Applied Imagination Fellow, 2021-2022
Ian Edwards is executive director of the Cape Cod Center for Sustainability, a registered nonprofit organization in Provincetown, Massachusetts that is focused on the question, “What’s next in sustainability?” He works on new models of leadership and engagement in the sustainability space, acknowledging the gaps between what we need to do and what we are actually doing—at planetary scale and with urgency. As part of that mission, he is the host and producer of Broto: Art-Climate-Science, a global, transdisciplinary conference, and he builds collaborative groups of experts who chart paths toward innovating new climate ideas. Previously, he was a print journalist, communications consultant, and global sustainability strategist for large brands. He holds an MBA in Sustainability from Bard College, and has developed his new project, Bank of Nature, as a way to engage in regenerative sustainability and to remake, at planetary scale, our economies to include the nature as a stakeholder.
Ian’s Applied Imagination Fellowship project, “Bank of Nature,” involves creating an alternative financial structure that incorporates nature as a lender and encourages the flow of investment funds toward projects that create more sustainable communities and economies and support efforts to remediate environmental damage.