Multi-species Relationality Through Scaling up Systemic Governance to Re-generate and Protect the Commons

The community of practice works to support the protection of multispecies habitat by pooling and sharing knowledge based on shared concerns and values. Together, we practice in a range of contexts locally and link with colleagues in Indonesia who support food and water security through a collegial systemic approach. Our praxis is rooted in protecting the commons using intergenerational learning and a cross cultural, interdisciplinary approach to set up transformative community engagement projects to ‘earn, learn and grow a future’ though finding out what works, why and how and mapping our findings on social, economic and environmental indicators of wellbeing—in order to promote and support food, water and energy security. The team will discuss the work of Dzomo la Mupo, the Participatory Guarantee System who focus on food security and the work of our COP in Indonesia which applies the principles of critical systemic praxis to promoting agro-ecology and habitat protection, in particular forests, soil, rivers and mangroves. We discuss systemic interventions in both South Africa and Indonesia. The case studies in this volume are selected because rapid urbanisation along with de-forestation and destruction of biodiversity poses an existential risk for human beings and the other plant and animal species on which communities depend. The chapter outlines ways forward through protecting our shared habitat, promoting agro-ecology, free range organic farming, the protection of wild life and the lowering of our carbon footprint through localisation, food sovereignty and scaling up a green circular economy approach, extending SDGs, protecting rivers and forests.