For a very long time, our humanity’s agricultural and hunting practices only needed natural rocks, wood, shells, and other materials found easily in the environment during the early stages of our evolution. However, several thousand years ago we began using and refining special elements found in the shallow parts of the earth's crust, which led us from the Stone age to the Bronze and Iron ages. 

Then rapid advancement in science and our discovery and use of high energy fuels like coal, oil, and nuclear triggered what has been called the Industrial Revolution. It is no coincidence that the first Industrial Revolution started 200-300 years ago, the same time our population began exploding.  

Science evolved rapidly and we became aware that we live in a closed system with finite resources on a planet traveling 67,000 miles per hour through a vacuum of space around the sun with no chance of resupply.

Every year a day is designated as "earth overshoot" day, the day in the year when we have used resources at a level that is sustainable over the long term. Every day after that is taking vital resources from our decedents. In 2020 it was August 22. In 2021 it was July 29, a trend line leading to a collapse in supply. It means we currently need 1.5 earths, or around 18 months of Earth's operating budget for freshwater, food, and so on to meet our demands each year at our current consumption level and way of operating, ratios likely to keep getting worse.

It is a certainty that if we do not change our behavior the earth will soon be a very uncomfortable place for humans, possibly a place we can no longer live.  

All of society needs to be part of the solution and change course, but here we focus on the Non-Governmental Organizations, the area where Pole-to-Pole Conservation exists. 

We need a radical restructuring of the nonprofit environmental sector from big and centralized to small, diverse, integrated, and flexible. These new NGO agents of change, in our increasingly complex and technological world, are and will continue to devolve from Big International Non-Profit Organizations (BINGOs) headquartered mostly in the global north to smaller more strategic organizations hybridized with businesses and other societal structures sensitive to local conditions and needs. Most importantly, not imposing first-world agendas on the developing world, rather prioritizing local needs. 

We applaud the catalytic role BINGOs played in the latter half of the 20th century when they awoke civilization to the consequences of rapid industrialization and population growth, and that everything we have had or ever will have has been on earth from the beginning.

In the later part of the 20th-century civil society rose up and formed organizations to address this as did governments. Businesses adopted and are still developing sustainable practices to deliver goods and services, nations have convened and adopted numerous treaties that provide consensus approved ways of how we can do things better now that we finally occupied every continent and have touched and used almost every resource.

While the problems are huge and planetary, the solutions are more granular and more efficiently carried out by right-sized purpose-built institutions integrated into society and eventually blended seamlessly. These organizations are small, interlinked, and recognize moral, financial, and ethical equity across all regions of the globe.

Pole-to-Pole Conservation is one such organization, our staff has come from BINGOs, businesses, the Arts, businesses and often volunteer or work part-time. We do not pay large executive salaries and execute work through time-limited contracts.  

We focus and create programs for areas of the planet we know best, the Pacific Islands while keeping the global view in mind. We develop and test solutions that can scale.  

One of the co-founders was born on an indigenous remote south pacific atoll with a blue lagoon whose beauty was once described by noted author and former president of UN General Assembly as "inescapable." While growing up in this remote and soon to be part of the beleaguered post-colonial wave sweeping through the region, she left at the age of 12, was drawn into the international world of advertising. This gave her an unprecedented first-hand experience of society's values from the small atoll she was born to the major cities of the world where industry thrived and as far from the values and world she grew up in. By the age of 21, she settled on the west coast of the United States along the rim of her beloved Pacific Ocean to become a designer and agent of social change ranging from successfully lobbying the California public school system to conduct cancer screening to creating marine protected areas in the Pacific Islands. Diversity is at the core of all we do. Other team members are actors, artists, chiropractors, nurses, musicians, and former college presidents. We need all sectors of society to understand and work together to overcome our global problems. 

The details of the problems we face as a civilization are well known to all of you, so we don't focus on that here but can provide more details upon request. Two board members were co-founders of the ocean health index and one the architect of the world's first large Marine protected area. 

Origins of Pole to Pole Conservation. 

Our combined decades of experience pushed us all to a "New Realism" about solving environmental problems. It is not about saying no to everything. It's about making it work with what you have. Everyone must be taken into consideration. The typical idea that biodiversity must be protected at all costs was unrealistic dreams that originated in cocktail parties of conservationists in the global north with no understanding that for billions of people biodiversity was their daily source of food.  

Co-founder and trustee Greg Stone spent most of his career underwater. He had a front-row seat to the modern environmental movement, the issues that inspired it, and was part of the birth of marine conservation in the early 1990s. His early jobs were in science and included a position with top-secret clearance under the National Undersea Research Program whose mission was to put scientists underwater with every conceivable technology (think NASA of the oceans), spent three years flying aerial surveys from Nova Scotia to Mexico for the US government so they could plan offshore drilling. By the time he was 25, he had logged thousands of hours under and over the water and Greg noticed that things were wrong, terribly wrong, in the ocean. 

The Baum Foundation places great importance on working closely with other organizations toward common goals. By establishing and maintaining effective partnerships with other groups, The Baum Foundation is able to create mutually beneficial relationships that maximize the use of resources and increase the impact of the programs we support. 

Pole-to-Pole would like to acknowledge The Baum Foundation as Founding Donors and the support they provided in 2021. 

P2P’s philosophies are aligned with the Baum Foundation and we appreciate their support and the working relationship with Glenn and April. Thank you for your support. The Baum Foundation works across most of our programs and also advises.