ECOLOGICAL ORGANISATIONS

Welcome to the online homebase for all things ecological organisations.

‘Ecological organisations’ is a reimagined story of organisations as rich living systems formed of flows of relationship, care, information, and intelligence that are utterly entangled within wider ecosystems and social systems: from place to neighbourhoods, cultural stories and histories, languages and worldviews, the more-than-human to planet Earth (and much more).

Ecological Organisations: A Design Lens is shared freely so that any organisational founders, stewards, and guides that want to support organisations to move into becoming more ecological have a starting point, if they would like one.

This free site houses all of the ecological organisations information and links in one place, including the latest version of Ecological Organisations: A Design Lens in various formats: PDF, poster, black and white, and as a text-only document.

The below image is the ecological organisations design lens, with eight main areas of focus and multiple questions to help explore each area.

The concept of ecological organisations rests on four premises:

• All organisations are ecological in nature, and not all organisations are ecological in practise.

• Becoming a more ecological organisation in practise is an ongoing process with no end goal (it cannot be, since living systems are living, with processes, relationships, and outcomes that are always shifting and evolving);

• Becoming a more ecological organisation in practise is likely the work of generations, and this doesn't reduce the need to start moving towards being a more ecological organisation.

• Today's systems make it impossible for any organisation to be ecological in practise.

The below image is a slide showing how 'being ecological' is held in this work, along with a visual image of the ecological complexity that human creatures and organisations navigate.

This work also rests on the following: There are many different lens, framings, and routes into ecological-ness and being a multispecies, multiculturally, multigenerationally-aware organisation that desires to be responsive to the members and beings in the ecosystems and social systems it is entangled with.

This work is not intended to be read as the only or the right framing, language, or lens, but one possible lens, language, and framing born of the author's stories, worldviews, cosmologies*, and social and ecological systems.

The colonial story/worldview so many of us human creatures are unintentionally immersed within and recreating values (amongst other things) mind intelligence over the intelligence of feet, heart, hands, and mind (i.e. the embodied intelligence we access in relationship with each other, the more-than-human, the land beneath our feet, the soil between our fingers (and so much more), and new intelligence discovered by a revered individual over recognising ancient, communal intelligences that are simply reimagined by new voices (i.e. recognising intelligences as being carried within many peoples in different languages and forms, culturally-carried, and stretching many generations long).

I hope that ecological enquiry is recognised as being neither new nor an individual holding, but, instead, a reimagining as I relationally meet and sit with information and ideas that have been, and are being, met and sat with in different languages and forms; and without doubt, done so by those living more embodied lives than I do.

This work is therefore held as a reimagining. As one possible doorway, formed of my particular language, into ecological-ness. My arising embodiment of a long lineage of enquiry and ecological curiosity and knowledge.

(*worldviews = stories about this world, and the role of human creatures as a member of it, cosmologies = stories about the universe, and the role of human creatures as a member of it, and stories = the language, ideas, conclusions, and myths that arise in the meeting between human mind and material reality.)