Ep. 57: Connecting With Nature Through Everyday Ecosystem Restoration

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (00:00.696)
What if the first step in protecting nature is simply learning to notice that we are a part of it? My guest today is here to talk about ecological literacy, why restoring nature starts with restoring our relationship with it, and what it might mean to find our way home to nature again. Welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs, a podcast for the eco-curious who want to live a greener life and are looking for a place to start. I’m your host, Sarah Robertson Barnes, a soccer mom with a station wagon and a passion for sustainable living.

Each week I’ll bring you practical tips and honest conversations to help you waste less, save money, and make small, doable shifts that actually fit your real life. Because sustainable living doesn’t have to be perfect to matter, and you don’t have to do it all to make a difference. Hello, and welcome back to Sustainable in the Suburbs, the podcast where we start where we are, use what we have, and live a little greener, one small shift at a time. My name is Sarah, and I am delighted to be sharing this conversation with you today.

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For all podcast episodes, show notes, the blog, and everything else. So I recently finished the wonderful book, Generation Restoration by Tim Christofferson, and I expected to read a book about restoring ecosystems. And of course, it is about that, but it also challenged me to think much more deeply about my own relationship with nature. It made me question

Some of the language I use and what it really means to be ecologically literate. The more we understand the living systems we are a part of, the better equipped we are to live in a more reciprocal relationship with nature and take part in restoring it. Tim Christofferson is a leading global voice on ecosystem restoration with more than 25 years of experience in climate and biodiversity advocacy. He is the author of Generation Restoration.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (02:20.32)
A roadmap for restoring nature at a planetary scale. His career includes roles with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and 15 years with the United Nations Environment Program. In 2022, he joined Salesforce as the vice president of climate action, where he works with major corporations and public institutions on sustainability initiatives. He also explores regenerative practices on his family farm in Denmark. In this conversation, Tim and I talk about ecological literacy.

The language we use to describe nature and what it means to understand ourselves as part of the natural world. We also talk about things like where our water comes from, the potential in our own yards and neighborhoods, how nature is infrastructure, what restoration can look like at the community level, and why Tim remains hopeful that we already have the solutions we need. Here’s my conversation with Tim.

Hi Tim, welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs. It’s really great to be speaking with you again.

Tim Christophersen (03:23.01)
Hi Sarah, it’s so good to see you.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (03:24.61)
Yeah. So before we dive into the book, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Tim Christophersen (03:32.568)
Sure, I’m a forester by background and now work for a global technology company, which is was a bit of a journey in my career. I think I started working on ecosystem restoration, which is still a big part of my day job when I was ten years old and restored the pond in my grandparents’ yard. I didn’t know what it was called at the time, all these terms of restoration and ecology and but I had just had a feeling that nature wasn’t

Wasn’t happy in that part of the yard and I set about to do something about it. And I’ve been doing that now for about twenty-five years professionally with the United Nations for 15 years of that. I led the UN Environment Program’s Nature for Climate team. And my last role there was to set up the UN decade on ecosystem restoration that we’re still in. So it’s the decade twenty twenty-one to twenty thirty. And the goal is to halt and reverse the

Loss of ecosystems worldwide. So it’s not a small task. But luckily there’s a really a groundswell of activity everywhere in all countries and all communities and a lot of cities to restore, not only restore nature, but our relationship with nature as humans. That is what the book is mostly about. It’s about our relationship crisis that we’re really in with nature right now.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (04:54.712)
Mm-hmm when so when I was reading your bo I had to put the highlighter down when I was reading your book, Generation Restoration, it took me in a direction that I wasn’t expecting. So I went in thinking that it would be about ecosystem restoration, which it is. But there were a lot of moments that I found myself thinking about my own neighborhood, my own relationship with nature, which I thought was solid, but I started really thinking about even the language that I used to talk about it. So

The one thing that I’m really holding on to from your book is the term ecological literacy. So can you tell us what you mean by that and what you how you see that as the foundation for everything else?

