Ma Earth

Ma Earth

/maearth33

We're sharing ideas and building tools for planetary health and regeneration.

How can restoring nature become the preferred economic choice?

We sat down at NY Climate Week with Tom Crowther, chair for the UN Decade of Restoration. He’s a professor of Ecology at ETH Zurich and founder of Restor.eco.

Restor supports land stewards with site mapping and impact stories, backed by measurement tools and scientific data.

Tom shares about the launch of Restor Enterprise, Costa Rica’s nature revival story, the limits of agriculture from deforestation, the paradox of counting nature, and more.

Watch/listen: https://youtu.be/CNewedjDMlE

Matthew Monahan sat down with Holke Brammer from Hypercerts Foundation after New York Climate Week to discuss their reflections from the event, and some emerging initiatives in the web3 regenerative finance space. #ecocerts

Watch: https://youtu.be/zItLlNMeDP0

Ma Earth Grants Round 2 is now open for applications. Learn more here: https://maearth.com/grants

We are saying prayers for those enduring the recent storms around the world. We seek to channel our despair into authentic alternatives. In that spirit, we bring you our recordings from New York Climate Week.

First up is Jojo Mehta, Executive Director of Stop Ecocide International, the advocacy organization and driving force behind the Stop Ecocide movement.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/mNYX8ylikeE
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2eBr2Fm1kW0XYCyWp4CVhR?si=6e6ae58ab30a4d4a
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-regeneration-will-be-funded/id1706728107?i=1000671976824
Ma Earth Website: https://maearth.com/episodes/stop-ecocide-international-jojo-mehta-icc

Melanie Mark-Shadbolt is CEO of Te Tira Whakamātaki (TTW), a Māori environmental not-for-profit that translates to “the watchful ones” in English, working with Indigenous peoples and solutions in the fight to protect nature.

In this episode we discuss holistic worldview approaches towards biosecurity, including reconnecting with our stories and mythology, the language and culture around conservation, and community-led approaches to resilience and disaster response. Melanie offers rich perspectives and practical alternatives to the climate change / biodiversity as usual conversation. We hope enjoy this conversation with Melanie Mark-Shadbolt.

Watch: https://youtu.be/w4qNSnEDoEI

Siddharth Sthalekar is the founder of Neighbourhoods, an open source infrastructure project seeking to enable new social coordination patterns. Sid is bringing together his inspiration from Ghandian Economics with a decentralized web approach. He also recently moved to New Zealand. We discuss these topics and more in this recent episode on The Regeneration Will Be Funded.

https://youtu.be/SVf0fY4ZCDQ

Rose Challies is the CEO of Terra Nova Foundation, and host of the Earth Talks podcast in Aotearoa New Zealand.

In this conversation with Rose we discuss: the state of environmental philanthropy, how to find and support change-makers, the value of fellowship programmes, and grounding climate solutions in behavioural change.

https://youtu.be/F_l3CVgcwbg

Barry Coates is the founder of Mindful Money, a New Zealand charitable enterprise that aims to make money a force for good, by divesting from funds that contribute to social and environmental harms.

New Zealand’s retirement scheme KiwiSaver has ~$100 billion dollars under management, most of which is invested overseas, and presents a significant opportunity for impact in NZ.

Latest episode now available on Ma Earth.

https://youtu.be/s8iNtA1BMPo

Maria English is the CEO of ImpactLab, an analytics company measuring positive social change in New Zealand. ImpactLab uses a data-driven methodology to help make investment work for communities, to improve the SROI: Social Return on Investment.

Learn how it works in this latest episode on Ma Earth’s interview series, The Regeneration Will Be Funded:

https://youtu.be/h7o15b6XWh4

David McConville and Dawn Danby are the co-founders of Spherical, an integrative research studio. They are working to regenerate the LA basin watershed through strategic design and “ontological repair”.

We discuss these efforts and philosophies in this latest episode on Ma Earth. Check it out.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/0Xh71Z_V_7k
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/19OBDXHb5VsfVOHAa9GqYG?si=b33e6621982346cc
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-regeneration-will-be-funded/id1706728107?i=1000668981613
Ma Earth: https://maearth.com/episodes/david-mcconville-dawn-danby-watersheds-ontological-repair

Alex Gyr is the COO of Daffy, a startup donor advised fund aiming to make it easy for more people to be more generous with their giving.

Through features like social campaigns, crypto assets, and a flat fee model, Daffy is bringing tech innovation into philanthropy. Learn more in our conversation with Alex:

https://youtu.be/nn2JhLzzvGk

Stuart Cowan is the Executive Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI). In this conversation, Stuart shares about the work BFI is tackling, including bioregionalism, abundance design, indigenous knowledge systems, and planetary civics.

