The 10th Annual Confluence Philanthropy gathering in Puerto Rico resonated with diverse insights, practical examples, philosophical thesis, stories and knowledge. We heard memories from Confluence’s founding and first decade and the foreshadowing of bravery, inclusion, passion and fight in the coming, decisive decade.
Participants joined together with intention, love and in community. My highlight was Elizabeth “Beth” Sawin’s remarks whose team at Climate Interactive produced the first simulated climate model for negotiators at COP 15 in Copenhagen. Beth offered the audience the concept of “coherence.” She helped us to understand that ‘not changing is not an option,’ and that all elements of human-made systems that lack coherence must shift or they will eventually die.
Beth explained how our unwillingness to operate within planetary boundaries is accelerating our decline. Localized armageddons in the forms of wildfires, hurricanes, mudslides and floods will become more frequent. In the face of ecological collapse, we will become reluctant learners coping with constant, uncontrollable change. She opened my eyes to our present reality: mini-collapses and mini-innovations already occur daily, with the recent natural disasters in Puerto Rico serving as very present examples of collapse and resilience.
I became excited by her colorful vision. We can replace the systems that are failing and dying around us with new, beautiful coherence; in the forms of new patterns, habits, policies, rules, systems, politics, towns, and energy sources.
At the conference we talked about our values and how our investment practices must reflect the patterns that we wish to see replicated in the world all around us. Beth equated coherence with equity and relationship, and I intuited values in which I feel personally aligned, such as cooperation and compassion. What has become clear to me is that if we incorporate these values into emergent structures they will blossom and grow; diverging from this current path towards crisis. With this new awareness of coherence perhaps we might see more Confluence members invest in companies that they want to watch grow in coherent patterns.
- Lisa Renstrom, Trustee, Bonwood Social Investments and Confluence Board Member
