about the writer
Bettina Wilk

Bettina Wilk is a sustainable urban development practitioner with expertise in nature-based solutions, urban resilience, and environmental governance. Bettina has worked with local authorities on policy integration, nature-inclusive urban planning and governance (Urban Nature Plans, EU Nature Restoration Law) with ICLEI Europe. She now leads projects and services development on urban nature at The Nature of Cities Europe, fostering strategic partnerships to advance sustainable urban futures.

Bettina Wilk

In times of rising political turmoil, growing polarization, and interconnected crises, the question of what good ancestorship looks like has taken on new urgency. As the future becomes harder to predict, communities, ecosystems, and institutions are expected to adapt quickly, often without the clarity they need to act. Against this backdrop, the concept of being a good ancestor feels immediate and pertinent. From a socio-ecological perspective and one of strengthening human-nature-connections, it asks how we can rethink proximity, governance, and stewardship so that institutions, communities, and ecosystems are better equipped to care, adapt, and endure in the decades ahead.

For a long time, my ambitions led me to believe that impact must be inextricably linked to scale: European and global reach, agendas, and policy targets. It is a paradox familiar to many in the field of sustainability: the larger our aspirations, the further they drift from the places where we can act with immediacy, humility, and depth.

Yet, ancestor-oriented thinking is profoundly local. It requires us to re-anchor ourselves in proximity, to attend to the local community, to our natural surroundings, and to immediate needs. It reorients us toward the responsibilities that come with presence: noticing when a tree suffers, when a riverbank erodes, or when a neighbor feels unheard. And it allows us to act where our hands and voices actually reach.

The future of each place, no matter how small or large, is shaped by countless local decisions: who shows up to a community meeting, who takes the time to repair something that is breaking, who brings people together around a community garden that is now cared for collectively. These micro-acts of care often echo the longest. They accumulate quietly into futures that feel held, not abandoned.

Our governance and planning systems are in urgent need of repair and reform if they are to enable collective care and stewardship for nature beyond individual actions, particularly in contexts where people, priorities, and conditions are constantly changing. Collaborative and stewardship-focused governance, grounded in participatory engagement mechanisms and multi-stakeholder management arrangements, should take the place of one-off consultations, rigid administrative structures, and inflexible procedures. Nature and ecosystem guardians, such as indigenous communities living in harmony with nature, as well as land and forest managers, should be rewarded.

Crucially, these governance instruments must be designed to listen, not as an afterthought but as a core function. Embedding values-based and narrative approaches into planning and decision-making helps ensure that people recognize themselves, their concerns, and their lived realities in the structures that shape their environments. Where governance makes space for diverse values and perspectives over time, it can counter feelings of exclusion and disconnection that too often fuel polarization and misinformation.

Legacy is about building inheritance-ready structures that are fit for use in 20, 50, or 100 years’ time, resilient enough to buffer and absorb emerging shocks and shifts, and adaptable.

Finally, being a good ancestor also means reconsidering who, and what, we treat as part of our collective inheritance. The more-than-human world is not a backdrop to human societies but an integral part of them. Rivers, wetlands, pollinators, soil organisms, and urban trees are not external to our future; their trajectories are inextricably linked to our own.

This perspective calls for an expansion of our moral and political imagination. When non-human lives are understood as co-inhabitants rather than external objects of management, governance, and planning cannot remain unchanged. Being a good ancestor, in this sense, means shaping cities and policies that recognize multispecies interdependence and grant the more-than-human world a legitimate voice in how space, resources, and futures are negotiated.

about the writer
Jokin Garatea

Jokin Garatea is the International Business Director at GAIA (Basque Technology & Knowledge Cluster) and the coordinator of the Basque District of Culture and Creativity (BDCC). Doctor in Industrial Psychology, he brings extensive experience across more than 80 EU-funded projects, working at the crossroads of technology, culture, and sustainability. With a background in Law (University of Deusto) and a Master’s in CSR for football clubs, he fosters innovation, international cooperation, and creative-driven development across the Basque ecosystem.

Jokin Garatea

Our Ancestor the OAK

“Jaungoikoaren aurrean apalik
Euzko – lur gañian zutunik
Asabearen gomutaz
Gernikako zuaizpian
Nere aginduba ondo betetzia
Zin dagit”
Oath in Basque of the Lehendakari before the Tree of Gernika

The oath of the Lehendakari, the highest representative of the Basque people, is one of the most important symbols of Basque self-government. That it takes place in Gernika is no coincidence, nor is what is sworn. One would have to place oneself in time to understand the significance of this oath. In 1937, Euzkadi―the Basque Country was at war against fascism, and the region was partially occupied. However, the province of Biscay was still free from Franco Dictator rule and hosted the birth of the first Basque Government, which symbolized the partial restoration of the “Lagi-zarrak” or historical rights of the Basque people.

The oath is not by chance. The tree of Gernika symbolizes the traditional freedoms of Biscay and, by extension, also of the Basques. It belongs to a connection with nature. It was the place where the General Assemblies of Biscay met since the year 1300 and where the Lord of Biscay swore to respect Biscayan freedoms. The reference to the “ancestors” is also not coincidental and could be interpreted as a respect for our ancestors: “We, the Basques of today, have gathered here in immortal remembrance of our ancestors, to show that we want to continue upholding our law.” Because that law reminds us of what we were, what we are, and what we want to be. That law heals us. It comforts us. The sacred oak cures us…

That is precisely what the Gernika oak is, as well as many other trees throughout the Old Continent: a witness. Trees were seen by our ancestors as sacred elements. Among other functions, they acted as representatives of the ancestors, who were buried in the land where they sank their roots; no one dared to lie under a representative of the ancestors.

Our ancestors, the ancient oaks, healed and nourished us

The ancient oaks of the poetess Rosalía de Castro were not only symbols of the poor’s wealth, but also represented a deep connection with nature and life. In her poem “The Oaks,” the author evokes the beauty and strength of the oaks, which, despite their fragility, have been a refuge and a source of sustenance for many generations. The wealth of the poor, as mentioned in the poem, is manifested in the oaks’ ability to heal and nourish, symbolizing the importance of nature in human life.

Extracto de los Robles, Rosalia de Castro

“Allá en tiempos que fueron, y el alma
han llenado de santos recuerdos,
de mi tierra en los campos hermosos,
la riqueza del pobre era el fuego,
que al brillar de la choza en el fondo,
calentaba los rígidos miembros
por el frío y el hambre ateridos
del niño y del viejo…

…Árbol duro y altivo, que gustas
de escuchar el rumor del Océano
y gemir con la brisa marina
de la playa en el blanco desierto,
¡yo te amo!, y mi vista reposa
con placer en los tibios reflejos
que tu copa gallarda iluminan
cuando audaz se destaca en el cielo,
despidiendo la luz que agoniza,
saludando la estrella del véspero.

Torna, roble, árbol patrio, a dar sombra
cariñosa a la escueta montaña
donde un tiempo la gaita guerrera
alentó de los nuestros las almas
y compás hizo al eco monótono
del canto materno,
del viento y del agua,
que en las noches del invierno al infante
en su cuna de mimbre arrullaban…

about the writer
Hita Unnikrishnan

Dr. Hita Unnikrishnan is an Assistant Professor at The Institute for Global Sustainable Development, The University of Warwick. Hita’s research interests lie in the interface of urban ecology, systems thinking, resilience, urban environmental history, public health discourses, and urban political ecology as it relates to the evolution, governance, and management of common pool resources in cities of the global south.

Hita Unnikrishnan

Remaking the present to serve the future

We are getting ready to bid farewell to a year that has been marked by global turbulence – from the crises in Palestine and Ukraine, to the rise of Trumpism, and the spread of populist discourses and racist ideologiesmasquerading under the guise of nationalism across prominent Western nations such as the USA and the UK.  The year has also seen marked shifts in the way environmental and developmental policies have been implemented across globe – for instance, efforts to erase climate data within the United States, the dismantling of the United States International Agency for Development (USAID), significant reductions to the Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) funding within the United Kingdom, and more recently India’s approach of locally redefining Air Quality Index rankings. Each of these decisions has placed significant strain on environmental and humanitarian agencies across the world — some of whom work with the most vulnerable groups of people.
These shifts also come at a time in our history when climate scientists have begun to acknowledge the role that past legacies such as those of colonialism and slavery are exerting on the way we experience climate change today and perhaps will do so long into the future. Injustices of the past continue to shape vulnerabilities of the present, which further intersect with newer forms of marginalisation thus forming a vicious cycle. A temporal bond, therefore, binds inhabitants of this planet across generations — something that is beginning to be acknowledged through ideas of intergenerational justice — emphasizing that the right to a healthy planet is fundamental to all generations of people inhabiting it. In acknowledging this bond, we lay ourselves open to reflecting on what makes us good ancestors. How do we enable a secure future for generations that succeed us, while at the same time acknowledging the injustices meted out by and experienced by the generations preceding us?
Globally, this would take the form of developing significant futuring skills — the ability to realise that governance decisions made today have impacts well beyond the lifetime of the entities making them; the ability to equip future generations with the skills needed to unshackle themselves from the burden of colonial legacies; encouraging processes of stewardship; building tribes of planetary citizens — and indeed reframing how we relate to the here and now in profound ways. It means acting selflessly such that we do not impose the same burden of care for a stricken planet on countless unborn, unknowable generations of people that we have currently been saddled with. In other words we need dramatic geopolitical shifts of the opposite kind to what we have currently witnessed in this past year — the kind that places collective humanity above distinctions of race; that which sets long term environmental sustainability as a key goal in short term governance regimes, and most importantly that kind that emphasizes collective stewardship of our planet across and beyond social, racial, national, or economic divides. We also need to acknowledge and highlight the immense role played by educators across the world in fostering the next generation of planetary stewards in a dramatically changing world.

Despite the bleak picture painted by global geopolitics in 2025, stories of hope emerge particularly at individual and collective levels. Climate change and its lived experiences have inextricably become part of our shared cultural heritage and several efforts across the world have served to highlight and foster this knowledge across generations. For instance, the annual climate festivals (Festivals of Life series) organised by Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, India have documented stories of rivers, forests, mountains and coastlines from some of the farthest corners of the country, and influenced several thousands of young school students who engage with them each year.
Efforts have also focused on simply getting people to engage better with the nature around them. In Sheffield, UK annual community lantern festivals and associated community-based activities — often nature-themed with a touch of whimsy, spark joy and wonder among people of all generations — tangibly providing a positive influence that will carry forward into the collective memories of people who experience them. Each of these activities are exemplars of actively remaking the present to serve as a beacon for the future. For in the end, it is all about recognizing that hope takes tangible form in seeds sown today that become heritage trees of tomorrow!

about the writer
Mike Houck

Mike Houck, co-founder of TNOC engages urban nature conservation, land use planning, green infrastructure advocacy. He founded the Urban Greenspaces Institute whose motto is “In Livable Cities is Preservation of the Wild” reflecting the belief that without creating livable and loveable cities it will be impossible to protect “pristine” areas outside the city. To be livable and loveable people must have access to nature where they live, work and play. He co-edited Wild in the City, A Guide to Portland’s Natural Areas (2000) and Wild in the City, Exploring The Intertwine (2011) and The Routledge Handbook of Urban Ecology (2011).

Mike Houck

Urban Greenspaces Institute

When I served on the City of Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission, I participated in numerous expert panels that deliberated at great length on every word of the 2005 Portland Plan and the subsequent 2035 Comprehensive Plan. In a very real sense, we were anticipating David’s prompt, “what does it mean to be a good ancestor to the people, places, or more than human lives we care about?”, albeit in a shorter time horizon. I have taken his prompt to be applicable even in the short term.

My knee-jerk response would have been to consider myself a good ancestor on “more than human lives” without consideration of nature’s value to humans. My goal was and continues to be institutionalized recognition of the intrinsic value of nature, period, without justifying it without “what’s in it for us” rhetoric. I wasn’t surprised at the pushback I got from business interests and even those concerned with diversity and equity. What did surprise me was the rapidity with which those opposed to the inclusion of the inherent value of nature in city policy retreated when the director of the Indigenous Nation Studies Program at Portland State University and another woman of indigenous heritage weighed in on the issue. When they made the case for including an explicit policy celebrating the intrinsic value of nature, it was a done deal.

Afterwards, it was city-wide policy to, “Weave nature into the city and foster a healthy environment that sustains people, neighborhoods, and fish and wildlife. Recognize the intrinsic value of nature and sustain the ecosystem services of Portland’s air, water, and land”. Had it not been for the fact that they had stepped into the conversation, that last sentence would not have made it into the plan.

As I have thought and read about the intrinsic value of nature and my obligation to nature without regard to its economic, social, health, and other human-related values, I took a closer look at indigenous thought. I quickly realized that I had a misperceived, zero-sum understanding of the admittedly little I’d learned about the “indigenous perspective”. I had in mind a more romanticized notion that the indigenous view was to protect and respect nature for its own value, period.

In This View of Life magazine, Mitch Distin states, “I hope to add two new words into our lexicon…from the Indigenous literature, those of “Kincentricity” and “Reciprocity”…. Unlike the anthropocentric view (of) Western society…Indigenous kincentricity recognizes that humans are just one part of a larger, interconnected web of life. This perspective encourages humility and respect for all living beings, viewing them as relatives rather than exploitative resources.

According to Distin, “Reciprocity refers to the practice of mutual exchange, cooperation, and a balanced relationship between two parties. The new picture of evolution…is less about competition between and among species within a zero-sum game but (is) about cooperation and collaboration between and among species in a non-zero-sum world, where everybody has the potential to benefit.”

Based on Distin and other readings, including Gaia theory, my response to David’s prompt is: I hope to be a good ancestor for having contributed to the incorporation of kincentric and reciprocal principles as a sacrosanct, legally binding tenet of urban planning in my region and beyond.

Resources:

Portland 2036 Comprehensive Plan, March 2020, p. I-7

The Indigenous Notions of Kincentricity and Reciprocity: The Keys To Sustainability and Climate Change, Mitch Distin

about the writer
Diana Ruiz

Diana Ruiz is a researcher at the Nature-Based Solutions Center at the Humboldt Institute in Colombia. She is a biologist with a Master’s degree in conservation and use of biodiversity, and is currently developing her PhD in environmental science and technology. Her work focuses on researching and proposing management guidelines that improve the incorporation of biodiversity and its ecosystem services in urban-regional planning, promoting co-creation, implementation, and evaluation of nature-based solutions in these contexts.

Diana Ruiz

The way we relate to the world, as human beings, among ourselves and with other forms of life, results from different processes that we are not always aware of. The education we received, the opportunities we had to connect with nature during our lives, and the cultural context in which we grew up determine how we care for and take responsibility for the things that we value.

Much of this is also due to the ways in which we represent, understand and name nature. Being a good ancestor and caring for different forms of human and non-human life may begin with rethinking how we have constructed systems of knowledge and symbols of nature that, rather than recognizing and valuing its chaotic essence, have sought to organize, catalog, and control it.

What are the consequences of basing our biodiversity conservation and nature care priorities on a Western knowledge system that is founded on a conception of living beings that abstracts them from their complex system? Indigenous peoples have represented nature in other ways, different from those we biologists have learned, which are the legacy of scientific expeditions that arrived in regions such as Latin America, driven by the Spanish crown. Although today it seems logical that knowing and naming a species requires representing, cataloging, and classifying it in isolation, other ways of generating knowledge remind us that through a comprehensive recognition of ecosystems and landscapes, we can also learn about, respect, and care for life, even better.

Abel Rodríguez Muinane, an artist and indigenous authority from the Nonuya people in the Amazon, is known as a “plant namer” due to his prodigious ability to remember the diversity of plant and animal species in his territory. Regarding his relationship with the jungle, mediated by memory, words, and images, he mentions in an interview published by the New York Museum of Modern Art magazine: “I hadn’t painted much, and at the beginning nothing came out right. It looked ugly. But what mattered was going to the forest in my thoughts and mind, and speaking and naming from there. Once I am there, I write down the colors and scents, where they are, what animals eat them, and when they rot. The translation is not easy—there are a lot of names I know in my language that I am not sure how to translate into Spanish. The paintings help me translate without words, to communicate what’s in my mind, and to show it in a way people understand. (…) The word is a technology that acts on the globe and determines how it operates, how it moves, and changes.”

The Western view, which currently dominates the strategies we use to conserve and restore natural systems, can limit our good intentions by prioritizing order and control over contemplation, respect, and a simpler understanding of complexity. Caring also means releasing control over what we want to care for and building a more honest and humility-based relationship from the essential: narrating, naming, feeling, and representing life in our day-to-day.

Valuing chaos and spontaneity so that biodiversity can thrive in our cities

How we design cities, as our habitat, including how we manage their nature, is a reflection of that symbolic relationship we have today with other forms of life, the narratives and aesthetics we prioritize. This is evident in how we value uniformity, cleanliness, and order over spontaneity and chaos.

Among the tools we have today to care for life and be good ancestors in our cities, we should promote more conscious and active ways of giving space to spontaneity. This includes building new relationships with our environment — some of which might be “uncomfortable” — that allow us to deeply recognize that we have no control over what we assume to care for.

about the writer
Patrick M. Lydon

An American ecological writer and artist based in East Asia, Patrick uses story and community-based actions to help us rediscover our roles as ecological beings. He writes a weekly column called The Possible City, and is an arts editor here at The Nature of Cities.

Patrick M. Lydon

They Built This City on Roots and Trees

In this Korean village, ancestry is only partly rooted in the human. The other roots as it were, are in a few old village trees and in the ways they guide this place toward acts of care.

A group of large and very old trees stand at the traditional entrance to our urban village. They are called Dangsan Namu. There’s no perfect English equivalent, though “guardian trees” or “god trees” with a lowercase “g” comes close. Trees like these exist in old Korean villages everywhere. Here, each year, the community holds a ceremony for the guardian spirit of these trees, and for the spirit of the mountain that looks over this place.

Less formally, each time I pass the trees, I bow. Sometimes only a small nod, a hello, a recognition that our lives are intertwined. Everyone’s lives are so intertwined. Every city, town, and village in the world depends on the plants, soils, and waterways that support life in that place.

We do not always acknowledge this.

I did not always acknowledge this.

Coming from a neighborhood in the United States that―with absolute authority and indifference―ignored such connections, I felt the difference immediately when I moved somewhere that instead embraced them. Living in Japan and Korea for the past decade, I began to realize that once we admit our lives are interwoven with the rest of nature, something unmistakable shifts.

In ourselves.

In the places we dwell.

In the world around us.

The Dangsan Namu at our village entrance are symbols of beings who give back more than they take. They are also a living lineage―a reminder of what becomes possible when a relationship with local nature is cared for, generation after generation, across a hundred, five hundred or a thousand years.

People tend these trees for centuries partly because they know the trees tend them. And partly because these trees, more than any single human family, are the ancestry of this place.

What does this look like in practice?

For the past year, my wife and I have been rebuilding an old hanok (traditional Korean house), slowly, with our own hands. With the house in pieces around us and the scent of Japanese cypress and sweet osmanthus drifting through the garden, we’re being folded into this practice in real time.

On a cold day, a neighbor brings us a fried potato pancake. When we’re redoing the roof, another drops off an extra ladder. On a walk through the alley, someone hands us a basket of beans from their harvest with the casual advice, “You need strength for the work you’re doing.”

Elsewhere, this might be called charity. Here it feels simply like the way a village nurtures itself, in the spirit of its guardian trees―the Dangsan Namu, they say, give back more than they take.

