Extinction & Renewal: A 5-Week Online Course on Climate Chnage Ecology
Length: Five weeks, online
Start/end: November 10- December 15
Facilitators: Dr Nicolas Salazar Sutil (Director, GWW) and Alex Meliñir (Traditional community leader, Quinquen)
Language: English and Spanish with English simultaneous translation
Cost: €85, inc. course fee, materials and links, 10% goes to support Araucaria recovery in the wild at Quinquen and campaign to stop illegal felling.
Visit www.guardiansworldwide.org to REGISTER
From 10 November to 15 December 2025, this immersive online course invites participants to explore the story of life’s great endings—and the beginnings that follow. Over five themed weeks you will move from the planet’s “Big Five” mass extinctions to today’s biodiversity crisis, examining fossil evidence, IUCN data and the resilience patterns that emerge after collapse. Alongside the science, the course opens a space for intercultural wisdom, drawing on Indigenous cosmologies such as Andean Pachakutik, Haudenosaunee renewal stories and Hindu yugas to show how many cultures view endings as transformation rather than finality.
The programme also addresses the emotional dimension of the climate emergency. Guided sessions on ecological grief and climate anxiety introduce mindfulness and nature-journaling practices that help transform fear into constructive action. Midway through the course, participants gather for a virtual campfire dialogue and a live-streamed field trip to Portugal’s Jurassic trackways and petrified forests, with an option for an in-person day trip if you live in Central Portugal.
In the final week the focus turns to recovery and action, exploring how Indigenous stewardship drive ecosystem rebound. Participants design their own “recovery scenario” for a chosen landscape and present it in a collaborative showcase. All sessions are hosted on Zoom and Discord, recorded for flexible access, and combine seminar-style discussion, creative workshops and participatory learning to reframe extinction as a gateway to renewal.