Tim Christophersen (05:37.016)
Sure. I well, first of all, I think the the crisis in nature that we’re seeing and things like wildfires and climate change and a a lot of issues with ecosystem collapse, they’re a reflection of a deeper human way of seeing the world. Do you know you you probably know the saying that the house is a reflection of your soul, like the house and the place you live and it reflects who you are.

I think of the whole planet a little bit like that. It’s a reflection of humanity’s way of being and thinking and seeing the world. And so in the book, I dived a bit deeper into beyond what what is it that we actually need to do to fix this, but into what how do we need to think and see the world differently and how to fix that. And that led me to the concept of ecological literacy. Just like we all became digitally literate in the

In the course of the last 20 years, and now most of the world is, we have to go through a phase of ecological literacy. And by that I mean knowing where our food comes from, where our water comes from, what nature does for us in our everyday lives in urban and suburban areas, for example, what do trees do for our quality of life, what species do we share this space with?

What does nature do for securing our water, our energy, our food, our storm surge protection if you live near the coast? So all of those things that we at some point all knew because it was the basis of all infrastructure before the industrial revolution. But we’ve forgotten a lot of that ecological literacy and have to

Relearn it. We can learn a lot from the indigenous peoples across the world. But starting with these three basic questions, where does your food come from? Where does your water come from? Who do I share this space with? And then an overarching question, am I part of nature? This is something that has to be answered by everybody for themselves. I think the answer in general is yes, we are part of nature, but it’s not something that you can understand intellectually. It’s something that you have to feel to

Tim Christophersen (07:55.052)
Make that change in the mind sh mindset. And once we feel that we are part of nature, I’m sure that we’ve also treat nature very differently.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (08:03.682)
Hmm. Back when I was a kid, I remember listening to we had a program here called The Nature of Things, which was hosted by Dr. David Suzuki. Yes. And I remember listening to like my dad’s old AMFM radio in my bedroom. And he was talking about how kids need to know that food doesn’t come from the grocery store and water doesn’t come from the tap.

And that’s really been a defi I call it like my villain origin story, my Captain Planet origin story. That’s where I really became interested in the environment. And one of the reasons that I ultimately became a science teacher with climate at the forefront. we were talking off mic about the fires that we are experiencing here in Ontario and the heat wave that you have been experiencing in Europe. And in your book, you wrote, Nature is broadcasting on all frequencies all the time.

All we need to do is stop and listen. And right now I think that nature is screaming at us to listen and seeing the orange skies outside our front door, I think, has really changed the way the people on my street are thinking about things. So what does it look like in practical terms to start listening to nature before she has to get our attention in such a dramatic way?

Tim Christophersen (09:19.084)
You’re you’re right. This is definitely an emergency distress signal right now. nature also sends us a lot of positive vibes and signals each day. If we just stop and listen and the the nourishment that comes from nature goes beyond calories and nutrition. It goes into our spiritual well being, our recreation, our mental health. There are a lot of studies now that show the

The many benefits that spending time in nature and with nature has for health, lowering blood pressure and relieving anxiety and stress. but nature is also stressed. So at the moment we have to ask ourselves what what can we do in our relationship together that that has to change? If you think of us as humans having a relationship with nature in a quite literal way, as in I feel that I’m part of the land that my house is on, or I feel that I’m part of the land where my food is produced.

Then right now that relationship is an abusive relationship. We as we we take, we take, take, take from nature all the time. We don’t even think about reciprocity. And if you know of or have been in, or any of us have been in abusive relationships, they don’t end well and they always end because they they cannot be sustained. So right now we would definitely

If nature heads for divorce with us, we would definitely be the part that is much worse off. so that that we cannot let happen. But we can fix this relationship crisis in a sense where we’ve we listen with the intent of reciprocity. You listen not only because you want food from nature or you want water or you want

a return on your investment. There’s a new there’s a lot of discussions now about nature as a financial asset class and this has become quite mainstream on Wall Street now to start investing in nature and nature restoration, which is great. I mean, I love the hundred billion or so per year that are now flowing into nature restoration from private sector funds. Still much less than our government spend in taxpayer money to subsidize things that are harming nature. But it’s there’s there’s a mind there’s a there’s a shift