In our own small way, Suhee and I try to do the same. We share fresh bread from our tiny oven. When someone needs help, we show up ready to shovel, carry, or hammer. We hold a stubborn belief―maybe foolish, maybe necessary―that a dying village is brought back to life not through complex development schemes, but through showing up for each other without a scheme.

If ancestry elsewhere is a matter of bloodline, here it seems to be a matter of attention―the kind that treats the living beings of a place, human and otherwise, as family. Similarly, it is worth saying that a hometown does not have to be the place where we are born. It can also be the place we choose to dwell because something in our body and mind feels connected to it.

Being a good ancestor to a place, in this sense, is as much about protecting nature as letting nature protect us. Caring for people, while allowing ourselves to be cared for. Building communities, while recognizing that communities already exist―soil communities, bird communities, tree communities―and that we are one among them, not masters over them.

If I have any hope of being a good ancestor, then it is largely through the small things. A fried potato pancake received with gratitude. Showing up at my neighbor’s house with a bag of tools and a smile. A bow to the trees, to the mountain, to the ocean.

And perhaps it is these kinds of gestures, repeated across time, that become the way a place remembers us, benevolently.

about the writer
Xavier Cortada

Xavier Cortada, Miami’s pioneer eco-artist, uses art’s elasticity to work across disciplines to engage communities in problem-solving. Particularly environmentally focused, his work aims to generate awareness and action around climate change, sea level rise, and biodiversity loss. Over the past three decades, the Cuban-American artist has created more than 150 public artworks, installations, collaborative murals, and socially engaged projects.

Xavier Cortada

The Art of Good Ancestry: Moving Humanity Forward

The best gift an ancestor can provide is to serve as a bridge. That is what we are, bridges carrying humanity across time. Biologically, we are part of an evolutionary process, a chain of nucleotides moving from one generation to the next. But the real movement, the movement that shapes lives long after ours, comes from something beyond the evolutionary chronicles of those four DNA molecules. It comes from the ideas we generate and advance through the lives we live, becoming the conduits through which meaning travels.

Ideas are the structure that lets us leapfrog the slow and random evolutionary process that mutations give us. They allow us to take our moment, make sense of it, refine it through experience, and offer it forward in a form others can use. Not only now, but in a way that transforms them so they, in turn, can give presence to those who follow. That, to me, is the work of ancestry: teaching future generations how to be more human and strengthening their capacity to extend that humanity.

A good ancestor gathers what they have learned and prepares it to survive uncertainty, whether it is an early death, a misunderstanding, a conflict, or a collapse. They act knowing that what we pass on is not just knowledge but a way of living that helps others carry meaning across time.

Throughout human history, we have relied on the same mechanism to do this: culture. Culture is how we embed meaning in forms that endure. Our deep ancestors understood this intuitively.

Sixty thousand years ago, as they moved across the African continent and beyond, they hunted, gathered, settled, and adapted. Yet, everywhere they went, they made meaning together. They formed language, ritual, and custom. They carved, painted, and sang. They took what the land offered them, whether it was pattern, danger, beauty, or sustenance, and transformed it into something they could share and something they could teach. Through art, they became a community, and in that shared act of making meaning, they became more interconnected, more interdependent, and more human.

Sometimes we forget that culture is not a product but a process, and its true resource is not the idea itself but the people willing to carry it. Art becomes real only when it is shared, when it passes from one life into another and inhabits them both, reshaping each in accumulating, unexpected ways. That exchange generates the momentum that keeps meaning alive — the quiet but insistent impulse to continue moving it forward so others can build on it. When someone steps into that work, feeling both the responsibility and the privilege of advancing it, that is ancestry in action. The ancestor’s life bends toward a future they will never see, and the recipient is shaped not only by the idea they inherit but by the generosity and intention carried within it.

We are not just creators of new ideas but curators of previous ones. Each of us takes in what earlier lives struggled to understand, makes sense of it in our own time, and sends it onward to people we will never meet. If we do not move those insights from past to future, they disappear. The line breaks. What survives is whatever we choose to receive, refine, and pass along. That is what makes us more than descendants. It makes us the living conduit through which meaning continues its journey.

Being a good ancestor is not caring only for the people who share our bloodline. It is about caring for the people who share our time, our place, our challenges, and our hopes. It also reaches the more-than-human world that will inherit our decisions: the coastlines, the wetlands, and the species navigating a century shaped by climate. What we pass on includes both the ideas we believe are worth carrying and the world required to carry them.

An ancestor’s purpose is not rooted in the present. It is rooted in the future — in a world they will never enter but are nonetheless shaping with every choice they make. We live our lives carrying forward what was handed to us so that those who follow can begin a little farther along the path. That is the work: to place our ideas, and the responsibilities they demand, into the vehicle that has always carried us: art, culture, and community, and to offer them in a way that keeps the cycle alive. To be an ancestor now is to labor for a future we will never inhabit, and to live as though its well-being matters more than our own moment — because that is how we move humanity forward.

about the writer
Camila Sant'Anna

PhD in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of Brasília, with a thesis entitled: Green infrastructure and its contribution to the design of the city’s landscape (2020). Sandwich PhD at the University of Manchester, funded by CNPq (2019). Master’s degree in Theories and Approaches to Landscape Design from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, ENSPV, France (2009). Master In Human Geography from the Université Paris Diderot. Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Brasília (UnB). She is interested in the topics climate change, landscape planning and design, green infrastructure, SbN, and Popular Knowledge.

Camila Sant’Anna

A Good Ancestor in the Southwards

Being a good ancestor is to act, reviewing the paradigm of understanding landscape and its relationship with the environment, from the perspective of the South, valuing the nature of its margins and its worldviews. Marginal landscapes are home to vulnerable communities, most of whom lack access to environmental and sociocultural benefits due to issues of race, income, nationality, and gender. Rethinking the role of marginal landscapes in an integrated way means listening to the voice of these communities, valuing their traditional knowledge and their relationship with nature.

Understanding landscape as a necessity and an infrastructure. This is a crucial condition for guaranteeing a landscape that is a right for all and for the ancestral present and future (KRENAK, 2020) to become a reality.

Therefore, it is necessary to understand how to valorize and build landscapes as the infrastructure that will guide sustainable development and adapt to climate change in a territory with so many socio-environmental challenges, such as that of the Global South and, at the same time, holding a large portion of biodiversity hotspots, fundamental for the survival of the Earth.

The construction of an anti-racist, anti-gender urban climate adaptation that addresses social inequality and is inclusive involves consolidating a landscape experience based on Southern perspectives, capable of addressing environmental racism and promoting environmental and climate justice (IPCC, 2023), addressing the vulnerable situation of its largely invisible population, mostly female and Black. To be a good ancestor is necessary to “relearn to hope” as an act of care.

Currently, some multi-scalar proposals involving landscape and environment in the face of contemporary challenges translate into top-down strategies for the renaturalization of cities, based on different proposals, nature-based solutions, green infrastructure, and ecosystem-based adaptations. We have the example of those born and developed in the Global North, generally aiming to promote high-performance ecological green and blue systems capable of restoring and enhancing ecosystem services and promoting the ecological cycle of cities. However, these solutions often translate into punctual interventions and are implemented in areas with higher purchasing power. Solutions need to be co-created that engage with the bioclimatic regions of the South, capable of generating income and empowering their population. They need to promote not only ecological resilience but also build [re] existence.

Below are attached two images of [re]existence. They are from the workshop “Redesigning Ancestral Landscapes between the Sea and the Land of Salvador” that aimed to rethink the design of two areas in Gamboa (Salvador, Brazil) and promote participatory painting and planting action in these areas. The Organization of a Community Urban Landscape Design workshop was in dialogue with the discipline Landscape Foundations Workshop (ARQC13), taught by Ana Caminha, Camila Gomes Sant’Anna, and Marta Alves, and the discipline ARQD53―Mutual Construction Practices, taught by Professor Marcus Vinicius Augustus Fernandes Rocha Bernardo of the Faculty of Architecture at Federal University of Bahia (FAUFBA).

The proposal has Ana Caminha as a visiting resident at FAUFBA. She is president of the Association of Friends of Gegê of the Residents of Gamboa de Baixo (Associação Amigos de Gegê Dos Moradores da Gamboa de Baixo), coordinator of the Gamboa Women’s Group, and, since 2014, one of the coordinators of the Articulation of Movements and Communities of the Old Center of Salvador. She was an important agent in the mobilization of the community.

about the writer
Georgios Giannoulis

Senior expert in development and creative culture/ cultural heritage, socioeconomic innovation, participative decision-making, green transition and digital transformation, sustainability and circular economy.

Georgios Giannoulis

“..but the true time, like a little child, is exiled” [1]

In the country I come from, the generation of my grandparents had never heard of long-term planning, externalities, the movement of continents, or the expansion of the universe.

Yet, even in their old age, they continued to plant olive trees and cypresses, without worrying about costs and returns. They knew they would die, but they still tilled the land for those who would come after them, perhaps even for the land itself.

They knew that no matter what “power” they had, that power would not yield beneficial results if they did not obey the seasons, if they did not pay attention to the winds, if they did not respect the changeable Mediterranean, if they did not cut the trees when they had to, and if they did not let the must brew for the necessary amount of time.

They did not think in terms of infinity―they might not have even understood the concept of the word―but they acted, lived, and died in a time that was truly without end.

Clearly, the country had not yet developed…

The current crisis is leading us to a point where we will either face a natural or social catastrophe, or, before or after that, people will react in one way or another and try to establish new forms of social life that will have some meaning for them.

We cannot do this for them, on their behalf, or in their place, just as we cannot say how it could be done.

What we can do is destroy the myths that, more than money and weapons, constitute the most terrifying obstacle on the path to the reconstruction of human society [2].

In these paragraphs, Cornelius Castoriades raises three fundamental questions about the ancestors.

First, he examines the meaning and role of what used to be called the tricky word ‘tradition,’ which is more than just a set of knowledge, practices, and moral imperatives. Tradition is perceived as something beyond an emotional and intellectual stance.

The second question concerns how this body of knowledge and emotion is passed on (or not) to the next generations in a changing world, where the narratives of existence’s imperatives have evolved. Are they understandable? Can these practices and emotions be felt in a different world? Can they speak to us, and if so, how?

Third, how do contemporary generations interpret the “speech” coming from their close or distant ancestors? How can we reconstruct or reimagine meaning within the new contexts of our lives? How might this meaning be transformed into social imperatives, into actions that provide us with purpose in a world seemingly without purpose? Can we do moral things without being moralists? Can we be happy in doubt and/or repetition? Is it the ambition of a generation to act rationally, or to mythologise that ambition?

These questions open paths for reflection that connect with ancestral inheritance, while simultaneously demystifying it. The world, even today, is shaped by myths and acts in accordance with their interpretations. However, in times of crisis and change, these myths destabilise, and people tend to look back with a mix of curiosity and spleen. Yet, this is not enough to give meaning to what and whom we care for.

In a way, our ancestors cared for us, as we are the result of their actions and omissions. We are the product of what they preserved, changed, or created through their own imagination. They are also what we imagine them to be, even more so than what we truly know about them. This feeling is inherited through knowledge and art, in the broadest sense. The books they wrote, the plants they planted, the wars they fought, the art they created, the music they reimagined, the stories they told, the deaths they experienced.

We are connected in an almost impossible way, despite the differences in our worlds, yet we still share an enduring connection against all odds.

We, the actual we, care for them as much as we contain them. We care about their world insofar as it illuminates aspects of our own. This may also lead us to feel a kind of ‘care’ for a future that will not include us as individuals, nor even the memories of us, which will fade with time, sooner rather than later. This future, in a way, is enveloped in the present.

Does one need to make a sacrifice, to give up some of one’s ego, in order to connect with the future in the present? Or, perhaps more fittingly, to give up some of our time, as it counts, in real actions?

“The important thing is to find TIME within TIME … It is enormously difficult, but it has to be done!” Tarkovsky wrote in his diaries while turning the Sacrifice. A masterpiece opening with a reference to another masterpiece. Leonardo da Vinci’s unfinished masterpiece The Adoration of the Magi. Specifically, a close-up of one of the Wise Men kneeling and holding up his gift to the newborn King. The characters celebrate Alexander’s birthday even as an imminent nuclear catastrophe looms. Sacrifice, in a biblical sense, is offered to God; possessions and memories are burnt to the ground. Sacrifice to love is offered as well. The fate of the world may not be changed, but in the end, the ancestor and the child meet in a single image around a poor, lonely, almost dry tree in the vastness of the Nordic island.

Watering (in vain?), the little man, the young boy, asks the question from the Gospel of John: ‘In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?’ One could reply, ‘Who cares?’ since the end is approaching.

Nevertheless, while it may not save the world, this image remains—a bond with ancestors and inheritance. The care takes shape in the form of pure poetry, and somehow, deep within them (and us), it justifies their (and our) lives and the memories of the future.

Notes

about the writer
Ania Upstill

Ania Upstill (they/them) is a queer and non-binary performer, director, theatre maker, teaching artist and clown. A graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre (Professional Training Program), Ania’s recent work celebrates LGBTQIA+ artists with a focus on gender diversity.

Ania Upstill

When I think about being a good ancestor, I normally think about the future, especially future generations. After all, those are the people that I will be an ancestor to, and I hope to be a good one. I am also an arts educator, so I am often in contact with young people. If you had asked me three months ago what made a good ancestor, I would have followed that train of thought and emphasized the importance of educating the youth and passing down knowledge, ensuring that they are ready for the world and prepared to be kinder, better, maybe even our salvation. This fall, however, I had the opportunity to work with a group of elder queer people in an intergenerational project. These wonderful humans are my own ancestors, and in our interactions, I realized how important it is to look backwards as well as forwards, to listen to and learn from those older than us.

We came together to work on a piece for the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and during our ten sessions, we told stories, shared experiences, and created theater together. As we worked, I was reminded of how little I interact with people in the generations above me. Outside of my parents and godparents, I have only one friend who isn’t my age or younger. Yet I was deeply moved by spending time with these elders, and cognizant of how much I learned. They modeled how to slow down, how to take your time thinking and moving. They appreciated the time we had together just for its own sake, as a gift of connection, without it having to have a product. We spent a lot of time just talking, rather than focusing on what we were “supposed” to be making, and our time together felt radical because it wasn’t focused on productivity. In fact, it modeled a different way of being, one that I think we will all need to shift towards to change our late capitalism, consumer-oriented worldview, and hopefully, our planet.

My narrative has shifted. Yes, we need to educate our youth and think about caring for the planet that they will inherit. And that’s not all. To be good ancestors, we also need to connect with those older than us and look to history as much as we look to the future. Older people have lessons to share. Many of them are forced to live slower lives, to not take their health for granted, to value human connections in new ways as they get older. Our culture puts a huge emphasis on youth and has a real disdain for the elderly. Instead of falling into that trap, we can value our elders and bring them into the conversation. We can learn from and with them and treat our ancestors with care while we become ancestors ourselves. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and even as we don’t have to recreate the world according to how it was when they were young. We get to create a world that values ancestry in both directions and that brings everyone into the conversation. After all, the world belongs to us, old and young. Let’s create a better one together.

about the writer
David Haley

David makes art with ecology, to inquire and learn. He researches, publishes, and works internationally with ecosystems and their inhabitants, using images, poetic texts, walking, sculptural and video installations to generate dialogues that question climate change, species extinction, urban development, the nature of water transdisciplinarity and ecopedagogy for ‘capable futures’.

David Haley

Be Good In The Now

In 1992, when I found out about “climate change” and read the Rio Earth Summit book[1], I formed three questions:

1. How can I and those I love survive the impacts of climate change?
2. Who are those I love?
3. How can I, as an artist, address climate change?

Biodiversity loss as a greater concern, exacerbated by climate change, became quickly evident. Then, given the indeterminacy of evolution and Charles Darwin’s primary strategy of adaptation (not competition)[2], I considered “culture” to be the missing factor from the dominant climate and species extinction narratives that focused on science, politics, and economics. As a creative cultural connector, the arts potentially offered other disciplines and societal sectors the ability to think differently about how we live. This provided my way into studying these profound issues that would impact my daughter, then aged 4. Gregory Bateson’s “ecology” provided “the pattern that connects”[3] and deeper understandings of ecology that included time as a determining factor came from Arene Naes[4] and Lynn Margulis[5].

Since then, I have endeavoured to learn how to be an ecological artist, making art with ecology. Serendipitously, I worked with the pioneers of ecological arts, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison[6], gaining insights into the process of Socratic Dialogue―forming questions that enable others to learn for themselves. Basarab Nicolescu’s development of “Transdisciplinary Knowledge”[7] provided further potential for thinking and acting “between, across and beyond all disciplines”. Serendipity and hard work also gave me the opportunity to lead a Master’s course in “Art As Environment” (2003-2012) and develop the cross-faculty research initiative, “Ecology In Practice” (2010-2016). I was and still am fortunate to work with amazing students and some colleagues. Such “eco-pedagogy” continues to form the basis of my practice as an artist-researcher-educator and being. But I realised that Academia was becoming industrialised, to the point where questioning the system (impiety) was perilous, as did Socrates. Luckily, I found solace in Paulo Freire, whose revolutionary pedagogy continues to inspire those souls brave enough to challenge the dogma of unimaginative autocracy[8].

Latterly, on observing seagulls teach their fledglings how to fly, find food, and know what danger looks like, I realised that every sentient being’s culture is based on intergenerational co-learning for the survival of their species. Perhaps, this is what it means to be a good ancestor to the things or people we care about?

However, beyond my immediate family and circle of friends, who do I love; who and what do I really care about? This question, I have not yet resolved. I may feel compassion for others, but I cannot honestly empathise with those I do not directly know or engage with. Vanessa Andreotti (aka Machado de Oliveria), in her considerations of the “Nature-Climate-Culture Emergency”, seeks to learn with “others” how things may be “otherwise”[9]; so perhaps this cultural co-learning is a kind of love, across, between, and beyond our immediate kin and community?

However, regarding our potential ancestral legacy, like George Orwell, I am aware that, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”[10]. As we see histories re-written or erased by dominant cultures, influencers, and AI, who knows what our descendants will think of us? We can only be “good” in the now and trust in our art (Rta) “The dynamic process by which the whole cosmos continues to be created, virtuously”[11].

[1] United Nations (1992) Earth Summit ’92: The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Rio de Janeiro 1992

[2] Darwin, Charles / Leakey, Richard (1986) The Origin of Species. Faber and Faber, London

[3] Bateson, Gregory (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. University of Chi-

cago Press, Chicago. P 512

[4] Naess, Arne. ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary’, in Drengson, Alan Inoue, Yuichi eds. The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology (Berkely California: North Atlantic Books, 1995).

[5] Margulis, Lynn. The Symbiotic Planet: A New look at Evolution (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1998).

