EARTHwise Projects
Systemic Transformation for Planetary Thrivability
The EARTHwise projects are led by our non-profit EARTHwise Centre, and are based on decades of applied research in education, human development, and systemic transformation.
EARTHwise projects focus on resolving the systemic causes of the sustainability crisis, which manifests as biodiversity loss, run-away climate change, and social-economic division.
Scientific Foundations
Into the Heart of Systems Change by Dr. Anneloes Smitsman
The Ph.D. Dissertation Into the Heart of Systems Change by EARTHwise founder Dr. Anneloes Smitsman, forms the scientific foundation for the EARTHwise projects. Providing a framework for diagnosing and addressing the systemic thrivability barriers of mechanistic systems and growth models, with tested transformation strategies.
Anneloes obtained her degree of Doctor from the School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, the Netherlands, where she conducted her Ph.D. as external researcher at the Maastricht Sustainability Institute (formerly ICIS). A summary of this vast work can be ready via her article Transition Plan for a Thrivability Civilisation, as well as the video below.
Research on Gamification and Social Tipping Points
EARTHwise Centre developed the initial IP for our Eloywn: Quest of Time game and continues to serve the game development through targeted research on gamification and social tipping point dynamics. Donations to EARTHwise Centre support us to continue this important research and apply this in social engagement strategies that empower youth and young adults as future leaders for a thrivable world.
Elowyn: Quest of Time is a fun Play2Thrive transformation game for taking on Moloch with benevolent artificial intelligences players help train. In game theory, Moloch is a concept that references an ancient demon or god that lures us into sacrificing our future for short-term gains and false promises. The Moloch dynamics on Earth are invisible to the average player, and yet most of us are trapped in it. Our game will help reveal its inner workings in a playful, empowering way.
Powered by a sustainable token economy, Elowyn offers players economic benefits while also contributing to funding support for projects—including their own—that positively impact both the planet and humanity. Supported by a global community of pioneers and visionaries that form part of the EARTHwise movement.
Learn moreDesign for Commons Governance
A new paradigm in politics, law, and governance is an absolute necessity for resolving the root causes of our sustainability crisis. Our current political, governance, and legal systems are unfit for the demands of our future wellbeing and planetary safety. The EARTHwise governance projects focus on the development of Commons Governance frameworks in collaboration with our partners. Our feature governance projects are the AGI Constitution and the EARTHwise Constitution projects, which are led by EARTHwise Founder Dr. Anneloes Smitsman.
The AGI Constitution Project
The AGI Constitution project involves the design of a participatory framework that can lead to the co-creating of an eventual AGI Constitution. In particular, to steward the development and deployment of benevolent AGI as a Global Commons. The project was initiated by EARTHwise Centre in 2023 in collaboration with SingularityNET, AQAL Foundation, and others. SIngularityNET and AQAL Foundation have also financially contributed to the project.
This framework is intended to serve as a living compass and an evolving open-source document where you can share your ideas for what may soon become the most important governance priority of our time.
Read the AGI Constitution FrameworkThe EARTHwise Constitution Project
The EARTHwise Constitution for a Planetary Civilization project began in 2022, and is envisioned as a Commons Governance framework for a planetary civilization. The constitution applies the principles and wisdom of living systems for societal development and systemic transformation. It was launched in December 2022 and has been endorsed by 50+ organizations through the EARTHwise Alliance for a Planetary Civilization.
The EARTHwise Constitution serves as a new kind of social contract for aligning the myriad of movements, projects, and initiatives through a common vision and focus. It is open-souce and can be freely adapted for your local context and unique purpose. It is one of our most ambitious initiatives and invitations for addressing the root causes of our sustainability crisis.
The Compass design of the EARTHwise Constitution also features in the design of the SEEDS Constitution and the Hypha DAO Constitution for which Smitsman served as the lead architect.
EARTHwise Constitution for a Planetary Civilization
Education for Sustainability
Our Education projects and programs are for schools, businesses, and communities. We trained over 300 teachers and reached more than 20,000 students in Mauritius since 2012. Our classes include: fundamentals for ecological sustainability, eco-systemic health, systems thinking and systemic dynamics, complexity sciences, evolutionary systems design, climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity protection, eco-systemic governance, ecological food security, cultural heritage, zero-waste campaigns, regenerative design principles, social innovation, eco-social entrepreneurship, wisdom development, peace-building, healing and reconciliation, law and governance for thrivability, creativity and innovation, indigenous wisdom and stewardship, storytelling and communication of complexity and sustainability issues, future visioning, and diversity inclusiveness.