Tim Christophersen (11:40.214)
In the finance industry. But we have to ensure that we listen with the intent of reciprocity. That is that is the key in rebuilding that relationship with nature. And I I learned that on our farm here. And this is still an ongoing process for me. It’s been a 25-year learning journey from when I graduated from forestry school and seeing a forest just as the sum of the standing timber plus the value that could be extracted from.

each cubic meter of of wood and the names of the species in it. I didn’t see the forest as a holistic living system. So I think for all of us it’s probably quite a learning journey. And it is one for me. Luckily my my wife who runs our permaculture farm here has taken me along on that journey of really learning from nature and and reflecting back with reciprocity.

how we can also help nature because it’s not a it it is a two way relationship we can have with nature. Nature can do something for us and we can do a lot for nature.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (12:49.966)
And that’s part of seeing ourselves as part of it. We can choose what type of impact we want to have, whether it’s negative or positive. And that sounds really simple, but I realized in reading your book that it’s actually quite a radical shift in thinking for a lot of folks. And as I was reading, I found myself paying attention to not just what you were writing, but the way the words that we use every day to discuss nature as if it’s something over there and we go and visit it and then we come back.

Because that really reveals how we still feel separate from nature on a psychological basis and and how that will shape how we live in the world. So again, you pointed out the definition of nature itself distinguishes it separate from the human world. Even words like environment, environment surrounds us, but we’re not part of it. That was so revealing to me and I never really stopped to think about that. How do you see that as how just the average person treats the world around them?

Tim Christophersen (13:48.834)
Wh when I looked up the definition of nature in a number of of dictionaries, the one that really stru struck me was Oxford Dictionary. I think they they they are adjusting it, but at the time it was the nature is the are the phenomena of the physical world collectively as opposed to humans and their culture. So n not only did they say we were not part of nature, but they say nat

the definition was that nature is opposed to us. We have our world that is human and then there’s nature. That is as wrong a definition as you could conceive. Because w if you think that through to the end, we are made up of living cells. There are a lot of different cells in our body. We it is actually even difficult to determine where exactly a human ends and where the rest of the environment begins.

And the deeper you look into physics and subatomic particles, the more this notion of that we’re all separate entities is dissolving anyway. So saying that nature is opposed to us is so fundamentally wrong, but it is in our everyday language, and that means it is in our everyday way of compartmentalizing and seeing the world. Many other languages don’t have that distinction and

I was once in a forest in Indonesia. I talked about that in the book. and I asked them, so how how do you know where the village ends and the forest starts? Because there were a lot of trees in the village and then some houses were cla quite close to the forest, so it was really a bit difficult. And they said the rule is w that as long as you can hear the rooster cry, th when you hear the rooster call, you’re still in the village. If you can’t hear it anymore, you’re in the forest.

It’s a it’s a very fluid definition of we are here with our village and the forest is over there. No, the village is part of the forest. It’s just a different way of expressing the forest for for a time that the village is there. So this this notion that we are part of nature has been driven out of our minds and more importantly, it’s been driven out of how we set up the current economic system and rules.

Tim Christophersen (16:10.242)
Because nature is defined as a commodity in most, in most economic settings. And again, that is really short-sighted because nature is more than a line on a corporate balance sheet. Nature is our balance. Nature is our home, nature as our family. If you see something or someone as a commodity, it really reduces the level of interaction that you can have with that. In a in a sense, I mean, this is a

far-fetched comparison perhaps. But I hope that in a hundred years or maybe hopefully qu sooner, we will look back on this time where we treated nature as a commodity in the same way we now look back on periods in history where we had slavery or we had things that we now say, wow, how could people live with that? Because it’s so wrong. but these norms will evolve. I just read by the way that there’s a city in Canada I

have to look up which one that recognize trees as living beings with their own rights. There are legal rights given to rivers in in New Zealand and other places. We we see the legal recognition of of nature as as a living system, making great strides. So that that gives me a lot of hope. Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (17:12.083)
I have to talk with you later, yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (17:30.19)
And again, a whole section of the book talks about nature as not as scenery, but as infrastructure. And we we know those things as like roads and bridges and power lines and buildings, subways, but your book asks us to look at trees and wetlands and soil and pollinators in much the same way because they are what’s actually supporting our daily lives, whether we notice them or not. So how can just the average

