Cindy Verbeek left her city life for a rural Eden in northern BC, Canada, where the air was clean, bears nonchalantly wandered along the local high street and preserving nature was hardwired into community life. It might have seemed an ideal situation for a dedicated naturalist giving her life to conservation. In reality, many years of struggle, discouragement and isolation were to follow, before she learnt how to speak the heart language of her adopted home and everything changed.If you have...

To halt and reverse the terrible trends in nature loss and climate change requires collaboration at international levels. With every country coming to the table with its own interests and agenda, it is no small task to agree joint commitments that stand a chance of changing the global outlook. Thankfully, there are good people in the room equal to the challenge.Among them is Dr Cyriaque Nikuze Sendashonga, who has worked in the policy and politics of biodiversity conservation for over forty y...

The choice to start a family is always a great act of faith, hope and courage. In these unprecedented days of biodiversity collapse, climate change and societal upheaval, all the more so. Doro is a marine biologist from Germany, whose love of the ocean goes back to her earliest memories. She is all too familiar with the state of the planet and yet she has recently become a mother. In this honest and raw conversation, she brings us into the adventure of motherhood and marine biology and her ho...

Is carbon offsetting just something to make us feel a bit better about our climate-harming behaviours? How does it actually work and is there good science behind the numbers? Caroline leads Climate Stewards, one of the organizations in the A Rocha family. She talks us through the principle of the downward spiral underlying their measure, reduce, offset process and tells some captivating stories which bring to life the wholistic benefits of offsetting to habitats, species and human communities.

Raised in Southern Chile in a family of farmers, teachers and pastors, Cristina never realized how all those areas could be linked with God's purposes to bring redemption to all his creatures. For most of her life, she worked as a staff member in a church in the big city, leaving her love for nature for holidays. In this delightful conversation, she shares the story of how some unexpected friendships and an internship with A Rocha Canada gave her a new purpose and a community. She co-fou...

Most of us live largely disconnected from the production of our food, but whether or not we give it much thought, each mealtime puts us in relationship with our fellow creatures, the soil, the air and the water. Abby and Carly are farmers at A Rocha Canada’s Brooksdale, BC site. They tell us why a conservation organization grows, eats and gives away so much food, why they love to welcome inexperienced helpers who often slow them down, and what the rhythms of the seasons have taught them about...

In 2023, Rui, his wife Debora, and their two young children moved their life from a campervan to Cruzinha, A Rocha Portugal’s field study centre in the Algarve. It is hard to imagine a more radical change but it is one their family has embraced wholeheartedly and with delight, notwithstanding the challenges. In this honest and inspiring conversation, Rui tells stories and reflects on how it feels to live in a home with a constantly changing array of people, united by a common love and concern...

More and more Christians acknowledge God’s call to care for his creation, and yet resist taking action. Kuki has preached, taught and written on creation care to audiences around the world for decades, and believes the main barrier is our love of convenience. From Mizoram in North East India and recently appointed as A Rocha International’s first Director of Church Engagement, she tells us about her hopes for the role and what spurs her on despite the challenges.

Federica Marsi is a multi-lingual freelance journalist who has filed dozens of hard-hitting reports from everywhere from Tunisia to Lebanon, Jordan to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Federica’s life and career were going well and then lockdown happened and everything was taken away.  Here she shares her remarkable story about what happened next, and how she left her flat in Milan on an improbable journey to Kenya which eventually leads to A Rocha and Mwamba, its field study centre on...

Uganda is known for the beauty and diversity of its landscape, encompassing as it does the enormous Lake Victoria and the snowy peaks of the Rwenzori Mountains. It is a land of contrast, with lush gardens full of tropical fruit and vegetables for the table, while families scrabble around for food. Wildlife in abundance attracting a thriving tourist industry, but local children grow up having never seen an elephant. Uganda has the world’s youngest population with over half of children under...

Nature is under enormous stress. It is almost impossible to turn a blind eye to the impact of our over consuming, polluting, degrading way of living on this planet. Fewer birds sing in sadder looking trees, under skies either delivering a month of rain in an hour or frighteningly blue day after day. If you are one of the many struggling with Eco Anxiety, this conversation with Leah Kostamo will be a source of help, hope and comfort. Leah is Co Founder and Spiritual Care Coordinator of A Rocha...

As the first day of 2023 dawned, Ed could not have known that by September he’d accept God’s calling to ‘sing a new song’ and be leading a global conservation organization he had barely heard of. With a history of walking towards crises, whether war, famine, or homelessness, perhaps it is unsurprising he was willing to face into the rather overwhelming disaster of biodiversity loss and join the A Rocha family at this precarious moment for the world. Ed is someone with great vision, energy and...

