Front Range Eco-Social Solutions: A Bioneers Network Event has ended

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Front Range Eco-Social Solutions: A Bioneers Network Event

Online pre-registration ends January 31 at 5pm. On-site registration is available in the SEEC lobby starting at 8:30am on Friday and Saturday. For event info, visit: http://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/bioneers/information

9:00am

National Bioneers Opening Remarks

Speakers

Kenny Ausubel

Bioneers

Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder (in 1990) of Bioneers, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, journalist, author and filmmaker. Co-founder and first CEO of the organic seed company, Seeds of Change, his film (and companion book) Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime helped influence... Read More →

Friday February 3, 2017 9:00am - 9:18am
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

9:18am

The Ultimate Symbiosis: Biomimicry as a Cooperative Inquiry (25 min)

Our species is finally turning toward other species for their embodied wisdom, borrowing these insights to solve challenges such as delivering nutrition in a way that nourishes both planet and people. Biomimicry author and visionary Janine Benyus will show how nature-inspired breakthroughs in agriculture are evolving from plant-focused “silver bullets” to system-savvy healing. She’ll give us a sneak preview of the amazing entries in the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge in food systems. She’ll explore how the “democratization of invention” is growing more biomimetic—as teams turn to nature together, in massive parallel, to discover a multitude of wild ideas that work together as a system. Cooperation, naturally enough, is the best way to learn from Life’s genius!

Speakers

Janine Benyus

The Biomimicry Institute

Janine Benyus is a biologist, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including the seminal Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Since the book's 1997 release, Janine, founder of The Biomimicry Institute, a nonprofit promoting education, and Biomimicry 3.8, the world's... Read More →

Friday February 3, 2017 9:18am - 9:43am
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

9:44am

The Least Deadly Catch: Ocean Farming in the Climate Change Era (26 min)

Bren Smith, founder of GreenWave and winner of the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge award, tells his personal story of ecological redemption. He dropped out of high school and became a commercial fisherman at age 14, but witnessed the destruction of the ocean firsthand. In a quest for a better way, he pioneered a revolutionary new model of harvesting bounty from the seas. He will describe his innovative, practical design and future vision for “restorative 3-D ocean farming.” It restores ecosystems, mitigates climate change, creates jobs in a blue-green economy, and ensures healthy, secure local food for communities.

Speakers

Bren Smith

Owner of Thimble Island Ocean Farm and Executive Director of GreenWave

Bren Smith, owner of Thimble Island Ocean Farm and Executive Director of GreenWave, a lifelong commercial fisherman since age 14, has pioneered "restorative 3D ocean farming" to restore ecosystems, mitigate climate change, create blue-green jobs for fishermen, and ensure healthy food... Read More →

Friday February 3, 2017 9:44am - 10:10am
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

10:11am

Optimizing the Energy Transition (22 min)

The great energy transition is underway. Renewable electricity build-out is outpacing dirty projects. Global greenhouse gas emissions have flatlined, but the transition isn’t happening fast enough to significantly arrest climate change. Danny Kennedy, founder of Sungevity and Managing Director of the California Clean Energy Fund, will draw from lessons learned over decades as an activist and entrepreneur on the frontlines of the global energy transition. He’ll illustrate his vision of how to achieve clean energy accessible to people of all classes, cultures and countries in a distributed, decentralized and democratized system.

Speakers

Danny Kennedy

California Clean Energy Fund, Sungevity, Powerhouse

Danny Kennedy runs the California Clean Energy Fund, a nonprofit connecting entrepreneurs to resources to build an abundant clean energy economy that benefits all. Kennedy co-founded Sungevity, the US' largest privately owned solar company, and Powerhouse, solar's premier incubator... Read More →

Friday February 3, 2017 10:11am - 10:33am
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

5:00pm

Climbing PoeTree Performance

Climbing PoeTree will perform two selections from their newly released record INTRINSIC

Speakers

Climbing PoeTree

Climbing PoeTree

Climbing PoeTree will perform two selections from their newly released record INTRINSIC

Friday February 3, 2017 5:00pm - 5:12pm
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

5:13pm

Youth Leadership (6 min)

Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) Fellow, Kian Martin, an Iranian-American non-binary trans femme from San José, sees climate activism as one piece of a much larger need for the liberation from and abolition of all oppressive systems.

Speakers

Kian Martin

Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) Fellow

Kian Martin, an Iranian-American non-binary trans femme from San José, CA, a freshman at UC Berkeley this year, and an Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) Fellow, is a young organizer around issues of racial justice, trans liberation, and climate justice who sees climate as one... Read More →

Friday February 3, 2017 5:13pm - 5:18pm
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

5:19pm

Deepening Indigenous Women's Networks: Embodiment, Healing and Resilience (18 min)

Legendary Mohawk midwife and environmental health researcher and advocate Katsi Cook will illuminate her dynamic new work strengthening Indigenous communities and addressing the cultural and physical safety and thriving lives of Indigenous girls and women. As Program Director of NoVo Foundation’s Indigenous Communities Leadership Program for Indigenous Girls and Women, she’s building bridges across communities and existing networks to increase synergy in the protection of Indigenous girls and women from multiple forms of violence and oppression. She’ll share preliminary results from a network-mapping analysis using a net-centered approach based in the understanding that “leadership is an emergent property of a network in balance.”

Speakers

Katsi Cook

NoVo Foundation

Katsi Cook (Mohawk from Akwesasne/Kahnawake Wolf Clan), currently a Program Director at the NoVo Foundation working to support the leadership of North American Indigenous girls and women, has long been a renowned visionary leader in the revitalization of Native American midwifery... Read More →

Friday February 3, 2017 5:19pm - 5:37pm
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

5:38pm

Creating An Equitable Environmental Movement (26 min)

Vien Truong, director of Green For All, has worked tirelessly to bring equity, social justice and climate justice to the frontlines of the environmental movement and public policy. She has been a central force in putting environmental justice at the center of California’s groundbreaking climate policy, legislation and cap-and-trade funding. Vien will share her wise perspectives on how to build a new clean-energy economy that brings prosperity and justice to low-income communities and communities of color.