person get better at recognizing that larger role that ecosystem plays. So for example, where I live, we’re around the Oak Ridges Moraine, and it’s supposed to be protected, but the current government is trying to chop it up and have it be paved and developed, which every time they do that, communities downstream in the city of Toronto face greater flood risk. So what should we be looking for in our own communities to understand those connections?

Tim Christophersen (18:24.736)
I would look at what matters to people, and that is often their food security, their water security, their recreation, their spiritual connection to a place, in the case of indigenous peoples, but often also when people live around or close to a well-functioning eco ecosystem, there is a s there is a sense of connection and belonging. What is happening in areas like London in the UK now, which is a water-stressed area, even though it has

quite a bit rainfall, is that even that the that the water utilities, they’re starting to re-wet and re-green and develop, if that’s the term, or at least remove the pavement from a lot of areas because they’re running into very severe water shortages. There have even been reintroductions of beavers, who are amazing ecosystem engineers to improve the water retention capacity of the Thames, surrounding watersheds.

So I would say look seven generations into the future and you’ll probably see that at some point you will have to remove all that infrastructure again if it if it really damages our original infrastructure, which is nature and nature’s capacity to provide water. The challenge in many modern economies is of course to translate that into a way where communities can also have livelihoods and jobs and benefits from nature. But there I would say

Look at taxpayer money and fiscal incentives because they can really be a powerful tool. And Mark Carney, when he was governor of the Bank of England, commissioned a great study into natural capital restoration. He’s he should actually know how this works. So the fiscal incentives to move job creation into ecosystem restoration and rural economies that are

Based on the notion that biodiversity is the driver of our economy and not concrete fossil fuels. And fossil fuels. If we could take the seven trillion US dollars of fossil fuel subsidies that are spent worldwide by governments, I mean remember, this is your and my and everybody’s taxpayer money. And we could redirect just part of that towards restoration of functioning ecosystems.

Tim Christophersen (20:46.998)
It would it would create massively more jobs in rural areas where they need it. It would help stabilize the geopolitical situation. Think about all these conflicts that we have around oil and surrounded and and linked to the supply chains of oil. And it would definitely secure the functioning of our societies in the longer term. That

notion of natural capital being a very important part of the wealth and health and well-being of nations is fortunately get getting a lot of traction in how governments measure national wealth. So we have to resist this urge of the common notion of the more we pave things and the more we build roads and develop in that traditional sense, the better we will be off. I think we’ve come to a

We’ve come to a the end of that road where that kind of development really works. We have to be smarter and develop in a much, much smarter way together with nature in the future. And luckily that’s really possible if we have the ecological literacy to know how to make these decisions.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (21:58.008)
I really struggle with the word development in that context because when I see yeah it’s destruction when I see something that was farmland or something that was forest, just paved over and now it’s an Amazon distribution center or yet another subdivision. I I mean I live in a subdivision, it is what it is. but in terms of even noticing that infrastructure around me.

Tim Christophersen (22:02.732)
We should use a different one.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (22:23.114)
I think folks think that there is no wildlife or naturalization in suburban areas, and that’s simply not true. And I learned that just by s I met just a gentleman at our public library who invited me to come to his talk. He was a bird advocate for many, many years. he was in his eighties at this time and I I turned up to the talk, and the next thing you know, I’m volunteering to monitor local bird populations, which I knew nothing about.

Never thought about the birds before in my life. And now that’s almost all I think about when I’m outside is who can I hear, who can I see? And I notice the populations changing over time with the variability in spring temperatures, when the town is deciding to log trees and chip them, that sort of thing. But we have trails right by my house because they couldn’t build on that ravine. And so that area has been protected, quote unquote, but it still remains.

vibrant in that sense. So it’s right outside your front door if you go and look at it and you look at it differently. And I think that changes how we care for where we live. And then restoration stops being something that’s happening somewhere else. and it becomes something that we can participate together in community. So I know you gave so many examples in your book of restoration happening in so many different places from regenerative agriculture to urban forests.

and other amazing community projects. So where do you see the greatest opportunities for ordinary people like myself to be part of that work?

