## Insights from Rewilding Patagonia

Why action-based storytelling matters for systemic changeDr. Jonathan Mille, Research Fellow, Climate Action Unit, University College London (UCL)

At a time when climate discourse is increasingly polarised, alarm-saturated, and politically weaponised, one strategic question becomes urgent:What kind of narratives actually could move systems?This question sits at the core of systems thinking,  and more broadly of systems education, where understanding interconnections must translate into meaningful action. As a lecturer and researcher working at the intersection of climate change, systemic risk, and neuroscience, I recently had the opportunity to explore this question through a different medium. I joined a team of filmmakers, Aurélie Miquel and Arnaud Hiltzer, to write a documentary film. Into the Rewild: Rewilding Patagonia follows the story of Douglas Tompkins, an American entrepreneur-turned-conservationist who co-founded The North Face, and Kristine Tompkins a conservation leader and former CEO of Patagonia. They left the world of business to become pioneering conservationists; through Tompkins Conservation, they worked alongside Chilean and Argentinian teams and local communities to help create and expand a network of 18 national parks across Patagonia.But beyond conservation, beyond this lifelong legacy, developing this documentary became an experiment in narrative design.It is not a story about a crisis/polycrisis. It is a story about agency, and about understanding how to take action within a specific context.


### From problem-focused to action-focused narratives

Most climate communication begins with what is broken.Loss. Collapse. Emergency. Irreversibility. While scientifically grounded and important, this framing can also unintentionally activate psychological defence mechanisms: disengagement, polarisation, anger, or fatigue in short, medium, and long term. Research in the sciences of brain and mind consistently shows that repeated threat exposure without pathways for agency reduces efficacy and increases avoidance and a wide range of emotions. The role of emotions has to be considered, but emotions are not a predictable engine for actions. The scenario takes another direction and adopts an action-based storytelling structure, guided by a simple insight: actions drive beliefs.Rather than attempting to persuade audiences through argument, we structured the documentary around visible, tangible actions:  land acquisition, species reintroduction, community partnerships, policy negotiation, ecological restoration. A non-exhaustive range of actions that shows the pieces that are done at different scales that contributes and leads over time to concrete changes. Beliefs and convictions emerge downstream of experience. Not the reverse.When viewers see action, they infer possibilities that could be used and adapted everywhere in the world depending on contexts, organisation and so on.


## Systems thinking in practice

Rewilding Patagonia is not only an environmental story. It is a systems story.It involves:Private capital mobilised for public ecological goodsCommunity engagement across generationsInstitutional transformation at national scaleCross-border political cooperation

In systemic risk research, we often speak about cascading effects, interdependencies, and resilience thresholds. Rewilding Patagonia offers a real-world case of cascading: private initiative triggering public institutional change, which then stabilises ecological and socio-economic systems, readapting a place that was not taking this direction. This matters beyond conservation.In a world facing compound risks, climate shocks, biodiversity loss, supply chain fragility, geopolitical stress, resilience is no longer a sectoral issue. It is cross-sectoral structural. And structure is also shaped by narrative.


### Depolarisation through demonstration

Throughout the work the team undertook, we made deliberate choices: selecting a voice, choosing which actions to highlight, and shaping the type of narratives we wanted to convey. Our focus was on identifying actions capable of driving wide and lasting change, and on understanding which of these actions, once adapted to another local context, could be replicated elsewhere. We also sought to capture the words and experiences of the people who have carried out these initiatives, in the past and in the present, and how these actions continue to guide their vision for the future. That is the purpose of the narrative.One of the documentary’s ambitions was also to reduce ideological friction. Conservation is often framed as left-wing activism, elite philanthropy, or an obstacle to economic development. Rewilding Patagonia offers a different perspective. While people may associate the project with different values, our attention remains on what has been done, how it has been done, and how these actions continue to unfold and shape the project over time.Here, entrepreneurship, political scene, land stewardship, community identity, rural employment, and ecological restoration coexist. The film demonstrates that systemic transformation does not require rhetorical escalation, it requires coordinated action from different stakeholders and these actions can speak to a wide range of value systems. This approach resonates beyond environmental sectors. In finance and risk management, for example, forward-looking resilience investments often struggle against short-term performance metrics and political scrutiny.Yet when resilience is framed not as sacrifice but as infrastructure, as asset protection, long-term stability, and risk reduction:  the conversation shifts. It brings something else. It can talk to a wider spectrum of political opinions and substantially depolarise a question that is a matter for everyone. Safeguarding the places where people live, across environmental, social, political and economic dimensions, is a matter of collective stability rather than ideology. This project illustrates that practical pathways exist, ones that are replicable and capable of producing meaningful long-term impact.Here are some reflections from the directors on the process of integrating neuroscience into the development of the film’s narrative and writing:


### Why this matters for strategic alliances

Large-scale transformation does not happen through isolated excellence. It requires alliances: across sectors, across geographies, across disciplines.But alliances are not just coordination mechanisms. They are behavioural infrastructure. If the stories we tell emphasise paralysis, fragmentation follows with unpredictable consequences. If the stories we tell emphasise agency, collaboration becomes plausible.Rewilding Patagonia highlights three lessons relevant to strategic alliances:Demonstrate and engage people in self-persuasion journeys. Visible action creates legitimacy.Embed transformation locally. Systems change scales through place-based execution.Align capital with long-term resilience. Ecological restoration is not philanthropy alone; it is risk mitigation and national asset formation.For finance leaders, this reframes conservation and adaptation from cost centres to stability investments.For policy leaders, it illustrates how private-public alignment can unlock structural change.For communities, it shows that participation generates ownership.


## From Patagonia to global systems

The Patagonia story is geographically specific, yes of course but structurally universal.Whether in climate adaptation planning, infrastructure redesign, biodiversity restoration, or resilience and sustainable finance, the central challenge remains: How do we move from awareness to action at scale?Yet evidence and frameworks alone rarely translate into action. Moral urgency by itself is also insufficient and, over time, can even become counterproductive. What tends to scale instead is demonstrated possibility. As researchers and practitioners, we often debate models and concepts, but Rewilding Patagonia offers something more tangible: proof that aligned actors across different types of actions, sustained commitment, even when imperfect, and action-first narratives can shift entire landscapes, ecologically, institutionally and psychologically. The task ahead is therefore not only to communicate risk, but also to design stories that unlock agency. In the end, systems do not change when people are convinced, they change when people act.

Rewilding Patagonia : Watch Here Website: https://www.intotherewild.org/ Tompkins foundation: https://www.tompkinsconservation.org/


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