As the political wheel turns, nurture seeds of justice, compassion, and love.

News of the world environment

 NEWSLETTER | DECEMBER 06, 2024

A Time to Sow

I should plant some seeds. That was my first waking thought on November 6, as the sun rose on a United States that would soon have to live through another four years with a climate-change-denying despot as its leader.

The thought kept circling at the back of my weary mind even as I agonized over what’s to come: the attacks on environmental safeguards and climate action, on immigrants, on gender nonconforming persons, on journalists, and on the civic institutions that keep our (admittedly imperfect) democracy running. We’ve lived through a version of this before, but I fear President Trump 2.0 is going to be more vicious and targeted in his efforts to undermine a functional government.

But the seeds. If you plant them now, come spring, you’ll have peas, and carrots, and bright-stemmed rainbow chard, and pretty wildflowers, the voice in my head insisted. I brushed the idea aside as frivolous. This was no time to focus on flowers. There was much more important work to be done. We had to find ways to mount a defense against this slide into fascism, and we had to do it fast.

But when I turned my attention back to the even more immediate task at hand — wrapping up our Winter 2025 print issue — I was confronted with seeds again.

There was veteran ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan writing about the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict that threatens to displace the painstakingly saved “crop seeds and their hardy wild relatives” that “help humanity after wars, floods, droughts, or famine” (“Refugee Seeds"). There was journalist Marisa Agha reporting from the US Southwest about Indigenous farmers’ efforts to bring back long-lost seed varieties (“Reviving Lost Relatives”). And there was my colleague Zoe Loftus-Farren’s cover feature, describing the brave conservationists in Ukraine and how “a lush riparian forest” has already reseeded itself on the bed of a reservoir after an explosion drained it last year (“War and Parks”).

The message about seeds — about life itself — was laid out in plain sight in these stories.

“In this time of collapse of old worlds and monumental transition, we must think like seeds,” Rowen White, seed keeper and farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, wrote in an Instagram post just a few days later. “We must breathe past the gut-wrenching fear of total destruction, for just beyond that precipice is life renewed, seedcoats coming undone to sprout the endless creative potential of what is possible for our children and grandchildren.”

Yes, the road ahead will be tough. There will be loss and pain and suffering. There will be places and people we won’t be able to help, which is hard to accept. But if we keep up the work of sowing and nurturing the seeds of justice, compassion, and love, eventually beauty will re-emerge from this chaos.

I suppose I’ll go plant some seeds in my backyard after all. Spring isn’t that far off.

Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor-in-Chief, Earth Island Journal

PS: This is a version of my Letter from the Editor published in our Winter 2025 print issue. Check out a quick breakdown on the issue below.

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo

WINTER 2025 ISSUE

The latest print edition of Earth Island Journal will be arriving in mailboxes and hitting newsstands any day now.

In this issue you will find:

• Vignettes of Ukrainian conservationists trying to protect the country’s wild landscapes amid the turbulence of war.

• A complementary essay about an overlooked collateral of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict — the Middle East’s most valued repositories of plant biodiversity.

• A report on the failed industry-funded efforts to use genetic engineering to save the iconic American chestnut.

• A personal essay by a North Dakota writer, describing how the town he grew up in is being transformed into a testing site for unproven carbon storage technology.

• A feature that explores how Indigenous communities in the American Southwest are working to safeguard native seeds and traditional farming knowledge.

Plus:

• A conversation with Indigenous activists and authors Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson about the connection between environmental violence and bodily violence, the antidotes to colonialism and capitalism, and their new book, We Will Be Jaguars.

• An essay from self-described “artivist” Melody Cooper about taking a stand for climate-vulnerable communities through TV, plays, and short-stories.

Photo credit: John Carr / USFWS
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Bison photo credit: John Carr / USFWS

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