With a population of over 1,200, the Yawanawa people live in villages nestled along the banks of the Gregório river in the Brazilian state of Acre, where they are guardians of thousands of acres of rainforest. Their history and culture are rich and diverse, with a deep connection to the natural world through their ancestral wisdom, plant medicine and environmental stewardship. The Yawanawa people's traditional way of life is based on subsistence agriculture, hunting and fishing, and an exceptional musical culture. Their way of life and deep cultural connection to the forest has served as an inspiration for the director and cast of the Hollywood movie Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).
The Yawanawa community is represented in this initiative by chiefs Biraci Nixiwaka Brasil, Putanny Yawanawa and Isku Kua Biraci Brasil Junior, leaders of the villages of Aldeia Sagrada and Nova Esperança.
Refik Anadol is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he owns and operates Refik Anadol Studio and RAS LAB, the Studio’s research practice centered around discovering and developing trailblazing approaches to data narratives. Anadol is also teaching at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts from which he obtained his Master of Fine Arts. Residing at the crossroads of art, science, and technology, Anadol’s site-specific three-dimensional data sculptures and paintings, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take varied virtual and physical forms. Entire buildings come to life, floors, walls, and ceilings disappear into infinity, breathtaking aesthetics take shape from large swaths of data, and what was once invisible to the human eye becomes visible, offering the audience a new perspective on, and narrative of their worlds.
Impact One is an impact investment initiative dedicated to restoring a balance between nature and urban life. To create nature-positive economies, Impact One is establishing a new asset class of infrastructure that places interconnected human and environmental wellbeing at its core, under the name of Wellbeing Infrastructure. Through evidence-based research and full life-cycle impact assessments, Impact One introduces scalable solutions for developing social and economic models that reintegrate nature into cities and creates visible and measurable positive impact on environmental and societal health. Impact One launched the Possible Futures programme in 2022, which looks into concepts to redesign the anthropogenic impact on ecosystems through existing evidence-based and scalable solutions.