Pacific climate action, close to the ground.
Planet Pulse Pacific follows practical climate and sustainability work across the Pacific region, from landscape architecture to zero-waste sport communities. Its conversations stay close to place, with acknowledgements of Country, local ecology, and community action.
PRESS PLAY
Planet Pulse Pacific is a climate, nature, and health conversation show with a distinctly Pacific frame. Its episodes are rooted in Aotearoa and Australia, with openings that acknowledge mana whenua, traditional custodians, land, waters, community, and local tribal authorities. The show is not built around quick outrage or distant policy talk. It prefers grounded stories about people changing the spaces, habits, and communities around them. A conversation with Richard Neville turns landscape architecture into a practical language for climate adaptation, biodiversity, water absorption, and human wellbeing. Car parks becoming bike racks and permeable planting becomes a concrete example of design serving both people and ecology. The same episode finds meaning in school grounds that move from concrete and lawn toward gardens, seasonal change, pride, and daily contact with nature. A discussion with Jess Lamb connects waste minimisation to outdoor sport, school food scraps, compost systems, circular economy thinking, rewilded urban centres, and the Athletes for Nature hub model. The show often treats action as communal rather than heroic. Listeners hear about committees, cleanups, affiliates, schools, and local hubs as much as individual passion. Dr Jenn Lavers and Jennell Reynolds bring another register, linking environmental care with Healthy Country planning and community engagement through the Dalarak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation in Esperance. The conversations tend to be warm, respectful, and patient. They make room for personal pathways into environmental work without turning every guest into a motivational slogan. There is a strong sense of place in the language, from Tāmaki Makaurau and Te Whanganui-a-Tara to Queensland and Esperance. The show also has an outdoors sensibility: trails, hiking, sport, gardens, bugs, water, and urban nature all sit naturally together. Its strongest moments make complex climate work feel graspable. A listener can leave with a sharper sense of how design, waste systems, Indigenous stewardship, and everyday habits connect. The tone is sincere and community-minded. It works best for people who want climate media that stays constructive without flattening the difficulty of the work.
Made for: For listeners interested in climate action, urban nature, outdoor communities, sustainability in sport, and place-based environmental work across Aotearoa and Australia.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by keeping climate conversations tied to local practice: school gardens, composting, landscape architecture, Country planning, and community hubs rather than broad abstractions.
The climate and health crises are two of the most urgent issues of our time. Change must happen, and it needs to occur sooner rather than later. Join your hosts, Ben Eitelberg, Emma Strutt and Abby Patterson, for conversations about people and planet. Find more details at www.athletesfornature.org
From shark nets to school compost bins, your climate curiosity gets scrutiny and somewhere to start.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Richard Neville connects permeable spaces, school gardens, bike racks, and pot plants to a practical ethic of making room for life.
Richard Neville's conversation with Planet Pulse Pacific makes landscape architecture feel like a practical case for making room for life. The Auckland-based designer links his outlook to childhood bushwalks and camping in Ha'ahei, then brings that feeling into grounded…
Jess Lamb connects food-scrap composting, outdoor life, and community action in a practical case for wasting less.
Jess Lamb's path into waste minimisation begins in a very practical place: food scraps, a home compost bin, and the awkward business of taking friends' scraps home from school on the bus.
Dr.
Planet Pulse Pacific speaks with Auckland landscape architect Richard Neville, who runs Neville Design Studios and describes landscape architecture as work that happens "under the sky." He traces his path from Browns Bay and bushwalks at Ha'hei in the Coromandel to five months in France, five months in Canada, and a last-minute pivot from architecture at Auckland University.
Jess Lamb, the Christchurch hub leader for Athletes for Nature and sustainability coordinator at Without Waste, argues that trail running, composting, and event waste sorting belong in the same climate conversation.
Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop tells Planet Pulse Pacific that agriculture accounts for 60% of current climate change under revised carbon accounting.
Planet Pulse Pacific revisits Andre Burrell's work on shark-culling programs three years after the documentary Envoy Shark Cull.
Lento Intervention hosts Ben Adelberg and Emma Strutt revisit Dr Sally Gillespie’s climate-psychology work, focusing on mental-health responses to climate disasters and ecological change.
Hosts interview scientists and activists about climate and health crises, with a focus on Indigenous perspectives.