Collective Trauma & Climate Change

Inviting Global Healing

Pocket project @ UN Climate Change Conference

6.-18. NOVEMBER 2022

Trauma is at the root of our inaction in the face of Climate Change. Trauma symptoms of numbness, apathy, hyper-activation and polarisation dramatically slow down our ability to respond adequately. Trauma is the sand in the system and the reason it is so hard to implement our good intentions and climate agreements.

As we expanded our global healing movement, through meditations, updates from COP27, interviews with Thomas Hübl and others, and news from communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis – helping restore our collective sensitivity and compassion and increase our flow of possibility and potential. 

FIND THE RECORDINGS OF THE EVENT IN THE SPEAKER’S SECTION

  

 

Program Overview:

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Meaningful conversations

We explored the importance of trauma-informed approaches for more effective Climate Change action. Allowing ourself to be inspired by inspirational conversations.

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UPDATES FROM COP27

Exciting live introductions and short updates about what was happening on the ground at COP27.

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Communities on the frontlines

We mindfully attended to Climate Change with embodied awareness, thereby shifting from being bystanders to responding from our hearts, minds and bodies.

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Movie screening

In partnership with the Roots of Resilience Project, we were screening Once You Know, a 144-minute life-changing documentary featuring Emmanuel Cappellin in his journey across the abyss of a world at the edge of climate-induced collapse.

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Collective Trauma summit

We were pleased to present the climate-focused speaker talks being made available as part of the Pocket Project‘s partnership with the Collective Trauma Summit.

UPCOMING EVENTS

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Hearing Russian Voices – Global Social Witnessing

(English / Russian)

Facilitator : Julia Tzotchev, Manda Johnson, Robert Buxbaum

The war has polarized people within families, made life dangerous and unbearable for many within their own country, destroyed international connections... At this event, you will have a chance to peer into a wide palette of human feelings, stories and destinies: those who have left from unbearability, those who have decided to tear themselves out of the country by the roots, those who cannot think of their lives outside the country and remain to do their best, risking their safety. These are voices that want to be heard. || Услышать голоса России - Глобальное социальное свидетельствование || Военные события поляризовали людей внутри семей, сделали жизнь многих опасной и невыносимой внутри собственной страны,  разрушили международные связи… На этом мероприятии вы сможете заглянуть в широкую палитру человеческих чувств, историй и судеб: тех, кто уехал от невыносимости, кто решил вырвать себя из страны с корнем, кто не мыслит свою жизнь вне страны и остается делать все возможное, рискуя своей безопасностью. Это голоса, которые хотят  быть услышанными.

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Transforming Obstacles into Insights – Meeting Adversity with Curiosity

(English/Spanish/German/Ukrainian)

Facilitator : Robin Alfred

When we meet what seem to be challenges and obstacles on our path, we are faced with choices. Do we walk around them, push them aside, blast them out of the way or … meet them with curiosity, transforming them from problems into answers? In this call we will explore our orientation to what appears difficult and share an exercise to harvest insight into a current challenge. Please bring a pencil and paper.

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Trauma & Technology – Exploring Technology’s Role in Collective Healing

(English)

Facilitator : Kosha Joubert, Tammarrian Rogers, Joana Breidenbach

In today's world technology serves as both a witness to and a catalyst for collective trauma. Over 97% of teenagers in the US use social media and most are negatively affected by it. Artificial intelligence, social media and instant connectivity can increase the speed of dissemination of distressing events and amplify polarization, thus contributing to collective stress. Together, we navigate this complex landscape, acknowledging the dangers of false self and fake news, empathy fatigue, and divisiveness that are all common in our digital age. How might we become able to use these same technologies to foster empathy, and provide platforms for communal support?

Meaningful Conversations

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Thomas Hübl
Listening to the Wind of Change

Tue, Nov 8 7-8.30pm

Thomas Hübl is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator whose lifelong work integrates the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has been facilitating large-scale events and courses that focus on the healing and integration of trauma, with a special focus on the shared history of Israelis and Germans. Over the last decade, he has facilitated dialogue with thousands of people around healing the collective traumas of racism, oppression, colonialism, genocides in the U.S., Israel, Germany, Spain, and Argentina. He is the author of the book Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds, available here. His non-profit organization, the Pocket Project, works to support the healing of collective trauma throughout the world.

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Charles Eisenstein
Trusting What the Heart Knows

Thu, Nov 10 7-8.30pm

Charles Eisenstein is an essayist and the author of several books, including The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible

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John D. Liu
Ecosystem Restoration

Tue, Nov 13 7-8.30pm

John D. Liu, Filmmaker, Ecologist, Founder of Ecosystem Restoration Camps, a grassroots movement to regenerate degraded lands worldwide. John made the documentaries Green Gold, a Prix Italia award winner, and Hope in a Changing Climate, named the best ecosystem film at the International Wildlife Film Festival.

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Nora Bateson
Where does deep change grow from?

Thu, Nov 17 7-8.30pm

Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer, educator, international lecturer, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. Her work asks the question “How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?”.