[6] Mayer Harrison, Helen and Harrison, Newton – https://www.theharrisonstudio.net/  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harrison_Studio

[7] Nicolescu, Basarab (2008) Transdisciplinarity: Theory and Practice. Hampton Press Inc., New Jersey

[8] Freire, Paulo (2017). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Modern Classics, UK

[9] Andreotti, Vanessa “Global citizenship education otherwise: pedagogical and theoretical insights”. In Ali Abdi, Lynette Shultz, and Tashika Pillay (Eds.) Decolonizing Global Citizenship Education. (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2015).  pp. 221-230

[10] Orwell, George (2000) Nineteen Eighty Four. Penguin Modern Classics. London

[11] Robert Pirsig (1993) Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals. Black Swan, London p.407

Nalu Andrade & Emma Andrade

about the writer
Nalu Andrade

Nalu Andrade is an Oahu born Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner who specializes in kālai lā’au (traditional wood carving). He is working closely with Kaulunani, Hawaii’s Urban and Community Forestry Program, with the goal of establishing a reforestation program founded on Hawaiian values, encouraging the proliferation of the proper cultural use of the native woods of Hawaii, and the holistic nurturing of the kēiki (children) of Hawaii.

about the writer
Emma Andrade

Emma is a third-year undergraduate student at Chaminade University of Honolulu double majoring in Environmental Studies and Environmental Science. She is interested in helping to conserve native species. She currently works with the DLNR at SEPP helping take care of the native Hawaiian tree snails, or Kāhuli.

When I think about being a good ancestor, I think about the kind of life I’m living right now and what I hope will continue after I’m gone. It’s not so much about having my name remembered; it’s more about the everyday things I do, the people I support, and the values I try to carry. Being a good ancestor means planting seeds; through actions, choices, teachings, and trusting that they will grow in ways I may never get to see.

For me, a big part of that is ʻohana. I want to make sure that the people I care about inherit more than just skills or belongings. I hope they inherit a sense of connection, belonging, and responsibility to one another. When I teach something, I’m not just teaching the technique behind it; I’m trying to pass on the stories, the moments, and the meaning that come with it. The memories we create and the time we spend together matter just as much as anything physical we leave behind. Those memories become part of who we are, and they’re what future generations will look back on to understand their roots.

Another part of being a good ancestor is taking care of the ʻāina. The land is not something separate from us; it’s something we depend on.  It is also something we have a responsibility to protect. I want the next generation to understand why the land matters, not just in a practical way but in a cultural and spiritual way. Caring for the land means thinking beyond ourselves and recognizing that our actions today have an impact on people we’ll never meet. If I can pass on even a small piece of that understanding, then I’ll feel like I’ve done something worthwhile.

I hope that the things I’ve learned, whether through experience, mistakes, or teachings from others, don’t stop with me. I hope the next generation can build on what I’ve learned, improve it, and make it their own. Being a good ancestor isn’t about being perfect; it’s thinking about how my choices affect the people and the place I love. If the seeds I’ve planted grow into stronger family bonds, deeper respect for the land, and a sense of meaning for those who come after me, then that’s the kind of ancestor I hope to be.

about the writer
Ebony Walden

Ebony Walden is a writer, consultant, award-nominated filmmaker and travel enthusiast who has visited nearly 50 countries and all 50 U.S. states. She is the founder of Ebony Walden Consulting, an racial equity focused consulting firm and the creator of Black Beyond Borders, a web series and podcast highlighting culture, cuisine and repatriation experiences across the African diaspora. Ebony writes weekly at Beyond Borders, a newsletter focused on travel and transformation. When she is not in Senegal or traveling the globe, she lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Ebony Walden

Good Ancestors Are Time Travelers:
Stewarding Gifts, Wisdom, and Resources for Futures We Cannot Yet See

Travel as a Teacher

When I think about being a good ancestor, for some reason, I think about travel. I think about the times this past year when I worked remotely for four to six weeks at a time—in Dakar, Mexico City, or Medellín, away from home. And I think about the moment I return: that first breath I take walking through my door, when everything is in order because a previous version of me—months ago—cleaned, prepared, and created ease for the Ebony who would eventually come home.

That moment of return always fills me with gratitude. I thank my former self for the work she did that I now get to benefit from, and that to me is what being a good ancestor is. Good ancestors prepare the way. They do the work now so someone else can exhale later. They create order, clarity, and care in the present so future selves—or future generations—can benefit. Good ancestors are time travelers.

Expanding the Meaning of “Ancestor”

When I consider the meaning of the word “ancestor”, I think of people who came before us who are no longer here in the physical sense—lineage ancestors, spiritual ancestors, elders of places and movements. I think about my grandmother, Theola, and Aunt Eunice, their influence, their idioms, and the teachings that make me laugh and fill my heart with warmth even today. I think of ancestors like Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose visions and actions toward a more just world helped us time-travel to a better future.

We often think of the greats of past generations, but we are all future ancestors. Every choice we make becomes part of the world someone else will inherit. For me, a good ancestor is a good steward—of time, of gifts, of land, of wisdom.

Stewarding Our Gifts

First, being a good ancestor is about finding your skills, your superpower, your unique experience and perspective—and using them for good. It means allowing your life, your work, and your words to leave something behind that matters.

Passing On Wisdom

Being a good ancestor also means stewarding wisdom and passing it on. In my own life, that looks like pouring into others. It looks like writing articles so my words can live beyond me. It looks like crafting a book that gathers life lessons from my world travels so others can see the possibilities ahead, feel a little more brave, live well, and inspire others.

Caring for Land and Place

It also means being a steward of our natural resources, of beauty, of place. The more I’ve moved across landscapes—from rainforest to desert, coastline to mountains—the more I understand how important it is to care for the Earth, so what we enjoy now is here and abundant for those who come after us. The Earth itself is an elder—and we must give time, attention, and reverence to her being, to her wisdom, to her ways.

Showing Up for One Another

Being a good ancestor is also relational in the human sense. It’s how we show up for the people we love and the communities we belong to. We prepare the way for others by telling the truth about what we’ve survived, doing the healing work so the next generation doesn’t inherit our wounds, and giving generously of our time, attention, and presence. It looks like creating conditions for safety, possibility, and rest for ourselves and for others.

Living for Futures We Cannot Yet See

Ultimately, being a good ancestor is choosing to tend to the people, the places, and the plant and animal life in our midst with the awareness that our actions echo forward. It’s remembering that someone, in a future we cannot yet see, will one day step into a world shaped by something we did today. And if that’s true, then each of us—right now—is being invited to prepare the way by offering our gifts, our wisdom, our stewardship, and our presence, both now and into the future.

about the writer
Diana Wiesner

Diana Wiesner, activist, architect, and landscape designer based in Bogotá, is recognized for her leadership in socio-ecological issues and innovative approaches to urban ecology and landscape architecture. Founder of her own practice and director of Fundación Cerros de Bogotá, she promotes environmental awareness, citizen participation, and preservation of natural systems.

Diana Wiesner

Read this in English

¿Y si habitar fuera un acto de ternura?
Geopoéticas del cuidado

El cuidador es quien se emociona, vibra y se conmueve ante la vida en todas sus formas: lo bello, lo frágil, lo vulnerable. Desde esa sensibilidad emerge un impulso protector, casi maternal o paternal, hacia aquello que se ama. Cuidar no es solo un acto altruista: es también una forma de auto-preservación. Al proteger lo que valoramos cuidamos el mundo que nos sostiene, nuestro propio disfrute, nuestras formas de vínculo y pertenencia. Es un instinto de supervivencia expandido: cuidarnos cuidando el entorno y a los otros.

La mirada geopoética propone entender el paisaje no como un marco pasivo, sino como un entramado vivo de relaciones entre cuerpos, memorias, aguas, suelos, humanos y seres más-que-humanos. Autores como Kenneth White, Tim Ingold, y David Abram plantean que habitar implica una relación sensible y corresponsable con el lugar: caminar, escuchar, observar y responder a los ritmos del territorio como prácticas de conocimiento. En esta clave, cuidar se convierte en una forma de atención profunda, una ética que no busca dominar la naturaleza sino acompañar sus procesos.

De aquí surge una pregunta central: ¿qué significa ser un buen ancestro para las personas, los lugares y las vidas que cuidamos? Ser ancestro no es únicamente existir antes; es asumir la responsabilidad de dejar condiciones fértiles para quienes vendrán. Cada acto cotidiano—conservar, restaurar, compartir, regenerar o incluso abstenerse de intervenir—configura el legado que heredamos a las generaciones futuras humanas y más-que-humanas. Ser un buen ancestro es actuar hoy con conciencia del mañana, aun cuando los futuros sean inciertos.

El cuidado, como han propuesto diversas filósofas del ecofeminismo y la ética relacional, no es paternalismo ni control, sino una práctica horizontal de vínculo y reciprocidad. Implica respetar la autonomía de los procesos vivos, reconocer los límites propios y sostener redes de apoyo mutuo. Cuidar es una forma de ternura activa: una presencia atenta que protege sin poseer y acompaña sin imponer.

Desde esta perspectiva, las prácticas contemporáneas de restauración ecológica, pedagogía territorial y arte situado se convierten en ejercicios concretos de geopoética del cuidado. Son acciones donde observar, sembrar, caminar, mapear o narrar se transforman en modos de relación con los lugares, fortaleciendo la apropiación sensible del territorio y la conciencia de interdependencia entre especies.

Habitar desde la ternura es entonces asumir que la vida no se administra: se cuida. Ser cuidador es participar de manera consciente en la continuidad del mundo, regenerando ecosistemas, tejiendo comunidades y transmitiendo valores de respeto y corresponsabilidad. No cuidamos únicamente para preservar nuestro bienestar presente, sino para permitir que otros—humanos y más-que-humanos—puedan emocionarse también ante la belleza frágil de un planeta vivo.

* * *

What if inhabiting were an act of tenderness?
Geopoetics of care

The caregiver is the one who is moved, touched, and deeply affected by life in all its forms: the beautiful, the fragile, the vulnerable. From this sensitivity emerges a protective impulse, almost maternal or paternal, towards what is loved. Caring is not only an altruistic act; it is also a form of self-preservation. By protecting what we value, we care for the world that sustains us, our own well-being, and our ways of connecting and belonging. It is an expanded survival instinct: caring for ourselves by caring for our environment and others.

The geopoetic perspective proposes understanding the landscape not as a passive backdrop, but as a living network of relationships between bodies, memories, waters, soils, humans, and more-than-human beings. Authors such as Kenneth White, Tim Ingold, and David Abram suggest that inhabiting a place implies a sensitive and reciprocal relationship with it: walking, listening, observing, and responding to the rhythms of the territory as practices of knowing. In this light, caring becomes a form of profound attention, an ethic that does not seek to dominate nature but to accompany its processes.

This raises a central question: what does it mean to be a good ancestor to the people, places, and lives we care for? Being an ancestor is not simply about existing before; it’s about taking responsibility for creating fertile conditions for those who will come after us. Every daily act—conserving, restoring, sharing, regenerating, or even refraining from intervening—shapes the legacy we bequeath to future human and more-than-human generations. To be a good ancestor is to act today with an awareness of tomorrow, even when the future is uncertain.

Care, as various ecofeminist and relational ethics philosophers have proposed, is not paternalism or control, but a horizontal practice of connection and reciprocity. It involves respecting the autonomy of living processes, recognizing one’s own limitations, and sustaining networks of mutual support. Caring is a form of active tenderness: an attentive presence that protects without possessing and accompanies without imposing.

From this perspective, contemporary practices of ecological restoration, place-based education, and situated art become concrete exercises in the geopoetics of care. These are actions where observing, planting, walking, mapping, or storytelling are transformed into ways of relating to places, strengthening a sensitive connection to the territory, and fostering an awareness of the interdependence between species.

To live with tenderness, then, is to understand that life is not something to be managed, but something to be nurtured. To be a caregiver is to participate consciously in the continuity of the world, regenerating ecosystems, weaving communities, and transmitting values ​​of respect and shared responsibility. We care not only to preserve our present well-being, but also to allow others—both human and more-than-human—to experience the fragile beauty of a living planet.

References

Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. New York: Pantheon Books.

Ingold, T. (2011). Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge.

White, K. (2007). La geopoética: una manera de habitar el mundo. Barcelona: Barral Editores.

Tronto, J. C. (1993). Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.

Shiva, V. (2016). Who Really Feeds the World? The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

about the writer
Claudia Misteli

Claudia is a social designer, communicator, and journalist who believes that care, creativity, and collaboration are key to building more just, vibrant, and nature-connected places. Born between Colombia’s coffee region and the Swiss Alps, she now lives in Barcelona, blending cultures and perspectives in her work. At The Nature of Cities, she co-leads European projects and TNOC Festival, sparking connections and meaningful action. Claudia also volunteers with the Latin American Landscape Initiative (LALI), helping amplify regional voices and build bridges across Latin America through storytelling, communications, and a deep love for people and place.

Claudia Misteli

Perhaps Being a Good Ancestor Begins with Staying.

In Tassili n’Ajjer, southeastern Algeria, thousands of prehistoric engravings cover a vast sandstone plateau. Today it is deep Sahara. Once it was green.

During the African Humid Period, water flowed here. Grasslands spread. Cattle grazed. People lived closely with land and water. Then the climate shifted. As water retreated and pastures disappeared, someone carved a cow into stone.

One engraving is known as the Crying Cow. Carved into sandstone some 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, it shows a small herd of long-horned cattle. One of them has a teardrop falling from its eye. There are several hypotheses about why the cow is crying, but a very logical one is that it was crying because everything was drying—the savanna was turning into desert, life was ending. Whoever carved these cattle was living through that transformation, not knowing what would come or if anyone would ever see their work. What they did was notice, and stay long enough to leave a mark.

That gesture… to witness, to care, to leave a trace without knowing its future, feels ancestral to me.

I think of this image often now. Not because our crises mirror theirs, but because the question is the same: what do we do when we cannot control what comes next, but we can still choose what to notice, what to protect, what to pass on?

The work I choose sits in that question. I work to create spaces where connection becomes possible—where different ways of knowing can meet, where creativity opens new paths, where cooperation reveals what seemed impossible alone. Where science meets lived experience, where art opens room for what cannot be measured, where policy slows down to listen. These spaces don’t offer answers. They make room for discovery, for care practiced together, for what emerges when we stay present with each other.

This is what transdisciplinary work requires. It is a practice of staying across differences. The scientist, the neighbor, the artist, the farmer, the planner… each reading the same world in a different language, and every language necessary. It means comfort with not-knowing, patience with translation, and willingness to let other ways of seeing reshape your own. It means trusting that presence, even without resolution, changes what we leave behind.

Being a good ancestor, then, is not about having answers or certainty. It is about choosing where to stay, what to notice, and how to act with others, knowing we will never see the ending. It is the small, persistent work of care…imperfect, insufficient, and still worth doing.

I think of the person who carved that cow. They could have walked away. The land was drying. Their way of life was ending. But they stayed long enough to notice the grief of it, to make it visible, to send it forward. And now, millennia later, we meet that gesture in the stone. We are held by their choice to stay.

There are many ways crying cows show up today: biodiversity loss, rivers running dry, ecosystems fracturing under pressure, wars, and politicians harvesting hate. But unlike the ancient carvers who could not stop the climate shifting around them, there are things today we can change. We can act in small daily gestures, in the decisions we make, in the work we choose to do, in any discipline we move through.

So, perhaps the question is not what will last, or what will be remembered, but what we choose to care for now, fully, imperfectly, together; trusting that the act of staying itself is what travels forward.

about the writer
Wendy Wischer

Wendy Wischer is an artist and educator currently living and working in Connecticut. With investigations in a variety of media from sculptural objects to installations, video, projection, sound, alternative forms of drawing and public works. Much of the artwork is based on blurring the separation between an intrinsic approach to working with nature and the cutting edge of New Media.

Wendy Wischer

41.75818° N, 72.21660° W

I now live in the woods.

I am surrounded by towering trees and electric green mosses. The mighty Oaks, Maples, Beech, Shagbark Hickory, and Dogwood reach towards the sun, swaying in the wind and dropping their seeds each fall, encouraging new growth to begin. The minty lichen clings to the rock, mingles with the moss who also snuggles into tree trunks in olive, emerald, and chartreuse. These shamrock carpets sing after rain and snow, always reminding us that spring is around the corner. Even in the bitter, dead of winter. The swaying ferns cover the ground as the weather warms, like a vast, feathery quilt sprinkled with wildflowers, whispering stories of the past, and the well-weathered boulders left from receding glaciers form a river of rock that flows from one end to the other, filled with a millennium of mysteries and memories.

I share this home with creatures of all kinds.

The silver piped orchestra of mating frogs begins early in spring and mingles with the buzzing of the bees as they pollinate, spreading survival in all directions.

The fluttering bats and magic of the fireflies ignite the dreams of the forest.

The birds are numerous and diverse; grand screeching hawks and eagles, hammering woodpeckers, and shimmering hummingbirds. Each spring, the hungry cries from their nests keep the parents working without pause. I am exhausted for, and inspired by them as they tirelessly work to ensure the thriving of the next generation.

And the grand, mottled Barred Owls. They hoot and coo and whistle, saturating the night air with deep-throated serenades that move me to stop and listen, every time.

The fauna, often captured on my trail camera, include small herds of deer with playful twin fawns and regal racked bucks, communal packs of coyotes, the elusive lone bobcats, russet red foxes that keep the mischievous mice in check, plump racoons, white skunks, fierce fisher cats, large gangs of turkeys, fluffy almond colored rabbits with their radar ears, and the waddling resident possum I’ve named Achoo. Achoo has a new companion, and I can’t wait for the piggyback riding joeys in spring.

We have dragged loads of trash from under the ferns, removed scraps of metal and tires discarded beneath the trees, and rolled down hills. We have collected nails and lines from years of tapping the maples for their sweet syrup and cleared the piles where cut trees were dumped, suffocating all beneath. We have scattered seeds and hung suet, built owl and bat houses with warm, spicy-smelling cedar shavings. I put out salt licks and protein blocks in the winter, filled with minerals and nutrients when the snow buries vegetation, keeping it just out of reach, and ice water in the bird bath in the scorching heat of the summer.

All are welcome here.

All are safe here.

I am documenting the flora, learning their names, getting to know the feel of their bark, their sweet and earthy aromas, and letting my soul sink into the depths of the moss. I am learning the birds by their song and where to look for the rainbow of wildflower colors, and the secret locations under leaf litter where fungi and fleeting ghost flowers flourish. I let them grow wherever they want, keeping the landscape wild. Even if others only see weeds, I see gems.

I walk slowly.

I inhale deeply.

I absorb the width and depth.

I feel the wind caress me as it soothingly rustles the leaves in the trees.

I am overflowing with gratitude.

My heart needed this.

I attempt to capture the beauty and tenacity in all forms and express my gratitude through sharing my journey of this connection with others. My hope is to inspire them to find their own deep connections so that we belong on equal footing, to place, and to each other.

Letting the fullness of all inhabitants teach us, guide us, heal our wounds and our suffering, so that we can cherish this beautiful planet, as long as we are able.

about the writer
Jaime Jackson

Jaime Jackson is a collaborative biophilic (love of nature) studio based painter and relational socially engaged visual artist and producer. His practice explores the idea that we are nature, he uses drawing and painting as well as digital technologies including Machine Learning AI, Motion Capture and moving image (film). ‘My work responds to the climate and ecology crisis by exploring the view that we are nature. I feel that a sense of separation from the rest of nature has created the earth crisis, and when we develop ways and tools of understanding our inter-connective selves we can become happier and more environmentally responsible.’

about the writer
Pearl Jackson-Payen

Pearl is a writer, artist, and researcher. Currently, she is working on her cross-stitch embroidery and poetic writing, creating a body of work that gives symbolic form and shape to the outer, inner, and secret levels of nature and the mind. She is inspired by angelic presences, archetypal symbolism, wilderness landscapes, and Tibetan Buddhist cosmologies.