Speakers

Vien Truong

Green For All

Vien Truong, Director of Green For All, a longstanding, highly effective environmental and social justice activist, helped lead a coalition to pass California's landmark SB 535 (de Leon) law, which reinvests hundreds of millions dollars in disadvantaged communities and offers a national... Read More →

Friday February 3, 2017 5:38pm - 6:05pm
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

9:00am

Occupy the Law: The Movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature (22 min)

As species collapse around the world while governments still authorize fossil fuel extraction and other destructive, unsustainable activities, communities across the U.S. are rising in resistance to “occupy the law.” They’re enacting “community bills of rights” that recognize a community’s legally enforceable right to sustainability and the rights of nature. Two of its most effective path-finding national and global leaders, Tom Linzey and Mari Margil of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, will show how this movement challenges our constitutional framework in which corporate rights and the preemptive authority of state and federal governments block sustainability, environmental protection and democracy.

Speakers

Thomas Linzey

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Thomas Linzey, award-winning Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which has provided free legal services to 500+ local governments and organizations, co-founded the Daniel Pennock Democracy School, which has graduated 6,000+ lawyers, activists, and... Read More →

Mari Margil

Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, leads the organization's global Rights of Nature work. In 2008, she assisted Ecuador's Constituent Assembly to draft Rights of Nature constitutional provisions, and works today in Nepal, India, Colombia... Read More →

Saturday February 4, 2017 9:00am - 9:22am
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

9:23am

What Are We Fighting For? (23 min)

“Revolution is on the horizon, and youth are rising with the oceans to lead the movements that will shape our future,” says Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, a 16-year-old Indigenous rapper and environmental activist (since age 6). Award-winning youth director of Earth Guardians, he travels globally to speak about environmental and Indigenous issues, including at the United Nations with Robert Redford. He’ll bring alive the unparalleled intergenerational movement emerging to save our planet.

Speakers

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez

Earth Guardians

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, a 15-year old Boulder, Colorado-based Indigenous environmental activist (since age 6!) and rapper, is the award-winning Youth Director of Earth Guardians, a rapidly growing organization of young activists, artists and musicians from across the globe committed... Read More →

Saturday February 4, 2017 9:23am - 9:46am
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

9:47am

What Winning the Climate Change Battle Looks Like (20 min)

The most influential climate activist of our era, Bill McKibben, a founder of the extraordinarily effective 350.org grassroots campaign, will describe the immense groundswell of global citizen engagement rising to challenge the “dirty” energy industry. Find out where we are scientifically and politically in the transformation to end our reliance on fossil fuels, while lighting the pathways toward a clean-energy future.

Speakers

Bill McKibben

Middlebury College, 350.org

Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, a 2014 recipient of the Right Livelihood Prize (aka the 'alternative Nobel') and the author of a dozen books about the environment... Read More →

Saturday February 4, 2017 9:47am - 10:07am
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

4:30pm

Maps, Magic and Medicine in the Rainforest (23 min)

Mark Plotkin, groundbreaking ethnobotanist and author of seminal books including Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, works closely with Indigenous peoples and local conservationists to protect isolated and uncontacted tribes in the northwest Amazon. As co-founder of the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) in 1995, he’ll depict ACT’s work partnering with over 30 South American tribes, including the Kogi, to map, manage and protect over 70 million acres of ancestral forests. He’ll describe collaborations with elder healers to develop and implement successful “Shamans and Apprentices” programs to transmit sacred healing information down through generations within the tribes themselves.

Speakers

Mark Plotkin

Amazon Conservation Team

Mark Plotkin, Ph.D., co-founder/President of the Amazon Conservation Team, author of such bestselling books as: Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice; Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets; and The Killers Within: The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria, is a renowned... Read More →

Saturday February 4, 2017 4:30pm - 4:53pm
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

4:54pm

The Role of Spiritual Practice in Social Justice Work (26 min)

Introduction by Fania Davis, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth

Speakers

Ericka Huggins

Merritt College

Ericka Huggins, a human rights activist, poet, innovative educator, and former internationally renowned political prisoner who helped lead the Black Panther Party for 14 years, is currently a professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Merritt College in Oakland, California... Read More →

Saturday February 4, 2017 4:54pm - 5:20pm
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

5:20pm

Youth Leadership (5 min)

This Brower Youth Award winner, arts activist and community organizer discusses his work helping build diverse coalitions in the spirit of “intersectional” justice to protect the highly threatened and crucially important Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem.

Speakers

Naelyn Pike

This extraordinary 16-year-old Chiricahua Apache activist from San Carlos, AZ, co-leads The Apache Stronghold group to defend her people’s sacred sites, tribal sovereignty, culture and language.

Saturday February 4, 2017 5:20pm - 5:25pm
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary

5:26pm

Creativity—the Antidote to Destruction (26 min)

Extraordinary award-winning poets, performance activists and cultural architects Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman of Climbing PoeTree explore the network of mutuality that binds our existence through the ricochet of oppression and the reciprocity of liberation. Their art is a tool for catalyzing action, cross-pollinating solutions, getting at the root of our most pressing social and ecological issues, and reminding us that we all belong to each other.

Speakers

Climbing PoeTree

Climbing PoeTree

Climbing PoeTree will perform two selections from their newly released record INTRINSIC

Saturday February 4, 2017 5:26pm - 5:50pm
C120 University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303

Broadcast National Plenary