Ashish Kothari is an Indian environmentalist, author, and founding member of Kalpavriksh, a non-profit working on environmental and social justice issues at local, national, and global scales. He has taught at the Indian Institute of Public Administration and the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru, coordinated India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan process, and serves as a judge on the International Tribunal on the Rights of Nature. He also helps coordinate the Vikalp Sangam alternatives confluence, the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, and the Radical Ecological Democracy initiative. Over more than four decades, he has authored, co-authored, or edited more than 30 books, along with hundreds of articles. In this wide-ranging InterDialogue, Kothari traces his path from a childhood watching Delhi’s urban forests disappear into a lifetime of environmental and social justice work, and how that activism grew into Kalpavriksh and wider networks like the Vikalp Sangam, the ICCA Consortium, and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. We discuss the biocultural and ideological diversity of the Indian subcontinent, his concept of “outscaling” as an alternative to conventional growth models, and how Adivasi and indigenous rights in India compare with frameworks in Latin America, shaped by very different histories of colonization and violence. Kothari also reflects on decades of writing—from a self-published newsletter in 1980 to the hundred-essay volume Pluriverse—and how it has supported grassroots movements and reached younger generations. We go on to explore the rights of nature movement in India—including the personhood granted to the Ganga and Yamuna rivers and the transboundary politics of South Asia’s rivers—before Kothari lays out earthy governance, his framework for moving beyond the legal limits of rights of nature toward a form of decision-making in which the rest of the natural world is already part of the process, illustrated through examples from a...

Marta González is a Venezuelan-American physicist and complexity scientist whose research explores the dynamics of human mobility, urban systems, and sustainability through the lens of statistical physics and network science. She is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also serves as associate director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center. González is internationally recognized for pioneering the use of large-scale mobility data to better understand cities and inform public policy. In this wide-ranging InterDialogue, González reflects on her journey from physics into complexity science and urban research, explaining how statistical physics provides powerful tools for understanding human mobility and the collective dynamics of cities. We discuss the emergence of urban science as an interdisciplinary field, the opportunities and limitations of mobile phone and mobility datasets, and how these data can improve transportation planning, climate adaptation, and the design of more resilient and sustainable cities. González also explores the challenges of translating scientific research into public policy, including questions of data access, privacy, and collaboration between researchers, governments, and industry. We further examine the future of urban mobility, autonomous vehicles, and clean energy, as well as the importance of international collaboration and expanding scientific capacity across the Global South. Finally, she reflects on the broader promise of complexity science for addressing some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges facing rapidly urbanizing societies. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction and Marta González’s path into complexity science 5:01 – From statistical physics to human mobility research 10:18 – Mobile phone data and the emergence of urban science 15:42 – Sustainable cities, climate adaptation, and resilience 20:24 – Privacy, data access, and international collaboration 25:42 – Using complexity science to inform urban policy 29:32 – Measuring the impact of remote work...

Omar Prias is an electrical engineer, professor at the National University of Colombia, and former president of the Colombian Energy and Gas Regulatory Commission (CREG). He has decades of experience in the energy sector working at the intersection between the academy, planning, and politics. This InterDialogue addresses the importance of decentralized energy technologies for sustainable development, the role of intercultural dialogue, national and global energy transition, and the possibilities of introducing advanced nuclear technologies, both new and projected, in non-nuclear countries such as Colombia. We begin by talking about the fundamental role of energy in all sectors of society. Timestamps 00:00 – Introduction 1:50 – Prias’s Background in Energy 7:57 – Industry and Energy Systems in Colombia 15:13 – Historical Development of the Energy Sector in Colombia; Energy and Conflict 22:06 – Geopolitics of Colombian Energy 26:32 – Hydroelectric Power in Colombia 44:40 – Intercultural Considerations and Energy Communities 53:15 – Intercultural Dialogue and Decision-Making 1:03:43 – Energy Transition in Colombia 1:13:41 – Nuclear Energy in Colombia 1:20:11 – Opening Spaces for Adopting New Technologies