Jaime Jackson & Pearl Jackson-Payen

In our opinion, being a compassionate ancestor involves mindful contemplation and action by recognizing and addressing our own harmful thoughts and habitual patterns. As Climate Psychologists and Buddhists suggest, radical compassion for oneself can be seen as a form of activism for change. As interconnected beings, we acknowledge our relationship to our ancestors and to nature as a means of fostering positive change for future generations. We are part of the intricate and interconnected ecosystem of Earth. As artists, we also recognize the distinction between creating work rooted in beauty, compassion, and care, as opposed to producing pieces motivated by irony, anger, or skepticism.

“Our attitude is the key to discovering the world. Obviously, we have a certain attitude toward ourselves, a certain attitude in relating to others, and a certain attitude in dealing with our world at large. If we haven’t developed the right kind of attitude, it is impossible to connect with the world properly. Art involves relating with oneself and one’s phenomenal world gracefully. In this case, the word gracefully has the sense of nonaggression, gentleness, and upliftedness: that is, a basic attitude of cheerfulness. It is important in becoming artists to make sure that we do not pollute this world,” Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, “True Perceptions”, 2008.

There is a growing recognition of the compatibility between Buddhist teachings and non-realist philosophy, as well as scientific theories of the nature of reality, such as quantum physics. Although emerging from distinct cultural and historical backgrounds, these different disciplines challenge traditional perspectives on the nature of time, reality, self, multiplicity, interdependence, and impermanence.

Meditation and mindfulness, considered the heart of Buddhist psychology, have been shown in neurological research to boost mental well-being by enhancing awareness and emotional control. Modern brain imaging technologies and scans of long-term meditators have shown that meditation slows down biological aging, which results in better emotional regulation, cognition, and stress resilience (National Library of Medicine BrainAGE and regional volumetric analysis of a Buddhist monk: a longitudinal MRI case study, 2020).

Within a Buddhist framework, practicing self-compassion also enables us to act as transformative agents, working towards a better future for those to come. Recognizing that we are an integral part of nature, the compassionate care we extend to ourselves ultimately benefits everyone.

If we adopt the Buddhist principles of compassion, karma (cause and effect), and reincarnation, we could ask: How can the actions we take today affect our future selves? And are we today the heirs of our own karma? Are we our own ancestors?

“Karmas generated without greed, hatred, or ignorance are virtues… Virtuous karmas produce the births of the happy realms and all the happiness of successive births.” — Nagarjuna (c. 150–250)

What can individuals do in the face of eco-anxiety and denial to make a difference for future generations? How can artists contribute with care and compassion to fostering a cultural shift, a movement from separation to multiplicity and interconnectivity?

about the writer
Ibrahim Wallee

Ibrahim Wallee; is a development communicator, peacebuilding specialist, and environmental activist. He is the Executive Director of Center for Sustainable Livelihood and Development (CENSLiD), based in Accra, Ghana. He is a Co-Curator for Africa and Middle East Regions for The Nature of Cities Festivals.

Ibrahim Wallee

Seeds in the Dark: The Ethics of Forward-Looking Care

The indigenous wisdom of the Haudenosaunee, known as the Seventh Generation Principle, offers a clear explanation of what it means to be a good ancestor to the people and things we care about. It states, “We are the forebears of our grandchildren’s descendants. We look after them, just as our ancestors looked after us. We aren’t just here for ourselves (Lyons, 2008).”

Culturally, we are trained to look backward at ancestors as the source of our existence, or sideways at our contemporaries as the subjects of our moral duties, and to look forward at those whose faces we will never see and whose names we will never know. This requires a radical expansion of our imagination. ​Being a good ancestor to the people and things we care about is not merely about biological lineage or leaving a financial inheritance. It is an act of speculative ethics. It is the practical work of stewarding the world so that it remains habitable, beautiful, and open for futures we cannot fully predict.

Redefining the “Ancestor”: From Lineage to Stewardship

​Traditionally, an ancestor is a biological forebear. However, in the context of “deep time” ethics, the definition shifts from biology to impact. In The Good Ancestor, philosopher Roman Krznaric argues that we suffer from “temporal exhaustion,” an obsession with the present moment. To be a noble ancestor is to cultivate “Cathedral Thinking,” the capacity to conceive, commit to, and build projects that will extend far beyond our lifetimes, much like the medieval masons who laid foundations for cathedrals they would never see finished. ​Therefore, an “ancestor” in this context is anyone who actively shapes the substrate of the future. You are an ancestor to the institutions you build, the ecosystems you protect, and the values you model. This observation leads us to the speculative shift, where we must accept that we do not own the future and cannot colonize it with our desires. In this sense, being a good ancestor means liberating the future from our debt (ecological and financial) and ensuring the next generations have the capacity to solve their problems.

The Ontology of “Care”

​If we are to be good ancestors to the “things” we care about, we must rigorously define care. It is not a passive feeling of affection. ​As explored by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa in Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds, care is a material practice. It is the “maintenance of the web of life.” Care is the mundane, often invisible work of keeping things going. To care for a “thing,” whether it is a public library, a coral reef, or a democratic norm, is to perform the maintenance required to keep it viable. In a throwaway culture, the “good ancestor” is the repairer. Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass, discusses the “Honorable Harvest,” recognizing care as not just extracting value for the present; it is asking the land (or the system) what it needs to survive. To be a good ancestor to a forest is not just to refuse to cut it down but to actively participate in its regeneration.

Practical Gestures Toward the Unknown

​How do we care for a future we cannot see? We are living in an era of “radical uncertainty,” where technological singularity and climate instability render 50-year predictions nearly impossible. How do we act responsibly in the fog? It brings to mind three practical, intuitive gestures of the good ancestor. First is the fact that, as we strive to build “concrete” legacies of monuments, rigid laws, or unchangeable structures, we leave concrete cracks. A wise ancestor thinks like a gardener composting soil. We should focus on leaving fertile ground, healthy ecosystems, robust education systems, and psychological resilience by investing in “generative” assets, such as soil health, open-source knowledge, and more, rather than “extractive” assets.

​The second step is to activate “The Precautionary Principle,” which the philosopher Hans Jonas discusses in The Imperative of Responsibility, where he formulates a categorical imperative for the technological age: “Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.” A good ancestor does not gamble with the survival of the whole. When we are unsure about a technology (like unregulated AI or geoengineering) or an ecological tipping point, the ancestral act is to preserve options. Once a species is extinct, that option is closed forever. Moreover, when confronted with an irreversible choice related to the environment or technology, we should opt for the course that leaves the greatest opportunities for future generations.

​Third is transmitting “how” rather than “what.” ​We cannot tell our descendants what to do, because their context will be alien to us. We fail them if we leave them with rigid instructions. Instead, we must care for the methods of wisdom and arm them with the required tools for survival by teaching critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and the capacity for empathy. These are the “tools” that work in any era. We must provide the future generations with the resilience they need to cope with the obstacles we are currently facing.

​To be a noble ancestor is to embrace a paradox: it requires working diligently for a reward you will never receive. ​It means planting trees under whose shade you will never sit. It means accepting that you are a bridge, not the destination. The ultimate definition of caring for the future is to act with restraint and generosity today. It is to acknowledge that the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the freedoms we enjoy are loans from our children, not inheritances from our parents, and as we move through our days, we can ask the “Ancestral Question” before every major decision: Will this action expand or diminish the horizon for those who come next? In the answer to that question lies our legacy.

References

Brand, S. (1999). The clock of the long now: Time and responsibility. Basic Books.

Jonas , H. (1984). The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.

Krznaric, R. (2020). The good ancestor: How to think long term in a short-term world. London: Random House.

Lyons, O. (2008). Looking Toward the Seventh Generation. University of Arizona, American Indian Studies Program. Tucson: University of Arizona. Retrieved April 17, 2008, from https://nnidatabase. org/video/oren-lyons-looking-toward-seventh-generation

MacAskill, W. (2022). What We Owe The Future: The Sunday Times Bestseller. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. University of Minnesota Press.

about the writer
Lindsay Campbell

Lindsay K. Campbell is a human geographer affiliated with The Nature of Cities and CUNY Graduate Center, Department of Earth and Environmental Science. Her current research explores the dynamics of environmental governance, civic engagement, and natural resource stewardship.

Lindsay Campbell

I struggle with what it means to be a good ancestor when I’m just figuring out how to be a good mother to the person I love most on Earth.

I provide my daughter with the essentials: love, support, attention, care, nurturing, guidance, resources. But how much, in what ways, with what words, when to lead, when to step back, from what moral framework or cultural reference? It feels, honestly, improvisational. How often have we heard parents say they are “making it up as they go along?” despite so many centuries of thought and advice on how to be a good parent. At the core, I come back to love; if I anchor in love, I hope I’m getting the most important part right, and hopefully the rest can be forgiven.

But compared to my interaction with my parents or my daughter, I don’t have much, if any, contact with my ancestors. I know some of their names that we wrote on a family tree for our daughter. I see their faces in photographs that my husband and I put on our ofrenda for Dia de Los Muertos, a tradition I now share from his Mexican ancestors. Those faces include our genetic family but also our chosen family―those whose ideas and work and friendship have inspired us to claim them as our own. Because we are more than our DNA―we live in a rich, connected social world that inspires and shapes us. The faces also include our pets, those fuzzy family members that often teach us first about dying, mourning, and remembrance because of their shorter lifespans. And they include things without faces―an acorn from the oak that was cut down in our neighborhood park―that we want to honor as relations.

If I am lucky, I have stories, or fragments of stories, about my ancestors. “Lindsay looks like Daisy Mae”―my great-grandmother, whom I met when I was 3 and never knew, but when I saw a picture of her in her 20s, it was like looking into my own eyes. My great-grandmother on my mom’s dad’s side was a farmer in the Midwest who made excellent biscuits―I should try to get the recipe someday, or better yet to make them with my mom. A lot of my people were farmers―in Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. My grandfather’s family name Zenthoefer, translates to “tenth taker” aka “tithe taker” aka the “tax man”.  These fragments are the stories I have. But beyond that, it’s hard to know how to look to them for guidance or grounding on what kind of an ancestor I should be.

So how do we know if ancestors are “good?” Some folks have deep ties to ancestral wisdom that they live and practice every day. Some folks have little written record of who their ancestors were – those histories have been obscured or erased. Some folks get into genealogy and unearth dark truths in their family histories―criminals, enslavers―that they then have to reckon with and work through. I haven’t done that probing, though I know my grandfather did some family research, and my mom recorded as oral histories, and I actually helped my mom transcribe with my fast typing in 8th grade. I should go back to it. I have no memory of the stories. That impulse to know more, to connect, to fill in the gaps of the missing stories comes from a place of asking―who am I? Where did I come from? Are we good? In truth, aren’t all of our lineages filled with good and bad people, saints and sinners, and aren’t we all a mix of both?

Since I can’t control my future legacy, I’m not sure that I can be remembered as a good ancestor―I have to be at peace with just being an ancestor and hope that’s enough?

I try my best to live my values and principles, to influence those in the small circle around me who influence others in ever widening circles and webs around them―because that is all I have. How do I express that? Through my parenting―improvisational though it may be―trying to raise my daughter to be a good human and learning so much from her reciprocally in the process. Through my family and friendships, though, I feel like our digitized world has made me more shallowly connected than I would like to be. Through my research, writing, and mentorship. I have no illusions of becoming a famous author, but I trust in the web of influence when I see the amazing young scholars and practitioners following after me, who might have taken a piece of wisdom or inspiration from my work, just as I have taken wisdom and inspiration from others. Through my care of the Earth―getting my hands into even a patch as tiny as an urban street tree bed affirms, for me, the interconnection of all beings. It is unseen, it is bigger than me, and it is awesome.

about the writer
Morgan Grove

Morgan Grove is a social scientist and Lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment. He is a Co-Chair of Baltimore City’s Sustainability Commission and Team Member of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES). Morgan worked for 30 years for the USDA Forest Service, where he was the Team Leader for the Baltimore Field Station.

about the writer
Steward Pickett

Steward Pickett is a Distinguished Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. His research focuses on the ecological structure of urban areas and the temporal dynamics of vegetation.

Morgan Grove & Steward Pickett

On Being a Good Ancestor

Ancestry is a broad and powerful idea. We find it to be more like a network or a village than the usual concept of “lineage” embedded in a mythological American middle-class nuclear family―Mom, Dad, two kids, and a dog. But this highly situated myth neglects the nearness of half-siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even neighbors in many cultures. If it “takes a village to raise a child,” so too are networks the shape of ancestry. As researchers and leaders of projects intended to advance social-ecological urban science and its practice in the real world, we are naturally concerned with the nature of academic and practical ancestry.

When we speak of ancestry, it might be a better idea to use a term that does not imply simply genetic or narrow hereditary relationships. Maybe we should speak of “ancestorhood,” because that is a mantle of responsibility that can be chosen, learned, enhanced, and passed on. This broader framing is why we consider how to become a good ancestor. Ancestorhood is a familiar concept in some Indigenous, African, and Asian cultures.

First of all, ancestorhood is a chosen or accepted relationship that builds on the generations before but grows into the future. The present network is temporary, but that means we can always be doing better for those yet to be a part of the community of urban ecology. While having literal children cannot be a requirement of academic and practical ancestorhood, nurturing intellectual and practitioner descendants is certainly required. The first principle of ancestry in science and practice is that each of us has ancestors and will be an ancestor.

What kind of ancestor will we be? Because scientific and practice ancestorhood is a relationship of responsibility, it raises a familiar question: “What does the work of our ancestors require of us?” One thing the current generation needs to do is to acknowledge that ancestral work. What has come down to us, in terms of materials, skills, ideas, values―in a word, culture―of our science and practice?

The honoring of ancestors and the desire to become better ancestors is really the “lifting up” of community and networks, not only in the present, but across time. We have learned from ancestors living and dead, as well as those younger than ourselves and older. Based on what we have learned from these people, here are some things we believe might help us and others be better ancestors. These are ethically motivated statements.

Each of us must accept our place in the stream of ancestors. Remember, you didn’t get where you are on your own.

Accept your responsibility in the community of ancestors. Consider how you can help somebody else be a part of the social-ecological community and its contribution to the larger world. Welcome newcomers to the community.

Kindness is a core value of ancestorhood, even when critical advice is offered.

Remember that students and newcomers to the field, especially those from groups that are not numerically large in the field, may require particularly thoughtful nurturing.

Ancestry can be direct or indirect. By definition, we cannot personally know all our potential ancestors. Look for positive multiplier actions. One indication of success is the phrase, “I’ve heard so much about you”.

Do not propagate or tolerate ill treatment, such as hazing. If you were hazed, that is regrettable and shouldn’t have happened. Don’t pass it on.

Members of all generations and ages should be included and honored. This is similar to two of the requirements of environmental justice: ensure inclusive participation and recognize all voices and perspectives in dialogue.

Include students and young faculty or agency staff in positions of responsibility. Give them chances to participate meaningfully in leadership, such as steering committees, project management, and group blue sky thinking.

Share opportunities to write papers that go beyond technical graduate training, especially syntheses, explorations of new methodologies, new ideas, and new study places. Participation in grant writing, whether to science agencies or private foundations, is a valuable shared experience. Such activities can expand the experiences of all generations.

Conduct activities that include people of all ages, interests, and backgrounds. Events like field trips to places few in the group are familiar with are especially useful in promoting inclusion and growth.

Be attentive to where people are in their life paths and make opportunities available that will help facilitate their advancement, while at the same time avoiding failure-prone situations.

The “old heads” sometimes have to choose to be quiet and let hopeful descendants speak and lead.

Build formal and informal institutions that favor multigenerational ancestorhood. We hope that the evolving Baltimore Ecosystem Study exemplifies conscious sowing of seeds of ancestorhood that have been planted and tended by many different people over the nearly 30 years of that project.

What is the best image or metaphor for ancestorhood? Ancestry and lineages of heritance are often spoken of as trees. A family tree is a common image. But that is really quite static, and it emphasizes a small reproductive unit. The philosophy we laid out at the beginning of this essay is about something much broader, more inclusive, and open to new intellectual and practical relationships. Perhaps we should speak of a braided stream of community. But the stream we envision is not the inevitable outcome of gravity acting on a fluid, but a series of choices and actions to promote the continuation and development of a community of scholars and civic actors.

Acknowledgements. The list of ancestors we are grateful to is much too large to enumerate. Morgan must mention the late Bill Burch and Herb Bormann, two of his mentors from the Yale “School of Forestry.” Steward must mention the late Fakhri Bazzaz, his mentor then at the University of Illinois, and the late Tim Allen of the University of Wisconsin, one of ecology’s practical philosophers. We are both grateful to the Hixon Center at Yale University for bringing together an amazing community of friends, mentors, students, colleagues, and change makers to celebrate our two retirements this year. This entire group is a sterling example of ancestorhood.

about the writer
Toni Luna

Toni Luna has taught geography at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) since 1996. He has served several positions at UPF: Academic Coordinator of Interantional Programs, HEad of the Humanities Department, Academic Coordinator of the Global Studies Degree, and Vicerector of International Relations. His recent projects engage with geohumanities, hydrosocial territoriality, and creative approaches to understanding landscapes and communities.

Toni Luna

Ancestry in the Classroom: Lessons Passed Down, Lives Passed Forward

When people talk about “being a good ancestor”, they often imagine grand, impressive acts such as building libraries, planting forests, or writing a novel. But in teaching, ancestry happens in much smaller, quieter, and sometimes chaotic moments. It happens in the classroom at unreasonable hours, in tutoring sessions in the teachers’ offices, or online, or in the school cafeteria, or also on field trips when students discover that Geneva diplomacy is less glamorous than expected, or in Tangier when they realise borders are lived, not drawn.

For me, the idea of being a good ancestor starts with remembering the people who shaped me. Recently, I lost one of my closest academic mentors, someone who guided me with a mixture of wisdom, affection, and the occasional necessary push. I still remember asking her, years ago, whether having children was a terrible idea for my academic future. She didn’t hesitate: “Kids and family are first. Careers can wait.” That advice—simple, human, and profoundly grounding—became one of the ancestral threads I carry with me.

Then there was the senior colleague who taught me what crafting a class actually means. From pacing a lecture to treating students with respect, he showed me how teaching is an art form, not just a workload. Only much later did I realise how much of my approach, my insistence on clarity, care, and humor comes directly from those early days under his wing.

And now, wonderfully, I’m learning from younger colleagues who keep bringing in new ideas, new tools, new topics, and new ways of connecting with students. They remind me that ancestry isn’t something that flows only from old to young. It circulates. It adapts. It surprises you when you least expect it.

But ancestry is not only about those who shaped us. It’s also about the lives we touch along the way, sometimes without even realising it.

A few years ago, a couple came to see me at the university. They arrived with a Gambian mother and her son, Mamadou, who wanted to study Global Studies. At the time, I was the academic coordinator, and thanks to the heroic efforts of an administrative colleague, one of those angels who carry the university on their shoulders, we managed to make it happen. Mamadou came from a very poor background; his mother worked as a janitor, and he commuted long hours every day because he couldn’t afford to live in Barcelona.

Years later, the day he graduated, his whole family appeared dressed in the vibrant colors of West African celebration. I still remember the emotion of seeing them together, joyful, proud, radiant, and I could barely speak. I told them that moments like this are what make our work meaningful: when you see a life transformed, across languages, cultures, religions, continents. That’s when you understand that teaching is never just teaching.

Not long ago, Mamadou married, and he sent me a message I will never forget:
“Your presence alone is enough to inspire. Back then I thought I was the only one who always went to you when something needed solving. Then I realized everyone else was the same! People would say, ‘Did you speak with Toni? He’ll figure something out.’ May you keep inspiring us!”

