Back to the Land: Why Restoring Earth's Capacity Will Take All of Us with Brett KenCairn

**Brett KenCairn** (0:00)
The environment that we're living in is becoming more unstable, more extreme, whether that's floods, heat waves, droughts, fire, new infectious diseases. That's why living systems regeneration is the fastest path for stabilizing systems. More photosynthetic capture, more soil carbon, more habitat, because all those trophic layers are gonna add opportunities for life. And that life is gonna be a lot more productive in terms of biomass, in terms of shade. It might not be stabilizing the entire globe at once, but we can stabilize at the geographies that we live in. That's where my hope resides.

**Nate Hagens** (0:40)
You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagens. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification.
Today, I'm joined by systems change practitioner, Brett KenCairn for an overview of the no regrets, regenerative strategies need to build ecological and community resilience through a practice called Living Systems Regeneration. Brett KenCairn is the founding director of Center for Regenerative Solutions and Senior Policy Advisor for Climate and Resilience for the City of Boulder, Colorado's Climate Initiatives Team, where he coordinates the city's nature-based solutions work. Brett has extensive experience in regenerative ecosystems and economic design and implementation. He has also worked across the Western United States in community-based initiatives. Additionally, he is the co-founder of multiple organizations, including the Rogue River Institute for Ecology and Economy, Veterans Green Jobs, and Community Energy Systems. In this conversation, we explore why overemphasizing carbon accounting has obscured the second and equally important leg of global heating, land use change, and soil degradation. Brett breaks down why land use change accounts for over a third of excess carbon, and how acknowledging this reveals a clearer, more manageable path towards local ecological regeneration and stability. Most excitingly, Brett shares some of the ways he and others have put theory into practice over many decades through community-led stewardship initiatives that are re-stabilizing land and local water cycles. Ultimately, Brett and I discuss why fully embodying all this will require us to complexify and deepen our relationship with the rest of nature and each other, even as we simplify our economic and material throughput at the global level.
If you'd like to learn more about the information presented in this episode, I encourage you to take a look at our show notes, which you can find on our website on all episodes on thegreatsimplification.com. And in the link in the bottom of the description of this episode, the show notes include resources and references for topics covered in this conversation and are available for every episode in our catalog, including the Frankleys. This was a really inspiring conversation. Please welcome Brett KenCairn.
Brett KenCairn.

**Brett KenCairn** (3:46)
Nate Hagens.

**Nate Hagens** (3:47)
Welcome.
At long last, I was so glad I watched your Bioneers talk and that connected us, and I've been reading some of your work. And I think what you're working on may be at the heart of what I have in mind and the goal of this platform.

**Brett KenCairn** (4:05)
Well, Nate, I've been a regular listener for quite a while now.
A good friend of mine who works in the same space that I work in sent it to me. Actually, as I was returning from the UN Convention on Biodiversity a few years ago, and he said, you need to listen to this piece. And that kind of got me hooked. So I really appreciate, and I come back to your program often for context on many things. And I've been watching for the way that the work that you've been doing around energy systems change and simplification sort of meet this work around living systems regeneration. So it's just really exciting to have this conversation.

**Nate Hagens** (4:41)
Thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Let me dive right in. I'm going to read a quote, something that I saw in your work.
I quote, We cannot stabilize the climate, reverse the loss of species and protect place base indigenous and traditional cultures without a global movement to regenerate the 50% plus of living system function that has been lost on this planet. So let's start there. Can you explain what this number is actually measuring and against what baseline and what do you mean by all that?

**Brett KenCairn** (5:17)
Yeah. So I work for the city of Boulder. Among other things, it's my core job and I'm grateful to be able to be a part of our climate team and I have been there for now almost 15 years. So I started in the conventional area of climate action, which was energy systems change and this accounting of carbon.