The Next UN: Visions for a Regenerative Future
Episode 1 – In Conversation with Elyes Mkacher
The Regeneration Collective has launched the first episode of its new podcast, The Next UN: Visions for a Regenerative Future, hosted by Silke von Brockhausen, a UN insider with 18 years of experience across more than a dozen UN missions.
As the UN approaches its 80th anniversary and the campaign for the next Secretary-General gets underway, the world faces protracted conflicts, widening inequalities, and breached planetary boundaries. Against this backdrop, the podcast asks a pressing question:
How can the UN become a platform through which people, institutions, and the more-than-human world repair and transform broken systems, and create conditions where life can thrive?
Each episode invites regenerative practitioners — policy shapers, Indigenous knowledge-holders, peacebuilders, culture-makers, and frontline humanitarians — to share lived experiences and visions that could inform UN policies, organizational culture, and operations. The series is intended for UN staff, partners, Member States, and bridge-builders curious about what regeneration means in practice, and ready to imagine the UN as a trailblazer for this global shift.
Guest: Elyes Mkacher
The inaugural conversation features Elyes Mkacher, a regenerative farmer, holistic thinker, permaculture designer, and educator from Tunisia. Elyes is the founder of Dar Emmima, where an abandoned family house was transformed into a flourishing permaculture education center and living laboratory of resilience.
He has worked for more than a decade to advance regenerative practices at local, national, and global levels, and is the author of Decolonize Imagination for Planetary Regeneration, a guide that urges unlearning of colonial myths and rewilding of ways of thinking, organizing, and relating. Recently, Elyes became Community Soil Tender at the Design School for Regenerating Earth, where he helps cultivate a planetary network of Earth regenerators.
What Regeneration Really Means
In the conversation, Elyes describes regeneration as the opposite of degeneration:
“Regeneration is moving from a spiral of death to a spiral of life — a virtuous spiral that heals ecosystems and helps life thrive again.”
For UN staff, regeneration is not simply about environmental projects. It is about reshaping how institutions function, how policies are made, and how staff sustain themselves and their teams.
Lessons for the UN: From Food Forests to Institutions
Elyes draws on the metaphor of the food forest to highlight lessons that apply equally to organizations:
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Diversity creates resilience. Monocultures collapse; diverse systems endure. The same is true for teams, policies, and leadership.
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Listening and observation are vital. Just as permaculture begins with observing land, international organizations must listen deeply to communities before designing interventions.
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Reciprocity over extraction. Nature thrives through cycles of giving and receiving. Institutions must also move beyond extractive relationships toward mutual care.
Decolonizing the Imagination
Elyes highlights myths that must be unlearned if the UN is to embrace regeneration:
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Separation from nature. Humans are not apart from the Earth, but part of it.
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Scarcity. Scarcity is manufactured; nature operates in abundance.
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Linearity. Life unfolds in cycles and spirals, not straight lines.
These insights challenge the UN to rethink its metrics. Rather than focusing narrowly on GDP or project outputs, success could be measured by drinkable rivers, fertile soils, breathable air, and the well-being of communities.
Practical Guidance for UN Staff
The conversation also offers simple practices that UN staff can integrate into their daily lives and work:
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Deep listening — with colleagues, partners, and communities.
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Storytelling — sharing narratives of regeneration, not just crisis.
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Gratitude — for water, food, bodies, and the Earth.
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Rethinking metrics — asking what well-being and ecological health would look like as indicators of success.
If Elyes Were Secretary-General
When asked to imagine himself as Secretary-General, Elyes offered three priorities:
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Relearn listening — senior leaders spending time with communities and ecosystems.
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Restructure around bioregions — recognizing the Amazon, Congo Basin, Himalayas, Mediterranean and other vital regions as key organs of planetary health.
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Redefine success — measuring progress through ecosystem vitality and human well-being rather than financial indicators.
Closing Reflections
For UN staff who may feel caught in bureaucracy or disheartened by today’s crises, Elyes’ words offer both inspiration and practical entry points. Gratitude, reciprocity, and deep listening are not abstract ideals — they are daily practices that can begin to transform teams, institutions, and global systems.
This first episode sets the tone for the Next UN Podcast: weaving together voices from across the globe to help re-imagine a UN that regenerates.
👉 Listen to the full episode with Elyes Mkacher: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4FeoGk2QriRsu0i6WWDp0M
👉 Connect with Elyes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elyes-m/
👉 Explore the Design School for Regenerating Earth: https://design-school-for-regenerating-earth.mn.co/