Mike Kaplin
Most sustainability strategies are written from a position of abundance. The harder test is what holds when resources collapse: degraded soil, brackish water, no reliable supply chains. Working models built under genuine constraint are rare and far more instructive than the aspirational frameworks most boards review.
Mike Kaplin pioneered permaculture in Israel and shows organisations what regenerative practice actually demands when resources are scarce and conventional supply chains are unavailable.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Mike Kaplin
- Built sustainability under genuine resource constraints. The Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan has spent nearly three decades producing food, energy, and shelter from waste streams and brackish water in the Arava desert.
- Pioneering work on natural building in Israel led to the legalisation of natural building regulations there, a rare case of grassroots ecological practice changing the regulatory environment.
- A working demonstration site to point to: around 700 Israeli and international participants have come through the Green Apprenticeship programme since 2000, and the regenerative system can be examined in operation rather than only on paper.
- Integrated regenerative practice runs as one connected operation, where organic agriculture, alternative energy, natural construction, and waste management feed into each other.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder and Director of the Center for Creative Ecology (CfCE) at Kibbutz Lotan, established in 1997.
- One of Israel’s first permaculturists; pioneered the country’s first recycling area.
- Led the natural building work that contributed to the legalisation of natural building regulations in Israel.
- Initiator and coordinator of the Green Apprenticeship work/study programme. Around 700 Israeli and international participants have completed it since 2000.
- The Center for Creative Ecology received the Israel Ministry of the Environment’s Shield award in 2000 for environmental education.
- Kibbutz Lotan received the Global Ecovillage Network’s Ecovillage Excellence prize in 2006.
Biography
Kibbutz Lotan sits in the southern Arava desert, where the founding settlers had little more than sand and brackish water to work with. The Center for Creative Ecology grew out of that constraint.
Established in 1997, the CfCE has become a working centre for training, research, and demonstration in sustainability under arid conditions. Mike Kaplin co-founded it and now directs it. The work spans organic food production from composted municipal and agricultural waste, energy-efficient construction using straw bale and natural materials, water systems built around brackish irrigation, and community waste management. Every part has been built, run, refined, and documented on site.
Some of the work has reshaped what Israel allows. Mike’s pioneering of natural building methods contributed to the legalisation of natural building regulations in Israel, and the recycling area he developed at Lotan was the country’s first. The CfCE received the Israel Ministry of the Environment’s Shield award in 2000 for environmental education; Kibbutz Lotan received the Global Ecovillage Network’s Ecovillage Excellence prize in 2006.
Around 700 participants from Israel and overseas have come through the Green Apprenticeship programme since 2000, learning permaculture design, natural building, and community-scale sustainability on the kibbutz itself. For organisations rethinking their use of resources, Lotan offers something unusual: a board can examine operations that have run for decades, in conditions harsher than any corporate setting, and ask what transfers.
Key speaking topics
- Permaculture design
- Sustainable agriculture in arid environments
- Natural and ecological building
- Community-scale waste management
- Organic food production from composted waste
- Renewable energy in desert conditions
- Regenerative community design
Ideal for
- Sustainability and ESG leaders are looking for working examples of regenerative practice rather than aspirational frameworks.
- Boards examining what climate transition demands are at the operational level, including under genuine resource constraints.
- Real estate, construction, and built-environment teams interested in natural building methods and the regulatory work that legalised them in Israel.
- Education and learning leaders responsible for designing experiential sustainability programmes.
Audience outcomes
- Direct examples of regenerative practice from a desert site that has run since 1997.
- The story behind one of Israel’s clearest cases of grassroots practice changing national regulation, via natural building.
- A working reference point for integrated sustainability across food, water, energy, and waste, designed as a single system.
- What serious sustainability looks like when supply chains and conventional inputs cannot be assumed, drawn directly from the operations Lotan has run for decades.