Because being a good ancestor in teaching doesn’t require brilliance or perfection. What it requires is presence. Listening. Guiding. Taking students seriously. Sharing our own doubts and learning from theirs. Passing forward the care that others once gave us.

In the end, our legacy isn’t measured in publications or committees—it’s measured in people. In the students who carry a small piece of our influence into futures we will never see. In the stories that continue long after our course has ended.

And if that’s what ancestry is, then I’m grateful to be part of it.

about the writer
Chantal van Ham

Chantal van Ham is a senior expert on biodiversity and nature-based solutions and provides advice on the development of nature positive strategies, investment and partnerships for action to make nature part of corporate and public decision making processes. She enjoys communicating the value of nature in her professional and personal life, and is inspired by cooperation with people from different professional and cultural backgrounds, which she considers an excellent starting point for sustainable change.

Chantal van Ham

Being a good ancestor: weaving the Web of Life

When I think about being a good ancestor, I remember my favourite childhood story of Millie and Tom, two field mice whose wedding secret traveled through the poppy flowers, the corn, the bellflowers, and the wind. The story taught me that in nature, nothing exists in isolation—every whisper, every action, ripples through the living fabric that connects us all.

To be a good ancestor means recognising that we are not separate from but woven into this fabric, that rivers, forests, animals, plants, and humans share the same world, the same breath, the same future. We are threads in a tapestry that has been weaving itself for millions of years, and the mission of our century is clear: to protect and restore this intricate web of life before too many threads are disappearing.

What does care mean in this context? It means listening. Nature has tremendous wisdom. The underground fungal networks through which trees communicate and share nutrients, the bats that save billions in crop damage by controlling pests, or the wolves that changed entire river systems in Yellowstone simply by returning to their place in the ecosystem. Indigenous peoples have understood this wisdom for millennia, living as stewards in harmony with all other living beings. Learning from both indigenous and non-human wisdom, wherever we are, is at the heart of achieving our mission.

Being a good ancestor is about the daily practice of giving nature a space, in our lives, our work, our meetings, and our relationships. It is about opening windows to let birdsong in, about planting trees and flowers, by buying seasonally at our local farm, repair rather than replace, speak up at local planning meetings for green infrastructure over grey, and by sharing what you learn from nature. These small acts help restore the broken relationship between people and nature, thread by thread.

In cities, this is more challenging, but even more urgent, as we cannot wait for pristine wilderness to teach us about interconnection. We must create space for nature in the places where we live. For example, hospitals, schools, and elderly homes with healing and vegetable gardens, which means everything to health and wellbeing.

Being a good ancestor also means reaching beyond our community of the already converted. It means bringing those who are not yet part of this movement closer to nature—for their own nourishment, for their children, and for future generations. It means helping others discover what Indigenous wisdom has always known: that when we heal nature, we heal ourselves.

Alexander von Humboldt taught us in the 18th century that the world is a single interconnected organism: everything, to the smallest creature, has its role and together makes the whole, in which humankind is just one small part. Today, more than ever, we must live this truth and become stewards of the planet, honoring the millions of years of wisdom part of every ecosystem, every species, every relationship.

The question is not only about which parts of the fabric of life we are risking to lose, but whether future generations will reconnect and live in harmony with nature, so that they inherit a world where the poppy flowers still whisper secrets, where the rivers still run clear, where we know the names of plants and trees, and where the web of life remains intact enough to remain a home to them all.

about the writer
Rosa Cerarols

Rosa Cerarols is a geographer and cultural activist. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona, where she teaches and conducts research in geohumanities, cultural geography, gender, and landscape studies. Beyond academia, she co-founded Konvent, a multidisciplinary space for cultural programming and artistic residencies, and has curated exhibitions and programs that connect art with territorial dynamics.

Rosa Cerarols

Being a good ancestor requires asking ourselves if we want to be a seed or become a residue. This implies a call to action in grounding to Earth acting ultralocal but using planet thinking with clear ideas. For me, the notion of feminist counterapocalypsis offers a critical response to dominant narratives of collapse that frame climate and social crises as inevitable, totalizing ends. Rather than denying the severity of planetary breakdown, feminist counterapocalyptic thinking resists the political effects of apocalyptic imaginaries: paralysis, fatalism, technocratic salvationism, and the normalization of sacrifice. From this perspective, the multidimensional crisis is not an exceptional future event but an unevenly distributed condition already shaping the lives of many human and more-than-human communities. What is at stake, then, is not how to survive “the end,” but how to live responsibly within ongoing conditions of damage.

This reframing connects to me with the ethical imperative of *being a good ancestor*. A feminist counterapocalyptic lens (or simply ecofeminist), complicates this temporal and moral horizon by insisting that ancestry is not only about distant futures, but about the everyday reproduction of livable worlds in the present. To be a good ancestor is not merely to leave behind a stable planet, but to cultivate relations of care, responsibility, and restraint within damaged landscapes that will inevitably be inherited.

Feminist counterapocalypsis shifts attention from heroic acts of salvation to the mundane, relational labor that sustains life: caring, repairing, maintaining, and making space for others—human and non-human alike. In this sense, ancestry is understood not as lineage or legacy, but as relational continuity. Our actions become ancestral not because they guarantee progress or redemption, but because they shape the conditions under which future beings will be able to inhabit, adapt, and respond. This perspective rejects the fantasy of control embedded in apocalyptic and techno-futurist imaginaries, replacing it with an ethics of situated responsibility and humility.

Many communities have long been forced to act as ancestors under conditions of dispossession, colonial extraction, and environmental violence. For them, the future has never been secure, and care has always been practiced amid uncertainty. Recognizing this challenges universalizing narratives of crisis and highlights existing practices of endurance, mutual aid, and commoning as already-ancestral forms of action. Being a good ancestor involves learning from these situated knowledge rather than imposing abstract solutions.

From my point of view, connecting ecofeminism with the ethics of being a good ancestor reframes environmental responsibility as a practice of staying with the trouble: acting without guarantees, acknowledging interdependence, and accepting that the worlds we pass on will be shaped as much by repair and care as by loss. It is an invitation to abandon the search for final solutions and instead commit to ongoing, collective work of sustaining conditions for life—imperfect, vulnerable, and shared—across generations. I want to be a resilient seed.

about the writer
Olivia Bina

Olivia Bina researches our evolving relationship with nature and its implications for 21st-century challenges. She focuses on nature-based urban transformative change, critiques of scarcity and growth, and the unlimited potential of human-nature connectedness to progress beyond traditional notions of development. Olivia is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences-University of Lisbon (Portugal), and Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. She holds degrees in Political Sciences, Human Geography and Landscape Architecture; loves trees, catching an early moon-rise, gardening and creating something beautiful from a lump of clay.

Olivia Bina

A few days ago, it was pouring with rain in Lisbon. I was walking along a road lined with deciduous trees shedding their autumn leaves when my attention shifted from busily avoiding getting wet, to just listening to the rain falling on the leaves and the pavement, the water pouring from the roofs, and being splashed around by cars passing by. I was moved by the messy beauty of it all.  What might it mean to be a good ancestor to all the life and supporting systems that make such beauty possible?

Here is my first attempt: love, responsibility, and precaution.

Perhaps, being a good ancestor requires that we fall (back in) love with allLife.

My research and journey have made me aware of the fragility of our world and the profound uncertainty of our times. The entangled evolution of our social-economic, ecological, and technological systems is the stuff of poly and meta crises, and much suffering. Meandering across disciplines, over decades, I have landed on the need to reflect on whether allLife, still, matters to the social-economic-technical systems that shape the present and future. I will refer here to “allLife” as a synthesis term for all human and other-than-human life and their supporting systems, including those that make our cities possible.

I want to think that it does matter, but I do feel it may be urgent to confirm that, daily―instant by instant, and in every choice one makes or contributes to. So, perhaps, being a good ancestor requires that we fall (back in) love with allLife? That would mean that being a good ancestor is an invitation to live, decide, and act daily in ways that make allLife and their biocultural landscapes to flourish, for present and future generations.

Better still, it could mean knowing the answer to the question: “why is the world so beautiful”? Question that set Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) on her journey to weave indigenous and western science in a dance of deeper understanding of our world: struck by the sublime and “regal procession in complementary colors” of the gold of Canada Goldenrods and purple of New England Asters (see picture), she wanted to know why, “why do they stand beside each other … What is the source of this pattern? Why is the world so beautiful?”. She was told by her supervisor, “that science was not about beauty, not about the embrace between plants and humans”, but she persisted and found the answer had to do with the gift of insect pollination, which drives the reproduction of nearly 90% of the world’s flowering plants, which in turn supports the web of life as we know it.

Once love is settled, I can see a role for responsibility and precaution in our pursuit of “good ancestor” practices. Here, I lean on the much-cited UNCED 1992 definition of sustainable development and some of the concepts on which it is grounded, including intergenerational ethics, ecological responsibility, and long-term thinking―which are echoed in many definitions of a good ancestor. Hans Jonas’ The Imperative of Responsibility helped raise the importance of ethics as technological power expanded (some of) humanity’s impact and their long-term effects―which in turn invite Roman Krznaric’s “cathedral thinking” or “seven generation principle”. The growing appeal for responsibility inspired UNCED’s precautionary principle: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation”(Principle 15 Rio Declaration 1992). Imagine if “we” had actually followed such an invitation.

So, to be a good ancestor may require us to radically fall in love with allLife across time, acting and choosing responsibly and with precaution, to ensure the flourishing of the living world and biocultural landscapes it/she/they will rely upon, long after we are gone.

about the writer
Lucie Lederhendler

Lucie Lederhendler is the Artistic Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, a community-engaged, contemporary public art gallery, where she began as curator in 2021. Her research is concerned with the ecosystems of mythologies and the mythologies of ecology. She is a lecturer in art history at Brandon University.

about the writer
Keith Waterfield

Keith Waterfield is a writer based in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. With a background in scriptwriting and performance, he is particularly interested in film and its collaborative nature, specifically within the horror genre. He is currently the administrator at the Brandon General Museum and Archives.

Lucie Lederhendler & Keith Waterfield

Lucie Lederhendler: The origin of the job title “curator” comes from the Latin “curare,” “to care for,” which, as with so many aspects of cultural exhibition, is deeply rooted in colonialism and conquest. While curates were meant to care for people, curators were meant to care for things―displaced, looted, stolen, decontextualized, and objectified, in the sense of turning a life into an object. I consider my own curatorial practice to be more akin to hosting, though I acknowledge the imperfections of that simile, because I need to first accept that a space is under my stewardship before I welcome or invite others into it.

(I want to be sure to acknowledge that Indigenous curation has much more potential to work within a framework of care without exacerbating harm, thinking specifically of my colleague Cathy Mattes, who leans into care and creates space for the ancestors inclusively.)

I asked my spouse, the administrator for our municipality’s historical museum, how he feels the objects he keeps relate to this. While he’s called an administrator (from the Latin to dispense, serve, or manage), and I am called a curator, the intention the words carry seems inverted to me. He is caring for the biographies that assemble into a history―the personal stories that assemble into identity―in the form of the material evidence left behind.

Keith Waterfield: Our museum is a tiny island with over 4,000 residents sharing just under 4,000 square feet. In it, we have the original council chambers, school yearbooks, a near-complete history of telephony, dozens of milk bottles and dairy paraphernalia, hordes of photographs, and personal items from farms that were settled in the city’s first years. More than half the space is used for a taxidermy collection that began in the 19th century. The animals have a room unto themselves, which they are reluctantly sharing with a new archival research facility. Who is to say what is more important, or deserves more care, between a recipe book of cakes or a century-old polar bear?

Certainly, not me. I wipe the dust off these objects and position them to be in full view. The objects’ donors definitely believe that their former belongings should be front and centre. The patron who travelled 1,700km just to see a map locating the place her long-deceased grandfather lived as a boy, to learn what his life was like a hundred years ago, she appreciates that those items and history are right inside the front door. The local who grew up visiting our polar bear at the local university wants it, and its feathered and furry friends, to be the sole focus of the museum. And what of that cake book, which belonged to the first chef of a prominent, long since razed, hotel that stands as a symbol of our city’s second boom? I learned that the donors tried to give it to their children before the museum when they came in to have their photo taken proudly alongside the display.

Lucie Lederhendler: As a curator who works mostly* in contemporary art (*no shade to what might be termed craft) in a gallery instead of a museum (the difference being the absence of a permanent collection) the space that I hold is for people and concepts far more than objects, but the parallels as far as our responsibility to pluralisms abound. The short history of our city and region that the museum tells includes a (quite famous, actually) taxidermied coyote, and merchandise from the picklefest festival of pickles (1990-1999), and a mid-century switchboard, just like the future of us includes a diversity of interests and culture that is held in current art practices. In order to appreciate the pride that those donors felt in their protected and captioned cookbook, or the rootedness that comes from an embodied, located understanding of one’s grandfather’s childhood, we have to appreciate the harm that results from the absence of these experiences–these archives.

(I employ the concepts of pride and roots as the opposite of harm here, but care in general as its antithesis. What else is in the arsenal against harm?)

Keith Waterfield: Each visitor curates their own experience here at the museum, and it is my job to build that experience for them, offer factual and anecdotal histories, be as present or absent as they need. In this way, I became a sort of step-ancestor. I care for and design the space based on the lives of the objects and those who visit them. While the museum is mostly static, it requires tweaking every month or so, as new old items are brought in weekly to supersede the old old items displayed.

Every donor comes in, treasured memory in hand, holds it up to me, and says, “This is good for the museum,” as a statement, not a question. Thankfully for me, there are procedures and policies that save me the awkwardness of contradicting them, but more often than not, the donors have already said something along the lines of “if you don’t want it, throw it out―saves me the trouble.”

Lucie Lederhendler: What follows makes me consider the idea of story and life, and that’s where we arrive at the idea of ancestors. The ancestor that will care for this sweater in a certain way is the mechanism by which it becomes part of an interconnected narrative into the future. If we can remove the idea of chronology from the idea of a storyline, then the tangled meanings of modern curation start to reconcile themselves: meaning derives from context, from sequence.

(In many ways preservation is a fool’s errand: immortality only exists in the realm of myth, and even myth is subject to death.)

Keith Waterfield: If the process accepts your aunt’s cheerleading cardigan, I’ll take great care in placing it in a shadowbox frame, positioned so the team’s logo and the buttons your aunt pinned to it are seen, and I’ll hang it next to photos and medals of the other school teams. I’ll write up an info card that details a brief history of the high school football team that had a short run from the 1960s through the early 70s. If you come for a tour at the museum, I’ll tell you stories of the other visitors who saw it, and the memories they shared about that team, or their team, or high school in general. How that red cardigan inspired someone to say that they should bring in their dad’s letterman jacket, he was the captain of the team, don’t you know? Soon, we might get a football to go with it. And there it will stay, for a time, evidence of that team, and that cheerleader, your aunt, in a museum in the town where they were.

Lucie Lederhendler: We’ve allowed ourselves a bit of professional detachment, perhaps because we’re displaced here ourselves. What Keith called “step-ancestry” acknowledges how our work is not neutral–that in processes of making relations we’re designing ancestors, who are a necessary condition of descendants.

about the writer
Gilles Lecuir

Gilles is an expert about public policies of French local authorities, from villages to metropolis. He tracks down best practices and local initiatives in order to raise awareness and promote them, adopting a positive bias and an evidence-based approach to education in favor of biodiversity.

Gilles Lecuir

Read this in English

Un paysage en héritage

Enfant, j’ai vécu toutes mes vacances dans un paysage de moyenne montagne entièrement créé par les générations passées : une montagne de schiste façonnée par les paysans du passé pour y transformer le rocher en un sol cultivable. Ils ont taillé le roc pour en extraire les pierres avec lesquelles ils ont construit des murs pour créer des terrasses, qu’ils remplissaient de sol qu’ils allaient chercher dans la plaine ou de limon qu’ils remontaient à dos d’homme depuis le lit de la rivière, qu’ils amendaient de fumier et de compost, qu’ils irriguaient grâce un ingénieux système de canaux gravitaires. Un travail de titans, réalisés dans cette région des Cévennes méridionales, dans le sud de la France, entre le XVIII^e et le XIX^e siècle.

Mes parents ont acheté cette maison quand j’avais 2 ans. J’ai connu les troupeaux de chèvres qui broutaient sur nos terrasses, gardés par notre voisine fermière dont nous dégustions les fromages. Puis, les chèvres ne sont plus venues, le pastoralisme qui entretenait ce paysage ouvert s’est arrêté, l’exode rural s’est encore accéléré, et les buissons puis les arbres ont tout envahi, certains poussant même dans les murs de pierre sèche, le paysage s’est refermé, se transformant en jeune forêt.

L’ensauvagement peut avoir du bon, mais dans notre cas, ces prairies méditerranéennes ont tellement régressé qu’elles sont désormais un des habitats naturels protégés au niveau européen (Natura 2000). Un papillon protégé en France, la Diane (Zerynthia polyxena), y fait son cycle de vie sur les stations d’Aristoloches à feuilles rondes, leur plante-hôte de la chenille. Le Lézard ocellé (Timon lepidus), protégé lui aussi, vit dans ces murs de pierre sèche et se réchauffe sur les grosses dalles qui les chapeautent. Mais beaucoup d’autres plantes et animaux des prairies sont menacés par la fermeture généralisée des milieux dans la région.

Vers 2010, mon père a monté un volumineux dossier administratif pour obtenir des financements de l’Etat français et de l’Union européenne, et il a pu ainsi faire intervenir deux jeunes paysagistes qui ont sué sang et eau, ont patiemment coupé, débroussaillé, bâché les souches des arbres dans les murs. Après cela, les gens s’arrêtaient sur la route en face pour admirer ce paysage à nouveau révélé. Et nous aussi, nous l’admirions, nous retrouvions nos souvenirs d’enfance ou de jeunesse. Depuis, nous le faisons entretenir par un courageux travailleur, c’est pénible, non mécanisable. Et il vieillit comme nous. On cherche maintenant une entreprise qui va prendre le relais, ça coûte un peu d’argent mais c’est tellement beau. Du point de vue écologique, il faudrait qu’on exporte le produit de la fauche, car les prairies s’enrichissent en azote et la végétation change. Mais comment faire alors que les escaliers sont pour certains de simples  pierres qui dépassent des murs et que la mécanisation est difficile voire impossible ? Les murs s’effondrent aussi. On en a remonté un avec un groupe de jeunes volontaires pendant les vacances, pas dans les règles de l’art, mais il tient depuis. Beaucoup d’autres ne seront jamais reconstruits, car s’il existe bien des professionnels de la pierre sèche, c’est hors de portée de notre bourse.

Qu’en feront nos enfants ? Seront-ils en mesure d’assumer la charge du bâti ancien mais aussi de ce paysage hérité ? C’est bien la question que mon père et ma mère octogénaires se posent aujourd’hui, même si j’essaie avec ma sœur de leur montrer que nous en prendrons soin autant que possible, y compris en y apportant des changements utiles comme les mares que nous avons créées récemment avec des amis vacanciers, pour les libellules, les oiseaux et une multitude d’insectes et de petite faune. Mes propres enfants et neveux ? Ils verront bien. Nous avons la chance chacun d’être une des multiples générations qui ont le privilège de vivre dans un paysage rare, et c’est déjà ça.

