fossil fuels, mining for minerals, or, you know, gaining water access. Indigenous peoples will say, we do not give consent, and that is ignored by governments, by corporations. by financial institutions. And so this is a very difficult time because as more and more resources are needed, the areas that need protection are, you know, being attacked more and more.
And I would also say that I think it's really important to recognize that 80% 80 percent of all biodiversity left on the earth, 80 percent is stewarded by indigenous peoples. They're only 4 percent of the world's populations, but because, again, of their worldview, their respect for living in nature in harmony, traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous peoples, 80 percent of our forests, our waters, you know, the biodiversity of plants and animals.
is stewarded by Indigenous Peoples on their territories or lands they're stewarding. And so, this is really important for all of us to slow down and realize how much we need to learn about Indigenous Peoples. Realize that many of us are living on stolen lands. Whose lands are we on? How can we support Indigenous Peoples wherever we live?
There are calls to action, there are calls to land back, uh, there are calls for, uh, Funding and really uplift indigenous leadership at this point. It's a really key component along with women's leadership that can actually move the dial in a very transformative way. So I would really encourage people to learn more about that, but I, I think that, yeah, it's really important when we're looking at projects, you are looking for patterns.
It's often, again, that we're flooding these interlocking systems of oppression, and so this is why we're putting forward, what is the agenda of indigenous people? What is the agenda? of Black women leaders? What's the agenda of women leaders in their local communities and what they're wanting? And how can we put forward, as an example, um, gender responsive climate policies?
How can we implement those in a project to make sure that they're gender responsive, that they're responsive to race, that they're responsive to Indigenous rights? These are the kinds of things that we're looking for in projects because, uh, this is what's needed to ensure that we lift all boats as we transition off of fossil fuels and into a clean energy, uh, uh, economy and a clean energy, uh, society.
How do we actually do that? And how do we ensure that it is just? How do we ensure that it is truly good for the environment? And I mentioned this because there's so many what we call false solutions out there that just push business as usual, and how, you know, we're looking at this big push to have renewable energy is what we need to do because of the climate crisis.
How are we going to do that differently? Because if we don't, we're just going to take the same steps. Um, and it will be on fossil fuels of coal, oil and gas, but it now will be on, you know, transition minerals, and that can hurt indigenous and frontline communities as much with all the toxins or destruction of extraction.
And so I think we really, this is why we need to kind of slow down and look at these worldviews and our systems of oppression. Because, you know, if I could wave a magical wand tomorrow and end the climate crisis, we would still be extracting and over consuming. And it wouldn't really just stop the destruction.
So this is why we have to systemic analysis and do a deep personal dive as well as have external actions because the solutions have to be based on a deep analysis that can actually transform society, and that's the moment we're in and how we like to approach our projects.
Megan: Yeah, that makes so much sense.
I'd love to hear a little bit more just explicitly about how or why you, why you find it so important and valuable to center women in this work and why that's maybe different from other generalized, you know, approaches or organizations. Could you talk about that?
Osprey: Sure. Um, you know, when I first started the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, I didn't know I was going to focus on the nexus of women in the environment or women in climate.
But when I started doing research, um, and finding out like, how do I want to get into this climate conversation and take action, I was just reading study after study that shows that you actually can't get to sustainability without women's leadership. And it's something that's sort of an untold story. Um, when we started the organization a decade ago, it wasn't really on the screen.
Now it's talked about a lot more, like even at the UN climate talks, In the Paris Agreement, we can talk about gender responsive climate policy. That wasn't a thing before, you know, but it's because of women leaders all over the world before who came before me, you know, who are working alongside of me and those who will come that are pushing this agenda.
Because, um, due to gender inequality, women are impacted first and worst by the climate crisis. Because they don't have the same economic means, mobility, voice. Um, and so when climate impacts come, they're harmed the most. Um, and I would have to add also a racial lens. So women of color are more. And at the same time, again, one of the untold stories is that women are key to solutions.
So I'll just give a few examples so it's not vague. You know, I was asked to do a presentation at the scenarios forum, which is a researchers forum that feeds the IPCC reports that the government's pull from during the UN climate talks and base their negotiations on and I learned of a study that shares that with just a one unit increase in something called the women's So the women's political empowerment index, which is an index that shows in every country, you know, are women involved in society?
Are they paid equally? Are they in politics? So the women's political empowerment index with just a one unit increase, it leads to an 11. 51 percent decrease in carbon emissions, which is huge. It's hard to find something that does anything over 10%. in terms of moving the dial. And again, lessening the climate crisis is not all based on carbon emission reductions, but it's certainly a really big indicator that empowering women makes a big difference.