We explore what it means to honor and learn from the legacy of Buckminster Fuller in this time, and the role of regenerative finance for a brighter future.

Watch: https://youtu.be/vwICa4K8pXY

Neha Sharma is the co-founder of the Center for Ethical Land Transition, exploring ways to decommodify, rematriate, and increase accessibility to land.

In this conversation, Neha orients us to the land justice movement using the center’s compass framework, and shares recent examples of successful campaigns.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/vQkTRMyow1U
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2nxs2r7joI7Po9G4e4GTsb?si=8f970968eeec41ae
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-regeneration-will-be-funded/id1706728107?i=1000666825894

Erin Axelrod is a partner and worker owner at LIFT Economy, an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

In this conversation, we discuss learnings from Erin’s time at LIFT Economy, their collaborations with Winona LaDuke, steward and employee alternative ownership models, “philanthropy as usual”, social justice and climate repair.

Watch: https://youtu.be/9amG_eg-zMk

A critical part of the business cycle is when a company “exits” and who controls the assets afterwards. Unfortunately, most small-to-medium businesses lack good options for succession, and as a result lose out to large corporates and private equity conglomerates.

This is especially important as baby boomers retire, and hundreds of billions of dollars in assets hang in the balance.

Derek Razo and the team at Common Trust have been working on a suite of practical exit alternatives, involving employee/steward ownership and “exiting with purpose”. These patterns were recently popularized by Patagonia, who used a purpose trust to make “Earth its shareholder.”

In this episode of The Regeneration Will Be Funded, Derek shares how these alternatives work. We also discuss their relevance to the climate tech space.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/vNkuX4ilZeY

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

We’re kicking off Season 3 of The Regeneration Will Be Funded with guest Josh Whiton, founder of MakeSoil, an open software platform designed to connect your food scraps with soil makers.

Josh also writes about artificial intelligence and recently published “The AI Mirror Test”, an experiment to gauge a machine’s self awareness. Tune into this fascinating conversation with Josh about soil, AI, and the pursuit of regenerative technologies.

https://youtu.be/5xQLJzM-K9k

Season 2 of The Regeneration Will Be Funded is a wrap! Here’s a special episode of curated sound bites, as host Matthew Monahan shares a recap of the people, places, and topics explored.

Watch: https://youtu.be/JNrxE6Axyjg

Thank you to all of our guests and everyone who’s helped put this series together. We are here to elevate voices of the regenerative economy, and we appreciate you being a part of it.

We’re turning the tables and interviewing the interviewer! Brother Brian Monahan takes over the hosting role to ask Matthew Monahan @mjm about Ma Earth, his motivations and journey, and what’s ahead for the project - in what is our 100th interview on The Regeneration Will Be Funded series.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/Zrgaq_ZDW08

Dr. John Reid is the co-director of Eco-index, who has published a bold, research-backed vision for 100 years of ecological restoration in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Eco-index helps guide land management decisions with Ecosystem Reconstruction Maps, built with advanced AI and remote sensing tools like satellites and aerial imagery. These vital insights can support iwi, government, industry, farms, and community groups, especially around biodiversity opportunities and investment.

Learn more in our conversation with John Reid: https://youtu.be/_om3o1mD_1M

Samantha Power has just released her new book, “Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet”. Her research sets forth a bold, new blueprint for how to move capital into local, place-based regeneration.

Watch our interview with Samantha, sharing the book and its key messages: https://youtu.be/tCMq-8sfK5Y

Charles Eisenstein is an author, philosopher, and public speaker. In this episode we talk climate finance, politics and polarization, and what Charles calls the “transcendent center”.

Enjoy our discussion with Charles Eisenstein here: https://youtu.be/IuAgkEeCohU

How can we weave stories of belonging? Susanne Aichele is a filmmaker and co-steward of Mothertree Labs, bringing diverse communities together to reimagine our collective stories and work. Their signature offering, Ecoweaving, has hosted several of the guests we’ve interviewed on this series.

See the conversation with Susanne: https://youtu.be/6Z-eAiu6JMw

What if AI goes well? Stephen Reid @stephenreid.eth is a transdisciplinary technologist, facilitator and Dharma student who has trained in the fields of AI/ML, complexity science, physics, transformative coaching and insight meditation.

In this discussion we explore the “metacrisis”, scenarios and implications around AI, web3, and the importance of in-person gatherings.

Watch now: https://youtu.be/qb9PVNqVCkY

Florence Van Dyke is the Global Sustainability Lead at New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. She shares about new developments in the regulatory landscape around climate reporting, which will have important implications for Kiwi businesses and supply chains.

Watch now: https://youtu.be/CcvlkGQMuiQ

Phoebe Tickell is the founder of Moral Imaginations, a research and practice centre dedicated to “imagination activism”.

Watch now: https://youtu.be/Wzvv0N_DBdM