* * *

A Landscape as Heritage

As a child, I spent all my vacations in a mid-mountain landscape entirely created by past generations: a schist mountain shaped by farmers of the past to transform the rock into arable land. They cut the rock to extract stones with which they built walls to create terraces, which they filled with soil they brought from the plain or silt they carried on their backs from the riverbed, which they enriched with manure and compost, and which they irrigated using an ingenious system of gravity-fed canals. This was a titanic task, carried out in this region of the southern Cévennes, in the south of France, between the 18th and 19th centuries.

My parents bought this house when I was two years old. I remember the herds of goats grazing on our terraces, looked after by our farmer neighbor, whose cheese we enjoyed. Then the goats stopped coming, the pastoralism that maintained this open landscape came to an end, the rural exodus accelerated, and bushes and then trees took over, some even growing into the dry stone walls. The landscape closed in, transforming into a young forest.

Re-wilding can be a good thing, but in our case, these Mediterranean meadows have regressed so much that they are now one of the natural habitats protected at the European level (Natura 2000). A butterfly protected in France, the southern festoon (Zerynthia polyxena), completes its life cycle on round-leaved pipevine plants, the host plant of its caterpillar. The ocellated lizard (Timon lepidus), also protected, lives in these dry stone walls and basks on the large slabs that cap them. But many other plants and animals in the meadows are threatened by the widespread closure of habitats in the region.

Around 2010, my father put together a voluminous administrative file to obtain funding from the French government and the European Union, and was thus able to bring in two young landscape gardeners who worked tirelessly, patiently cutting, clearing, and covering the tree stumps in the walls. After that, people would stop on the road opposite to admire the newly revealed landscape. And we admired it too, recalling memories from our childhood and youth. Since then, we have had it maintained by a courageous worker, as it is difficult work that cannot be done by machines. And he is getting older, just like us. We are now looking for a company to take over. It costs a little money, but it’s so beautiful. From an ecological point of view, we should export the mowed grass, because the meadows are enriched with nitrogen and the vegetation is changing. But how can this be done when some of the steps are stones that protrude from the walls, and mechanization is difficult or even impossible? The walls are also collapsing. We rebuilt one with a group of young volunteers during the holidays, not according to the rules of the art, but it has held up since then. Many others will never be rebuilt, because although there are dry stone professionals, they are beyond our means.

What will our children do with them? Will they be able to take on the burden of the old buildings and the landscape they have inherited? This is the question my octogenarian parents are asking themselves today, even though my sister and I are trying to show them that we will take care of it as much as possible, including making useful changes such as the ponds we recently created with vacationing friends for dragonflies, birds, and a multitude of insects and small wildlife. My own children and nephews? They’ll see. We are each fortunate to be one of the many generations that have the privilege of living in a rare landscape, and that’s something.

about the writer
Pau G. Aleikum

Pau Garcia is a media designer and founder of Domestic Data Streamers. Since 2013, the Barcelona-based studio has researched and produced immersive “info-experiences” and GEN-AI projects for institutions such as the United Nations, Barcelona City Hall, and Citizen Lab over 45 countries. Garcia is chair of the Master in Data in Design at ELISAVA University.

Pau Aleikum

To care for someone, or something, is to accept that our acts echo in a space and time we will not see. A good ancestor is not a keeper of order. A good ancestor is someone who leaves a small crack through which new life can enter. A crack is often more useful than a wall.

Joy helps here. Not joy as escape, but joy as force, it’s complex because in a tired world, joy can feel like poor taste. Yet music, love, and small shared sparks have kept us alive far more than fear ever did. Nick Cave closes one of his songs by saying we have had too much sorrow and now is the time for joy. When joy is rare, holding it is a task.

Mario Benedetti wrote a defense of joy that treats it as a thing you must guard with your life. It asks us to keep a small bright window open, even when the house shakes. To be a good ancestor is to keep that window open for whoever comes next.

While thinking about the question, I turned to maps. Maps are letters sent across space and time by people who walked the land before us. They help us trace their paths. To know something is to know how to get lost in it, and maps are the first step for this kind of knowledge. At the same time, a map is only a thin cut of the land. No map can hold the whole earth. There are always hidden areas; maps help us dream of places that are not on them. A good ancestor draws maps that show where we stand, but also where the blank spaces might be. A good ancestor keeps some space blank on purpose, because blank space is where freedom and critical thinking grows.

To be a good ancestor is to make these breaches. There are two types. The first is a break against a structure that does harm. The second is a proposal for another way to live. Both matter. Not voting is a break. Building a new form of group life is a proposal. In art, refusal can shock awake a room. But the deeper task is to make things that feel true to those who do not care for the word “art” at all, good ancestors may guide through that, as they truth, although changing with times, remain a mirror of what we have been in the past.

So, where do we look for seeds that can outlive us? Look in cracks in the ground. Look in odd glitches in your daily live. Look in slight shifts of tone around yourself. Look in moments that melt as fast as snow. You cannot store snow. You cannot plan it. When it falls, it covers the old shape of things. It can fade fast, yet with enough of it, even the heaviest, oldest structures give way. A good ancestor knows how to let that happen.

about the writer
Jerry Bauer

Jerry Bauer (Retired, Biological Scientist, International Cooperation, USDA Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry) has more than 50 years of experience working in the Latin America and Caribbean Region with the US Forest Service’s International Institute of Tropical Forestry, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Peace Corps.

Jerry Bauer

As my daughter said in a university essay when she was a 17-year-old, “Life is not always perfect, families are not always perfect” and “being imperfect is a part of life”, Neysha Bauer, 2008.  This can be applied to being “good ancestor” and “caring”. Which to me means:

• You will find imperfections; it will be your role to face these and face them in a positive way, correct them in a positive way, and adjust to benefit society.
• Recognize that the world is big, it is bold, and life is not always fair. But it is always an ADVENTURE. Embrace this adventure, look for it, guide it in the direction you want to go, be different, be bold, be a leader.
• Things are not always what they seem; be prepared for it.
• Help others, care for others. As I explained to my daughter when she questioned why I was traveling and away from home a lot working in underserved communities in Central America, she said, “Daddy, if you don’t do it who will” Neysha 6 yrs old. So DO IT.
• Contribute, in your own way, to make the world a better place.
• When times get difficult, face it as a team, with those around you, as one, become stronger, don’t let tough times defeat you, “you must defeat tough times”.
• You will reach success through failure, don’t be afraid to fail, take risks, it will pay off.
• And most of all, be true and kind to yourselves and to others.

about the writer
Samarth Das

Samarth Das is an Urban Designer and Architect based in Mumbai. Having practiced professionally in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and subsequently in New York City, his work focuses on engaging actively in both public as well as private sectors—to design articulate shared spaces within cities that promote participation and interaction amongst people.

Samarth Das

When we think of our ancestors, we reminisce and revel in the romance of a time when our environment was healthier, the air and oceans were cleaner, a time when nature truly flourished. For me, it is a sensorial deep dive into how people lived―how they occupied space, their livelihoods, their relationships with one another, their surroundings and with nature, and how they negotiated the early trends of urbanization and city life. Today, in the pursuit of rapid development, we have tipped over the scales and are as far away from thinking of nature as we have ever been. As an architect and urban designer, I am always looking for cues on how to restore some balance within our urban environments. People living in cities in our subcontinent are growing further away from nature, let alone interacting with it frequently for the relief and much-needed moments of pause it provides. As a people, we are losing empathy towards nature, being embroiled in our daily lives with utter disregard towards our already severed relationships with what is “natural”.

But not all is lost. While time is not on our side, time itself is the greatest healer. Nature finds a way of its own, and we must give it space and time to recover and reclaim lost ground. A transition to nature-centric approaches from the obsessive people-centric approaches of today is the need of the hour. Understanding this will help formulate ways of addressing the climate and environmental degradation at hand today.

We must put ecology at the forefront of all our endeavors. Bringing natural areas back into our cityscapes must be a comprehensive approach adopted by city and state governments. Instead of seeking solace in forests and greenscapes outside of cities, we leave them be and instead try to bring forests back into our cities. We must find ways to give flora and fauna a physical stake within our built environments. In a world driven by capital and its geography flattening approaches, policy makers and city builders should instead aim to define birds, bees, butterflies, insects, lakes, rivers, mangroves, hills, and forests as their key clients. By giving nature the respect it deserves, we ensure the longevity of the very lands that we occupy and enjoy today. Our focus must be to help damaged environments in and around our cities heal by ensuring that green areas are given sufficient buffer areas to proliferate, while new developments allow for natural ecologies to flow through them instead of building barriers and severing relationships that the ground shares.

Ancestral timelines are rapidly shrinking―ironically, like the nature within our cities. What was earlier considered to be a multi-generational timeframe to perceive varying forms of livelihood, transport, methods of construction, amongst others, are now compressed into much shorter timeframes. In this time of accelerated change, interacting and spending time with nature is an in-exchangeable facet to nurture children into becoming climate-conscious and responsible guardians of tomorrow. Observing nature and its processes itself is a patience and empathy-building endeavor. Through learning at home as well as local community stewardship programs that address biophilia, we can help build a culture of respect towards one another as well as towards nature. These cultural practices can be carried forward as important tools of sustaining balance in our environments. Collaboration that enables cross-pollination of ideas across various sectors of technology and innovation across all age groups, with ecological refurbishment as the core development principle, can help garner relationships with multi-generational positive effects. After all, our efforts today carry with them the hope for a healthy future for the generations to come. With this, we hope that our descendants look back at this time, and appreciate our efforts in restoring ecologies that have been lost―not revel in the romance of what today offers, but rather be thankful for the changes we have effected to restore and recover from the damage we have inflicted upon our planet.

about the writer
Martina Artmann

Martina Artmann is a professor at the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences and leads the Leibniz Junior Research Group URBNANCE (Urban Human-Nature Resonance for Sustainability Transformation) at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development. Her work takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying cities as socio-ecological systems and exploring their potential to contribute to sustainable development.

Martina Artmann

Healing the Wounds of our Ancestors: Towards Care for Nature and Future Generations

What does it mean to be a good ancestor to the things or people we care about? Upon receiving this question for the round table, my inner voice responded immediately. It is a very personal perspective. I have been exploring the roles of ancestors for many years, and I stumble if I should share it with a wider audience. However, my individual explorations about the traces of ancestors that influence my life are not separated from the collective history. In particular, the collective history of women shaped by patriarchy, I feel deeply in my DNA, including emotional, physical, and spiritual abuse, and violent death, such as happened with the burning of witches. These traumas experienced by our ancestors can make us feel lost in an alienating world; they can mute our voice. By “voice” I refer not only to the sound generated by the vibrating vocal folds. Rather, a muted voice also pertains to the psychological-spiritual dimension, reflecting a reduced access to one’s intuition, inner wisdom, and self-connection. The audible and symbolic resonance of our innermost being is muted.

The possibility that traumatic life experiences or ancestral exposures to pollutants can be transmitted across generations is studied scientifically under the framework of epigenetic inheritance. Traumas of our ancestors — such as war, expulsion, flight, or colonization — can manifest in our own lives in various ways, including physical illness, unstable relationships, reduced self-confidence, guilt and shame, or anxiety disorders. These phenomena are explored and illustrated in a range of formats, such as an ARTE documentary (in German), talks by Dr. Peter Levine, a psychologist and trauma therapist, and the regular International Symposium on “Epigenetic Inheritance”.

Therefore, overall, being a good ancestor means walking the path of healing. Healing is neither a measurable outcome nor a wellness guarantee sought by modern societies. Thus, healing is a cyclic process, which is often demanding and pushes one beyond the comfort zone. Healing means for me to get whole again, looking into the eyes of the collective shadows, and to resolve and unlearn what does not belong to me. By “me”, I do not mean the ego, personal desires, or conditioned thoughts. Rather, I refer to our higher consciousness. For instance, the higher consciousness in Indian philosophy is referred to Atman. Atman stands for the innermost essence of a person, which transcends the body, thoughts, and ego. It is unchanging, eternal, and pure ― in other words, what is truly “me” beyond all roles, emotions, and conditioning.

In science, we are shaped invisibly by roles and cultural conditioning as well. Western scientific ontologies and epistemologies are deeply influenced by materialistic and human-centered worldviews. These dominant paradigms can be regarded as the main cause for the unsustainable exploitation of nature and the ecological degradation we face worldwide. Thus, voices are getting louder that there is a need to overcome anthropocentric human-nature relationships and, with that, also to transform our research systems. From my perspective as a researcher, healing entails bridging contemporary Eurocentric conceptions of science with diverse ways of knowing, including embodied knowledge, Indigenous wisdom, relational epistemologies, and spiritual perspectives. Healing the wounds of ancestors — particularly wise women who embodied spirituality, healing, and deep connection to themselves and the natural world — has empowered me to share an expanded understanding of science with the wider public, one that honors diverse ways of knowing and fosters care for nature and future generations. I offer my heartfelt thanks to all my ancestors for their generous guidance and support.

about the writer
Cecilia Herzog

Cecilia Polacow Herzog is an urban landscape planner, retired professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She is an activist, being one of the pioneers to advocate to apply science into real urban planning, projects, and interventions to increase biodiversity and ecosystem services in Brazilian cities.

Cecilia Herzog

What If Ancestry-Based Cities Could Change Everything?

What is the legacy that my generation, the “baby boomers”, is leaving to their beloved grandchildren and the generations to come? When I talk to my friends about this, they become kind of disturbed, but they don’t really reflect on what is at stake. Maybe because they ignore, or they don’t want to know, so as not to have to leave their comfort zones. Or maybe they don’t see themselves as ancestors… or they believe they may be immortal, and they will be around for eternity…

When you are conscious that all living organisms, including us, have a life cycle, this gives you a sense of temporality, a sense that you are here for a limited period of time. And who is going to live here after you, are your offspring, who are dependent on a healthy living planet.

Being conscious that we are an ancestor calls for being responsible for what are the consequences of our own positions and actions.

Western consumerism-focused society is supported by depleting nature and exploring people, which means that our choices matter. It may be hard to change the mindset towards caring for life, as it requires a big shift in values. And this may change everything!

I have thought a lot about what changed in myself when I realized I am an ancestor of my granddaughters and other unborn generations. Questions started to rise: How will the world they will live in be? What am I doing to contribute to making it a better place? How can I nurture their biophilia so they break the disconnection with nature that the current capital-based society leads people to? How can I cultivate presence, love, and compassion for myself, so I can be a better person to keep caring for life every day?

It is quite challenging to maintain the energy up when we are aware of the state of the world. It is pretty scary to face the existing reality, not only for me, but for our descendants, for the more-than-human lives, and their fellow generations.

Actually, I believe really good ancestors are the indigenous peoples that were demonstrating in Belém, during the COP 30, and all others worldwide that fight to restrain the fierce hunger of the economic system to destroy nature, and by consequence, our homeland, Mother Earth.

I have been inspired by them, and I have learned a lot from them over the years.

They care for life so much that many die defending their people, their forests, their rivers, their landscapes. They are their ecosystems!

What a difference from most of my friends and family, who are mainly concerned about their own immediate, mundane pleasures, pure hedonism. It is not a judgement; it is a fact.

How can one be a good ancestor when they don’t feel the impacts of their everyday choices? People are so apart from nature in cities, being a piece of the predatory engine, that they are disconnected from their own nature.

How can they connect to the cycles of life, including their own, in urban environments? How can they learn to care for the world they will pass on to their descendants?

What if we could reshape cities so people could develop their sense of ancestry?

What if cities went further than trying to be “nature-based” to adapt to climate challenges?

How can cities promote an environment that enables people to feel a deep belonging to Gaia, as the indigenous peoples do? Could those cities mimic the original ecosystems that once thrived in their landscapes?

Could this ancestry-based city give more meaning to people’s lives? Could it help change values and behaviors? Could it change everything?

I dream they could!

about the writer
Lucas Bueno

Master’s in Landscape and Environment from the University of São Paulo’s School of Architecture and Urbanism (2024), with a postgraduate degree in Geography, City and Architecture from Escola da Cidade (2020) and a bachelor’s in Architecture and Urbanism from Mackenzie Presbyterian University (2013). He is co-founder of Estúdio Lava, an architecture and landscape practice in São Paulo, and works as a consultant in urban planning and public space. In research, he has been affiliated with FAUUSP’s Landscape Frames Laboratory (LabQuapá) since 2021, focusing on planning, landscape, territory and communities. Since 2017, he has coordinated LALI’s Landscape Good Practices Unit.

Lucas Bueno

Read this in English
O que significa ser um bom ancestral para as coisas ou pessoas com quem nos importamos?

Em nosso ciclo de vida na Terra, ao nascer, ingressamos ao mundo que foi construído por aqueles que vieram antes de nós, tecido pela rede de vínculos afetivos consolidados ao longo de suas vidas partilhadas. Essa herança que recebemos é carregada de memórias e sentimentos e se materializa na paisagem ao transformar a natureza, tanto seus aspectos físicos, associados ao ambiente natural e construído, quanto seus aspectos simbólicos, por meio das formas de apropriações e percepções que se constituem naquele determinado mundo, coexistente com outros mundos que integram este pluriverso, segundo desenvolvido por Arturo Escobar (2017), Marisol de La Cadena (2019), entre outros.

As heranças que recebemos de nossos ancestrais são agenciadas em nossas práticas e conhecimentos expressados no cotidiano, constituindo traços de nossa ancestralidade, conceito dinâmico que, segundo Antônio Bispo dos Santos (2015), está constantemente em reconstrução. Para o mestre quilombola, conhecido pela alcunha de Nego Bispo, a agência conferida a ancestralidade representa a circularidade com que seu povo compreende a vida, conforme os ciclos da natureza. Sob esta perspectiva, a herança (aquilo que recebemos) e a ancestralidade (a forma como agenciamos tal herança) transformam a paisagem de determinado espaço-tempo, constituindo-a como palimpsesto de camadas históricas e a-históricas.

A paisagem que construímos materializa sempre, em alguma medida, aquilo que nos foi deixado pelos nossos ancestrais, no espaço transformado e em suas percepções e apropriações estabelecidas ao longo do tempo. Parto desta perspectiva para a reflexão sobre o que significa ser um bom ancestral para as coisas ou pessoas que nos importam.

A contemporaneidade trouxe uma série de desafios postos pelas mudanças climáticas, que são reflexos das heranças culturais moldadas na Constituição da Modernidade (Latour, 2010), que subordinou a natureza perante a humanidade e hierarquizou as sociedades através de raça, gênero, religião e cultura, tema largamente trabalhado por Quijano (2000), Latour (2010), Santos (2014), entre outros. De todo modo, são os desastres climáticos que vivenciamos na atualidade que nos mostram a urgência de rompermos com este paradigma e compreendermos que somos parte da natureza e que devemos atuar para conservá-la, protegê-la e restaurá-la.

Quando reflito sobre o que é ser um bom ancestral, penso no legado que deixaremos para as próximas gerações, e como elas vão expressar a sua ancestralidade, se será possível resgatar relações harmoniosas com a natureza, fortalecer as diferentes identidades culturais deste pluriverso e, principalmente, compreender como é possível integrar a natureza e a cultura. Trazendo para o campo da paisagem, no qual me insiro, ser um bom ancestral significa compreender como a paisagem pode ser instrumento para o Bem Viver (Bueno, 2024) das comunidades urbanas e rurais, que permita contribuir para a construção de alternativas ao desenvolvimento extrativista, que não sejam ecocidas e etnocidas.

