Rehabilitating degraded lands, restoring fisheries, or reducing greenhouse gas emissions all demand changes by actors at multiple scales; and power, profit, and livelihoods are at stake. Blake Ratner of Collaborating for Resilience recounts his experiences of pursuing big, systemic change when people don’t agree what the problem is, or how to solve it.

It’s become popular to say that the health of the environment and the health of human communities are interlinked. Yet much of the investment aimed at solving environmental crises still fails to make these connections. How can we do better?

When Ning Savat laid down his arms at the end of Cambodia’s civil war, he returned to what he hoped would be a simple, peaceful life as a fisherman.  What he did not know was that he was stepping into one of the country’s most prominent popular struggles of the post-war period. 

“Natural resource management, environment, good governance, and political stability: they are all so interrelated,” says Madam Haddijatou Jallow, head of the Environment Protection Agency in Sierra Leone.