20 years EarthCollective: Reflections

Two decades years ago,  a group of motivated and inspired dreamers for the earth gathered for dinner in a student flat at Droef 99. Everyone present spoke into their current passions, hopes and desired to make a difference as a collective, for the collective. Most of us had just completed our MSc degrees at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. We stood at a precipitous of possibility and, at that time, every leap toward a floating idea seemed attainable.  What resulted from that evening was the birthing of the EarthCollective Network (the name had been conceived 3 years earlier but that’s another story). 

Our motto came to be “Positive Ideas. Happening.”

From that evening, positive ideas effervesced and happenings happened.  Some bubbled up quickly, others brewed a bit. The initiatives that EarthCollective most directly catalysed and made durable included Living Lands (championed by Dieter Van den Broeck), the Cultural Values of Nature (which became the Sacred Natural Sites Initiative and more, led by Bas Verschuuren) and eyes4earth, coordinated by me.  Recognition of these efforts enabled to us to attract funding from various sources including from WUR INREF programme (2007), Canon Environmental Grant (2007), Marine Biodiversity & Cultural Grant (2007) and, eventually, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food & Nature to support the nascent ecological restoration work we were doing in the Baviaanskloof, South Africa, and which led to Living Lands being formed (2008). eyes4earth.org became the impulse and outreach for my PhD (2009) which attracted bursary funding. 

But perhaps what I’m most proud of is all the catalytic work that you haven’t heard about and will never hear about. It didn’t seek nor attract funding because it was invisible and often imperceptible. It was the micro-mycelial movements – an innate push for positive life-affirming networking that has continued in the two decades since without fanfare.  It has been an enduring impulse to connect people, places and ideas that have led to continued openings and opportunities, sometimes with the benefactors themselves being unaware. 

So, I’ve been reflecting on EarthCollective in 2026 and have received welcome messages from those close to the source of its 2006 wellspring. 

These days, it would seem that EarthCollective hasn’t done anything particularly tangible for several years now.  So I have repeatedly looked at wrapping it up, dropping the website/domain and yet, for some reason, it persists. It doesn’t go away. Ironically, over these past few months, there has been more activity in my life that’s aligned with the EarthCollective philosophy and modus operandi than in the past 10 years. There’s meaningful conversations with some of the early EarthCollective members and new catalytic collaborations underway.  And so at times I find myself still sat at that dinner table in 2006, looking into everyone’s excited eyes, and reawakening the latent dreams.  Maybe it’s circling back. Or spiralling up. We will let you know how EarthCollective unfurls from hereon.  

I offer immense gratitude to those who were there from the beginning and freely committed much energy in the early years to ensure some of our positive ideas did happen. It was a significant turning point in my life and my coming to South Africa a direct result from it. Special thanks to Dieter Van den Broeck, Bas Verschuuren, Silvia Weel, Mahe Charles, Maria Piquer, Philipp Gaertner, Sander ter Meulen and Andrew Zylstra for the early impulses.  And then to Floris & friends, Coen Boogerd, Ana Belen Ruiz Sanchez, Janneke Spekreijse, Kim Janssen, Alejandra Vargas & Olga Ypma. 

Let us know what EarthCollective has meant to you or if you have any other reflections you’d like to share.  Thanks.