In alignment with the Elemental Impact (Ei) tagline, Regeneration in ACTION, the Ei Regenerative Working Group (RWG) Executive Team crafted a Nature Prevails Action Plan.
The September 2020 Regeneration in ACTION (RiA) Magazine article, Nature Prevails: a new Ei Platform, announces the new platform to complement the Soil Health and Water Use | Toxicity platforms. Within the Nature Prevails premise, the Earth heals herself and nurtures renewed life forms, no matter the calamity caused by humans, natural disasters, or extraterrestrial activities.
Tree grows through a wall in Old San Juan,
Photo credit: Holly Elmore Images
During the 2020 COVID-19 global-pandemic quarantines, citizens witnessed an immediate impact of reduced human activity via clearer skies, orchestras of bird songs, and the roaming of wild animals in urban and rural parks. The experiences were a glimpse of how quickly the natural world resumes when human activity subsides.
In addition, the article states Nature Prevails is in partnership with the RWG and defines the Principles of Nature.
Regenerative Working Group
Global thought leaders supporting complete and equitable communities.
A first task was designation of a powerful RWG Executive Team. Focused on guiding the RWG's segue from a vision into a viable initiative, the team commits to making a difference in global arenas. The RWG Executive Team consists of the following individuals:
Holly Elmore, RWG Chair (Ei Founder)
The opening slide in the RWG intro PPT
photo credit: Holly Elmore Images- Bernadette Austin, RWG Focus Area Lead (Acting Director of the Center for Regional Change at the University of California at Davis)
- Brad Bass, RWG Advisor & Industry Expert (30-year veteran at Environment and Climate Change Canada as well as a Status Professor at the University of Toronto (UT))
- Ronald Thomas, FAICP, RWG Adviser & Industry Expert (Ron Thomas & Co. President)
- Tim Trefzer, RWG Adviser & Industry Expert | Ei Regeneration in ACTION Chair (Georgia World Congress Center Authority Director of Sustainability)
With the Executive Team in place, the next task was crafting the RWG Vision and defining the Focus Areas and Commitment as follows:
RWG Vision: to explore challenges related to stated focus areas from a holistic approach where the community, environment, and local economies benefit from commentary, discussions, and proposed projects.
The RWG seeks to be a thought leader in supporting complete and equitable communities.
Focus Areas:
Infrastructure – explores the built environment including a city’s water & sewer systems, water-treatment plants, public utilities, as well as corporate, government, and educational districts | campuses. Additionally, focus is on the availability of and access to affordable housing within a community.
The FA slide in the RWG intro PPT photo credit: Holly Elmore Images - Environmental Resources – explores the impact of existing and proposed projects and infrastructure within urban and rural communities on energy sources, soil health, local greenways, open spaces, waterways, and resident access.
- Social Equity – explores ways to promote complete communities that include equitable access to housing, transportation and transit, education, employment, human services such as healthcare and safety, and other amenities such as parks. Complete communities balance land uses focused on people, (such as commercial- and residential-land uses), with natural- and working-land uses such as open space, waterways, farms, and ranches.
Commitment: the RWG is committed to action, whether in the form of drafting educational documentation (articles, white papers, website copy), global webinars, and/or projects designed for community impact. RWG members must actively participate.
Within each Focus Area, the team identified a series of Topics designed for member engagement within the commitment to action. Many of the Topics overlap within several Focus Areas. For example, affordable housing relates to the Infrastructure and Social Equity Focus Areas. The Topics are detailed on the respective linked Focus Area pages listed above.
Biosolid Management Systems, Broadband Communication Access, and Soil Erosion are the first Topics earmarked for member engagement.
Principles of Nature
With a commitment to align work with Nature, Ei defined The Principles of Nature with three broad categories:
- Diversity
- Dynamic Balance & Nutrition Systems
- Necessity of Cover & Ability to Roam
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| Fallen trees provide cover and nutrition for insects & small animals. Photo credit: Holly Elmore Images |
Ei Advisory Council member Simon Lamb's groundbreaking book Junglenomics published in late 2019 presents Nature's clear blueprint for reorganizing the current economic domain; the blueprint's intentions are to protect and benignly coexist with natural environments, halt species decline, and benefit the poorest. The result of 25 years of research and insight, Junglenomics provides a new vision for a future world rescued from decline, gained through an understanding of the profound forces at work in modern economies.