And so, um, people are welcome to go to our website at www. wecan. org. WCA and international spelled out fully dot org. And we have, you know, pages of stats on why women. And so I don't want to go on and on, but I'll just cite one more, um, that, you know, um, between 40 and 80 percent of all household food production is And developing countries is done by women.
So we're talking about food security and food sovereignty, which is key to mitigating the climate crisis and adapting to the climate crisis. Women are leading the way. It's also true on protecting water to the highest levels of government, as I mentioned with the study on the Women's Political Empowerment Index.
And we can also look at an example we all just lived through during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic. It was shown over and over again that countries that were led by women did far better with their populations than led by men navigating that crisis. And so the role of women is gigantic around environmental policy, around the care economy.
And so many different factors. And I would just say also, it's not about putting men down. It's about lifting women up. It's like, when you see a bird flying powerfully in the sky, it has two wings for reason, not just one wing. And so we, we really need. To bring back egalitarian leadership and fully express ourselves as humanity and also, uh, to say, you know that we don't need to think just in terms of binaries of female male leadership, but also across the gender spectrum that we need to get out of this patriarchal view, which has been so detrimental to men and women and this idea that that has created so many imbalances and so much violence and harms.
Um, so we, we really need to center women at this point, as well as indigenous peoples and black and brown leadership. This is what we have to do to balance the systems we're in.
Megan: Yeah. Thank you. Those story, those, um, examples you shared are incredible, and I hope that that continues more and more to shift.
And I guess I'm curious what. Patterns you're noticing in the sort of climate justice movement overall, if we could even call it, you know, one cohesive thing, but for those of us, not super tuned into the ins and outs of what's going on right now, what, uh, sort of trends are there, where's their movement happening.
Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening, maybe in the upper levels of these, you know, places you're going and what you're seeing in terms of studies and how the movement is, is right now.
Osprey: Well, it like you said, the climate justice movement is quite broad and quite diverse, which is great. I mean, we want to bring in everybody.
I mean, it needs to involve labor and women and LGBTQ community and, you know, industry. I mean, every facet of society needs to be involved in the climate justice movement. So maybe I'll just highlight a few things that, you know, we're, we're really following and interested. I mean, I think one, it's really important to understand there is no climate justice without human rights.
And that means what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in Sudan, what is happening in the DR Congo. We cannot separate out climate justice from human rights. Because there is no climate justice, unless humans have rights within that context. So that's a big thing, you know, as we look at these wars and genocides and what is going on around the world right now.
Um, another key component is, um, two, two policy pieces that I think are really important, in addition to ones I've already mentioned. Around gender and indigenous rights, which I think are really, really key. Um, we sit on the executive committee of something called, uh, the global alliance for rights of nature.
And I think it's a really powerful movement and different framework we can look at. So, um, right now, most of our environmental laws are viewing. Nature as property again, this hierarchy and supremacy thing that we have supremacy over nature. So this feeds into our legal frameworks. When we look at the environment that, you know, nature is here to serve us and we're to take and take and take, which clearly isn't working.
We don't have a reciprocal relationship with nature. And so rights of nature really turns our current legal frameworks inside out and says, No, we don't have dominion over nature. Nature is a right sparing entity that the river, the forests. Have a right to thrive and be, um, be respected just as humans have rights that they can grow and thrive and have a healthy life cycle.
And, um, even the U. N. Secretary General last year said that Earth jurisprudence and rights of nature as a part of that is the fastest growing environmental movements in the world. Uh, so right now, Uh, Rights of Nature is operating in 39 countries. Ecuador became the first country in the world to put Rights of Nature into their constitution in 2008.
Um, and since then, you know, the movement has just really exploded. And it has protected entire river ecosystems, um, kept fracking out of communities. And so it's working at the local level to the, National level. It's we're a long ways a long ways from it being at the level where it could really change how we're affecting the planetary boundaries, but it's very exciting.
It has the right framework to include humans to include the environment and to put nature and Mother Earth at the center of the conversation. So it's very exciting. Um, what is going on with that work? Uh, I'll just mention one story that really moved me. Uh, we've done a lot of rights of nature work in parallel to the UN climate talks and doing tribunals and all kinds of things.
