Staveley Camp: where the forest is a teacher
In the foothills of the Southern Alps, Staveley Camp provides inspiration for regeneration.
Gen De Spa has a long history as a thinker and change-maker. She believes that by supporting and nurturing the regeneration of a precious remnant of Aotearoa’s once-mighty forests at Staveley Camp on the Canterbury plains, the people are giving back to the forest. And they are, at the same time, regenerated by the experience.
“This economy is not really working out well for us … It’s for us to figure out how to do this. New economics is not about going back to communism or socialism or something that hasn’t worked already. It’s about pulling all sorts of things together and experimenting and finding out what works in the 21st century.”
She believes the current worldview sees nature as something to be subdued. This feeds the business-as-usual paradigm that seeks to extract from the land more than it can comfortably give.
“We are in transition from Power-Over to Power-With. We must stretch ourselves to put down anger and fear and create the shift that this world is calling us to make.”
