If you want to escape the news cycle that seems to only focus on pantomime villains and evil geniuses... Rewilding The World is my favourite podcast for when I need reminding that not everything in the world is going belly-up. There are other stories at play, other actors at work. Now in its third season, the podcast features Ben Goldsmith interviewing different people who have led large-scale rewilding in their part of the world. 

There are a few things I like about this kind of storytelling. These are truly global stories that uncover large-scale nature restoration projects in all kinds of countries from Mexico to Kazakhstan to India. The countries featured are diverse - and so are the kinds of projects and the kinds of people leading them. From deserts to mountains to forests or madcap dambusting or beaver-led river restoration projects we are introduced to all kinds of solutions in all kinds of places. 

By nature, these are long stories - not sound bites. The stories are stories of struggle, and of perseverance, of working hard with communities and local authorities, of finding ways to be creative within the legal structures, and campaigning tirelessly for new laws, new ways to fund, emergent ways to reframe nature not as something we can exploit (for free) but as critical infrastructure that we can genuinely invest in for good. 

This kind of storytelling is especially important when dealing with the climate and nature crisis. These stories are not fiction. They are not wishful thinking. They are lived out, worked for, worked through and evidenced through nature coming back - at scale, in all kinds of places. As humans we can be destructive, divisive, exploitative. We can also be agents of restoration, recovery, resurrection - these are the kinds of stories I want to remember. These are the stories I want to be part of making happen.