When I posed the question to Dario about which cultures, countries or communities are living the most harmoniously with nature, he brought up three different examples. The Inuits, Amazonian tribes in South America and some South Pacific islanders in Papua New Guinea. All groups he had taken the time to live with, interact with and tried to get to better understand. To provide his reasoning he retold the following stories.

While living with the Inuits, due to drastic changes occurring in the Arctic regions, their specific ecosystems, they recently had to switch their diets from seals to dolphins. Seals, their main dietary resource for food, clothing, and survival, have become more scarce. While the rest of the world, or at least Western Nations would be horrified to hear this, he explained that it was quite natural for the Inuits to replace seals as their main dietary source of nutrition. The only available alternative are dolphins. It’s not like the Inuits can wait for the next container ship to bring in imported items from the mainland. They’re in the middle of extremely remote regions, and must eat in order to survive. Like other indigenous tribes they do eat and use every single last piece of the animals or fish that they take.

On the contrary, the tribes in the tropical jungles of Amazon don’t have a concept of the future. While they may have a huge variety of plants, animals and fruit to live off, they don’t talk about the future, and never use verbs in the future tense. Talking about resources disappearing in the distant or not so distant future has no meaning. While this is hard for us to comprehend, it does make sense. How can you explain to a tribesman that doesn’t understand the concept of the future, to understand the reasons for practicing sustainability.

The last example he gave was of cannibalistic tribes in Papua New Guinea. After visiting with these tribes people, and discussing why they eat their fellow tribesmen, they explained it was a natural part of their culture. Again, something that we western cultures would find abhorrent, was a matter of the natural existence for these people. According to Dario’s interactions with these cannibalistic communities, when times are lean during a famine, and people are starving it makes sense to reduce the number of mouths to feed, while also supplying a much needed source of food. But these tribes people see it as humane, and a natural part of their culture. The people that are eaten are given notice that they have 3 months to live, during which time they are given anything that they want to eat, or enjoy. The best 3 months of their lives is the idea. Then when it is their time to go, they are peacefully given some poison unbeknownst to them. And eaten.

Fascinating to be sure, and these stories make for great fodder in the classroom, or during the frequent school presentations that Dario and his wife give throughout the year as the educational component of their non profit.

Another part of their purpose is to climb all 7 of the highest peaks in all continents. The only continent’s highest peak that hasn’t been climbed is Antarctica. They started with Aconcagua in the Andes, have completed Everest with all the children hiking, or biking as far as base camp and have completed the others. All of this done without using any mechanized form of transportation. To date, they have climbed over 400,000 meters biking, hiking or walking.

Through all of this exploring, and traveling, there are a few core components to the educational aspects of the ToptoTop philosophy.

• Less is more, or having a minimalist approach to living. Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle. The perfect example of this is Patagonia’s free repair of used clothing. Even if it’s other brands, Patagonia has events where they will repair your old sports clothing.
• Respect nature, by being in it. Disconnect, and spend time outdoors. There’s no better way to do that then doing active outdoor sports like sailing, skiing, climbing, surfing, fishing. Dario enjoys taking his children and students into all of these environments.
• They’re doing it, every day of the year. The latest expedition they have in the works is applying to Russia to cross the Arctic via northern Siberia. A trans Atlantic Pacific passage which has hardly been used throughout the centuries due to year round ice . Because of climate change, there is now some traffic going through this route, which is stark reminder to us all that the climate changes are having a real impact on our world. For hundreds of years, there has never been a time when ocean going navigators could have used this route to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Sadly, the route is now mostly used by large global oil companies and drilling rigs in search for new oil fields.

Using these approaches to Inspire, educate and act, they have brought their message to over 130,000 students worldwide. We are not just talking about a 20 minute presentation either, in some circumstances we are talking about days of hands on education with student groups, doing and being active in nature.