The r3.0 Educational Transformation Blueprint
Anneloes Smitsman is the lead author of the r3.0 Educational Transformation Blueprint with 7 Transformative Learning Perspectives for Regeneration and Thrivbability, published by r3.0. This Blueprint features the EARTHwise Education for Sustainability program as case-study, as well as the transformation strategies that have evolved from the EARTHwise research over many years.
The purpose for this Blueprint is to inspire, catalyze, and support a much needed shift in the role and focus of education towards developing our transformative capacities for regeneration and thrivability. Major inner and outer shifts are required in our perspectives, understanding, attitudes, expectations, behaviours, and actions for safeguarding the present and future wellbeing of life on earth. Without this, the survival of our own and many other species is not guaranteed.
Never before has learning and education become this important for developing our navigational capacities during this catalytic time of compounding tipping points. This includes preparing humanity for what we have set in motion by destabilizing our climate systems and damaging our biodiversity, and to catalyze the required actions for preventing the worst case scenarios from happening by shifting gears and trajectories now towards regeneration and thrivability.
Our Educational Projects for Schools
Since 2011, we've been training schools in Mauritius to transform their systems and curriculum to become future relevant for developing competencies and understanding for sustainability, regeneration, and thrivability.
Thrivability education empowers by facilitating experientially the teachings, knowledge, principles, and practices for systemic understanding and capacities. We trained over 300 teachers and reached more than 20,000 students in Mauritius since 2012. Our educational best practices have become embedded in mainstream education at a national level in Mauritius. Several of the schools we' trained have received their International Eco-School certification. This program has been fully implemented in Loreto College Curepipe, St Mary’s College Rose-Hill, and BPS Fatima College Goodlands, Mauritius. We have also provided training to Westcoast International Primary school.
Our program is open to all schools and aims to innovate and transform the educational systems through a systemic whole curriculum based approach. Teachers and students are also trained in working with complexity and the informational dynamics of living systems through systems sensing, thinking, and mapping.
Psychological first-aid & Crisis Management
Our project on research and capacity development for psychological first-aid and crisis management is led by Dr. Kurt Barnes. The project also investigates how an increase in climate change extremes is impacting psycho-social issues and mental health. Capacity development training includes the setting up PFA training to prevent the development and escalation of psychosocial unrest and violence. Furthermore, the project looks into issues of migration and refugees and how to manage revolts in migration-related crisis situations, based on trainings that Dr. Barnes provided for this aim in Africa.
Cultural & Indigenous Heritage
Many people today grow up without a sense of roots and belonging. Cultural and ancestral heritage education is essential for the development of regenerative and thrivable cultures that are rooted in ecological consciousness. We have worked extensively in Mauritius to help raise awareness about the cultural and ancestral heritage of the Maroons and their vital role in the fight against slavery and oppression. Since 2007 we have been directly involved in the Le Morne Cultural Heritage (LMCL) process by documenting the Maroon Oral History and providing critical input for the inscription of LMCL as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Learn more about this through the following articles below.
The Fall and the Maroon Queen
By Anneloes Smitsman & Kurt Barnes
Le Morne Cultural Landscape in Mauritius is one of the most important UNESCO World Heritage Sites on Maroonage and the resistance to slavery and oppression, due to what took place by the tremendous courage, bravery, strategy and skilfulness of the maroons who fought against slavery and oppression since the early days of colonisation. The first slaves on the Island could have been those who were brought by the Dutch around 1598. The maroons referred here are the people who managed to escape the hands of their oppressors (colonisers) and sought refuge in the caves and other hiding places that Le Morne Mountain provided them.
With the opening of the most important heritage trail to the general public, we feel it is time to come forth with some of the oral history that has been kept from the people. These stories are very important for the healing that still needs to occur in Mauritius as well as the deeper transformation of the underlying slave-mastery archetypes and dynamics. What is happening in Mauritius serves as an example for similar processes in other places in the world that were impacted by the same patterns. Before we share with you more background information regarding this unique World Heritage Site, we like to first take you on a journey.
