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FOREST
Program Coordinator at Crawford Stewardship Project
Lifetime Member of Dancing Waters Permaculture Cooperative
"We take on a broad variety of issues, really trying to work with the people on the ground most affected organizing them, catalyzing other local organizations that we can then support and give access to our networks and advise on how to best communicate with local governments."
Forest talks about the Crawford Stewardship Program, a local non-profit working towards environmental justice, local control of natural resources and sustainable land and water use.
Forest Jahnke was born in a barn on the 130 acres of the Dancing Waters Permaculture Cooperative. After traveling to 26 countries, he returned to live at Dancing Waters, a rural consensus-run community striving to live in sustainable relationship with the land and one another. Forest keeps busy on a wide range of projects involving grassroots networking and cross-organizational coordination, research and education, public speaking, and community organizing. Crawford Stewardship Project works to protect the local environment from threats of polluting and extractive industries, to promote sustainable land use, environmental justice, and local control of natural resources through community education and empowerment.
Karst landscape means a lot of good things - important habitat for trout and bats. "But it also means it's very susceptible to contamination. The distinction between surface water and ground water on a karst landscape is often just time."
Forest explains how the local geology exasperates contamination from agriculture.
"Dancing Waters Permaculture Cooperative was founded 38 years ago around the principles of trying to establish a more sustainable relationship with the land and also with each other as a community."
Forest describes the permaculture-based intentional community that he's lived at most of his life.
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"In 2007, we had two 500-year floods within ten months and since then, every year there's at least one if not multiple what used to be 100-year floods coming through here."
"I recommend showing up at your most local government meetings... establish a seat at the table. Be aware of and involved in what's going on in your community. A lot of solutions have to come from shifting our economy along with the politics."
Forest gives advice for creating positive environmental change.
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