And I mentioned a lot of these things in the book, but, um, one of the experiences I had I was able to go to New Zealand some years ago on fact finding mission. And there, um, they have a interesting, you know, implementation of the rights of nature framework, which is seeing, um, rivers. Or a forest having personhood.
And then being given equal rights as a person, and, uh, the indigenous people, um, the Maori people of, um, New Zealand, uh, see, you know, um, the rivers and the mountains as their ancestors. And in this particular case, um, the Whanganui River with the Whanganui tribe. After many years, over a hundred years of fighting to protect the Whanganui River, we're able to make a settlement with the New Zealand government to have, uh, legally, the Whanganui River have personhood.
And so you can't harm the river, just like you couldn't hurt a human being. And I was able to go there and meet the Whanganui River. And was introduced to the Whanganui River by some Maori elders. And, uh, this one woman took myself and some other colleagues to the river as she sang this beautiful song to the river.
And at the end she took my hand and she said, We have a saying here. I am the river and the river is me. I am the river and the river is me. Like literally remembering that it's not just in concept or a metaphor. Like. This river is our ancestor. Our living ancestor. Our bodies are made of water. The highest percentage of our bodily makeup is water.
And remembering the waters. Are us and our ancestors and our life. And it was just such a beautiful moment to kind of connect us to all the waters of the world and to be in that feeling of our animate living cosmology and how that changes us when we put our bodies into that remembrance. Um, and I love rights of nature because it's a legal framework, but it also has cultural implications, spiritual implications that are so important to us right now.
So that's, you know, something within the climate justice framework that I think is a really important initiative that's growing. And then I'll mention one other. Which is, um, we're on the steering committee of something called the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty. And this is a very powerful initiative.
Uh, 13 countries have signed on to date. And though we have the Paris Climate Agreement, which most people are familiar with, which is very important. It's an agreement that all countries agreed to in 2015. And it has very important markers like the 1. 5 degree guardrail. But it doesn't really deal with the supply end very much. And so what the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty does is it's a framework, a mechanism, an instrument for governments to agree on how we're actually going to phase out fossil fuels, which is the main source of the climate crisis. We have to really get away from business as usual, which is just carbon emission reduction discussions, which are very important.
We also must talk about stopping fossil fuels. And so it's very exciting. And I'll just say that at the end of last year, during COP 28, when we were in Dubai. It was very thrilling because the country of Columbia, which is a fossil fuel producing country, endorsed the treaty, along with the initiators of it, which were the first endorsers, um, who are from island nations, you know, who usually are the most progressive because they have, you know, sea level rise threatening their very existence.
So that's another initiative I'm really excited about that was, uh, that is chaired by Zipporah Berman. Uh, who's an amazing woman leader that, you know, we're really honored to work with.
Megan: Thank you. I really appreciate that insight into the larger happenings of that movement, this movement. I don't have a great segue for this, but one thing I wanted to be sure to ask you about was this idea that humans could actually be or are a keystone species, which kind of blew my mind. I've never thought of it that way. And I'd love to hear your thoughts about how that's true, where you have seen that be true, what it could be like. And it feels like an idea that has real potential to, at least for me, sort of helped me rethink how we relate to the earth and what's possible.
Osprey: Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier around viewing ourselves as life enhancing. How do we understand that we need to be in a reciprocal relationship with the land and the earth and all other beings? And so the idea of the keystone species is that we're actually critical to The ecosystems we live within and I think a really important scholar to, to learn more about this is, um, a wonderful woman, uh, Indigenous Navajo woman, Lila June Johnson, who wrote her PhD thesis on this topic and it's called Architecture of Abundance and it talks about, um, Indigenous peoples and, you know, so as an example, I'm here in the United States and when settlers first came here, people thought that the land was wild.
And it's not. Every inch and corner was stewarded and tended to by indigenous peoples, but because they did such a great job of it and understood their place in the ecosystem, everything was enriched. So as an example, here in California, there were prescribed burns. It was part of traditional ecological knowledge that you don't let the tinder under the forests build up because some of the fires come through it really does destroy the forest ecosystem because it's too hot of a fire, and they would have prescribed burns to lower that tinder and the fires come through and are actually a pretty Healthy part of the ecosystem, but done in a balanced way and then opening up other areas so that, you know, different species could come and feed and and how the force also helps certain plants grow.
And so all of this was learning about nature and how to live in synchronicity in a complimentary fashion. With the world around us and not in this dominant view of just using what's here and so I think there's many, many examples from particularly indigenous peoples all over the world about how do we enter the web of life as a enhancers and building relationship with our relatives, the relatives, the plants, the animals, the waters that we're part of this family of life in relationship.