Tim Christophersen (24:00.098)
Well, first of all, I wanna say that what you’re doing is is is amazing by amplifying this message of hope and action and that we all can do something. That is that is so important. and this is a great example right behind your house. I would say start with restoring your relationship with nature personally and then think about where to restore nature outside of yourself. Because once that relationship is restored, th the the the rest will come automatically. You will be then

led to where it makes most sense for you to focus on creating a local farmers market or helping like you do with citizen science and bird monitoring and census. And by the way, there’s a great there are great opportunities in technology, of course, now I use a bird app called Merlin. there are

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (24:50.528)
Merlin is the gateway to caring about your natural environment.

Tim Christophersen (24:53.736)
natural is there are there are great opportunities now to be a ecology expert in a few weeks or months. and you can everybody has sort of their own PhD of ecology in their pocket now with with AI and with these modern tools. So let’s make use of those technologies for good and for informing ourselves. It’s it all starts with restoring our relationship with nature though. And that that means wherever you are start with where you are and what it matters to you.

Often that is food. I mean, yeah, many good relationships starts with food start with food. So think about appreciate, savor, enjoy where your food comes from, where it was grown. I have a a friend who is very active on LinkedIn posting about the value of homegrown food. And he says when you once you’ve eaten a homegrown tomato, you it’s very hard to go back to the supermarket and industrially grown ones. So that

Difference of knowing what is actually possible with nature’s diversity behind you as an ally is that is goes a long way to restoring our relationship with nature. And then the rest will follow. There are great website one websites. One is restore.eco, that now have 300,000 restoration projects all over the world listed on there with their geolocations, with a description, many of them looking for volunteers for.

Partners, many of them are good inspiration for starting your own local restoration project. So there there will be a lot of opportunities once that sense of yes, I am part of nature, which means you know I should also do something for nature. that sense will lead you to the next step and the next project that makes sense for you.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (26:42.168)
Yeah, I’m noticing that with the growing popularity of pollinator gardens. So getting rid of your front lawn or your back lawn. I’d love it if my whole back lawn was raised beds, but I am married to a lawn guy. But I am continually making the front garden larger and larger and larger with native pollinators. And so I’m learning so much about local flora and fauna. What are the names of the trees on my street?

we had to choose a new tree for our front yard and I wanted to make sure that it was a local species and not one that would just grow quickly or look pretty or or what have you. And so we touched on it earlier about the town of Terrasse Vaudreu, just outside of Montreal, has legally recognized trees as living beings with their own fundamental rights. And I think that’s so indicative of how we can start to shift this. So how can we change the way a community understands this relationship with nature?

To make policy like that more possible on a bigger scale.

Tim Christophersen (27:40.952)
Share and and celebrate these inspirational examples because it’s we we as humans are also a very much a herd species. We we like to move in flocks and like to reinforce our thinking by having other people think like we do. So talk about it and share that this is happening. Ask in your community what they are doing to recognize nature’s rights and nature as a not only as a

Commodity to be exploited, but as a real force to be reckoned with, and somebody who’s at the at the table and needs to be taken into account. And the this will of course be different for every community. There’s I mentioned the example in New Zealand where an entire river ecosystem has been given rights, and there’s even an office where a

human and a river representative who’s from the indigenous tribe that originally was living along that river, where they make policy together about the river and its watershed. That’s that’s one of the best examples. We would this there’s there are very few of those yet in the world. But that example is also being watched very closely and being followed closely. So I would say if especially if there are any lawyers listening to your podcast, think about

What is the legal representational right that nature could have in your community, even if it’s symbolic? I think at the at the beginning, making a symbolic step that people say, wow, yeah, this makes sense. it would be would be a very important step in the right direction. Mm-hmm.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (29:23.978)
And also turn up at your town council. Just show up. You’re allowed to be there and ask questions. Yeah. we’re having municipal elections in Ontario this October. so everyone listening in Ontario, find out who’s running in your ward and ask them these questions. They are running to serve you. And this is how we can start to shift that as well. And I guess that’s where we’re going with this. What is it going to look like if we can build these?

economic and political systems that do recognize nature as an asset and start to reflect that healthier relationship with the natural world. What could we build?

