A note on timing: our lab meeting usually falls on the first Monday of the month — this month, we're shifting to Monday, June 15 at 12 PM.

Greenlight Nature Lab’s June Meeting is digging deeper this month with a homework assignment and an invitation to powerful conversation. Previous lab meetings have focused on how we speak about conservation, our relationships to science and each other, and understanding our own personal experiences in this political, cultural, and environmental moment. Now I’d like to resource us a bit with some ongoing conversation around the same topics.

The Global Diversity Foundation works in collaboration with grassroots and civil society organisations in the Global South on the topics of biodiversity, livelihoods, and territorial governance. They have curated a space named “Conservation Futures Dialogues” to foster difficult conversations among individuals holding diverse positions, perspectives, and approaches to conservation. From these dialouges Dr. Carolyn Finney and Aksha Chettri wrote an essay entitled “Reimagining Conservation: Disruption, Relationship & Dreaming our Futures” in 2025. You can find it here. We’re talking about it.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

Through the Conservation Futures Dialogues, we seek to reimagine conservation’s futures and possibilities, moving from our entrenched, sometimes contrasting, positions in the field to a collective enquiry. It is an invitation to different stakeholders to dive deeper into the intricacies that govern our interactions, approaches, and philosophies, and to collectively explore the challenges each one of us faces, as individuals and within our institutions and contexts. While it is easier said than done and the journey ahead still poses challenges, it also presents an opportunity. We can explore how to move from dialogues and arguments that set us apart from each other, to modes of action that are rooted in how we are all ‘in this together’, both as a human community and a community of planetary beings.

If you’re not familiar with Dr. Carolyn Finney and her work please check out a youtube video of a conversation facilitated by yours truly between Carolyn and Chicago Wilderness in 2021

Wanna join this exciting conversation? Please read the paper, watch the video, and come ready to react, interrogate, and learn. RSVP below!