Erica Gies, Author & Journalist

Increasingly frequent floods and droughts amplified by climate change inevitably spur calls for higher levees, bigger drains, and longer aqueducts. But this engineered infrastructure designed to control water, along with urban sprawl and industrial agriculture and forestry, are actually making water disasters far worse. Now some scientists, farmers, landscape architects and urban planners are asking a revolutionary question: “What does water want?” Our current forms of “development” speed water away and destroy wetlands, floodplains, and forests that normally absorb floods, store water for droughts, and grow food. But now, practitioners of the Slow Water movement like Erica Gies—inspired by geology, microbes, beavers, older cultures, and cutting-edge science—are showing us that we can make space for water within our human habitats and collaborate with natural systems to forge a more resilient future. Introduction by Teo Grossman, President of Bioneers.

Merlin Sheldrake, Biologist and Writer

Most fungi live out of sight, yet they make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The symbiotic mycorrhizal networks formed by plants and fungi comprise an ancient life-support system that easily qualifies as one of the wonders of the living world. Yet climate change strategies, conservation agendas and restoration efforts overlook fungi and focus overwhelmingly on animals and plants. This is a problem: the destruction of underground fungal networks accelerates both climate change and biodiversity loss and interrupts vital global nutrient cycles. In this session, Merlin Sheldrake, the biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our World, drives home just how critically important fungi are and discuss the visionary work of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) and its efforts to map and protect the mycorrhizal fungal communities of the planet. He also presents cutting-edge research into the flow dynamics of carbon and nutrients within mycorrhizal fungal networks. Introduction by Toby Kiers, Ph.D., Executive Director and Chief Scientist, SPUN

We spend a lot of time talking about the ecological crisis, and not nearly enough talking about real, workable solutions. If the ultimate goal is to keep fossil fuels in the ground, how must we transform our economy to make that possible? Award-winning activist and innovative educator, Sage Lenier, one of the most impressive young leaders to emerge in recent years, takes to the stage to shed light on what a realistic and just transition looks like, and the role we can each play in leading us towards a more circular and equitable economy.

Dolores Huerta, President and Founder, Dolores Huerta Foundation

Dolores Huerta, now 93 and still going strong, is a genuine living legend, one of the most influential labor activists in U.S. history as well as a foundational leader of the Chicano civil rights movement. Huerta’s 7 decades of activism have included co-founding the world-renowned United Farm Workers’ Union with César Chávez, leading major strikes and consumer boycotts, negotiating contracts, and tirelessly advocating for safer working conditions (including the elimination of harmful pesticides) and for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. In this talk, she draws from her decades of experience to share her thoughts on the critical importance of organizing unions in all sectors of the economy to fight for a fairer society, and on how to build more unity between labor, social, racial, gender, and climate justice movements. Introduction by Film Producer, Writer and Director Peter Bratt.

Stacy Mitchell, Co-Executive Director, Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Most of us would like to live in a society accountable to people and the planet, one in which we exercise genuine agency over our lives and have a real say in the decisions that affect our communities, but the dramatic increase in corporate domination, especially the rise of giant tech companies that wield unprecedented levels of surveillance and control, is radically undermining our democracy and concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Stacy Mitchell, who has long been at the forefront of the national movement to rein in excessive corporate power and reinvigorate local self-reliance, is here to tell us that, as powerful as these immense companies and their political allies may seem, they’ve finally met their match. A broad grassroots alliance, together with a new generation of creative government leaders, is bringing long-dormant anti-monopoly laws and strategies back to life. This promising turn of events, Stacy will explain, offers hope for reclaiming our rights and assuring a far more equitable and greener future. Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-Founder and CEO.

Corrina Gould, (Lisjan Ohlone) Co-Founder and Lead Organizer, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust

Returning to open this year’s conference, one of the leading figures in the East Bay Indigenous community and a longtime activist for First People’s rights and the protection of land and waters globally, Corrina Gould, focuses on the concept and practice of “Rematriation,” which involves reclaiming traditional land and sacred sites to help rebuild traditional cultures and heal the deep wounds inflicted by colonization and genocide and also prioritizes the unique role women play in that enormous undertaking. Introduction by Cara Romero, Director of Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program.