She wrote, directed and produced the documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of Gregory Bateson.
Nora’s work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.

Her book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity.

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Brother Phap Dung
UN COP27 - Closing

Fri, Nov 18 7-8.30pm

Brother Phap Dung (pronounced “Yung”)  is a senior Teacher in Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village community. Born in Vietnam in 1969, he escaped  with his family aged ten and became a refugee in America. He has helped bring a spiritual dimension to ecological activism and the climate movement, representing his community at the Paris COP21. Brother Phap Dung is passionate about bringing mindfulness practice and well-being into educational settings, offering young people an alternative and sustainable way to engage themselves with the social, racial, and environmental challenges of our times.

Brother Spirit

Brother Spirit
UN COP27 - Closing

Fri, Nov 18 7-8.30pm

Brother Spirit also known as Brother Pháp Linh, is a Zen Buddhist monk ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh. A musician and mathematician, he is pioneering new approaches in the meeting of science and contemplation. He is becoming a leading voice in a new generation of young monastics, helping to bring awareness and healing to the collective trauma of climate grief and anxiety.

 
 
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Matthew Green

Fri, Nov 6 7-8.30pm & Thu, Nov 17 7-8.30pm

Matthew Green is a journalist working to show how an understanding of collective trauma can help solve the climate crisis. After working for years as an international correspondent for the Financial Times and Reuters, covering conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, he returned to Britain to write Aftershock, a book about military veterans and their families finding new ways to heal from the psychological scars of war. Since then he has focused on reporting on climate change, and is now global investigations editor at nonprofit climate news service DeSmog. He was a host of the Collective Trauma Summit 2022 and writes the Resonant World newsletter on healing collective trauma. He lives in south-west London with his wife Genevieve and their daughter Matilda.

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Emmanuel Cappellin
Once You Know

Emmanuel is a documentary filmmaker and producer at Pulp Films. After growing up between France and the US, and studying Environmental Studies at McGill University, and film at Berkeley Digital Film Institute, Emmanuel chose non-fiction to creatively explore the relationship between humans and planet Earth. He now shoots for television (ARTE, France3) and cinema, regularly collaborating with Yann Arthus-Bertrand for world-releases such as Climate Voices, HUMAN, or WOMAN , and has most recently directed ONCE YOU KNOW, which is his first feature documentary.

communities on the frontlines

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Sarah Queblatin
Witnessing Philippines

Mon, Nov 7 7-8.30pm

Sarah Queblatin is an inclusive design strategist passionate in transforming the narrative of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) into Design for Resilience and Regeneration. With a background in mental health and psycho-social support, ecopsychology, and expressive arts , she applies a trauma-informed understanding of regenerative resilience in her work with climate and conflict vulnerable communities. Sarah is a core team member of Permaculture for Refugees and is contributing to ways to decolonize permaculture through Principle 0. She has worked with the Global Ecovillage Network as UN and Advocacy coordinator and as representative to the UN Climate conferences. She started Green Releaf Initiative in the Philippines, one of the most climate vulnerable nations in the world, working with regenerative solutions for food sovereignty, regenerative livelihood, and ecosystem restoration. She combines this work with a passion project called Kalikhasan: Living Story Landscapes,  working with local culture bearers and creatives in designing places of remembrance, resilience, and regeneration in communities facing loss and damages from climate emergencies. Sarah is also shaping a dialogue journey on decolonizing and transforming narratives of ecosystem restoration between the global north and south called Restore-Restory, where learnings can offer shared wisdom, collective healing, and emerging ways of regeneration from countries already facing harsh climate emergencies around the world.

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Linda Kabaira
Witnessing Zimbabwe

Wed, Nov 9 7-8.30pm

Linda is a passionate regenerative food grower, agroecology practitioner and trainer with two decades of implementing sustainable and regenerative food systems initiatives in communities at both field and programming aka-managerial level. She currently serves as the country coordinator for Zimbabwe Institute of Permaculture- SCOPE Zimbabwe. www.scopezimbabwe.com. She Initiated the founding of the Ecovillage@Chitubu, a growing off-grid sustainability Centre 23km West of Harare, Zimbabwe. She is also in her final stage of a PhD research in agroecology water and resilience focusing on exploring alternative agrifood systems in Africa. She volunteered and served on Global Ecovillage Network board for 5 years until February 2021.

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Daria Yemets
Witnessing Ukraine

Fri, Nov 11 6-7.30pm

Daria Yemets is a psychologist and researcher, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She works in the field of collective trauma and aims to address the transgenerational trauma transmission and to maintain historical truth in Ukraine. Currently, is working in alliance with the Pocket Project, developing Ukraine Support Project. Since the Russian invasion in 2022 she has been coordinating Ukrainian therapists and health care specialists with international educational web in order to maintain a sufficient level of professionalism in the face of war, nuclear thread and ecological catastrophes.

