Hope as a Radical Act
Issue 355 • March/April 2026

 

Following our most recent issue, which reflected on the last 60 years of Resurgence, the March/April issue of Resurgence & Ecologist looks to the future – and what that might look like. 
 

To project forward, we first have to look clearly at the now: a time of ecological collapse, war, relentless extraction of natural resources and massive inequality. If we wish to save what is still beautiful in this world, we must not lose hope. But where can we look for hope today, and how radical an act is hope itself? In this issue, we offer responses to these questions, and much more.

Rebecca Solnit grounds hope historically and politically, reframing it as agency, continuity and incremental change, alongside a refusal to surrender. While governments and policy fail us, The Land Gardeners return hope to the soil, focusing on the local and practical actions of farmers and growers who are building their own regenerative solutions. Giuliana Furci finds hope in the fungal world, explaining how a fungal lens reveals interdependence, cooperation and forms of intelligence that challenge human exceptionalism. And Sonji Shah questions and troubles hope itself, shifting it away from certainty towards relationship, responsibility and the not-yet-known. As we rehearse for the future, hope emerges as collective, grounded and deeply relational. It becomes a radical act, unshackled from optimism and outcomes, yet committed to participation, care and the unfinished work of imagining the otherwise.

Elsewhere in the magazine, Katie Hodgetts suggests that inner development must accompany our calls for justice, while Rachel Fleming invites us to recover more subtle ways of listening and relating to land. Amy Warren explores the idea of the evolved nest as a more nurturing relationship with our own human ecology, while Satish Kumar reflects on poetry and love as daily practices.
 
Highlights
The world reimagined: Guiliana Furci
Innertersectional changemaking: Katie Hodgetts 
What next for the climate movement?: Jan Goodey
From bleak streets to greener streets: Andrea Perry
The evolved nest: Amy Warren
Writing lichen: the poetry of Clare Goulet