It's a very different concept than how we view nature now or how we get our food or how we live. And I think that worldview shift is tremendous. And the people think of it mostly spiritually and personally, I would also suggest it's also a political change that we have to go through.
Megan: Thank you. I love your description of that.
Yes, I feel all of that. I think one other thing I'd love to ask you about is your sense, this is more a sort of a spiritual or metaphysical question. We've talked a lot about humans being in reciprocal relationship. Yes. relationship with the earth as our kin, as our relatives. And I'm curious, you know, if, if the earth is sort of speaking to us in its own way, what's your sense of what the earth is trying to communicate to us today, or, or even to you personally, if that feels more accessible?
Osprey: Well, I think she's speaking very loud and droughts and floods and heat waves. In species extinction, I think Mother Earth is letting us know very clearly how far out of balance we are. And, um, as I've learned from, you know, some of the Indigenous women I'm so honored to mentor with and learn from, it's what they call the time of purification, where Mother Earth is balancing herself.
You know, she's not trying to harm us, but she's got to balance. Her natural systems and it's the big wake up call, you know, are we going to listen to this time where we need to really evolve and become a much more mature species move out of these systems of oppression that we talked about earlier and learn a very different way of living with one another in the earth, and we can do it.
We've done it in the past and we can do it now in a regenerated reformulated way. We need to metabolize a lot of the grief. metabolize a lot of the harmful things we've done. I have a whole chapter on composting, colonization, and capitalism, and all these isms. And we must do this work. Life is making it very clear that we're not going to be here.
You know, there's no nice way of putting it. We're not going to be here unless we can transform. And I have every hope that we can, but we need to do it now. And we need to go on this journey collectively and support each other in it, but Mother Earth's making it very clear in her language that we've crossed the line and we need to come back into these proper protocols of our relationship with nature and our codes of conduct with each other.
Megan: Thank you for bringing in the clarity and the sharpness of what this moment is. Is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you want to make sure to mention or that we haven't woven in from your book? Um, anything you want to add?
Osprey: I really appreciate all that you asked. I think we've covered a lot.
I think I would just say, you know, really encourage people to Roll up your sleeves and get engaged. If you're not, um, hope is a verb with it. Sleeved roll up. So if we roll up our sleeves, we can generate hope and get engaged. And wherever you feel passionate about, that's the place to enter. We don't all need to be doing the same things, but we can all do something.
And it's very healing for us to do that. And also it's how we can get through this little keyhole that we have the opportunity to get from where we are now to, you know, the world that we imagine we want for ourselves and future generations. And it's going to take a lot of work. You know, our democracy is at stake here in the United States of America.
There's conflicts all over the world. We we're facing a lot, but it's so good to be in community, be with others, uh, be in groups that can help us move together. But we can all do something and just really encouraging people to do that.
Megan: Well, I will put your website and WECAN International's website in the show notes.
And is there anywhere else where people can find you that you'd like to mention?
Osprey: Yeah, if people just look up my name, Osprey, Orielle Lake, They'll see a website that's dedicated to my book and a lot of interviews there. And, um, just want to encourage people to read the book and be in discussion with it. I wrote the book to really be an open conversation about all the things we've talked about.
And I think it's really important that we have. You know, these, you know, ways of having public discourse and that's mainly why I wrote the book is it's not like the all out answer, but it's to generate all the kinds of things that we've discussed today.
Megan: Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing so much of your insights and experiences with us today.
I really appreciate it.
Osprey: Thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
Megan: Okay, my friend. I hope you really enjoyed that conversation I encourage you to check out Osprey's book and learn more about her organization. We can they're doing a lot of essential life giving work around the world Thank you again to those of you who are supporting the show Financially if you get meaning out of the show and have the means to to help support Pitch in either once or monthly.
It means so much to me. And you could do that at buymeacoffee. com slash Megan Leatherman. This is the end of the summer season of the show. The fall season will most likely come out starting the last week of September. That's my intention, but I will be sure to share an update on Instagram and in my email newsletter as it gets closer.
So, you know, when to look out for the beginning of the next season. season. The theme for the fall season is a juicy one. It's about decline and how we can start to become more comfortable and maybe even appreciative of decline as a necessary part of the cycle. And I'm really looking forward to exploring that theme and moving through the fall season with you all.
So I hope you take such good care and enjoy the remainder of your summer season. And I will see you on the other side.