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Volodymyr Gandziura
Witnessing Ukraine

Fri, Nov 11 6-7.30pm

Volodymyr Gandziura was born in Kyiv in the family of a writer. He graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, where he has been working since 1979. He is a Doctor of Biological Sciences (Ecology), Professor of the Department of Ecology and Zoology of Shevchenko University, and Director of the Center for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine.

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Katherine Poco-Enders Witnessing California, USA

Mon, Nov 14 7-8.30pm

Katherine Poco-Enders lives in the Pacific Northwest on Duwamish land. She is a descendent of Comanche Native American war-chiefs, warriors, and medicine men on the one hand, and also an artistic Irish strand. She has facilitated groups and workshops for the Women’s March and music festivals. As she walks with her ancestors, she has also held witnessing grounding meditative space for families and survivors of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People and for her community processing the traumatic legacy of Indian boarding schools.

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Margarita O. Zethelius
Witnessing Colombia

Wed, Nov 16 7-8.30pm

Margarita O. Zethelius is an activist for life. She works to create places, programs and life change experiences that bring together care for Mother Earth and the wellbeing of humanity. Margarita is a Biologist with MSc in Conservation and Rural Development, she  is founder and co director of the Falun Natural Reserve in the Andean region and the UBUNTU Center for experimentation and training in Sustainability in the Rosario Islands of Colombia. For the last 25 years she has been involved ecotourism, environmental education, nature preservation, ecovillages and educational strategies developed by local communities in the face of Climate Change and highly violent environments. Currently she represents the Council of Sustainable Settlements of Latin America CASA in the Global Ecovillage Network GEN.

Updates from COP27

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Sonita Mbah

General Updates from Cop27

Sonita Mbah is combining her role at The Pocket Project with her Masters in World Heritage Studies. She is a passionate food grower, Permaculture designer and facilitator. For over 10 years, she was the Administrator of Better World Cameroon and co-initiator of Bafut Ecovillage, an off-grid learning center North West of Cameroon. As Executive Secretary of the Global Ecovillage Network Africa, she brings regenerative community and social enterprise development to several African communities.  In 2017, Sonita received the Gender Just Climate Solutions Award by the Women and Gender Constituency for empowering women on the earthen cook stove technology. Driven by her passion for healing colonial trauma, Sonita took the Principles of Collective Trauma Healing course with Thomas Hübl.

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Claire Kaufman

Mon Nov 7 7-8.30pm

Claire Kaufman is a Masters in Public Affairs student at Princeton University focused on international climate policy. Her prior roles include sustainability policy advisor for the former Mayor of Tucson, Arizona, and nonprofit environmental program management focused on green business and biodiversity. She’s passionate about equitable climate mitigation, renewable energy, international environmental justice, and sustainable cities. Originally from Los Angeles, Claire enjoys yoga, writing, and anything outside.

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Gina Cortés Valderrama

Wed Nov 9 7-8.30pm

Gina Cortés Valderrama, is the Co-Focal Point for the Women & Gender Constituency and from Colombia. Gina is currently working on gender, human rights, and climate change policy issues at the organization – Women Engage for a Common Future. She is part of various youth networks such as the Heinrich-Böll Stiftung, Global Solutions Initiative and the Colombian collective Aluna Minga.

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Caroline Mair-Toby

Thu Nov 10 7-8.30pm

Caroline Mair-Toby has over ten years’ experience in public international environmental law. She is a former lawyer at the Foundation of International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), advising small islands and developing countries on UN climate change negotiations. She was a lawyer and liaison officer with the Legal Response Initiative, and a former Special Advising Consultant on a climate change project at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. She has published widely on the environment, climate change, human rights, business and human rights, and conservation. She is currently the founding Director of the Institute for Small Islands.

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Elise Buckle

Tue, Nov 15 7-8.30pm

Elise Buckle has been working in the field of climate and sustainability for over 20 years. She is Co-Founder of SHE Changes Climate, Co-President of Climate & Sustainability and Board Member of the Climate Action Accelerator. 

She is a globally recognized expert in climate policy, partnership building, systemic change, and public participation facilitation.

She has a strong track record of building successful global alliances to deliver positive impacts for climate, people and nature, including the Planetary Emergency Partnership, the Nature-Based Solutions Coalition hosted by the UN, the Leaders Pledge for Nature and the G7/G20 Summit alliances for sustainable finance.

She is able to bring together and align a wide range of stakeholders including business CEOs, UN, governments, unions, NGOs and local authorities. 

She led and facilitated several successful local participatory Citizens Forums.

Elise is professor at the Glion Institute and the Graduate Institute in Environmental Policy and Executive Leadership for Sustainability.

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Mohammed Anwar Shaheen

Wed, Nov 16 7-8.30pm

Mohammed Anwar has a long experience in the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). He coordinated many international projects that focus on improving the quality of education for sustainable development in higher education and pre-university education institutions. He is currently working as Director of Rural Development Centre at Heliopolis University with a focus on community development, community-based learning, and social transformation in rural areas surrounding the Sekem community in Sharkia, Egypt.

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