Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker's Guidebook - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1952338166 ISBN 13: 9781952338168

Verlag: Patagonia, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

"An eco-activism guidebook that bursts with salient strategies for rising up and fighting the powers that threaten the natural world." -- Foreword Magazine

A Global Guidebook for Activism in the Age of Climate Chaos and Social Injustice

In 1994, Patagonia invited representatives from 75 grassroots nonprofit organizations to gather and learn from active experts how to be more effective at what they do. Through this ongoing conference as well as years of funding these organizations, Patagonia has helped thousands of activists make the changes they envision for the world.

In 2016, Patagonia publishedTools for Grassroots Activists, a compilation of presentations from the Tools conferences, accompanied by case studies and inspiring essays from environmental leaders.

The world since then has changed in profound ways, and so a new set of tools is required for the world we now occupy. Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker’s Guidebook captures the wisdom and best advice from activists in the field, creating a resource for any organization hoping to hone core skills.The lessons and examples it shares are as current, diverse, and global as the changemakers working around the world.

At a high level, the book’s structure echoes an activist’s journey. It begins with self-reflection, essays prompting readers to identify their purpose and clarify their cause. The focus shifts to the inner workings of an organization or campaign—how to create a communications strategy; organize people, and fundraise—before taking an outward look at creating momentum through mobilizing and events, using political tools, collaborating with other people and organizations, and taking legal action. The book culminates with a chapter all about movements: How combining purpose, effective organizations, and momentum can create a tidal wave that can change the world.

A go-to resource for driving change, offering anyone who is passionate about environmental and social justice a timely and relevant resource to support their mission-aligned work, this book is intended for both those who are new to taking action and seasoned activists and community organizers who want to learn how others are finding success.The hope is that it will become dog-eared and scribbled in -- a reassuring and resourceful companion to the environmental and environmental justice movements.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Nick Mucha is the Environmental Capacity Building Director at Patagonia. In this role, Nick leads Patagonia’s efforts to focus and deliver strategic grantmaking support to Patagonia’s grantee organizations while enhancing the effectiveness and durability of nonprofit partners. His work is born out of a deep appreciation for the vitally important role that nonprofit organizations play in tackling our most vexing environmental, social, and economic issues. Nick has 15 years’ experience leading conservation and community development programs throughout the world. His interest in this work was born while he and his wife served as Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras from 2004-2006. From that experience Nick founded his own organization supporting coastal communities that were grappling with booming surf tourism in southern Nicaragua. After running that organization for seven years, Nick served as Director of Programs for Save The Waves Coalition with a focus on protecting surf ecosystems worldwide. Nick holds a B.A.in political science from UC Santa Barbara. Outside of work, Nick is usually serving up dad jokes to his three kids or scheming to get in a quick surf, trail run, or weekend adventure off-grid.

Patrick Thomas is a Minnesota-based marketing leader, editor, and consultant. Over 20 years of publishing work he’s edited New York Times bestsellers, served as managing director of Milkweed Editions, ran theSan Francisco Chroniclebook review, and developed innovative branching narrative gaming scripts. He’s been fortunate to work with numerous award-winning writers, scientists, adventurers, and poets, and believes in the powerful role stories have to play in saving the planet.

Jessica Flinthas worked as an editor at such publications asVanity Fair, Bloomberg Businessweek,andDepartures, and was a content strategist at Apple. She has written about mountain climbing in Africa forOutside, hiking with her father through Chilean Patagonia forDepartures, and trends in sustainable travel forNational Geographic, among other publications. She lives in Minnesota.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Foreword: Why a Tools Conference? 

Yvon Chouinard

Over the years, I’ve been influenced by many nature writers like Henry David

Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and Edward Abbey. I pretty much got to know what the

problems were but it was lost on me what I, as one person, could do to fix them.

The first time I came to realize the power of an individual to effect major change

was in the early seventies. A group of us went to our local theater to watch a surf

movie. At the end, a young surfer asked the audience to attend a city council

meeting to speak out against the city’s plan to channel and develop the mouth

of the Ventura River, one of the best surf points in the area and only five hundred

yards from Patagonia’s office.

Several of us went to the meeting to protest the possible disruption of our surf

break. We knew vaguely that the Ventura River had once been a major spawning

creek for steelhead and chinook salmon. In fact, in the 1940s, the river had an annual

run of four to five thousand sea-run rainbows. Then two dams were built and the

water was diverted, killing the fish run and causing the bars at the mouth of the

river to be starved of sand. Except for winter rains, the only water left in the river

flowed from the one-stage sewage treatment plant. At the city council meeting,

several city-paid experts testified that the river was dead and that channeling would

have no effect on the birds and other wildlife at the estuary or on the surf break.

