A Pathways to Planetary Health Conversation with Dekila Chungyalpa

Integrating Faith-based, Psychological, and Ecological Approaches to Resilience

A Pathways to Planetary Health Forum

Dekila Chungyalpa and Jonathan F.P. Rose In Conversation

Please join us for this interactive online Forum hosted by the Pathways to Planetary Health initiative at the Garrison Institute.

Dekila Chungyalpa and Jonathan F.P. Rose will discuss psychological and emotional aspects of the environmental and climate crises. They will explore research related to how different people experience climate distress and reflect on what we learn from contemplative practice, counseling psychology, and wisdom traditions about how to cope and even thrive in uncertain times. The discussion will touch upon the Loka Initiative’s Sacred Wisdom, Sacred Earth, an upcoming documentary highlighting indigenous resilience in Wisconsin. Dekila and Jonathan will also consider frameworks for inner, community, and planetary resilience.

The live Forum will be held on Zoom on June 7th at 1pm ET. A Zoom link will be emailed to participants after registering. Please email us at events@garrisoninstitute.org with questions.

SPEAKERS

Dekila Chungyalpa is the founder and director of the Loka Initiative. She is an accomplished environmental program director, with 20+ years of experience in designing and implementing global conservation and climate strategies and projects. Known as an innovator in the environmental field, Dekila has expertise in faith-led environmental and climate partnerships, biodiversity landscape and river basin strategy design, and community-based conservation. She began her career in 2001 working on community-based conservation in the Eastern Himalayas and went on to work on climate adaptation and free flowing rivers in the Mekong region for the World Wildlife Fund in 2004.

In 2008, she helped establish Khoryug, an association of over 50 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries implementing environmental projects across the Himalayas under the auspices of His Holiness the Karmapa. In 2009, Dekila founded and led WWF Sacred Earth, a 5-year pilot program that built partnerships with faith leaders and religious institutions towards conservation and climate results in the Amazon, East Africa, Himalayas, Mekong, and the United States. She received the prestigious Yale McCluskey Award in 2014 for her work and moved to the Yale School of Environmental Studies as an associate research scientist, where she researched, lectured and designed the prototype for what is now the Loka Initiative. Dekila is originally from the Himalayan state of Sikkim in India and is of Bhutia origin.

Jonathan F.P. Rose is a noted global expert in sustainable development and regenerative communities. He is Co-Founder and Board Chair for The Garrison Institute, and Founder and President of Jonathan Rose Companies, a mission-driven company focused on enhancing the health and wellness of its residents with green, energy-efficient property improvements and through its Communities of Opportunities programming. In 2024, he was awarded Bhutan’s prestigious Druk Thuksey Medal (“Order of the Beloved of the Thunder Dragon”) for helping create and implement the Thimphu Structure Plan, a framework for sustainable development in Bhutan’s rapidly urbanizing capital city. Jonathan founded the Pathways to Planetary Health initiative at the Garrison Institute.