The RWG team classified each Focus Area Topic with one or more of the Principles of Nature. For example, Affordable Housing relates to Necessity of Cover and Broadband Communication aligns with Ability to Roam.
Action Plan - Step #1
In the three-step Nature Prevails Action Plan, the Step #1 is: apply the Principles of Nature to natural ecosystems. Research is underway in the following categories:
- Address the role of keystone species (predator, prey, habitat engineers, etc.) in natural ecosystems.
- Identify examples of disrupted natural systems caused by population eradication.
By the mid 1900's wolves were eradicated from Yellowstone National Park. With the loss of a keystone predator, the natural ecosystem was disrupted and unbalanced. In 1995, the wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone and the ecosystem began the restoration process.
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| Giant pile of buffalo skulls Photo compliments of businessinsider.com |
Future articles will correlate how the eradication and eventual return of keystone species demonstrate the Principles of Nature within natural ecosystems. Wolves and buffalo are keystone species. Ei research intern Jahin Kahn is dedicated to the underlying necessary research.
Action Plan - Step #2
Once Step 1 is complete, the RWG team shifts focus to Step 2: apply the Principles of Nature to human-created systems. As previously mentioned, the RWF Focus Area Topics were correlated to one or more of the principles.
Research will substantiate the necessity for human-created systems to align with the Principles of Nature to survive and thrive.
Economic Markets
GNP measures the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced by the country’s factors of production irrespective of their location. Only the finished or final goods are considered as factoring intermediate goods used for manufacturing would amount to double counting. It includes taxes but does not include subsidies.
In Enric's perspective, the GNP is one of the worst indicators of human prosperity for three reasons:
- It does not factor in the destruction of the natural world and externalizes devastating consequences in favor of manufacturing capabilities.
- It assumes that the only value of a society is what can be measured as part of an official, organized market.
- It does not measure well-being and happiness.
Simon's and Enric's referenced books are excellent research-starting points for correlating the Principles to Nature to economic markets and beyond.
Societal Structure
Within Step #2, the RWG Team will explore the societal hierarchies within bee and ant colonies, wolf packs, elephant herds, bird flocks, and other eusocial colonies. Anticipated discovery: the workforce population is treated well, as long as the workers tend to their designated tasks.
A duet of worker honey bees
Photo credit: Holly Elmore Images
Next the team will compare societal-hierarchy principles explored to the treatment of the human workforce across civilization boundaries. Recommendations for human co-existence that emulates natural communities are forthcoming. Human and environmental health implications are integral within the research and analysis.
Action Plan - Step #3
Following completion of Step #2, the team embarks on Step #3: establish the importance of ecosystem foundations. As featured in her May 2020 Bigger than Us podcast interview, Ei Founder Holly Elmore is known for the following quote:
In order for life as we know it to survive and thrive on planet earth, we must - absolutely must - get our soil and water microbial communities back to a healthy, balanced state.
Building from the eusocial-colonies research in Step #2, the Step #3 goal is to establish the importance of ecosystem foundations and how they align with the Principles of Nature. Research begins with the importance of balanced, healthy water and soil microbial communities and extends to the base species within the prey hierarchies; insects often establish the foundation of prey hierarchies.
Research on the implications of the insect apocalypse underway is integral to Step #3. Intangible pollution, including light and noise pollution, impact the entire natural ecosystem spectrum. Yet the insect species are often more dramatically impacted. Indirect impact from destroyed insect populations flows through the entire prey hierarchy to the keystone prey species.
A fish who succumbed to red tide provides a feast for
for the flies; initial steps in regenerating
the prey hierarchy begins
Photo credit: Holly Elmore Images
The importance of base species in prey hierarchies correlates to balanced microbial communities as well as worker populations in eusocial colonies and human civilizations. Overall community health and strength is dependent upon the effectiveness of worker populations. Thus, those at the hierarchy top tier are incentivized to care for worker populations, whether insects, animals, or humans.
With an established plan, the RWG Team is staged for action mode. Stay tuned!
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