Around 1850, or just before, a massacre took place on top of Le Morne Mountain that became the source of legends long after. Nobody knows exactly what happened and why, but this story, here written in the first-person of the ‘Maroon Queen’, is inspired by the interviews we conducted with the descendants of the maroons and slaves who were living in the Cultural Landscape of Le Morne.....
Lost in Paradise, the Maroon Quest
By Anneloes Smitsman & Kurt Barnes
Le Morne Mountain became the most important place of refuge for the maroons in Mauritius. It also became a beacon of hope for other maroons and slaves in other countries, who heard about the achievements and courage of the maroons in Mauritius.
The following narrative is inspired by historical events and based on our interviews with the slave and maroon descendants in Mauritius. This story is in the voice of a young Kreole man to take us into the heart of the Maroon Quest. This Quest is part of our deeper Quest as human beings, irrespective of ethnicity or race, in the search for meaning, freedom and the expression of our authentic ways of being.
“I wake up confused, my mind is still trembling with the echoes of my dreams. Each time the same dreams re-emerge. I am always on the run, no matter where I go it is not safe. I never know who I can trust. I am always on guard, not knowing what is next. I cannot ever put down my roots to remain in one place. I have to run, all the time. One does not know who is friend and who is enemy. I want to rest, but i cannot. I do not feel safe. There are voices in my head that I cannot silence. Images of flames that I do not understand. Voices of women and children screaming in terror. Behind the flames I see their eyes. They stare at me, penetrating me deeply with the terror of their pain as their bellies are cut open and their babies brutally taken out of their belly. How can they be so cruel, what did these women do to deserve this? Left to die in their own blood while seeing their children taken from them? For what? What happened to the babies; did they survive? I do not know my mother. I was taken from her when I was born and raised by women of different colour."......
Why America also owes its Independence to Mauritius
By Kurt Barnes
This is a Story of Impact that has been never been told, yet it is so significant that once you know this story you cannot possibly understand why others don’t know it too! This story will reveal to you some facts about key contributing factors to the American Independence war that few have ever realised, and is rarely acknowledged if at all. It all happened over a three year period from 1780 to 1783. This time period is known in Mauritius as part of “the little Golden era”. Those conversed with the link of the island to America might be thinking that this is about the time when Mark Twain visited the island and wrote his famous phrase: “Mauritius was made first and then heaven; and heaven was copied after Mauritius.” Yet this is not what this story is about.
Mauritius Island was one of the first countries, if not the first in the world, to be granted an American consul in 1872 by the name of Nicholas Pike. Some say this was done as an acknowledgment of the Island’s contribution to the Independence war. Nicholas Pike says of Mauritius that it is “in reality the Gem of the ocean, but little known to the world at large, small as it is, only a dot in a vast ocean”. However due to the inconsistency of the alliance with the French one might think that Mauritius contribution was quickly forgotten.
Hence to start this story let us first look at the maps of the World and Mauritius, or rather the absence of Mauritius on some important maps. Naming a person or a place is a form of acknowledgement. It is very revealing, therefore, and key to this story that it was made to look on some maps as if Mauritius never even existed. Look at this map from the site of the Cincinnati historian society in France. It is easy to believe, if you go by this map, what was accomplished in the Indian Ocean during the American Independence war had little or nothing to do with Mauritius. The island does not appear on this map at all despite our significant contributions, as you will come to understand later on in this story. Mauritius was first colonised by the Dutch who brought the first slaves to Mauritius in 1638. The Dutch left officially in 1710. The French then colonised Mauritius in 1715 and called it “Isle de France”....
Climate Change Advocacy
Our Climate Change Advocacy project aims to catalyze collaborative impact based on long-standing indigenous wisdom principles and practices that focus on stewarding the conditions for Planetary Health and Collective Wellbeing. Our key partner for this project is Chief Phil Lane Jr. and his Four Worlds International Institute. EARTHwise Centre hosted the online global Talking Circle Leadership program for FWII in 2020, which can now be accessed via Four Worlds Indigenous University.
Through our many years of advocacy work we have also been providing key strategic and legal advice for movement building related to climate change and sustainability issues. Through our Climate Change Education programs we have been supporting schools and businesses to develop their climate change literacies and competencies for climate change adaptation and mitigation in their local and regional contexts, and how to stop the ecocide. You can learn more about our approach through our conversations below with Chief Phil Lane Jr., Dr. Anita Sanchez, and Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler. As well as the TEDx talk by Anneloes from 2016, and her interview with the Shift Network in 2019.