Tim Christophersen (30:01.366)
And be my be be aware that you’re not alone. There’s a huge groundswell of people who know that, for example, our food is not the product of some chemicals that you pour into a black box called the soil, but it it is the product of soil diversity. The soil microbiota that actually is much more diverse even than the life above the soil is what actually pr makes plants grow and prosperous and nutritious.

And there’s a whole mind shift at the moment in the world’s agri food system is not yet fast enough, and usually in small pockets of permaculture and regenerative agriculture. But there is a mind shift that the soil is that healthy soils are really fundamental to healthy societies and and our entire agri-food system depends on soil biodiversity. And that ten years ago wasn’t even a word that people would have recognized. It would be what is that?

What is soil biodiversity? And now people I I hear people talking about the role of that soil biodiversity and healthy soils and soil organic carbon and things that we that were really confined to expert niche discussions of a decade or so ago. This is now very broadly recognized, also thanks to great films like The Biggest Little Farm or Kiss the Ground or Ground Swell. These are all great films.

for a larger audience that I recommend to everybody to to watch with your family. Some of them are on popular streaming platforms. there’s also a great documentary by a friend of mine called Roots Roots So Deep You Can See the Devil down there. It’s about it’s great the role of grazing and how to improve livestock management so it can really revive the soil.

And he works with farming communities who are very skeptical about things like climate change and the science behind it. But once they see that this new way of doing of producing food works not only for nature but also for them, they’re very quick to adapt it because this is the way with with farmers. They they they have the notion they have the they have the reputation of being conservative, but they have to be careful in how they make management decisions for their land.

Tim Christophersen (32:22.526)
Once they see something is working, they’re very quick to adopt it because they see that it actually works. So this this gives me a lot of hope that there’s a mind shift, especially in agriculture, which is the most important sector for the future health of nature.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (32:38.222)
Yeah. One of the most fascinating examples in your book about that was the dust bowl and how you can trace that back to the attempted extermination of the bison that were grazing on those grasses and those grasses had deep roots that held the soil in place. And when they were gone and the monoculture started, the soil literally just blew away. And still today we’re learning how to

manage those lands again in that way and plant those grasses along windrows and that sort of thing. And I had never made the connection between those two things again. That was a fascinating example of how something we do now could impact the future, either negatively or positively.

Tim Christophersen (33:19.818)
Back to this point of ecological literacy. If the people making the decisions that time in the 1920s and 30s would have had the ecological understanding of the tillage, it’s really not a good idea for that ecosystem. they could have conserved and built on trillions of dollars of national wealth that blew away in the form of fertile topsoil from from that entire section of the

Off the US and all the way up to the Canadian border. This was this was then stopped, or at least it was slowed down, with a massive public works program and and Roosevelt’s Army Corps of Engineers planting millions of trees to stop the wind erosion and changes in in soil management. And we’ve we’ve learned a lot from that time, but basic ecological literacy.

could have avoided the the worst disasters there. So let’s let’s all become more d ecological lit ecologically literate so we can advise and work on with our decision makers how we can work with nature and not against nature. Because that is a the the suicidal war with nature that we’re in, as the UN Secretary General calls it, is is a war that we cannot win. And that doesn’t make any sense anyway to start with if wars ever make sense.

so it is something that we have to have to get out of.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (34:49.378)
Mm-hmm. And if we can put all of that effort into trying to fix the problem, what if we put it into preventing it in the first place?

