FutureSeeds is a platform dedicated to foster multi-disciplinary conversations to breed a better understanding of where our world is heading, and where it could be headed if we saw all the possibilities that are available to us today.

Mara Bun

President of the Australian Conservation Foundation
Director at Australian Ethical Investment

Live Interview

Investing in the Good

Mara Bun has a wealth of experience when it comes to ethical investments and how we can use money to steer the world in a positive direction. Cyprien Clerc, the host of the FutureSeeds podcast, will interview Mara live on stage, and have a conversation around the importance of money, and its ability to have an enormous positive or negative impact on our world, depending on how we use it.

“It’s estimated we’ll need to raise 5 to 7 trillion dollars every year to fully address the United Nations sustainable development goals“

 

“Investors have injected 51 billion dollars into the sustainable development goals in 2020, that’s more than twice the year before“

About Mara Bun

MARA BUN is a Brazilian/Australian nature lover (who sounds American). Her early career with Morgan Stanley’s technology group shaped a career in innovation, with roles including DIrector of Business Development for CSIRO, Strategy leader for Food Agility CRC, and Senior Internet Equities Analyst for Macquarie Bank. Her NGO experience includes senior roles at Greenpeace, Choice, Green Cross Australia and Bush Heritage Australia. She applies environmental and humanitarian values as a Non-Executive Director of Australian Ethical Investments, and as Chair of asset consultants Australian Impact Investments. Mara is a Founding Director of the board of Enova Community Energy.

Links

Helena Noberg-Hodge

Author and film producer, Pioneer of the local economy movement
Founder of LocalFutures, The Economics of Happiness

Presentation

The Fork in the Road Post-Covid

The COVID pandemic has strengthened two diametrically opposing movements worldwide: on the one hand global economic forces, with the help of national governments, are pushing for an ever-more competitive, fast-paced technological future; at the same time, from the bottom up, there is a widespread cultural turning towards more cooperative, feminine, community-based, ecological futures. People are recognizing that connection, both to others and to Nature, is the true wellspring of happiness. In almost every country, farmers’ markets, permaculture, community co-ops, local finance and business alliances, place-based education and nature reconnection testify to this great shift in values. In these ways, people are already sowing the seeds for a very different future, and demonstrating the way forward.

About Helena Norberg-Hodge

HELENA NORBERG-HODGE is a pioneer of the new economy movement and recipient of the Alternative Nobel prize, the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.” She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures, and Local is Our Future (2019). She is co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home and From the Ground Up, and producer of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness. Helena is the founder and director of Local Futures and The International Alliance for Localisation, and a founding member of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.

Links

Jean Renouf

Lecturer in International Relations and Politics at Southern Cross University
Founder of Resilient Byron

Presentation

Community transformation in times of the Great Unraveling

The Great Unravelling has started and will be part of our story for the rest of our life. It is an ineluctable dismantling of the fabric of life as we know it, leading to rapid and at times violent, changes to human societies. It is the result of humans pushing the boundaries of our planet beyond sustainable levels, leading among others to climate change, but also rapid loss of biodiversity, pressure on freshwater, and more. We are currently going through an acceleration of the Great Unravelling due to the confluence of the environmental crises with other crises. While the 2020-2030 decade will be affected by disasters of unprecedented scale, it will also be the decade of unprecedented societal transformation as a way to adapt to these. In Australia, there has been an enormous wave of community activities that have sprung since the Black Summer bushfire season and Covid-19. The confluence of crises have led to a realisation that we can’t continue living the way we do. Mindfulness, resilience and regeneration are emerging as key ways to navigate the Great Unravelling. There is a thirst for social and environmental connection and as a result an innumerable amount of grassroots community initiatives are springing. In the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, Resilient Byron is a perfect example of it.

About Dr Jean S. Renouf

Jean is an academic at Southern Cross University, a firefighter and a dad. Prior to this, Jean spent years implementing emergency relief projects in disaster zones and countries at war, including Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, etc. All of this informs his passion for climate change, community regeneration & resilience and non-traditional security, and led him to found Resilient Byron.

Links

Kyle Redman

Design and Research Manager, NewDemocracy Foundation

Presentation

Democratic lotteries: Imagine being represented by people like you

The original vision of democracy in ancient Athens used lotteries to select representatives, in order to prevent corruption and division. Now lotteries are again on the rise to form Citizens’ Panels and Citizens’ Assemblies around the world. These groups of everyday people investigate and shape public policy—without the campaigns, parties, and so much of what we dislike about politics.

About Kyle Redman

Kyle is the Research and Design Program Manager at the newDemocracy Foundation. He has designed and managed a number of newDemocracy’s projects, including the Democracy in Geelong, Yarra Valley Water, ACT Housing Choices, and Byron Shire Council projects. He has also worked with international partners to design democratic innovations in Eupen, Fortaleza, and Madrid. He has also co-authored the recently published handbook ‘Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections’ for the United Nations Democracy Fund.

Links