Then Mark Capelli, a young graduate student, gave a slide show of photos

he had taken along the river, of the birds that lived in the willows, the muskrats,

water snakes, and eels that spawned in the estuary. When he showed the slides of

steelhead smolt, everyone stood up and cheered. Yes, several dozen steelhead

still came to spawn in our “dead” river.

The development plan was defeated. We gave Mark office space, a mailbox,

and small contributions to help fight for the river. As more development

plans cropped up, the Friends of the Ventura River worked to defeat them and to

clean up the water and increase its flow. A second stage was added to the sewage

plant and then a third. Wildlife increased and a few more steelhead began to spawn.

Mark taught us three important lessons:

1) grassroots efforts can make a difference

2) degraded habitat can, with effort, be restored 

3) the grassroots movement needs sustained and deep support to prevail

Inspired by his work, we began to make regular donations to small groups working to save or restore natural habitat, rather than give the money to large, nongovernmental organizations with big staff and overhead and corporate connections. I didn’t have the courage to be on the front lines, but I’d learned the power of activism and I wanted to support it. We held our first Tools Conference in 1994 at Chico Hot Springs, Montana. We knew we’d hit pay dirt when the local newspaper ran a front-page story about how we “greenies” asked the hotel we were staying in not to change the sheets every day to save water, a revolutionary idea at the time.

While I am often embarrassed to admit to being a businessman—I’ve been known to call them sleazeballs—I realize that many activists could benefit from the skills that businesspeople possess. When I told that first group of activists that they were businesspeople, there was some snickering in the group. They all thought business was the enemy. I told them that their organizations had budgets and expenses, had to summon leadership under crises, had to be creative and innovative or die - they had all the problems of business. I thought I would bring leaders from the organizations we fund through our grantmaking programs together with world-class trainers and thought leaders to help advance their work. 

Now, almost thirty years later, the Tools Conference has really come into its own. Every two years we gather 100 activists at Stanford Sierra Camp on Fallen Leaf Lake near South Lake Tahoe and let them build community together, share best practices, and interact with some of the best trainers on a wide spectrum of topics, from grassroots organizing, lobbying, planning strategy and communications, to being more inclusive organizers and organizational leaders, shifting power in their communities, fundraising, and working with business. While our trainers consistently lead incredible sessions, some of the greatest wisdom and insight comes from the participants themselves.

We now have over 50 years’ experience supporting the grassroots environmental movement. And while we are proud of how far we’ve come as a funder, collaborator, and co-conspirator for these scrappy and focused organizations, we understand that the world has changed in untold ways since we started this journey.

As business educator and coach Marshall Goldsmith said, “What got you here, won’t get you there.” We know that the strategies and leaders that got us to this point are not the ones who will lead us through our current, unfolding crises. Heck, that goes for me, too! The world we now occupy thinks, acts, and looks vastly different than it did 40, 20, or even 10 years ago. The pace of change is so dizzying – how could we expect to use the same playbook to solve the problems of tomorrow? We need to double down on the successful strategies of the past while also building in new approaches.

We also know that this is hard and often thankless work. If you’ve picked up this book you are already motivated and inspired to affect change. That is great, but it isn’t nearly enough. The crises before us demand that we take this work dead seriously.

The contributors to this book are working tirelessly for a wide variety of causes, from banning open net pen fish farms to protecting our right to vote. They are successful because they do the work, day in and day out, that needs to be done, like any business. They write (and rewrite) vision and mission statements, create campaigns, raise funds, and take legal action. They celebrate their successes and recalibrate after a setback. They keep at it, day after day, knowing that one day they will succeed, maybe not how they originally envisioned but in some way.

In these pages, you’ll find the best practices and tricks of the trade from those who are on the frontlines, fighting for the planet and for thriving communities. Learning from and being inspired by them is the best way I know to gain momentum in this fight for our lives.

Thank you and good luck.

Foreword: Why a Tools Book? 

Ryan Gellert, CEO Patagonia

The news about climate is bad, with devastating effects throughout the world. Hurricanes and flooding, droughts and forest fires, ongoing extinctions and much more threaten sustainable life on this planet.

There is no disputing that this climate crisis is human caused, amplified by our dependence on fossil fuels and our emphasis on continual economic expansion. We created this climate and ecological crisis, an existential threat to all humans and everything we value, and we need to solve it.

As many of us learned at home and teach our children, if you make a mess, it is your responsibility to clean it up. That means that each of us must take action to combat climate chaos and its myriad detrimental effects, both environmental and social.

Yes, it can be overwhelming and depressing, easy to feel that one person can never do enough.

But, as our founder Yvon Chouinard often says, the antidote to depression is action.

This book was created for those who hear these words and commit to change...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Patagonia
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1952338166
• ISBN 13: 9781952338168
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Herausgeber: Mucha Nick, Thomas Patrick, Flint Jessica
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: PATAGONIA; eu.patagonia.com; ; Jollemanhof 11; Amsterdam; 1019 GW; Niederlande