Rebecca Reider has worked and written on issues of human and ecological community around the world. Her projects and home bases have spanned from Biosphere 2, to indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest, to the farming landscape of New Zealand, where she currently makes her home. Experienced as an environmental educator, journalist, organic grower, activist and performance poet, she earned her BA in the History of Science from Harvard University and her Masters in Environmental Science from Yale.
Rebecca first arrived at Biosphere 2 as a wide-eyed student researcher in 1999. The book emerges from several years of investigation, exclusive archival research, and dialogue with the Biosphere 2 project’s creators, including more than 50 interviews.
Work on the book was supported by grants from Harvard and Columbia Universities, and by a guest residency at the Mesa Refuge.
—
OTHER WRITINGS BY REBECCA REIDER
Poetry
Links to audio recordings, video performances and more
Journalism
The World of HANDS — New Zealand’s most successful complementary currency
Beyond money: building community self-reliance in paradise, through alternative local currency systems
In global popularity test, we’re off the map
On being an American abroad, in times and places where it can feel pretty shameful to be an American
… plus many more articles in Organic NZ, Acres U.S.A., Harvests, Turning Wheel, Terrain, Element and other print magazines
Research on environment, development, and agriculture
Growing organically? Human networks and the quest to expand organic agriculture in New Zealand
From a year roaming New Zealand on a Fulbright fellowship: what gets average farmers to turn organic, and what might help more of them change
Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas
A collection of visions from leaders building alternative agricultural and food systems across the Americas
Oil and Chicha: Indigenous Movements and Survival in the Ecuadoran Amazon
Reflections from research among Ecuador’s Kichwa, in the battle amongst oil developers and indigenous peoples to determine the future of the Amazon rainforest