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Written by Luke Devlin

Luke Devlin

Roundtable on Ecological Design and the Natural Capital Debate with Joanna Boehnert
Wednesday 1st July 2015 1800-2000

CHE Library, 2nd Floor, The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU (near Govan underground station)

Booking essential: pay what you can (suggestion £5 waged). All funds to to our speaker and to support our charitable work.

We welcome Joanna Boehnert to CHE for the latest in our roundtable series. At this event, Joanna will introduce her work with an introductory talk before we open up conversation around the table for contributions, questions and insights. Light refreshments available.

About Joanna Boehnert

Dr. Joanna Boehnert is a designer and researcher with expertise in the visual communication of the environment. She recently finished a year as Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder where she was mapping climate communication and working on issues of the emerging green economy. She is now back in the UK finishing work on a book titled: Design/Ecology/Politics: Within and Beyond Error for Bloomsbury Academic. She completed an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded PhD in 2012 at the University of Brighton titled: The Visual Communication of Ecological Literacy: Designing, Learning and Emergent Ecological Perception. She is founding director of EcoLabs (www.eco-labs.org) and tweets at @EcoLabs.

About the Roundtable

Ecological Design and the Natural Capital Debate

Design is a practice strategically placed to be pivotal in the transformation of unsustainable ways of living. John Berger famously said “Seeing comes before words”. Seeing is also a way new ideas emerge and thus design can facilitate change on various scales. Designing new communication tools reminds us that the ways that we think are constructed. Environmental problems can be understood as a result of dysfunctional ways of perceiving, understanding and relating to the natural world. The theory of epistemological error (Bateson 1972) posits that the western premise of radical independence and its rational logic is in conflict with its context. Reductive, instrumental and fragmenting ways of knowing are responsible for the transformation of the life sustaining ecological and social context into isolated elements to be managed with reductive methods. The notion that carving up the natural commons into individual ecosystem services will enable the conservation of natural capital is based on these erroneous epistemological assumptions. Nature cannot be effectively divided and submitted to the logic of the economic system because the ecological and the social orders are the context of the economic order.

Bateson G (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Created: 23 June 2015

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Written by Luke Devlin

Luke Devlin

An Evening with Charles Eisenstein

Saturday 4th October 2014 1800

The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU (near Govan underground station)

We are delighted to host Charles Eisenstein on his first visit to Glasgow.

Charles Eisenstein is an author and public speaker, and “degrowth activist”. He is the author of several books including The Ascent of Humanity (2007), Sacred Economics (2011), and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (2013).

His viral short films and essays online have established him as a genre-defying social philosopher and countercultural intellectual. Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy and spent the next ten years as a Chinese–English translator. He currently lives in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

Advance tickets are available for those who wish to ensure their place. Although the event is accessible to all regardless of ability to pay, ticket prices vary to allow the event to be fully inclusive. The ticket fees will help to support Charles’ work enabling him to travel and share his ideas, philosophies & passion. Please pay what you can, so that we can offer him an adequate gift for his time and work. For more information please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Created: 02 September 2014

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• 2014
• Degrowth
• imagination
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• books
• Charles Einsenstein
• The Ascent of Humanity
• Sacred Economics
• The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

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Written by Luke Devlin

Luke Devlin

Roundtable on Resilience: why it matters, how to help it

Wednesday 29th October 2014 1800

CHE Library, 2nd Floor, The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU (near Govan underground station)

Booking essential: pay what you can (suggestion £5 waged)

We all face growing pressures from local to global levels: including service cuts, food costs, and climate change.

The skills of personal and community resilience could help mainstream society sustain its wellbeing despite such pressures, and could enable wider engagement with big issues like climate change.

This round table brings together three pioneers in this field, and invites you to join the discussion.

Alan Heeks has many years’ experience of leading groups and projects exploring resilience, and leads the Enjoying your Future project. See more at www.living-organically.com

Pamela Candea based in Stirling, Pamela has has been the prime mover in creating a UK-wide network of facilitators for Carbon Conversations. She also leads programmes for organisations.

Alf Young is an award-winning journalist and leading figure in Scottish community regeneration, and co-author of the book The New Road.

Created: 09 October 2014

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• life-sustaining culture
• resilience
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• Alan Heeks
• Pamela Candea
• Alf Young

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Written by Luke Devlin

Luke Devlin

NOTICE OF CENTRE FOR HUMAN ECOLOGY ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2014

We warmly welcome you to this year’s AGM. It will take place at the Mary Barbour Suite, Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU on Saturday 6th September, 11am – 1pm, followed by a shared lunch until 14.30pm.

Please find attached formal notice of this meeting.

If you are not a member and wish to become one, see http://www.che.ac.uk/people/join-the-che/

It would be helpful if you could RSVP at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to give us an idea of numbers. The lunch will be potluck, so please indicate what dish you would like to bring to share, so we can make sure to buy a few remaining items. Thanks!

At the meeting will be reviewing the past year’s activities and events and sharing our plans and thoughts on the Centre’s future. Please note well the following points:

Special resolution to develop a new model of organisation for the Centre for Human Ecology as an educational co-operative:

The board of directors have been discerning and developing this resolution to present to the membership for consideration. We will be explaining our thinking and giving details of the resolution in a green paper to be distributed before the AGM.

NB the resolution is to endorse the development of the model for further consideration, not at this stage to change the organisational structure or governing documents: an additional EGM in the first quarter of 2015 will be required for any formal change of this nature if the resolution is passed.

Special resolution for the Centre for Human Ecology to take a position in favour of a ‘yes’ vote in the Scottish independence referendum.

The board of directors welcome the opportunity that the independence referendum offers to revision the kind of country Scotland could be and explore the kind of society we want to build. The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator permits charities to take a position on independence if it is a way of achieving our charitable objectives.

It is the view of the board of directors that Scottish independence could potentially further the charitable objectives of the CHE to improve the just relationship between humankind and the environment and relieve poverty, by creating more favourable conditions for a smaller, bioregional socially equitable economy within ecological limits. This is not an endorsement of nationalism or any political party.

Again, we will be expanding on this resolution in a green paper for distribution before the AGM for your consideration and discussion. Proxy forms for voting on these two resolutions, and the re-election of directors will also be distributed prior to the meeting.

Please also find attached call for directors if you wish to put yourself forward for election as a director at this AGM: please feel free to distribute this to your networks.

We look forward to welcoming many of you at this year’s AGM!

With warm wishes,

CHE directors Luke Devlin, Ewen Hardie, Mike McCarron, Svenja Meyerricks & Walton Pantland

Attachments:

Call for Directors

Notice of AGM

Created: 02 September 2014

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