Another (bioregional) world ‘is here’ … Ralph on the ‘Sustainability Ambassadors’ Podcast ... Sunday Thoughts ... Bioregional Nomads on the Road
Edition 32 | September 2025
It took some time to simply let things sink in, or let’s say a full weekend and the prospect of some detox time (aka vacation) to realize what I just witnessed, and partially caused, together with our wonderful team at r3.0. We came out of the r3.0 12th International Conference week, in concert with dozens of so-called Bioregional Confluences on six different continents on Friday. ‘Braiding Bioregional Resilience & Regeneration – Learning to Reinhabit Earth Together’, the title of this year’s conference, brought together more than 400 people engaged in all kinds of bioregional activities, and painted a picture of a world that is just ‘phenomenal’, as Richard Howitt described it in a Linkedin post on Monday morning.
Another (bioregional) world ‘is here’
For decades I told myself that ‘another world is possible.’ As of last week, I absolutely think ‘another world IS HERE!’ It is not evenly distributed around the world, it is supposed ‘not to be heard’ by the incumbents of the current economic system pressure cooker of ‘more, bigger, quicker, richer’ stereotypes. Bioregionalism in all its necessary colours, places, cultures, spiritual and indigenous forms is alive, vivid and ready to weave from local to regional to continental to global scales. During the conference several times people got choked up about ‘not being alone’ and saying things like ‘I had no idea you all existed.’ And in such a breadth of innovations, tools, interventions and paradigms that it was hard to take it all in. This will take weeks to re-‘live’ it all!
You all will be able to witness this explosion as of Thursday, September 17, 3pm CET, when we will have released the conference recordings on r3.0’s youtube channel, and I’ll add just some slide screenshots & photos here below that sum up what we witnessed. They are mouth-watering if you just look at all the headlines of the talks, the diversity of speakers and the interaction of panels, as well as the local teams in their Confluences around the world. The conference agenda is probably the best way to understand the breadth and depth, clustered around main themes and questions:
A whole tapestry of speakers and participants, attending online and doing on-the-ground translation into their individual contexts! And what you see here is just a small percentage of all the activities happening. It felt to me as if the roots of trees globally strengthened their hand-holding and connection while we interacted. Linkedin exploded for us with all the stories nicely curated by the team of our media partner StoryMoss Magazine , and additional posts by participants. The chats were giving us heartbreaking moments of joy in togetherness. The below is just a small fraction of the ‘halo’ we created.
We of course see this as just the beginning, while acknowledging bioregionalism existed for more 40 years (you can even argue it always existed in some form somewhere), and we just added a layer of visibility and connectedness beyond the pure local and bioregional level. It is our aim at r3.0 to help create global interventions from local to regional to continental to global level, we see ourselves as stewards of Fractal Bioregional Coherence. In all the misery, hate and violence we see and that will still increase we see this as the only way to stay mentally sane. Islands of Coherence is all we can still long for and help birthing in an age of collapse. And last week created a big step forward.
Ralph on the ‘Sustainability Ambassadors’ Podcast
Just at the last day of our Conference week on Friday Richard Brubaker informed me of the release of our conversation we did some weeks ago on his ‚Sustainability Ambassador Podcast.‘ In this episode we talked about a broad spectrum of topics that help to understand the status of sustainability, its shortcomings and necessary interventions.
As the description says: ‘In this episode of the Sustainable Ambassador Podcast, Rich Brubaker sits down with Ralph Thurm, founder of AHEAD|ahead and Co-founder of r3.0, to explore a pressing question: Has the sustainability movement lost its way? Drawing on decades of experience—from Siemens and Deloitte to his leadership role at GRI—Ralph delivers an unflinching critique of the current state of sustainability. Through our conversation, he questions whether sustainability, as it's practiced today, even exists, and together we unpack what went wrong—from flawed assumptions and missed opportunities to the industry's failure to deliver systemic transformation—and what needs to happen now to reclaim the original purpose of the movement.’
Having seen last week at our own r3.0 Conference how ‘another world is here’ through the great contributions and community action in the bioregional field, this podcast describes the ‘why and how’ I needed to move away from what needs to be hospiced and towards what needs to be midwifed.
The last part of the episode eludes specifically to that and how I am at peace with collapse, given the new resilience strategies that we discussed at broad spectrum this week and that I described a bit above! Thanks Richard Brubaker for this conversation. You asked all the right questions!
It is not the first time I offered a critical assessment of the sustainability field overall, but of course I am always hoping that my critique of what I coined #ESGLaLaLand some years ago would lead to some ESG experts to really deeply reflect for how long and in how far they would want to still cling their career to and drag a dead horse to water. I always look at them as parents and members of communities, and what made me leave these treadmills, should be possible for them too. My motto was ‘you need to break out to break through’ as I am fiercely convinced that no corporate, no government, no bigger NGO is capable to be sustainable at this point of collapse, as well as I don’t think there will ever be a ‘sustainable’ supply chain. Our economic system design simply disallows that, and circular processes are stuck at about 7% globally, while resources for renewables will run out between 2035 and 2055, making Net Zero a hoax concept overall.
What a joy then to see Maria Tymtsias posting about our interview and starting to ask the right questions, inviting others to find answers that she so far couldn’t find herself. It is exactly that I wished for so many more ESG practitioners. I engaged with her and opened a third way, and I hope many will follow on that path with that same level of interest to find out more in how far they could better contribute to collapse resilience. Thank you Maria, I applaud you for that post!
Sunday Thoughts
I am continuing my compilation of Sunday Thoughts that came out since the last Lighthouse Keeper Newsletter, covering a broader range of topics as always. May these thoughts continue to inspire thinking. I realized that I have crossed the 3-year mark of offering these weekly thoughts, one at a time (and often already on Saturday afternoons ;-)), only taking a break during vacations.
A Sunday Thought (#157): ‚How the Sustainability Movement Lost Its Way‘ - A Conversation For The Sustainability Ambassador Podcast (September 14)
A Sunday Thought (#156): ‚Measuring Spiritual Kinship‘ - The Dangers of Reductionistic Measurement (September 7)
A Sunday Thought (#155): ‘The r3.0 Conference 2025’ - Are We Able to Reinhabit Earth Together? (August 31)
A Sunday Thought (#150): ‚The Right To Clean Air, Water, Soil‘ - what are international court decisions actually worth? (July 27, 2025)
Bioregional Nomads on the Road
For the second time now I also share the posts in my relatively new ‘Bioregional Nomads on the Road’ series in which we (my wife and I) share impressions from our trips with our camper Molly (all campers have a name!). As we’re heading out again, you’ll most likely see some of those during our stays.
See and hear you all back after our office closure. We're back October 16!
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1wDefinitely worth reading Ralph, this is veary informative and great service and is good for the people around the world thanks for sharing this best wishes to each and everyone thair ❤🤝🏽🤝🏽🤝🏽🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
#DisarmIsraelNow
1wKeep going. That other world has always been there. Different world's co-exist. We just need to figure out which one will be the dominant world we chose to live in...
Coach & Author of Leading by Nature, Nature Works, Regenerative Leadership, Future-Fit and other books
1wGreat to see you still rocking my friend Ralph Thurm
As always you shed light Ralph Thurm .. please keep it up!!
Caring Ecosystem Catalyst
1wJust read this massive post on bioregional being and becoming. It warmed my heart. My respect and deep gratitude !