March

"Achieving transformative change requires that the fundamental drivers of overconsumption are addressed, through changes in personal values, norms, economic and social operating rules, technologies and regulations. Given the interconnected nature of climate change, loss of biodiversity, land degradation, and air and water pollution, it is essential that these problems are tackled together urgently." (p. 107) United Nations Environment Programme (2021). Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies.

February

"The report serves to translate the current state of scientific knowledge into crisp, clear and digestible facts-based messages that the world can relate to and follow up on. It first provides an Earth diagnosis of current and projected human-induced environmental change, by putting facts and interlinkages in perspective, including by using smart infographics. In building on this diagnosis, the report identifies the shifts needed to close gaps between current actions and those needed to achieve sustainable development. The analysis is anchored in current economic, social and ecological reality and framed by economics and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. By synthesizing the latest scientific findings from the global environmental assessments, the report communicates the current status of the world’s urgent issues and opportunities to solve them." United Nations Environment Programme (2021). Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

August

"The stories illustrate that biodiversity, climate and inequality are inseparable agendas. (...) The biodiversity community needs to move beyond the technocratic approaches that currently dominate ways of thinking about the future (...). This means that researchers have to acknowledge that imagining the future, whether in a model or a story, is political" Wyborn, C., Davila, F., Pereira, L. et al. Imagining transformative biodiversity futures. Nature Sustainability, number 8, volume 3. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

May

“Growing our connections to nature will allow us to push past mere intellect to embrace sensory experiences, emotions, intuition. (…) For the first time, a large body of research is illuminating the fact that our world arises from a sprawling, highly dynamic set of rhythms and relationships. (…) An especially intriguing aspect of this scientific shift – of this effort to break science out of the intellectual boxes we built for it – is the effort by some to merge traditional science with indigenous wisdom.” Gary Ferguson, 2019. Eight Master Lessons of Nature. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

May

“We are nature. When we stand firm on that undeniable fact, shedding the long-standing illusion that there’s nature “out there” and then there’s us “in here”, we’ll be able to see in a new light some of our most troubling, persistent problems. (…) It really is possible to mend our relationship to the world around us and, through that mending, release an intelligence millions of years in the making.” Gary Ferguson, 2019. Eight Master Lessons of Nature. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

April

“(…) it’s time to wake up the tissues of perception that have been there all along. We are nature. When we stand firm on that undeniable fact, shedding the long-standing illusion that there’s nature “out there” and then there’s us “in here”, we’ll be able to see in a new light some of our most troubling, persistent problems. (…) It really is possible to mend our relationship to the world around us and, through that mending, release an intelligence millions of years in the making.” Gary Ferguson, 2019. Eight Master Lessons of Nature. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

March

"Wherever you are now, however urban or interior your life, nature is still there for you - anchoring, inspiring, helping you become more of what it is you set out to be." Gary Ferguson, 2019. The Eight Master Lessons of Nature. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

December

"This guide will help you to decipher the vast quantities of information you can glean from your local environment and especially your garden. (...) It will address many everyday questions that in the future you'll be able to answer for yourself; and many phenomena will suddenly be easier to understand when you know the background." Peter Wohlleben (2019). The Weather Detective: Rediscovering Nature's Secret Signs. Penguin. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Improve

 

 "(...) any knowledge we have is dependent on the technology, circumstances, situations, and actions from which it was constructed. (...) knowing, doing, feeling, and making sense are inseparable. Pragmatism is a practical, consequential philosophy, a practice that is concerned with imagining and enriching as much as understanding. The test it sets itself is to improve things."John McCarthy & Peter Wright, 2004. Technology as experience. London, MIT Press. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Painting with Nature

"(...) it was nature herself who created the shapes and patterns (...) without the need for pruning shears; branches feathered down or twisted towards the sun; some trees grew so bushy that they were green barriers, while others were as delicate as ornamental lattice-work against the sky. (...) It was like painting with trees. The different hues of leaves, Miller said, should be like 'Lights and Shades in Pictures', while Collison described the way in which Petre used a tree's foliage, its texture, bark, height and shape, as his 'living pencils'." Andrea Wulf, 2009. The Brother Gardeners. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

mother nature

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Nature

"Close your eyes, prick your ears, and from the softest sound to the wildest noise, from the simplest tone to the highest harmony, from the most violent, passionate scream to the gentlest words of sweet reason, it is Nature who speaks, revealing her being, her power, her life, and her relatedness so that a blind person, to whom the infinitely visible world is denied, can grasp an infinite vitality in what can be heard." J. Wolfgang von Goethe, cited by Andrea Wulf (2016), The Invention of Nature: the adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the lost hero of science. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)