Is self-organization the answer to the foundational question of why life exhibits such complexity? And can it also serve as a guiding framework for how best to save complex webs of biodiversity amid the onslaughts of the modern world? Self-organization exists throughout nature and socioeconomic structures. It refers to the spontaneous emergence of collective, complex order within a disordered system, due to localized interactions that follow simple rules, and occurring without external controls. While conceptually abstract, given that uncertainty lies at its core, the applications of self-organization are everywhere. Advancing our understanding of the non-linear processes within complex systems that drive self-organization is also becoming increasingly important for developing evidence-based policies in a world defined by interdependence and escalating stressors. Indigenous cultures, such as those that live within complex socio-ecological systems in the Amazon ecoregion, have long embraced these principles of uncertainty, interconnectedness, and non-linear dynamics. How will their wisdom, experience, and models of socio-ecological systems integrate with evidence-based policies for protecting the Amazon ecoregion? Safeguarding the Amazon is one of our world’s most pressing, complex, and vital global challenges. Among the strategies gaining traction, supported by increasing financial investment, is the intriguing proposition to transform a portion of the region’s immense biodiversity into a sustainable “bioeconomy.” However, these proposals, and the policy makers responsible for negotiating their implementation across boundaries and cultures, often lack an understanding of how both economies and ecologies self-organize and scale. Data-driven models of self-organization and critical collective phenomena in the natural world and within traditional Indigenous sociocultural structures, along with adaptive context-based frameworks, can help guide the transboundary development of a decentralized and circular socio-bioeconomy for the Amazon. Self-Organized Criticality and the Edge of Chaos Pioneering research on self-organized criticality (SOC) began in the 1980s and was made accessible to a wider audience by...

Mariana Gómez Soto is a Colombian social anthropologist, environmentalist, and activist. She holds a BA in social anthropology with minors in geography and biology, a master’s degree in social anthropology, and a second master’s degree in holistic sciences from Schumacher College. Gómez has worked closely with Indigenous communities for many years and has led key intercultural initiatives through her roles at the Gaia Amazonas Foundation and as a leader within the North Amazon Alliance. She is the lead author of a recent chapter on socio-bioeconomics and connectivity published in an assessment report by the Science Panel for the Amazon. Gómez also played a central role in founding the Amazonia Conectada coalition, which brings together the North Amazon Alliance, the Science Panel for the Amazon, RAISG, and Aguas Amazónicas—organizations with distinct areas of expertise united by a shared commitment to sustaining the Amazon’s terrestrial, biocultural, hydrological, and climatic interconnectivity. This wide-ranging InterDialogue opens with a discussion on dynamic, context-based frameworks for building and scaling a sustainable, circular bioeconomy in the Amazon. The conversation then turns to the importance of Amazonian connectivity, the evolving priorities of the North Amazon Alliance and Amazonia Conectada, and the critical role of interdisciplinary and intercultural education and collaboration in safeguarding the region’s future. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction 1:42 – Defining Bioeconomics and Socio-Bioeconomy 5:44 – Envisioning a Circular Bioeconomy in the Amazon 9:52 – Developing Socio-Bioeconomic Trade Infrastructure 12:09 – Challenges of Modeling Bioeconomy in Practice 14:45 – Consequences of 2026 Elections for the Amazon 16:10 – Bioeconomic Product Identification and Market Integration 22:47 – Experiences Coordinating the North Amazon Alliance 24:27 – Analyzing Connectivity in the Amazon 31:47 – Hydrological-Terrestrial Interconnectivity 34:24 – Developing a New Methodology for Measuring Forest Connectivity 37:26 – Coordinating with Policymakers and the Public 44:11 – Experiences at COP30 49:49...

Investment in science is a pillar for any dynamic, equitable modern society, and promoting scientific literacy across all levels of society can help foster innovation, dialogue, and consensus that crosses disciplinary and cultural boundaries. Science also helps to uncover answers to foundational questions that have captivated, confounded, and divided our species for millennia. But what is “science,” and what kind of “evidence” ensures that an approach is scientific? If we take “science” to broadly mean, in its purest sense, a “dynamic search for the truth,” or more explicitly, “the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence,” as the Science Council aptly defines it, then science extends beyond the established, highly specialized disciplines of reductionist natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, geoscience, and space science) that have been so successful in fostering our understanding of our planet and the cosmos. Under this definition, science also includes the rigorous data-driven (qualitative and quantitative) social sciences, the inherently non-reductionist “holistic” sciences such as ecological and Earth system sciences, and the budding interdisciplinary field of complex systems science, as well as robust traditional knowledge systems based on multi-generational experiences, observations, and reasoning. As with science, “evidence” can mean a lot of things as well, including primary research, pre-existing data, past and planned experiments, and the referencing of peer-reviewed publications and primary sources. It can also include local and traditional knowledge, thought experiments, theoretical proofs, contemplation, verifiable personal experience, and empirical observation. Broadening and weaving together these forms of scientific evidence holds the potential to address complex, interconnected global challenges and explain deep mysteries that could help unify our polarized societies around foundational understandings. Foundational Questions Foundational questions can transcend the divides of generations and cultures: Cosmology, physics, and evolutionary biology have shed...