Por meio da paisagem, podemos atuar para regenerar a cultura e a natureza, para fortalecer e resgatar as memórias e as identidades, ao tempo em que podemos contribuir para reestabelecer vínculos, conservar, recuperar e proteger a natureza, porque somos parte dela, e ela é a principal herança que deixaremos para as gerações futuras. Este raciocínio institui a política na paisagem, já que, ao transformá-la, estamos afetando em alguma medida essa herança, o que determina o dever do bom ancestral em contribuir para esta reconexão, com sua natureza e com sua cultura.

O bom ancestral é aquele que deixa como legado sua contribuição para a ruptura do paradigma da modernidade, seja ressignificando nossas relações com a natureza, seja fortalecendo nossa cultura. Ao mesmo tempo em que conduz a ancestralidade para as próximas gerações, o bom ancestral resgata elos perdidos ou vínculos enfraquecidos para regenerar a paisagem, reapropriando-se da natureza-cultura.

Ao bom ancestral, abrem-se amplas possibilidades de deixar este legado. Penso na herança dos povos originários que vivem em harmonia com a natureza, suas culturas ricas de tradições, conhecimentos, técnicas e práticas, penso nas suas lutas contínuas pelos seus territórios e nos processos locais de retomada de territórios ancestrais. São verdadeiros guardiões da natureza que conservam nosso planeta. Para dar um exemplo local, ressalto a luta dos Guarani Mbya e sua retomada do território no extremo sul da cidade de São Paulo, iniciada em 2013.

Passados doze anos do início da retomada, os Guarani conseguiram ampliar seu território de 52 hectares divididos em duas aldeias para 16.000 hectares em 2016, onde, atualmente, já contam com dezesseis aldeias espalhadas pelo território, onde habitam cerca de mil e quinhentas pessoas. A retomada das terras, permitiu ampliar espaços de plantio, o que levou ao processo de restauração ecológica e à substituição de antigas silviculturas abandonadas por roças agroecológicas: no lugar de monoculturas de eucaliptos e pinus, estão regenerando a floresta nativa e plantando sua comida tradicional por meio de consórcios agroecológicos e agroflorestais que atravessam a paisagem guarani em seus aspectos físicos e simbólicos.

Regenerar a terra através do cultivo alcança as dimensões simbólicas desde o cuidar a terra, semear, plantar, colher e comer em comunidade, e são estas práticas que moldam o ser guarani, contribuindo para a diferenciação estabelecida entre eles e os juruá, como denominam os brancos (Pierri, 2013). O bom ancestral, neste caso, costura traços identitários dos antepassados com a comunidade presente, e estabelece as pontes através da sua ancestralidade.

Referências

BISPO DOS SANTOS, A. (2023). A terra dá, a terra quer. São Paulo: Ubu Editora / PISEAGRAMA.

BISPO DOS SANTOS, A. (2023). Somos da Terra. Em V. Autores, Terra: antologia afro-indígena (pp. 7-17). São Paulo / Belo Horizonte: Ubu Editora / PISEAGRAMA.

BUENO, L. G. (2024). Paisagem como Instrumento para o Bem Viver: planejamento e territorialidade na retomada ancestral da Terra Indígena Tenondé Porã. Biblioteca de Teses e Dissertações da FAUUSP: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/16/16135/tde-30012025-130557/es.php

CADENA, M. D. (2019). Cosmopolítica indígena nos Andes: reflexões conceituais para além da “política”. Maloca – Revista de Estudos Indígenas, 1-37.

ESCOBAR, A. (2017). Autonomía y Diseño: la realización de lo comunal. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón.

LATOUR, B. (2013). Jamais fomos modernos: ensaio de antropologia simétrica. São Paulo: Editora 34.

PIERRI, D. C. (2013). O perecível e o imperecível: lógica do sensível e corporalidade no pensamento guarani-mbya. Universidade de São Paulo: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humandas – Departamento de Antropologia, São Paulo.

QUIJANO, A. (2000). La Colonialidad del Poder, Eurocentrismo y América Latina. Em E. LANDER, La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas Latinoamericanas (pp. 122-147). Buenos Aires: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.

SANTOS, B. S. (2014). Más allá del pensamiento abismal: de las líneas globales a una ecología de saberes. Em B. d. Eds. Santos, & M. P. Menezes, Epistemologías del Sur (perspectivas) (pp. 21-67). Madrid: Ediciones Akal.

* * *

What does it mean to be a good ancestor to the things or people we care about?

In our life cycle on Earth, when we are born, we enter a world that was built by those who came before us, woven by a network of emotional bonds consolidated throughout their shared lives. This inheritance we receive is loaded with memories and feelings and materializes in the landscape by transforming nature, both its physical aspects, associated with the natural and built environment, and its symbolic aspects, through the forms of appropriation and perception that constitute that particular world, coexisting with other worlds that make up this pluriverse, as developed by Arturo Escobar (2017), Marisol de La Cadena (2019), among others.

The legacies we receive from our ancestors are mediated in our practices and knowledge expressed in everyday life, constituting traces of our ancestry, a dynamic concept that, according to Antônio Bispo dos Santos (2015), is constantly under reconstruction. For the quilombola master, known by the nickname Nego Bispo, the agency conferred on ancestry represents the circularity with which his people understand life, according to the cycles of nature. From this perspective, heritage (what we receive) and ancestry (how we act on that heritage) transform the landscape of a given space-time, constituting it as a palimpsest of historical and ahistorical layers.

The landscape we build always embodies, to some extent, what our ancestors left us, in the transformed space and in their perceptions and appropriations established over time. I start from this perspective to reflect on what it means to be a good ancestor to the things or people we care about.

Contemporary times have brought a series of challenges posed by climate change, which are reflections of the cultural legacies shaped in the Constitution of Modernity (Latour, 2010), which subordinated nature to humanity and hierarchized societies through race, gender, religion, and culture, a theme widely explored by Quijano (2000), Latour (2010), Santos (2014), among others. In any case, it is the climate disasters we are currently experiencing that show us the urgency of breaking with this paradigm and understanding that we are part of nature and that we must act to conserve, protect, and restore it.

When I reflect on what it means to be a good ancestor, I think about the legacy we will leave for future generations, and how they will express their ancestry, whether it will be possible to restore harmonious relationships with nature, strengthen the different cultural identities of this pluriverse, and, above all, understand how it is possible to integrate nature and culture. Bringing this to the field of landscape, in which I work, being a good ancestor means understanding how landscape can be an instrument for Good Living (Bueno, 2024) in urban and rural communities, contributing to the construction of alternatives to extractive development that are not ecocidal or ethnocidal.

Through the landscape, we can act to regenerate culture and nature, to strengthen and rescue memories and identities, while contributing to reestablishing bonds, conserving, recovering, and protecting nature, because we are part of it, and it is the main legacy we will leave for future generations. This reasoning establishes politics in the landscape, since, by transforming it, we are affecting this heritage to some extent, which determines the duty of the good ancestor to contribute to this reconnection with nature and with their culture.

A good ancestor is one who leaves behind a legacy of breaking the paradigm of modernity, whether by reframing our relationship with nature or strengthening our culture. While passing on ancestry to future generations, a good ancestor restores lost or weakened ties to regenerate the landscape, reclaiming nature-culture.

Good ancestors have ample opportunities to leave this legacy. I think of the heritage of indigenous peoples who live in harmony with nature, their cultures rich in traditions, knowledge, techniques, and practices. I think of their ongoing struggles for their territories and the local processes of reclaiming ancestral territories. They are true guardians of nature who preserve our planet. To give a local example, I highlight the struggle of the Guarani Mbya and their reclaiming of territory in the extreme south of the city of São Paulo, which began in 2013.

Twelve years after the beginning of the recovery, the Guarani managed to expand their territory from 52 hectares divided into two villages to 16,000 hectares in 2016, where they currently have sixteen villages scattered throughout the territory. The recovery of the land allowed for the expansion of planting areas, which led to ecological restoration and the replacement of old abandoned forestry operations with agroecological farms: in place of eucalyptus and pine monocultures, they are regenerating the native forest and planting their traditional food through agroecological and agroforestry consortia that traverse the Guarani landscape in its physical and symbolic aspects.

Regenerating the land through cultivation achieves symbolic dimensions from caring for the land, sowing, planting, harvesting, and eating in community, and it is these practices that shape the Guarani being, contributing to the differentiation established between them and the juruá, as they call white people (Pierri, 2013). The good ancestor, in this case, stitches together the identity traits of the ancestors with the present community and builds bridges through their ancestry.

References

BISPO DOS SANTOS, A. (2023). A terra dá, a terra quer. São Paulo: Ubu Editora / PISEAGRAMA.

BISPO DOS SANTOS, A. (2023). Somos da Terra. Em V. Autores, Terra: antologia afro-indígena (pp. 7-17). São Paulo / Belo Horizonte: Ubu Editora / PISEAGRAMA.

BUENO, L. G. (2024). Paisagem como Instrumento para o Bem Viver: planejamento e territorialidade na retomada ancestral da Terra Indígena Tenondé Porã. Biblioteca de Teses e Dissertações da FAUUSP: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/16/16135/tde-30012025-130557/es.php

CADENA, M. D. (2019). Cosmopolítica indígena nos Andes: reflexões conceituais para além da “política”. Maloca – Revista de Estudos Indígenas, 1-37.

ESCOBAR, A. (2017). Autonomía y Diseño: la realización de lo comunal. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón.

LATOUR, B. (2013). Jamais fomos modernos: ensaio de antropologia simétrica. São Paulo: Editora 34.

PIERRI, D. C. (2013). O perecível e o imperecível: lógica do sensível e corporalidade no pensamento guarani-mbya. Universidade de São Paulo: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humandas – Departamento de Antropologia, São Paulo.

QUIJANO, A. (2000). La Colonialidad del Poder, Eurocentrismo y América Latina. Em E. LANDER, La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas Latinoamericanas (pp. 122-147). Buenos Aires: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.

SANTOS, B. S. (2014). Más allá del pensamiento abismal: de las líneas globales a una ecología de saberes. Em B. d. Eds. Santos, & M. P. Menezes, Epistemologías del Sur (perspectivas) (pp. 21-67). Madrid: Ediciones Akal.

about the writer
Kate McGloughlin

Kate McGloughlin is a celebrated painter, printmaker and instructor at the center of the art colony of Woodstock—The Woodstock School of Art, and has been leading creatives on painting excursions around the globe since 1998. Spiriting an ethos of curiosity, goodwill, and inclusion, McGloughlin infuses multimedia art adventures with warmth and a heart for kindling transformation through engaging work and play experiences for participants and the ecosystems in which they find themselves.

Kate McGloughlin

The People of Davis Corners

We live in the house my grandfather and two of his best friends built in 1922, at Davis Corners, in Olivebridge, New York. The land it sits on was granted to my ancestor, Kit Davis, in a 17th-century land patent on the unceded land of the LENI LENAPE. My people have lived, loved, married, given birth, farmed, and died here for twelve generations. In turn, I have been painting the fields, brooks, and wood lots that they worked since I was thirteen. Their work sustained their families; my work has sustained mine.

In the summer months, I mow the lawn weekly and almost always think of my grandfather, who mowed this patch until my twin brother and I were tall enough to reach the clutch on the Montgomery Ward Ride on Tractor. Every new dip in the lawn signifies a new tunnel, made by voles, or the presence of a new spring. Alas, water finds its way, and so have I.

I got away from this farm as soon as I could—at eighteen, for college—and came back when I needed to look after my beloved grandmother. I found my way to a local art school where I have been able to do service to my profession as a landscape painter and printmaker, and where I eked out a living, on this- just-under-two-acres and farm house that came with a barn/garage with an apartment built as a honeymoon cottage for my aunt and uncle, just after the war.

The hundreds of other acres that were cared for by Kit’s early descendants were first donated to create a town around the farm—the Methodist Church and parsonage and the Odd Fellows Hall were sectioned off from the early farm—then sold off to other small farmers and those who would become cherished neighbors and friends.

Caring for the land and home is what we do. We don’t feel that we own it, but we do feel like we’ve polished up and improved on what we were handed. Neither my partner Sarah nor I have the stomach to raise animals, (why do they call it livestock? It should be called dead stock, for sure…) nor do we hay the one small field that is ours. We will continue to pay our neighbor to do that until we have more time to tend to what we might grow there. We do carry on Pa’s legacy as we care for a small patch that provides greens and tomatoes, and an enviable herb and tea garden that lures local bees from their hives to our land to make love to.

I wasn’t lucky enough to inherit the barnyard or 1948 Allis Chalmers Tractor, but my cousin lets me prowl around in the Horse Barn that was part of his inheritance, and I did manage to score a lot of cool old rusty farm equipment to have and to hold and cherish forever. I really do know what each part went to, and the memories that a rusty piece of a harrow can conjure rival a bite into any Proustian Madeleine. It’s potent, and I remember them. The studios I built in my time have replaced the milk house and granary, silo and hay mow; each building a nod to the past, with functional spaces, and red siding, with white trim.

Lately, I’ve been creating assemblages using wood from the remnants of our barn and bolts and nuts and washers and bits of harnesses and bridles, windows, and doors. Each assemblage, steeped in heritage, now holds things that at least 5 generations of my ancestors held in their hands, and though there will be no generations going forward of my own, my cousins’ kids will have something from my hands, too. And my heart, I suppose.

Of course, this is only one set of ancestors that I’ve remembered and to whom I’ve tended. In my last four major exhibitions, called “Requiem for Ashokan”, I remembered another side, each show a different iteration of work showcasing the devastation of my generational community and our homesteads that were razed during the creation of the Ashokan Reservoir. I wanted their stories and sacrifices remembered, so I put it in writing, and on the walls of two museums, two other gallery spaces, and in the frames of a small documentary film.

I have loved my people more after each telling, and I have been so honored to be asked to contribute this piece for this cohort, as well. May the work you continue to uncover be as practical in implementation as it is marvelous in its ethos.

Requiem for Ashokan:

https://www.katemcgloughlin.com/video

about the writer
Toby Query

Toby Query is a father, husband, and ecologist. As an ecologist with the City of Portland’s Revegetation Program since 1999, he stewards natural areas for all Portlanders where he has overseen the planting of over 4 million trees and shrubs. He founded the discussion group Portland Ecologists Unite! which created spaces to learn, discuss, and connect over current ecological issues.

Toby Query

This question is one I’ve wrestled with for many years, and it continues to shape the way I move through the world. As someone who cares deeply for the planet and is committed to becoming a better human being, I return to this question repeatedly.

Good ancestors are those who feel their connection to the future, who draw strength from those who came before us, and who recognize their ability to shape the world they inhabit. This is a teaching of the Cottonwood tree. It draws its roots deep and brings up water and nutrients from the earth. The Cottonwood teaches us that we all come from strong ancestors.

Living with this question—How can I be a good ancestor?—has changed the quality of my choices and the texture of my life. It reminds me that my life resides within a tiny blip of time, yet I have the power to shape the future through the resonances of my life. I have a responsibility to cultivate care and to metabolize negativity in this lifetime to move the world towards balance.

Generational and relational thinking are ignited with this question. How is my imprint in this life absorbed by other beings, and what changes occur with my presence? What choices today will bring me into better relations with the people and other sentient beings around me? There is a spiritual dimension to these questions as well. Acknowledging ourselves as ancestors and other beings as ancestors acknowledges spirit: the life force that unites all of us.

Living with big questions, especially when I can settle my body and breathe into them, helps me care more thoughtfully for myself and for others. This question also slows me down. Our modern world is saturated with urgency—an urgency that narrows our options, tightens our minds, and constricts our bodies. I know I often move at a pace faster than the rate of good decision-making, and I see that speed as one of the destructive forces of our time. The moments when I feel most nourished are the ones where urgency falls away—moments with community, moments without the clock dominating my attention, moments where spaciousness exists.

My mentor, Judy Blue Horse Skelton, teaches, “Heal the land, heal the people,” which is one answer to what it means to be a good ancestor. This land carries many wounds, both historical and ongoing, and healing requires repairing relationships that have long been broken. The genocide of Native peoples here still demands acknowledgment and reconciliation. Healing means restoring relationships to place while practicing life-affirming, reciprocal stewardship of the land.

We know life-affirming practices when we experience them; they connect us to community, to the earth, and to our own joy. They nourish us. And because we all belong to this earth, part of my responsibility is to repair my relationship to land and other beings. That work is both internal and external. Internally, it’s cultivating balance and health, composting unhealthy ways, and continuing self-reflection. In my external work as an ecologist, it translates into reestablishing culturally significant plants in natural areas and building genuine relationships with local Native leaders. It means working toward a reciprocal relationship between people and land, grounded in the understanding that plants are our relatives and caring for them is another form of caring for ourselves.

Care is embedded in this work, as is love. Care for myself, my family, my community, our more-than-human kin, and the planet. To be a good ancestor is to grow into an elder with soft eyes, to speak from the heart, and to work toward a world where all beings can be liberated.

I don’t believe any of us can definitively measure whether we are “good” ancestors. But by living with this question—by letting it challenge and guide me, I move closer to the kind of ancestor I hope to become.

about the writer
Martha Fajardo

Martha Cecilia Fajardo, CEO of Grupo Verde, and her partner and husband Noboru Kawashima, have planned, designed and implemented sound and innovative landscape architecture and city planning projects that enhance the relationship between people, the landscape, and the environment.

Martha Fajardo

Being A Good Ancestor: Landscape as a Vaccine and the Relational Cities We Must Imagine

For me, that is the essence of being a good ancestor.

It is about choosing the legacy we leave—deciding whether we transmit the viruses of fear, fragmentation, and hatred that today spread with alarming ease, or whether we choose, instead, to act as vectors of what Gustavo Wilches-Chaux calls viruses of life: forces of hope, tenderness, and ecological reciprocity. These viruses of life have the capacity to restore our collective spirit and reconnect us with the living world.

Through this lens, today’s projects offered something remarkable. The designs prioritized the needs of non-human species—pollinators, birds, trees, fungi, and microorganisms—while embracing human well-being. They showed that urban design can become an instrument of healing, not only for people but for entire ecosystems.

This understanding was deepened through my experience as a juror for the Form Follows Life— Reinventing Cities competition. Participating in this visionary initiative was intellectually and emotionally transformative. I witnessed a new generation of designers, landscape architects, ecologists, architects, artists, scientists, and planners—young people from 38 countries—imagining cities not as machines of efficiency but as ecosystems of care. Their proposals were vibrant testaments to the idea that urban futures can nurture life in all its forms: human, vegetable, animal, microbial, visible, and invisible.

Landscape—whether a tree casting shade on a street, a biodiverse corridor threading through a neighbourhood, or a night sky unpolluted by artificial light—functions as a kind of emotional vaccine against the global pandemic of hatred amplified by digital noise. Nature restores what hostility erodes: the ability to listen, to imagine, to empathize.

Every act of cultivating, restoring, or defending a landscape becomes an act of intergenerational care—a deliberate recharging of what Wilches-Chaux calls the “battery of hope”.

Landscape design revealed that a profound paradigm shift is underway. At its heart lies the principle of life’s relationality: the understanding that all beings exist within a web of interdependence. The most compelling proposals demonstrated the radical potential of collaboration—between architects and biologists, engineers and artists, communities and ecologists. Breaking disciplinary silos is not only good practice; it is a form of ancestral care.

It invites us to imagine cities not as sites of extraction and exploitation but as places of care, connection, and regeneration. By prioritizing life’s relationality, it challenges us to create spaces that are not only sustainable but also life-affirming.

