Public Speech prepared for the Opening Plenary, on September 3rd 2026, in Paro (Bhutan)

Dear Excellencies, Dear CoFSA Members, Dear Brothers and Sisters,

My name is Elise Buckle, I am the Founder and CEO of Climate Bridges, CoFSA Partner and Member of the Club of Rome. I was given the challenging task of making sense of what is happening here at the Summit, where we are on this path, here in Paro and in the world. I am pleased to be serving the CoFSA community in this role of “sense-maker”, while being aware that this is one part of the multiple realities we are experiencing together. I wrote this “Letter to Mother Earth” as an attempt to make sense of the individual and collective experiences we are living together here today.

Phub Pelmo & Elise Buckle during the field visit of the Mountain Hazelnuts Tree Farm near Paro, September 3rd 2026.
With special thanks to Sean Watson, CEO of Mountain Hazelnuts, a triple bottom line social enterprise dedicated to the Planet, People and Prosperity, who organized the field visit during the Summit.

“ Dear Mother Earth,

You are so beautiful, generous and resilient. As a CoFSA community, we would like to express our deep gratitude for your wholeness and abundance.

Millions of years ago, you created the right conditions for life to emerge, including for this apple that we tasted together during the opening of the Summit.

Since that, we have been enjoying life, your fresh water from the rain and rivers, your fresh air from the Himalayas, your fertile soil.

You are nourishing all of us. You are nourishing the world.

This morning, once again, we woke up to the miracle of life, to the beauty of the sunlight.

Here in Bhutan, the sun has given you the energy to grow more plants, flowers, fruits, and rice, as we get closer to the harvesting season.

Together we touch the joy of soon harvesting your fruits.

And this CoFSA Summit is a mirror of the world. Here as well we grow and nurture a fruit tree, with our values firmly rooted into your fertile soil: Peace, Well-Being, Harmony with Nature. Together we care for each other.

You are so gentle, warm and inclusive, providing unconditional love to all living beings on this planet. Thank you for sustaining us, as One family on One Earth, as a Living System including all animals and plants.

Yet, we would like to express our regrets. We are really sorry for the harm we have caused to you, especially in recent years.

We are in a poly-crisis. Because of the lack of consciousness, because of our greed, and a power system of oppression based on patriarchy, colonialism and untamed capitalism, we have been extracting too much of your natural resources, exhausting the soils and extinguishing biodiversity.

We feel you: you are over-heating. There are so many fires taking place in so many places in the world. Here in the Himalayas, the permafrost and glaciers are melting rapidly, causing massive flash floods of ice, water and rock. We hear your pain and your rage. We hear the pain of the people who died here in Nepal, and also the farmers who struggling to produce food, and the children who starve in Sudan and Palestine. Some of our brothers and sisters are even bombing each other, in Russia, Ukraine and in the Middle East between Iran and the USA. We hear the pain, the suffering. This is so loud in the media that we cannot ignore it, even here in our comfortable CoFSA bubble. As human beings, we really created a mess. We are sorry for this, Mother Earth. It makes us feel sad.

And we all have this question for you: how can we transform all this suffering into collective action ? Can we find joy again ? All this mud, we have had under our feet, can we really grow some lotus flowers in it ?

We all have a dream here: the emergence of conscious food systems, not only here in this room, but also in the real world outside this window. Can it happen ?

Yes, we think it can happen, if we are open to beginning anew, starting today. Can we pause and be fully present for each other as human beings ?

Mother Earth, we would like to heal these relationships, and heal the relationship with you. We want to find a new balance, a balance between human beings and nature, to live in harmony with nature.

There is a commonality of care among all of these islands of conscious leadership, with all of you here in the room, and beyond that with other like-minded leaders around the world. Each of us is being connected through mycelium, social fabrics, and through the humus, through you, the Earth, with your humility. There is a rare sincerity of the leaders here, recognizing that we are all learning.

There is also a true admiration for Bhutan, as beacon of hope. Yes a better world is possible if we follow the path of Bhutan, valuing people, nature and happiness.

CoFSA has become a movement of movements, connecting us all across sectors and regions, reaching unity while valuing diversity. Together we manifest the emergence of a new system of systems around a shared vision: healing food systems is about restoring our trust in our shared humanity. And it is about healing the relationship with you, the Earth. We are all at home, here, with you. You are our one and only home. And it is so beautiful to see all the living beings shining and thriving on the Earth, as a constellation of stars.

Now is the time to tap into the economy of love, to learn how to love again.

Dear Mother Earth, we count on you. And you can count on us. By giving us life, you have given us a mandate. We have been elected to fulfill a mandate: serving the well-being of people and the planet. Today we shall all commit to restoring Planetary Peace: Peace between People, and Peace with Nature.

Positive change is already happening. Will it be fast enough?

We thank you for your patience, Mother Earth, we love you so much.

From your daughter Elise and your son Dalmas,

From the CoFSA community,

From the Human Beings standing here together as One Family. “

Elise Buckle, Founder and CEO of Climate Bridges (based in Switzerland), standing together with Dalmas Tiampati, Maasai Land and Community Steward (based in Kenya).

A Letter to Mother Earth - Global Conscious Food Systems Summit in Bhutan

What We Grow, Grows us