A Rocha's cofounders Peter and Miranda Harris were in their early thirties when they identified the collapse of the biosphere as the issue of our times and decided to give their lives to that cause. With a big vision, next to no resources, and in a context of skepticism and apathy, they and their three small children moved to Portugal in 1983 together with another family, Les and Wendy Batty, and their two daughters. 40 years later, A Rocha's commitments and character are the same, expressed...

It is the poorest of this world who suffer the worst impacts of biodiversity loss and climate change. But we'd be wrong to think the vulnerable are passive in suffering and without agency or hope. This is a conversation that will leave you in awe of human resilience and the goodness of God in spite of the painful reality. Godwin leads A Rocha Ghana’s work in the north of the country, in and around Mole National Park. The Savannah Region is a beautiful but harsh landscape and severely...

Do you ever find you have walked for several minutes without any awareness of your surroundings? Particularly in cities, where our senses can be overloaded, we can block out much of what is going on around us. Prarthi has always lived in urban environments so her early love of nature was fuelled by nature shows on TV rather than direct experience. But she’s learnt to be attentive, to live with a posture of curiosity and playfulness, and to learn from the book of nature. As you listen to...

Originally from Brazil, Gustavo draws on his previous experience coming from the business sector to the nonprofit world and challenges us to rethink how we measure success. Rather than continuous growth as the usual marker for achievement, Gustavo shares insights on what living out his Christian faith looks like and how that helps him redefine success. He describes a different way— the A Rocha way, which involves working with vulnerable places and communities, committing to deeper...

India has 1.4 billion people and 29 thousand elephants living in a multiple use landscape. Avinash Krishnan has dedicated over half of his life to making peace between these two populations. Now its National Director, Avinash was first a volunteer in his student days, helping with a large scale elephant counting exercise (involving dung and complex mathematical formulas!). He has seen some of his efforts make significant impact and has also experienced discouragement and great sadness, such...

Many of us have felt our consciences pricked in the midst of doing something we know is harming the natural world. But few have thrown their lives into upheaval in the way Dave Bookless did having chucked a few bags of rubbish off a cliff at the end of a holiday.  Twenty five years later, everything from Dave's job to the food on his family's table had changed. He founded A Rocha UK, wrote some influential books, got a PhD, became Director of Theology and Churches for A Rocha International...

If you have never heard of GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) you are not the only one, but after this conversation you will be glad to have discovered it. Funded by the world's governments and free to access, this global network and data infrastructure is used to inform endeavours tackling everything from farming and food security, to disease control, to habitat restoration planning and so much more.  Judith Ochieng is a Kenyan scientist who has spent the past three years...

Hope is sometimes understood as a feeling of optimism, but as we all know, feelings are transitory and not a rock on which to build a life. What if we instead understood hope as a practice, an active way of living? Lebanon has a turbulent history, a troubled present and an unknown future and A Rocha Lebanon has had its own traumas, not least the death of its founders, Chris & Susanna Naylor, in a car accident in 2019. In this episode of Field Notes, A Rocha Lebanon’s new co-director...

Beauty and suffering coexist in this world. There are breath-taking mountains and devastating volcanoes; healthy children and children born with acute medical challenges; birds that sing in war torn countries. How do we endure suffering and retain awareness of the beauty that surrounds us? Christine Warner loves snails. Since surviving an encounter with a truck which by all accounts should have ended her life instantly, snails have been an inspiration. During her long, slow recovery, she has...

At a time when social distancing and virtual working have become the norm, a new book invites us to rethink our connections to each other, the earth, God, and community. Co-written from A Rocha co-founder Miranda Harris and her daughter, Jo Swinney, A Rocha’s Director of Communications, A Place at the Table explores a philosophy baked into the A Rocha family since the very beginning — hospitality.  After her mother’s sudden death in a car accident in 2019, Jo was resolute in getting her...

How do we sustain our physical, mental and spiritual health when we are expending ourselves for justice? How can we face the reality of the world's problems and not be crushed?  Soohwan has spent much of her working life up close and personal with suffering on a scale most of us only see on a TV screen. From the Dalit of Bangladesh to the fall out of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, she's spent significant time in places and with people facing severe challenge. In an airport one day she was...

Is peace just the absence of conflict, or is it something more? In this episode, Stephen Ruttle QC talks to Peter and guest host Rachel about peace making and the art of having difficult conversations. As a professional mediator, Stephen has extensive experience in resolving conflict, helping sparring groups and individuals turn towards each other in search of peace.  Stephen was a practicing barrister, and latterly QC, from 1978 until 2002. Since then, he has worked full time as a...