Welcome.
Anthropocene Actions promotes fair, loving and ecologically regenerative societies.
What we do
Achieving fair, loving and ecologically regenerative societies will need deep cultural shifts. These shifts will only be achieved by doing the things that enable us to feel loving and compassionate.
Humans are predominantly cooperative, social creatures with individualistic and competitive characteristics. The intrinsic and extrinsic values that underpin these opposing behaviours are hardwired and culturally emphasised to different extents.
We take the view that the current dominant cultural paradigm massively over emphasises the values that promote individual competitive behaviours. This stands in the way of galvanising our intrinsic values into a wider response to the current crises.
There are many vested private and institutional interests and structures maintaining this status quo. We work, therefore, to explicitly share, celebrate and connect together those whose ways of operating are already underpinned by intrinsic values.
Our role is to do all we can to promote the emergence of communities of people coalescing around shared values rather than siloed issues, working cooperatively to drive change that can transform practice and shift cultures.
We are currently collaborating on developing and iterating two approaches to achieving this – Solidarity Matters and the Liminality Network.
About
The Anthropocene is the age of human impact at a global scale. From our ancestor’s first painting of a hand on a wall, our impact has been increasing. Now humans are destroying or fundamentally disrupting the living systems we are part of, and upon which we and all other living things rely.
We cannot completely undo what we have done, nor halt many of the changes we have begun, but we can respond positively, with great urgency and collaboratively. All over the world people from all walks of life are aware of the urgent need for deep change across our societies. They are cooperating, reaching across the silos that divide us, to create ways of responding to the complex problems we face.
To impact systemically the apparently very diverse actions and ideas for change must become visible and emergent as a powerful social movement, building to the point that it becomes unstoppable. Humans are already defining the era in which we live. Through our shared actions and interactions, we have the opportunity to define it differently.
Our focus is on radically reframing our relationship with each other and within nature so we can rapidly achieve fair, loving and ecologically regenerative societies.
This earth-centric approach is what we mean by Anthropocene Actions.
Initiators
Peter Lipman
I’m the former (founding) chair of Transition Network and Common Cause Foundation and also chaired the UK government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change’s Community Energy Contact Group. I’ve been a teacher, a co-operative worker, an intellectual property lawyer and worked at a UK charity, Sustrans, latterly as external affairs director, before setting up Anthropocene Actions as a community interest company which promotes fair, loving and ecologically regenerative societies.
Ciaran Mundy
I’m director and co-founder of Anthropocene Actions and what motivates me is a love for the natural world of which humans are a part. I want to contribute to greater justice in this unequal world and sense the possibilities for humans to live in greater harmony, moving away from cultures of domination and violence. I’ve worked mainly in the private and non-profit sectors often initiating projects and organisations. My academic training was scientific culminating in research on soil ecology, and in species and habitat conservation – these experiences greatly influence my work and how I live. I was very involved in the Transition movement from 2007 cofounding and MD at the Bristol Pound local currency 2010-2018. I spent 5 years as a non-executive director at Common Cause Foundation and in 2021 I helped establish a sociocratic farming and housing community in Wales where I now live.
Melissa Henry
I bring a range of experience, including working to implement an intrinsic values-based approach to developing place-based identity in a city setting whilst working at Common Cause Foundation. I’ve long experience of working across a range of stakeholders, from communities to government, to influence policy, practice and public sentiment, particularly around low-carbon travel. More recently I’ve been exploring and researching the role of governance and systems leadership in working with complexity and change, and have come to appreciate that capacity for relationality with ourselves, other folks and all Earth others is at the heart of healthy cultures.
Contact
If you’re interested in collaborating we’d love to hear from you.