Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

Although they receive less than 1% of climate funding, women-led climate justice grassroots projects are generating cascading benefits, from greater gender and economic equity and less gender violence to improved biodiversity and ecosystems’ health. Simultaneously, the centrality to many Indigenous peoples’ cultures of traditional relationships to place and to honoring all of life as sacred are a tremendous resource in strengthening efforts to protect and renew biodiversity and water resources. We invite you to listen to this excerpt of a panel conversation from the Bioneers 2026 Conference, which explores what these two vastly under-resourced constituencies have to offer in the quest to co-create regenerative landscapes and futures. With Dilafruz Khonikboyeva, Executive Director of Home Planet Fund; Osprey Orielle Lake, founder and Executive Director of Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN); and Zainab Salbi, co-founder of Daughters for Earth.

Scientific evidence is increasingly supporting the theory that the Earth is alive and replete with intelligence. In fact, the wild diversity of earthly organisms exhibits the characteristics that human beings attribute to personhood. How is it then, by the law, that a corporation is a person, but nature is not? What if we expand the anthropocentric boundaries of our systems of laws, rights and responsibilities to encompass ALL living beings? How would this new legal story affect our relationship with our vast other-than-human Earth family? In this episode, we imagine a planet with rights for all, with visionary lawyer César Rodríguez-Garavito. This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. ⁠Visit the series page to learn more.⁠ César Rodríguez-Garavito, a Professor of Clinical Law, Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and founding ⁠Director of the More Than Human Life (MOTH) Program⁠ and the Earth Rights Advocacy Program (all based at NYU School of Law), is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner whose work and publications focus on climate change, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the human rights movement. Resources ⁠More-Than-Human-Life (MOTH)⁠ ⁠Report Assessing the Implementation of the Los Cedros Ruling in Ecuador⁠ | MOTH ⁠César Rodríguez-Garavito – More-Than-Human Rights: Pushing the Boundaries of Legal Imagination to Re-Animate the World⁠ | Bioneers 2025 Keynote ⁠Deep Dive: Intelligence in Nature⁠ ⁠Earthlings: Intelligence in Nature⁠ | Bioneers Newsletter Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel Producer: Cathy Edwards Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Producer: Teo Grossman Associate Producer: Emily Harris Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Production Assistance: Mika Anami Graphic Designer: Megan Howe

Ethnobotanist and Indigenous rights advocate Mark Plotkin on the protecting the people who will protect the land, preserves ancient medicine practices

Dr. Manuel Pastor, activist and Professor of Sociology on building the solidarity economy.

James Nestor leads us on a deep dive into the mystery of marine mammal consciousness