I have a desire to live in intimate relationships with life. I like to sit in the Overton windowsill and explore how to create a culture where we understand ourselves as participants in the wild order of things. As if the world matters to us!
About Pella
I am a maverick ecologist, farmer, author and educator. I work with relational, systemic leadership for a society in harmony with nature at all levels, from local resilience to international legal frameworks. I am a knowledge expert in the UN Harmony with Nature programme and I have co-founded swedish hubs of international networks like Transition Sweden, (part of Transition Network) End Ecocide Sweden (part of Stop Ecocide International) and Save the Rainforest Sweden. I am a board member of the swedish Permaculture association and an associate of the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at Uppsala University. I teach regularly at several swedish universities and lead a one-year ecopsychology programme with Lodyn.
I love being in touch with the soil and all the inhabitants of the smallholding in the archipelago of Stockholm where I live.
Awards:
2023: The Martin Luther King Award from the Christian Council of Sweden and the Uniting Church of Sweden
2021: A Sustainable Prize from A Sustainable Tomorrow
2019: Environmental Hero of the Year from WWF Sweden
2013: The Environmental award of Värmdö Municipality
Selected works:
2024: Moral imagination for the rights of Nature: An Embassy of the Baltic Sea in Nordic Environmental Law Journal, special issue.
2024: Ecocide law as a transformative legal leverage point (with Valérie Cabanes) in Rights of Nature in Europe – Encounters and Visions (Routledge).
2022: Faith Voices for Ecocide law. Editor, End Ecocide Sweden.
2022: Naturlagen – om naturens rättigheter och människans möjligheter (med Henrik Hallgren, Volante)
2021: Naturens rettigheter – regler for en vill verden. Chapter in Naturtro – Om å dekolonisere naturen (Concerned artists Norway).
2021: Människans vilja och det levande sammanhanget. Chapter in Fri vilja och mänskligt ansvar. Fri tanke.
2020: Rights of Nature as a prerequisite for sustainability. Chapter in Strongly sustainable societies – organising human activities on a hot and full Earth. Routledge.
Contact details at bottom of the page.
World of wisdom 162. Pella Thiel - On why Ecocide legislation has such deep implications
https://podtail.se/podcast/world-of-wisdom/162-pella-thiel-on-why-ecocide-legislation-has-suc/
Forest Calling: Rights of the Forest - Rules for a wild relationship
A contribution to the art project Forest Intervals – responding to the forests call a full-day public programme with the swedish Public Art Agency engaging ecological and relational entanglements within Malin Arnell and Åsa Elzéns work Forest Calling – A Never-ending Contaminated Collaboration or Dancing is a Form of Forest Knowledge.
The Great Simplification: Criminalising Ecocide: the Rights of Nature
On this episode, Nate is joined by maverick ecologist Pella Thiel to discuss the legal frameworks behind the Ecocide and Rights of Nature Movements. Our current economic and legal systems have no mechanisms to consider nature in our decision making – much less to make systemic planetary stability a priority. Could redefining the destruction of our biosphere to be considered a crime parallel with that of genocide alter the way we structure laws governing our societies and economies? How are countries legislating and enforcing these ideas – even going so far as to act against the flow of the superorganism? Most importantly, how could top-down legal ideas such as these interact with bottom-up individual action to create powerful shifts in cultural values and motivations?
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/121-pella-thiel
Forest of Thought: The Great Unveiling // PELLA THIEL
Sweden in Transition: ecocide and rights of Nature
Should Nature have rights? Today a corporation can have standing to be represented in court whilst animals or ecosystems can’t. President Macron said he would support the creation of a crime of Ecocide in international discussions and so did the Belgian govenment, the Danish parliament and the Swedish labor party. An idea whose time has come it seems! Discover what it would change if Ecocide was recognized as an international crime, and meet a beautiful person, who embodies engagement with softness and sparkle.
The burning man and the oil of the rainforest
Yasuní National Park in Ecuador has been called a biological bulls-eye. Biologists have counted to over 600 species - in a hectare of forest. (As a comparison there are around 40 tree species in the whole of Sweden). Due to the location at the intersection of the...
Rights of the Forest – Rules for a wild relationship
A contribution to the art project Forest Intervals - responding to the forests call a full-day public programme with the Public Art Agency engaging ecological and relational entanglements within Malin Arnell and Åsa Elzéns work Forest Calling – A Never-ending...
Time for a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Nature
Also at Medium As we are seeing the UN Decade of Biodiversity coming to a close this year, to say that we haven’t fulfilled its promises would be an understatement. If anything, we are beginning to understand the extent to which the Earths’ living systems are falling...
The Potato Appeal – a Transition response to Covid-19
Also at Medium May 1st was potato planting day in Sweden this year; at least according to Transition Sweden (part of Transition Network). The Transition initiative Närjord (translates approximately to Local Soil) in Söderhamn, Sweden, has been working for food...
I am the Environmental Hero of the Year!
Movement and Maps – Told and Untold Stories of the Future
A speech from Climate Existence conference may 2018 (on video here) As I pondered about what exquisite wisdom I would share with you after these lovely days of depth, spaciousness and beauty, I felt quite humble. Then suddenly, a character from long ago showed up,...
A letter to you, dear Transitioner
Opening speech at REALS final international forum in Järna, June 16-19th 2016 "Todays challenges and the need for resilience" Dear fellow transitioners from different corners! As we are standing in the mess we are in, how are we to make meaning of our actions and to...
Values-based change agent – interview with Sustainable Lens
Values-based change agent - an interview by Samuel Mann of Sustainable Lens - resilience on radio.
Changing the story of Self
Published at Common cause Foundation June 2014 The Common Cause framework shows that intrinsic values, such as equality and connection with nature, are associated with actions and attitudes towards a fair and sustainable society. Our ability to act for a greater good...