Earth Awareness: Mapping an Emergent Relational Field
A 2025 review of key actors, opportunities, and challenges within the emerging field of “Earth Awareness,” which connects inner transformation and relational ways of knowing to collective ecological action.
Fritjof Capra Writings
Capra’s dozens of books, including his best known, The Tao of Physics explore and connect ecology, systems thinking, and worldview shifts.
Jeremy Lent Writings
Argues for a shift toward a more interconnected, life-centered understanding of humanity’s relationship with the Earth. His work integrates systems thinking, philosophy, and ecology to highlight pathways toward regenerative, sustainable, and meaning-centered futures.
Monica Gagliano Writings
Explores how plants exhibit forms of intelligence, learning, and communication, challenging conventional scientific boundaries while integrating ecological science with Indigenous knowledge and more relational, ethical ways of understanding the living world.
Bioregioning for Systems Change
Highlights emerging insights at the intersection of systems change and investing from Twist, A global collective of investors, practitioners and facilitators, who are actively seeking to contribute to positive systems change.
How to build community resilience in the face of abrupt economic decline
A community can build resilience to abrupt economic decline by proactively shifting from dependence on a single economic driver toward localized, diversified, and participatory systems that strengthen social cohesion, self-reliance, and long-term sustainability.
New Economic Thinking and Climate Change
A 2010 report by McKinsey & Co. and Garrison Institute report examining the dimensions of economics, behavioral science, neuroscience and social dynamics needed for effective climate strategy.
Bill McKibbon Writings
Argues for rapid transition to renewable energy, systemic economic and political change, and large-scale grassroots mobilization to protect a livable planet.
Climate, Cities and Behavior Symposium Synthesis Report
This 2013 report from the Garrison Institute explores how effective climate action requires integrating diverse approaches, from individual mindset shifts to community engagement and systemic change, while embracing cultural and ecological diversity, leveraging social networks, and fostering positive, shared visions of a resilient, low-carbon future.
Daniel Christian Wahl Writings
Building true resilience requires a shift from extractive, growth-oriented systems to place-based, regenerative cultures that align human activity with ecological systems through diversity, local adaptation, and collaborative, systems-level thinking. In particular, The Three Horizons of innovation and culture change framework explains how organizations manage transformation by simultaneously improving current operations (Horizon 1), scaling emerging innovations (Horizon 2), and exploring future disruptive ideas (Horizon 3).
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
An essay by Donella Meadows that outlines a framework for systems change, arguing that while small interventions can produce significant effects in complex systems, the greatest leverage comes from shifting underlying goals, paradigms, and ultimately the capacity to transcend them.
The NYS Climate Smart Communities Framework
A strong state-level local climate action rubric both transparent and leverageable that includes interagency support, as well as integration of mitigation + adaptation planning into a single actionable roadmap.
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for climate change mitigation
Offers global policy guidance linking NbS to climate adaptation, biodiversity, and sustainable development.
IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions (NbS)
A widely recognized framework, defining what counts as NbS and providing criteria for design, equity, and effectiveness.
Bayo Akomolafe Writings
Challenging conventional resilience narratives, emphasizing uncertainty, relationality, and transformation.
Richard Flyer Writings
Describes the process of rebuilding resilient, human-scale communities by fostering neighbor-to-neighbor networks of mutual care and shared responsibility grounded in lived values of love and trust rather than reliance on centralized systems.