Ariadne Gorring

2018 Cohort

Pronouns: she/her

Ariadne is elevating community-based climate solutions, unlocking incentives to sustain nature, and weaving local and global communities of practice to accelerate a just transition to a climate-resilient future.

Ariadne is CEO of the Pollination Foundation where she is passionate about place-based economies and Indigenous-led conservation. She is based at Lands of the Kulin Nations, Boonwurrung Country, South Melbourne, Australia.

She is focused on connecting local communities to global expertise with a vision to accelerate nature-based initiatives that put humanity at the heart of climate solutions. This entails seeding and growing a networked ecosystem of community-owned nature-based enterprises with a long-term vision to create place-based economies and a climate-resilient future where people and nature can thrive.

Working with the Kimberley Land Council (KLC) for over 20 years, she co-designed a cultural economy model to increase the flow of finance into the Kimberley Ranger Network. Ari also participated in the development of Northern Australia’s savanna carbon industry and has engaged with national and international networks to promote best practice models of Indigenous-led conservation.

She was a Committee Member at the World Indigenous Network Conference in Darwin, and a Presenter at the World Parks Congress, Sydney, and the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Paris. She’s an Atlantic Fellow for Social Equity, Melbourne University, and recipient of The Nature Conservancy’s Barbara Thomas Fellowship in Conservation Financing.

Social change project

During her AFSE Fellowship, Ari focused on creating a service hub to scale Indigenous nature-based enterprise across the Kimberley region of northwest Australia. Today her vision has grown in size and scale but not focus. As the leader of a new NGO focusing on a Net Zero climate-resilient future her vision is to establish a network of Indigenous-owned nature-based climate solutions.

This is a two way opportunity with global experts experiencing Indigenous innovation and understanding the complexity of establishing local nature based enterprises while communities benefit from new knowledge, networks, and access to market opportunities.

What AFSE changed

Since finishing her AFSE Fellowship year Ari has changed from working for a regional community-based Indigenous organisation to leading the development of a new NGO with a global footprint - the Pollination Foundation. And her family moved from a remote town to a global city surviving this transition through the pandemic!

Next steps

To host a workshop bringing together community, corporates, and senior advisors to co-design the backbone structure, and identify four pilot projects, to test the “On Country” incubator model. Once the model is proven in Australia we can take its learning and adapt it for other regions and countries such as those in Africa and the Pacific.