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This spring, I drifted all the way Down Under - to Australia no less! - to hang out with the Small Giants. Here is a belated report.
I met with the Small Giants in their Impact Safari to Scandinavia a year ago, and we kind of fell in love. I find this happens easily these days. When what you see from your viewpoint is seemingly so different from most people, it is a bliss to be in company with people who have a similar outlook. Is the world crazy or is it just me? OK, the world. Discomforting and comforting at the same time.
The Small Giants are not easily described. Is it an education institute? An impact investment office? A travel agency? A thinktank? A little bit of all of those, united by the willingness to “investing everything we have with the intention of creating a more sustainable and just world” using “business as our major tool for positive social and environmental impact, and provide people with a meaningful pathway to live a life of passion and purpose” in their own words.
It is rare to come across an actor like that. What I fell in love with was the seriousness and diligence with which everyone at Small Giants approached their work, combined with such a joyful and warm outlook. It is not common to get to hang out with people who are beginning with the metacrisis as a default, instead of either being haunted by it as a ghost not spoken about, or having it as the center of attention. No one is an expert. When you start from the understanding that business-as-usual is taking us where we really do not want to go, and directs you business in a qualitatively different direction, that’s when you really have to get inquisitive and imaginative.
I had the great honour to be invited as a speaker to the annual Wisdom & Action Forum on the theme We are Nature. Before the conference a group of us went from Byron Bay via Brisbane and Sydney to Melbourne. Small Giants founders Danny Almagor and Berry Liberman hosted us incredibly generously with their time, space, and general brilliance throughout. In what felt like a neverending array of parties I got to meet so many inspiring people, most of them new friends but also my old rights-of-nature buddy Alessandro Pelizzon, scholar of law at University of the Sunshine Coast. Before we parted we managed to make an interview on his new book on ecological jurisprudence. His comparison is so elegant: extending law to the natural world is to law what quantum physics is to physics. It changes the outlook and increases the potential of society in a transformative way.
At the conference the Small Giants kept me very busy (too busy to listen to Tyson Yunkaporta even!!) in conversations: on how to listen to nature with the CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific David Ritter, issues of scale with Helena Norberg-Hodge, and I even got to talk about the need for seduction with the former Premier (head of government) of the state of Victoria, Daniel Andrews. Among many others. Below a snippet to get a sense of what a lively, massively regenerative inspiration and networking event this was. I will report later on one of the main gains for me!
Last week, Berry and I had a conversation on rethinking legal frameworks to invoking the sacred in service of ecological repair, including touching on the emerging Embassy of the Baltic Sea and how to support communities of care.
Lastly, it is my great pleasure to be a travel guide at the Scandinavian Impact Safari this year! Check it out, it will be a magical experience.
About Pella Thiel
Pella Thiel is a maverick ecologist, part-time farmer, full-time activist and teacher in ecopsychology. She is the co-founder of Swedish hubs of international networks like Swedish Transition Network and End Ecocide Sweden and a knowledge expert in the UN Harmony with Nature programme. Pella works with relational, systemic leadership for a society in harmony with nature at all levels, from local resilience to international legal frameworks, and serves as one of the knowledge experts in the UN Harmony with Nature programmes. Pella was awarded the Swedish Martin Luther King Award in 2023 and the Environmental Hero of the year 2019.
You can learn more about Pella here, and listen more about the Ecocide and Rights of Nature Movements in Pella’s conversation with Nate Hagens here.
