The first two hours of my drive from Christchurch to Dunedin for our team offsite last week, I had to myself, and so naturally it was podcast time. I saw a new podcast with Paul Hawken, Author of ‘Carbon: The book of Life’ and remembering that I really enjoyed one on his previous book ‘Regeneration’ I chucked it on.

I love how Paul had framed ‘carbon as life, not the enemy’. It’s a similar framing to a book chapter I recently co-authored on ecological agriculture as NZ’s biggest climate opportunity (regardless of what you believe about the drivers of climate change). 

However the bit that stood out the most was Paul's response to a question about hope - and how he doesn’t entertain hope as hope is a response to fear…

Instead Paul talked about being fearless, and something about that really resonated with me about how I want to live my life. The next day when we reflected on our first iteration of our Groundshift values, the last two felt a bit off the mark. I told this short story to Chanelle and Conan and they got it immediately, so ‘honesty/integrity’ and ‘impact’ got upcycled into ‘be fearless’. 

So what impact does incorporating this value have for Groundshift? It encourages us to be bold, ambitious, raise the elephants in the room and to not shy away from hard decisions or uncomfortable situations. That will help ensure that uncertainty or difficult challenges don’t hold us back from our mission of ‘supporting farmers to improve the health and resilience of farm and food systems’.

Groundshift Values:

• Grow Together
• Build Connection
• Abundance Mindset
• Be Fearless

Paul Hawken Podcast

Kiwis in Climate (Book that Sam contributed to)