In 2010, Michael Jenkins and Carlos Souza each earned Skoll Awards for their innovative work to preserve forests and promote both conservation and sustainable development in South America and around the world. Jenkins, Founder of Forest Trends, a Washington, DC-based international non-profit organization that pioneered the concept of financial incentives for the “ecosystem services”, and Souza, Senior Researcher at Imazon (Amazon Institute of People and the Environment), a leading Belém, Brazil-based research institution focused on spatial analysis and remote sensing for mapping and monitoring forest changes, recently reconnected as participants in The Wellbeing Project. We recently chatted with them about the interconnections between their environmental work and ideas of wellbeing, their own paths to this work, and how their organizational leadership reflects the lessons of their personal inner wellbeing process.
Zach Slobig: What was it about the idea of wellbeing practices that resonated with you both, in different ways for your organizations? What was it that struck you as something that would be valuable for you to develop those practices?
Carlos Souza: I decided to apply to the Wellbeing Project because I was feeling that my life was imbalanced. I was too focused on my work, I was forgetting about other important aspects of my life, such as my family, my place in the community. One of the things I’ve learned is how to reenergize my body using a technique called “rest-pause”. During the workday, I now regularly take three to five minutes to do that. But developing the capability of being present and more conscious in each aspect of my life was the turning point to bring more balance to my life. Meditation is key for that.
In addition to specific techniques, the opportunity to learn from the experience of our cohort members was really powerful because I didn’t feel alone, ever. It allowed me to expand, to open up my heart, and to learn. The Wellbeing Project was so beneficial to me, I thought if all my colleagues at Imazon also had a chance to experience these lessons it could be transformative for their lives as well.
Michael Jenkins: When I started in the Individual Wellbeing Program, that Carlos and I were part of early on, I really insisted that we think about ways that we incorporate others in our teams. If this is really going to work, I thought, we have to institutionalize this.
We need to move from this great experience that I’m individually having, to a way to systemically embed that into the nonprofit world. And the way that happens is when the donors who support us by putting fuel in our tanks recognize Wellbeing as a real value and respond to it.
Zach: How did you each come to do the work that you are now doing? What was it that initially inspired your connection to the natural world?
Carlos: When I was 17 years old, I decided to study geology. My aunts, my mother’s aunts called her and said, “Okay, we have engineers, lawyers, we have doctors. Why does your son want to do geology?” I was the first in my entire family. When I encountered Imazon I discovered a way to stay in the sciences and work to improve sustainability. The connection that put me on this path was a miracle somehow because I love what I do.
Michael: My father was in the foreign service. We lived in Venezuela for several years when I was a boy. The small house that we lived in backed up to a forest that went all the way up a mountain side. What an incredible gift that upbringing gave me— the sense of being in the world and the world was a playground. As a boy, I developed this sense of wanting to be in the world, to do thing more tangible than diplomacy. I wanted to actually do things. I wanted to grow things.
Zach: At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems like much of your work has been around pointing out the market value of protecting nature. But I also wonder, how does the spiritual value of nature come into play here?
Michael: Absolutely. When we started Forest Trends, we had two ideas in mind. One is that, because I’m a tropical forester by training, if we don’t put an economic value on these things, we will lose them. That’s the reality. Unless we put a real value on these things, we were fighting a losing battle. One acre of soybeans is worth more than one acre of mature tropical forest. If we can’t change that equation, we are going to lose in the end. But there are other values we have to recognize. Cultural values, spiritual values. In Haiti, I would be driving along a dry area with no trees, and you’d find this monster tree by a creek. And I would ask, “Why have you not cut this one down?” And they’d said, “That’s where our ancestors are. That’s the way they get up to heaven, is through this tree.”
Carlos: At Imazon, people working in the administrative sector don’t have much experience with nature. Participating in the Wellbeing project, where many of our activities took place in nature changed my thinking. I began to ask, “Okay, how can we bring people that don’t work specifically with nature to appreciate it more?”
At Imazon, we take one day in the month to go out to the outdoors. We go to parks, we go canoeing. I realized that if I step out of my traditional work and scientific conferences, I can try to reach out the community where I live, to help people understand the value of nature. Once these people engage, helping others to do the same, I think it could be transformative.
Michael: Forest Trends was really about the intellectual, the head part of “how do we make this work?” But as Carlos was saying, it’s really the heart that also brings this to us.
Zach: 2020 was a real doozy. I wonder for both of you, where did you find yourself turning to remain nourished, hopeful, and optimistic?
Carlos: I bought a small parcel of land on a farm condominium and we spent most of the time there—it’s a one-hour drive from the city. I’m now producing food in this place, been gardening. We go there every weekend. I’ve seen my kids engaging more with nature. And it struck me how fortunate I was—I’ve seen many people without that option. I had the opportunity to be in that kind of situation and many people didn’t.
Michael: I came back to the well of nature to be able to keep me sane in these times. That’s been an effective potion. We rent a little farmhouse out in Virginia that’s up in the mountains 60 miles outside of DC. I’ll go there and I’ll do things like yoga in the forest. When you’re looking up at the sky and you’re watching everything moving around and the canopy changing from spring, to summer, to fall, to winter it’s an amazing thing. But I think it goes back to what Carlos was saying: it makes me feel like I’m really not alone. And even if other human beings might not quite get what we’re doing, the world around us is supporting us, nature is supporting us.
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