Central to this vision is the concept of living symbiosis—designing cities that foster deep mutual relationships between humans and the natural world. “Designing for life” means creating urban spaces that support and enhance the intricate web of interdependencies that sustain life, transforming them into landscapes of life where biodiversity and human well-being flourish in harmony.

As we look to the future, the insights from these experiences can serve as a guiding light. They remind us that the urban and the natural are not opposites but parts of a larger, living whole. By designing with this understanding, we can create cities that truly reflect and enhance the web of life.

Being a good ancestor means understanding this, honouring it, and acting accordingly. It means choosing to sow the viruses of life—care, connection, regeneration—so that future generations inherit landscapes capable of sustaining dignity, beauty, and meaning.

And perhaps the most important question remains:
What landscapes of life—ecological, emotional, and relational—will we choose to leave in the hands of those who come after us?

References & Links

• Gustavo Wilches-Chaux, “Una vacuna contra la pandemia de odios”: https://razonpublica.com/una-vacuna-la-pandemia-odios-invade-la-humanidad/
• Form Follows Life – Reinventing Cities (Non Architecture Publishing, 2025):
  Bina, O., Silva, D., Fokdal, J., & de Stefano, L. (2025). Form Follows Life: Reinventing Cities. DOI: 10.57854/ulisboaics.9rc5-nx74.2025
  https://lnkd.in/ezKGMHAx
• Grupo Verde https://grupoverdeltda.com/

about the writer
Carmen Bouyer

Carmen Bouyer is a French environmental artist and designer based in Paris.

Carmen Bouyer

On Being a Good Ancestor

Our actions and life choices are shaping tomorrow’s world. To live is already to participate in ancestry.

I love to think of the concept of allomothering, developed by anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and introduced to me recently by my friend Tom Keogh. Allomothering highlights how entire human communities act as “mothers” to the young ones in extending the responsibility of care, protection, and transmission of wisdom far beyond biological parenthood. We are mothering and fathering the younger ones in our communities—human and more-than-human alike—through the ways we live our lives.

I love to imagine a kind of luminous “halo of love” surrounding every new being—a field of love and protection woven by the wider community and by all the ancestors who came before. To be a good ancestor, in this sense, is to strengthen that halo.

In matrilineal cultures, as well as in many Indigenous cosmologies, responsibility does not flow downward from authority, but outward from care. Life is upheld by circles of relationship. The notion of being a good ancestor, or of thinking for the next seven generations, was introduced to me through Native American cultures and echoed in the words of many Indigenous wisdom keepers I have had the honor to listen to. I feel deep gratitude for the wider and deeper paradigm this opened in me—a paradigm of deep time, where responsibility stretches far beyond a single lifetime.

As diné artists Lyla June Johnston and Desirae Harp sing in their song Time Traveler: “We are here to give all of our love to the ones unborn.” It reminds us that we are the realized prayers of our ancestors, those whose choices created the conditions for our life to emerge and flourish. Their care made it possible for us to be here now. To honor them is not only to remember them, but to pour our love forward, so that our own lives become a bridge for those to come.

When I look as far as I can see ahead, I ask myself: What should I practice today to enable the next generations to thrive?

Yes, we are living in a climate change era. Many uncertainties lie ahead of us. The destructive systems currently in place in large parts of our world seem to tighten their grip as we speak. Hyper individualism, extractivism, systemic oppression and inequalities, authoritarianism, will likely take some time to be dismantled. Facing those realities, it is our responsibility to identify the qualities we need to embody today to fertilize future grounds with beauty. These qualities are life-affirming practices. We can call them art forms or crafts, as they require heightened sensitivity, grounded imagination, powerful creativity, and strong practical skills. I tried here to name a few of those nurturing arts that I feel must be urgently learned, embodied, and transmitted to the younger ones as living knowledge.

the art of sustaining life

Sustaining life is the essential work that keeps bodies nourished, communities resilient, and the Earth healthy. It includes caring for our own bodies and emotions, attuning to the rhythms of rest, growth, decay, and rebirth. Protecting and supporting biodiverse habitats, learning regenerative stewardship practices for the thriving of more life. Learning from and tending to the land, soil, water, plants, and animals around us.

the art of relationality

Relational weaving is the skill of creating communities in which everyone belongs. Circulating care, wealth, and resources, and nurturing solidarity across divides. Celebrating our interconnectedness strengthens the bonds that hold us together. In our time of climate disruption, social fragmentation, and technological acceleration, remembering that no one thrives alone, building community and solidarity across boundaries is at the heart of resilience.

the art of repair

Repairing is the work of restoring balance when harm occurs. Acknowledging damage without denial, restoring trust through care and accountability, and justice. Harm done to the Earth, to countries, to communities, to the self. We need to become experts in peace-making. Through diplomatic skills, deep listening, non-violent communication, truth-telling, collaboration, wisdom of the heart, we build cultures of respect.

the art of celebration

To be a good ancestor is not only to protect life, but to make it feel worth inheriting. Joy, humor, pleasure, playful interactions, festivity, and celebration are not luxuries for better times. They are ancestral responsibilities.

the art of reciprocity

Reciprocity is the practice of honoring the gifts of the living world by giving back with care, gratitude, and responsibility so that both people and the land may continue to thrive together. Learning how to receive: welcoming the abundance of the Earth, the warmth of the sun, the beauty around us, and the care of others, allowing ourselves to feel fully nourished. It continues in giving: offering gifts, care, thanks, support, and forms of attention that enhance the vitality and sense of purpose of others.

These art forms —among many others that could be listed here— center the continuity of the good life. Life ways where the integrity of human and non-human bodies in their physical and spiritual essence is protected, honored, and cherished.

Nigerian philosopher and poet Bayo Akomolafe speaks of “dancing in the ashes” as a practice of our time. He talks about not clinging to old forms that are already collapsing, nor rushing toward imagined futures with certainty. It is to remain present in times of transformation, at the threshold, to welcome change with humility and grace, and to allow grief, creativity, and not-knowing to coexist.

In these fast-moving grounds, as we engage with the unknown, each of us must ask how our unique personality—our gifts—can express love in a creatively generous way. Ultimately, to be a good ancestor is to perpetuate, adapt, and expand the art of loving. The vibrations of these choices echo far beyond us. They are seeds—quiet, often invisible—of wholeness, beauty, and nurturance for those who will walk the path after us.

about the writer
Marthe Derkzen

Dr. Marthe Derkzen is a researcher and lecturer with the Health and Society chair group. She studies urban nature from a social justice perspective with an interest in climate adaptation, local food, healthy neighborhoods and stewardship of the commons.

Marthe Derkzen

Ancestorhood

Ancestorhood. Have you used the word before? Is it in the dictionary? Sisterhood is, brotherhood, parenthood, childhood, and even elderhood. Why is there no such thing as ancesterhood? Is it not worth thinking about the ways in which we shape our ancestorhood? Do we care so little about our ancestorhood? Or are we just not accustomed to thinking and caring in such dimensions, dimensions that may seem far away and indirect?

Some places in the world have much better evolved understandings of ancestorhood. In Ubuntu philosophy, the community has three legs: living dead, living, and yet to be born. Everything is in motion, everyone is connected, and interconnectedness necessitates that one cares for the people, places, and things around them. In the words of Ubuntu philosopher Mogobe Ramose: “The good of today will always be an orientation towards the better of tomorrow.” But what if you are not raised according to the Ubuntu philosophy? How can you yourself start shaping your ancestorhood for the people, places, and things you care about?

One way to start caring, to start thinking about your ancestorhood, is to care about and for your own ancestors. To get to know them. Who are your ancestors? Where are they coming from? What choices did they make in their lives – choices that, for certai,n have influenced your life and your choices.  And what did they (not) do to be good ancestors? To us, and to the places we call home?

Everyone has ancestors, but we often do not take the time to relate to them, to include them in the lives we lead, to make them an active part of ourselves. Personally, I notice that I am much better able to connect to my ancestors when I spend time in the places where they have lived, loved, and fought, or when I confront myself with the struggles they faced. In my case, the places connected to my ancestors on my mother’s side are mostly in Indonesia, where she grew up next to a small stream. And the struggles are those of a typical migrant family: first generation gave up everything and lived in poverty, second generation started to climb out and up, third generation is fully ‘assimilated’ (not to say that that should be a goal, absolutely not). On my father’s side, my ancestors are closer to home, in the Netherlands, but through his work and life, the red soils of West Africa are also home to me. When I visit these places, I feel connected. I feel like I belong.

And that is what I believe makes a good ancestor: passing on a sense of belonging. A sense of belonging makes you care for people and places, including the streams and soils that all life depends on. A sense of belonging also brings me back to the other “hoods” that I started this piece with. As a relatively fresh parent, I have been thinking about childhood and parenthood a lot lately, and about what it means to be a good parent. One of the major realizations that struck us when our first child was born was that the bare fact that she appeared in this world made a community of people gather around her. She already belonged. That is one of the richest gifts one can give and receive: a place to call home, a social network, a community of people that care about you and that you will care about, and that will instill that sense of belonging.

Exploring, shaping, and connecting to your ancestorhood will help you grow your sense of belonging. It will help you care about the humans and more-than-humans that surround you: Those that have gone before us, those here at present, and those yet to be born.

about the writer
Gary Grant

Gary Grant is a Chartered Environmentalist, Fellow of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, Fellow of the Leeds Sustainability Institute, and Thesis Supervisor at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London. He is Director of the Green Infrastructure Consultancy (http://greeninfrastructureconsultancy.com/).

Gary Grant

What does it mean to be a good ancestor to the things or people we care about?

We may not all be, as individuals, biological ancestors; however, we contribute in some way to the ancestry of future cultures. Our time may be short, but the traces of our lives will be there in culture and the environment. We also live intimately with other organisms that will be ancestors of future species and ecosystems. We are part of the ever-changing, branching tree of life and the ever-changing and branching tree of culture.

Take, for example, the letters of the English alphabet before you. T was the last letter of the alphabet for thousands of years. U and V were once the same letter. U was added a few hundred years ago. W was needed to represent sounds from Germanic languages. Several letters have been lost, including, for example, the thorn and the yogh. Similar stories are associated with the alphabets and writing systems of other languages. The thought here is that even things which appear so solid and unchanging are impermanent and do not last. There are changes that persist and others that fail.

Bold people have made these and other changes. Other bold people have tried and failed. We cannot know in advance exactly how our own efforts as ancestors of people or culture will change the future; however, we can all be part of an increasing understanding of how human culture relies on and interacts with the wider biosphere. As our knowledge increases, we can encourage everyone to consider the ecological aspects of the various components of our civilization, individually and in combination. This is about knowledge and also caring for everyone, and every living thing, everywhere. There is insufficient space on Earth for the existing widespread culture of domination to continue to work. There is always blow-back: we should take note of that and try to avoid it. We should strive to be ancestors of more ecologically literate, cooperative, and caring societies that are compatible with the biosphere. Prediction: It will support a better life.

Fear of failure holds us back too often. When we propose green improvements to our cities and neighborhoods, we are often asked what will happen if things don’t work out. What will it look like, and who will care about it? There is, relatively speaking, a higher level of scrutiny of the small and green and not enough scrutiny of the large and grey. Are the green spaces and parks established by our ancestors a source of regret? Hardly ever. A park that needs restoration or renewal does not present the same scale of difficulties caused by, say, an inner city, multi-level, elevated highway. Nearly every initiative or intervention conceived by ecologically-literate, caring people wishing to green their city, using soil, water, and vegetation instead of concrete, will be low-regret. This means there is a minimal future downside, so that if adaptations are required because of climate change or other factors, these can be made with relative ease.

As caring ancestors with (usually) limited agency, we can concentrate on small-scale, local, low-regret projects. These can be as small as a window box planted with native wildflowers, a street tree, a rain garden, or a downpipe disconnection planter. We care, so we should ensure that wildlife habitat and the sponge effect are increased. The cumulative effect of millions of small positive changes will make our cities more resilient and biodiverse. Where there are larger projects planned, designed, and built by large organisations, these can be positively influenced by the efforts of the many. Those small interventions become part of the design language and culture of others, often more powerful people, with the messages of ecological restoration, the water cycle, multi-functionality, and consideration for all people, strengthening to a point where they become routine.

about the writer
Dagmar Haase

Dagmar Haase is a professor of urban ecology at Humboldt University in Berlin. She is a guest scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig. She specializes in urban systems analysis. Together with her team, she investigates ecosystem services, green infrastructure, and nature-based solutions in cities.

Dagmar Haase

Being a Good Ancestor

To me, being a good ancestor means taking actions today that will benefit future generations of humans and nature that I care about, long after I am gone. This concept transcends immediate self-interest, embracing a long-term perspective grounded in stewardship, legacy and intergenerational responsibility.

What does this mean in more detail? I want to be an ancestor who leaves societal and natural resources in a better state than I found them, ideally not only in and around my home, but elsewhere too. I hope to create a positive legacy through my life and existence. I want at least some of my choices to consider the long-term consequences of my life in favour of sustainability rather than short-term gain, knowing that the opposite has been the case for a long time. Reflecting on the lives of my deceased parents and grandparents, I feel there is a connection between past, present, and future generations, and that we cannot simply shake off the role of the ancestor. I have learned from my parents that part of my life should include honouring those who came before me by paying their efforts forward to those who will come after. This includes passing on the values and wisdom I have acquired during my life to future generations, including my strong belief that nature should have the same rights as humans, because humans belong to nature and cannot be excluded from it. I also want to pass on my deep joy when I am in nature. I admit that it is not easy for anyone, even ecologists, to prioritise long-term thinking and make decisions that extend far beyond my own lifetime, as well as those of my family and friends.

But what does being a good ancestor actually mean for my life right now? Some time ago, I started minimising my consumption in line with the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra, and I found it fun as well as imperative. I love wearing second-hand clothes and have become a fan of vintage shops. Apparently, I am not alone: vintage shops are even opening in city centres in wealthy European countries! Another area where I feel I am a good ancestor is transport. I love public transport and have subscribed to the local ticket in Germany, the so-called “Deutschland Ticket”. The European train network makes it easier every year to avoid flights within Europe, at least. Last but not least, it is imperative to consume a sustainable and healthy diet, and I would love my successors to know that I do just that! I can tell you that the sustainable diet ideas published in papers by my colleagues at PIK Potsdam are easy and delicious to implement―brilliant! Stick to a mostly vegetarian diet―it is part of our humanity and our existence as part of a global environment.

Isn’t living a “sustainable” life exhausting? Quite the opposite, I find it fun to apply and experiment with knowledge about metabolism and the nature of things in my own life. It’s practically an intrinsic part of a scientist’s life. This application of knowledge is more enriching than many material goods or videos on YouTube or TikTok. Definitely. Sustainably.

Finally, I would like to raise one more point, which I also want to pass on to the future: We are currently experiencing a phase of returning societal autocracy in our democratic societies, which is severely jeopardizing many advances towards equality, self-determination, justice, and sustainability. I am countering this with arguments, public contributions, and education.

To me, this means being a good ancestor.

about the writer
Paul Downton

Artist, writer, ‘ecocity pioneer’. A former architect with a PhD in environmental studies, Paul is distressed by how the powerful idea of ecological cities has been perverted, citing ’Neom’ as a prime example. Still inspired by his deceased life-partner Chérie Hoyle (1946-2024), Paul is continuing his graphic novel / epic poem / art project called ’The Quest for Wild Cities’ that he promised Chérie he’d finish along with his 80% complete ‘Fractal Handbook for Urban Evolutionaries’!

Paul Downton

The concept of ancestors strongly implies that one is expected to respect one’s dead forebears. But to be a genuine ancestor, do you need to be dead? The Oxford Dictionary definition doesn’t seem to demand it:

“ancestor ― NOUN a person, typically one more remote than a grandparent, from whom one is descended” (my emphasis)

There is no active value judgement in that dictionary definition; “they were there and now they’re not”, but it seems to me that the concept of ancestors is about people who were alive in the past and left information, ideas, ceremonies, social patterns, tools and constructions, and legends that became integral points of referral to the life and times of people who came after. Ancestors left stories in words, music, and art forms developed over many lifetimes, and these stories from the past have contributed strongly to shaping the present―and hence the future. That’s a large part of what cultural transmission is all about.

What about the living ancestors? Are they vulnerable simply because they’re old or on the brink of passing from life? Are their stories worth listening to simply because of the storytellers’ experience of life? The answer to that is almost certainly “yes”, but what if your forbears turn out to be those ancestors of dubious renown who failed their remit and created havoc and damaged the world? We can typically see an abundance of cautionary tales when things “go wrong”, but there are any number of stories about children who try so hard not to do the things their parents did that they create new lessons. It may be harder to find clear indications of what has “gone right”, after all, humanity has long tried to capture the “good” ideas and turn them into “thou shalt” commands set in stone, and that hasn’t always turned out well either.

All living organisms or systems seek to maintain the conditions of their own existence; understanding what those conditions are is essential. That understanding may not be conscious. We may be the only species we know of that has the potential to consciously understand and maintain the essential conditions of its own existence at the global level. There may be pockets of knowledge about these “essentials”, but that doesn’t guarantee that the necessary knowledge for survival is sufficiently integrated in the wider culture to be significant, ie, is capable of both informing and changing the activities of that culture so that the preconditions for its survival are achieved. And lauded individuals of obvious cunning have made pronouncements that fly in the face of the logic in self-survival―“History is bunk”, said Henry Ford.

If you’re still alive and kicking and you do decide what kind of ancestor you want to be, you’ll never know if you succeeded.

Ancestry is baked in. It is part of cultural DNA. It is deep history―cultural memory―racial memory. It is fallible. Stories weave some of the oldest cultural patterns that people have ever made, but we cannot know for certain what any of them really mean―is the story of Noah, the Flood, and the Ark a flawed description of actual events, i.e., is it an attempt at a historical record? How much has it been embellished over the centuries by people who were never there? Is it just a story to market a new god by jumping on the back of an exceptional natural disaster?

You obviously can’t literally go back before their death and ask an ancestor anything; you have to divine it from the stories and rituals that have succeeded in surviving the distorting whispers of history.

I would explicitly exclude AI from any of this kind of patterning, even if we accept that language-based machine “learning” contains enough “truth” to be worth talking to.

We know that real individual and cultural memories are unreliable and subject to distortion over time. Humans have responded with myths and legends, which are typically non-literal versions of complex social memories that have found a way to survive. The best are understood as stories that can be interpreted for their moral guidance, even when people are inclined to argue about those interpretations. The Bible, anyone? The most resilient of the great faith traditions pick up on this process of interpretation as a structured, dialectic way of learning; The Torah, anyone?

I’m inclined to the view that the work of worthy ancestors is to help develop and sustain the culture which, in turn, sustains the essential conditions for maintaining that culture through deep time, defined as several generations or more.

It has been just over three years since I wrote the stanza that I decided to make the very last one in Canto 4 of the 329-verse epic poem component of a graphic novel I’ve been working on for a decade or more. I’ve called the novel “The Quest for Wild Cities”, and for me, this final stanza sums up what it’s all about, and it seems to fit this Roundtable quite well:

LXXXIV.

Your job is to be a good ancestor.
Your job is to remember the legends.
Your job is to know what we are here for
and to know the past on which it depends;
the past doesn’t die, your job never ends;
your body and soul are mixed with the world
making wild patterns as nature intends,
chaotic beauty in an endless whirl
scattered like brave fractals in a wave’s breaking curl.