Words by Georgia Shine Bartlett

We are entering one of the crux points in human history – where the decisions we make today will impact how our future is shaped. One such organisation approaching this with a hands-on approach is GreenBack. The following article is written by Georgia Shine Bartlett, the founder of GreenBack.

Hate to say it. But it’s the end of the world. Or at least the world as we know it. The last 300,000 (give or take) years of human evolution have brought us to grinding halt. We are witnessing the culmination of every bad choice ever made by every bad human who ever held any amount of power. These choices have, for too long, harmed good humans, living humble lives, in incredible places. The only real difference between our reality today, and any other time in our history, is that today, we know it’s happening, and we have absolutely no excuse not to act.

To comprehend how much of a privilege this is, we only have to go back 30 years – a blip in our history, and a slice of an atom geologically – to realise that ‘knowledge’, and the gatekeepers of that knowledge, have always been at the top of the food chain. For the most part, most of us had no fucking clue what was going on, in most of the world, for most of the time. Yet in 2020, if you’re white, you are more likely to witness, and if you’re POC, you are more likely to experience these injustices firsthand and are able to capture, comment and communicate them to the rest of the eagerly watching world. This is why it’s the end of this world. Because if it isn’t, we’re accepting that the pain inflicted on innocent people past and present is just news, and technology, just the messenger. We’re accepting that we can’t do any better. What if, instead, we united, where injustice became our catalyst, and technology our solution.

This is why we’ve created GreenBack. GreenBack is a female-led, community rooted, green-tech start-up and revolution; changing the way we interact with each another and our planet. We are building the technology to evolve us out of our human crises. Our app will let you measure the impact of your lifestyle on the planet, suggesting changes you can make that will draw down the greatest amount of carbon from the atmosphere, in the shortest amount of time. Behaviour that reduces emissions, whether riding a bike or planting a tree, will be rewarded with GreenBacks and will be educated and encouraged in-app. We are creating a community based on a sustainable, ethical and common vision for our future, easy and fun to use, and aeons away from the ego-centric drone of our current social media networks.

In Aotearoa, we are blessed to be leaders on the world stage, which is why, with the world watching us, supporting and encouraging resilient and compassionate communities is vital to showcasing our possible global future – if we demand it.

Our allies, Pollinator Paths, are another young Kiwi movement, fighting for the flight of essential pollinators and the pollination of urban spaces, crucial to the urban food revolution necessary to feed our growing cities. This initiative protects our unseen natural heroes with vibrant green corridors, absent from council planning and hit hard by green desertification, and too often maintained with cheap sprays, toxic to insect life.

GreenBack’s first platform, PlantMe, is a virtual community planting hub, inspired by the incredible work of groups like Pollinator Paths, as well as community gardens and initiatives like the Ranui Community Garden, Morningside Urban Market Garden and Kaipatiki Project around Auckland city.

These community gardens are part of a network of hundreds across Auckland and beyond, planting bio-diverse, educational and ethical gardens to support volunteers growing kai or natives for their communities. Some of their volunteers are refugees, who land on Kiwi shores wanting to connect the best way they know how, from the Earth up. Food and gardening are in our genes and fundamentally link us together, regardless of languages spoken or culture of origin.

Lema Shemamba, an artist, film-maker, and grower from the Democratic Republic of Congo, leads the Women of Hope and the Ranui Community Garden. “In Africa, we plant together, with loud music and our hands deep in the soil. It is the only way we know how.”

Lema comes from the cradle of human civilisation, yet her journey to New Zealand involved escaping hell. She fled her village after being targeted for speaking out against the atrocities committed by the Congolese militia, who are paid by Western corporations to ransack communities that sit on lucrative coltan mines. Coltan is a mineral necessary for the production of almost every kind of electronic device, also used to make high-temperature alloys for jet engines. These mines are responsible for ridiculous emissions, destroying farmlands and soil quality, and decimating ancient and beautiful communities. “Each time you use your phone, remember the blood of a Congolese within it”.

Lema is one example of how our society is harming the least responsible in order to enrich the lives of the most powerful. Greed breeds devastation and always has. While this story of corruption and suffering is just one page in our history books, your capacity to know of this, read about it, and share it online, is ironically a result of the same seed which caused it. And it’s our responsibility to use our voices, choices and technology to change it.

PlantMe provides the platform for anyone, regardless of their experience, to exchange seeds, plants, and information with others in their community. It supports community gardeners like Lema or backyard, windowsill growers to learn more about planting, to connect with like-minded individuals and share knowledge of what it means to be responsible for your impact. Users will be able to buy, sell, gift and swap seeds, plants and tools locally, log their gardening progress, and receive information about what plants need to grow successfully. Users will also be rewarded for the carbon they’ve removed from the atmosphere. Growing micro or leafy greens is one of the simplest ways to reduce, as 90 per cent of associated emissions are removed just by growing your greens yourself.

In this way, stories like Lema’s can be supported, her invaluable knowledge shared, and an international community based on caring for our Earth and the growth of thought is created. We are living in a pivotal moment in time. Our world is in a struggle, which is affecting how we see ourselves, how we see our culture, and how we see our histories. It feels as though the time has never been more right for engaging with our communities and creating local resilience – seeking out the stories, the activists, the people who are fighting for our future.

If this sounds like a bit of you, we would love to hear your story, and find out how you can help us change the world and get the green back. Hit up info@greenbackme.com. Let’s grow together.

GreenBack - Creating the Green R/evolution