The ever increasing need for better debates

Politics of Nature is an international initiative uniting people from tech, sciences and society to rethink, develop and deploy better ways of governing the commons.

Since May 2018 we have made four editions. One in Copenhagen, two in Amsterdam and one in Brasilia. You can read about them in the Articles section

The project will explore how humans can learn to interact with non-humans and engage in a joint political discussion where the end goal is to achieve ‘consents for coexistence’.

Water ressources and privacy by design we believe will be topics only picking up more and more attention in the coming years. They touch upon ethics, infrastructure and survival. We hope to contribute to these big challenges with perspectives, not one sides opinion, before situations gets dramatically worse. Do we take a stand ? Yes, otherwise the project would never had started.

Our stand is that something proactive needs to be done with communication and representation to avoid further polarized fronts. We do not wish to face the consequences of running out of ressources nor loosing the capability to understand a person or thing that we disagree with.

We don’t, can’t and won’t control the outcomes of the editions. This is being created by the actors involved. We present a canvas and principles for a new democratic conversation.

Our vision is that everyone can pick up the tools and explore their networks and identify durable and lasting solutions to apparently wicked and unsolvable problems.

Politics of Nature takes its name from the eponymous book by Bruno Latour, portraying a social order in which humans and non-humans are interacting in the same social and political sphere. This order is referred to as the Parliament of Things and first described in Latour’s essay “We have never been modern”. Politics of Nature builds on top of Actor-Network Theory, a theory in which reality is constantly constructed and deconstructed in relationships.

Various governance methods and tools such as liquid democracy, sociocracy, holocracy and digital participatory processes, such as Wikis and Open Source, influence our thinking.

The same goes for the experimental use of XR (Extended Realities) as a communication platform creating illusions of place, agency and embodiment

Added to the box of methods are Life Cycle Assessment bringing understanding of the environmental effects of products and services, and the concept of Privacy by Design, by which privacy and security can be built into the solutions – essential for the proper functioning of democracies.

With these components, Politics of Nature creates frameworks and toolboxes allowing multiple perspectives to coexist.

The first outcome of Politics of Nature is a meeting game format inspired by the Cratic Platform, merging components from Sociocracy and Holocracy. The Politics of Nature – Meeting Game is intended to quickly identify the relevant actors along with their needs, worries and wishes.

Then we engage with designers and developers and performing arts to turn the consents into visual representations. From performances and installations to practical applications like an augmented reality solution to identify and help fix leaking water pipes.

Our vision is that everyone can pick up the tools and explore their networks and identify durable and lasting solutions to apparently wicked and unsolvable problems.

We adhere to Open Source and build stuff to give it away. This means that anyone is a liberty to utilize ideas, concepts or any other stuff acquired whilst participating in Politics of Nature events or exploring things produced by Politics of Nature, including this website. We only wish that Politics of Nature is acknowledged for its contribution – possibly with a link to this site.

Politics of Nature was initiated by Frederik Lassen and Jakob Raffn