Tim Christophersen (34:57.41)
Yes, absolutely. I think the I I have this con this conversation often with nature enthusiasts who’ve who who who ask me, isn’t the first priority to conserve what is left of nature instead of focusing on restoring? And to me, these are flip sides of the same coin. If we restore, we’re also preventing further erosion of primary forests and remaining intact ecosystems because we build that functionality back into

Landscapes that can produce our food, that can produce our water. so these are it’s it’s a win-win scenario. It will make us all better off in so many ways beyond stabilizing a climate and our food and our water supply. so I’m very happy that there’s so many people now taking up this idea of restoration at local level, but we also have to think about restoration at global.

scale because we’re the first generation that has all the f all the knowledge, all the tools, even all the money to do this at a planetary scale.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (36:00.334)
Yeah, we have the solutions we need. We just have to talk to each other. And that’s part of the reason I do this show is I just want folks that are, you know, a soccer mom in the suburbs like me to realize that that we’re out there and we’re neighbors and we can talk to each other and we can do these projects locally, which expands globally. So

Tim Christophersen (36:19.966)
Everybody has agency. That is the most important thing to remember. We all have agency to make change. All the more powerful if we stick together and do things together collectively. but everybody has agency and has the power to make changes.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (36:34.936)
Yeah. So if you could leave listeners with one new way of seeing the world after this, what do you hope they notice tomorrow that they might have walked past today?

Tim Christophersen (36:45.038)
I would hope that you hear more birds, smell more flowers, walk more barefoot on the grass. Locally, what is your what is the nature that you have walked past a thousand times and that you can look for the first time? Look for the ladybugs or the butterflies that you haven’t noticed before, and just give thanks. This is the reciprocity that we we need. And it does make a difference that intentionality of how we

approach nature and how we perceive nature, lift that into a relationship. And once you’ve done that, having that relationship with nature, nature is waiting for that. It’s time for us to come home. So nature is waiting.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (37:30.062)
Tim, thank you so much for your time and sharing your philosophy with us today. It has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.

Tim Christophersen (37:38.318)
Thank you so much, Sarah. And thanks for all that you do.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (37:40.782)
Thank you. Where can people find you and learn more about your work?

Tim Christophersen (37:45.41)
Best way is on LinkedIn, but there’s also Tim Christofferson dot com with links for where to order the book. The book’s called Generation Restoration with a foreword by Dr. Jane Godall. And we of course I’m always happy to hear feedback and if people like the book, please do leave a re review online. That’s very important for for books. And I hope the message resonates.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (38:09.026)
Yeah, it is it is a fantastic read. I really can’t recommend it enough. So thank you for writing it and thank you for talking with us today, Tim.

Tim Christophersen (38:16.76)
Thanks so much.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (38:19.768)
So before we wrap up today, I want to thank Tim again for joining me. I really appreciated the chance to talk with him. And I hope this conversation has given you a new way of thinking about ecological literacy. That’s not something reserved for scientists or conservationists, but it’s something all of us can develop by paying closer attention to the natural world and our place within it. So your one small shift for this week is to get curious about one part of the natural world you encounter every day. You could choose

A tree you pass every day, or a bird that you can see or hear, a flower that catches your eye. Learn its name if you don’t already know it. Notice how it changes throughout the day or the season, and spend a little time learning how it fits into the local ecosystem around it. Ecological literacy doesn’t happen all at once. It grows through curiosity and observation and a deeper appreciation for the living world that surrounds us all.

And as Tim reminded us today, the more we understand our place within nature, the better equipped we are to care for it in return. So if you enjoyed today’s conversation, I’d love it if you followed or subscribed to the show, left a rating or a review, or shared this episode with someone who might enjoy it too. You can also find more practical sustainability ideas at sustainableinthesuburbs.com/slash blog. So thank you so much for listening today. And until next time, start where you are.

Use what you have and live a little cleaner.

Thanks for tuning in to Sustainable in the Suburbs. Every small step adds up, and I’m so glad we’re doing this together. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me at sustainable in the suburbs.com or at Sarah Robertson Barnes on all the things. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have, and live a little greener. This is produced and edited by Cardinal Studio.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (40:19.222)
For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit www.cardinalstudio.co or email Mike at mike at cardinalstudio.co. You can also find the details in the show notes.