Hope is a practice: 5 lessons from conservation leader Gary Nabhan
Ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan has spent more than five decades learning what it takes to restore landscapes, and why lasting conservation begins with listening, collaboration and action.
What does hope look like after 55 years of watching a landscape change?
For Gary Nabhan, it looks a lot like work.
The ethnobotanist, author and MacArthur Fellow has spent much of his life in the desert borderlands, helping restore ecosystems, protect seeds and build coalitions across communities and borders. At a recent Phoenix event for his new book, Water in the Desert: A Pilgrimage, Nabhan shared lessons from that work — including a simple idea with implications far beyond conservation: Hope is not something you wait to feel. It is something you practice.
That idea also speaks to how ASU approaches professional learning in conservation.
Through the Conservation Futures Academy, the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures connects practitioners with applied learning across disciplines including Indigenous knowledge, policy, technology and leadership. The goal is to help people bring different forms of expertise to the same table, and build the capabilities to put that knowledge into practice.
In a new story from the Conservation Futures Academy, Jennifer Woods shares five lessons from Nabhan’s book signing in Phoenix. They range from the importance of staying with a place long enough to understand it to recognizing that meaningful conservation does not require everyone to play the same role.
As Nabhan sees it, every skill offers an entry point.
Read 5 lessons of hope from Gary Nabhan’s Water in the Desert book signing in the Conservation Futures Academy newsroom.