The narrative underpinning our 2020 meeting:

There could not be a more important time to imagine a better world, and fundamentally question the way we choose to live on our planet.
How we see ourselves. How we treat others.
​How we care for our place, our communities and our ecosystems.
​Even the way that we approach our problems.

The acute catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn greater attention to many other interconnected challenges--global health, environmental, social, spiritual, and economic problems that have been underappreciated or neglected for decades. This is accelerating opportunities for greater collaborative action, as so many groups now focus on the necessity of a “Great Transition”. While ambitious integrative efforts have never been more important, it is imperative to apply these with mutualistic value systems as a compass, as we seek to make wiser choices. Project Earthrise is our contribution to this important process.

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Project Earthrise is inspired by one of the most profound moments in modern history. The “Earthrise” photograph, taken on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, became one of the most significant images of the 20th Century. It triggered a profound shift in environmental awareness and the potential for human unity. It provided a “wake up” call on every level, from personal awareness to planetary consciousness—and inspired the first Earth Day in 1970. This event had a far broader agenda than it has today, addressing manifold issues ranging from growing poverty, blight, racism, and war, to broad-ranging environmental decay—with exploitative economic systems as the common denominator, stemming from a culture of profit over people, and self-interest over the beauty and mystery of nature. In short, it was a call to address fundamental value systems—arguably the same kind of shift in consciousness that we need to reignite now.

In the spirit of these powerful events 50 years ago, we launched Project Earthrise at our 2020 annual conference of inVIVO Planetary Health. Through the ongoing activities, discussions, and events of Project Earthrise we hope to provide an ongoing forum to develop our strengths and our assets, to engage with others to ask meaningful questions for purposeful actions, and to create a positive, healthy, and inspiring community that creates opportunities for all who wish to be part of it.

Imagining the future
is the first step to getting there. 
We might all begin by asking ourselves:
“What kind of world do we want to live in?”

Project Earthrise builds on the emergent concept of planetary health, which provides a shared narrative to integrate rich and diverse approaches from all aspects of society towards shared solutions to global challenges. In an age of convergence, this initiative promotes awareness of interdependence on all scales—across the continuum of people, places and planet—and creates opportunities through connectivity by nourishing a diverse community of change. 

A place where everyone's work is relevant.

The broad-ranging Project Earthrise agenda underscores the importance of ecological approaches to health on all scales – spanning from the foundational microbial ecosystems that underpin health of all ecosystems to the social, economic, and cultural value systems that drive the many risk factors for human disease and environmental destruction. It emphasizes the need for integrated multilateral, multi-solving strategies that seek to understand and improve the complex relationships between human health and planetary health. This includes the socio-eco-biological interactions in our living environment (including urbanization, food systems, education, social inequity, climate change, biodiversity loss, and microbial ecology) that impact physical, mental and spiritual well-being, together with the wider community and societal factors that govern these. This creates many new opportunities for both personal and community actions towards grassroots positive change. It builds on the value of connectivity and efforts to promote and restore the many physical, psychological, social and environmental factors that promote resilience in every sense—recognizing that even small changes signal important long term shifts in health behaviour and in wider values.
 
In addition to our established history of robust science, Project Earthrise aims to normalize more mutualistic, creative approaches to positively influence normative value systems. It seeks to equally consider our social and spiritual ecology as it does natural ecology; to address “broken spirit” as well as “broken systems” manifest in mounting social unrest, hopelessness, and unparalleled adversity. 
 
Our ongoing and evolving agenda seeks to place a higher value on self-development, creativity, and imagination in solving challenges at all scales. This includes greater emphasis on positive assets in health and resilience on all scales (awe, wonder, joy, love, compassion and hope values)—and deeper values that unite, empower and refocus priorities of individuals and groups. 
 
We promote change narratives through diverse activities (conferences, projects and “campfire” discussions) that encourage greater awareness, inspire creativity, cultivate connectivity and clarify path and purpose.  At the heart of all of these activities, we continue to take every opportunity to return to the fundamental question: “What kind of world do we want to live in?” as we consider how to make this a reality.
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