Provocation: A Future of Interspecies Democracy

By Phoebe Tickell and republished with permission

This short provocation was written as part of the Post-2043 Waters Project, where Moral Imagination hosted an Interspecies Council for stakeholders of the River Roding community and policy-makers.

Background to this provocation

In April 2023, we hosted the River Roding Interspecies Council, in collaboration with the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Policy Lab, as part of their Water Post-2043 Project. The project explored how we can transform the future of decision making around water, asking “How can we transform what the freshwater system looks like, 20 years from now and beyond?”

The Roding Interspecies Council, held in the London Borough of Barking next to the River Roding, included stakeholders with knowledge of the local river catchment area, local community action groups and decision makers from inside and outside government. The topic of the Council was ‘How do we ensure the flourishing of the River Roding?’

As part of the invitation to the Council, Moral Imaginations shared a short provocation, set in 2043, exploring a future where interspecies democracy has become the norm. Inspired by sci-fi writings, the text invites people to imagine a world where Interspecies Councils are a part of citizen democracy and bioregional governance. This set the scene for participation in the Council, which was both a prototype for real-world decision making and policy-making processes, and an act of ‘futuring’ and imagining. Thus, the Interspecies Council was an act of pre-figurative governance, serving as a provocation for the future and a real-world decision making prototype that seeks to sow the seeds of transformation in the practises of today.

A FUTURE OF JUSTICE FOR ALL BEINGS

What does justice for all Earth beings look like in 2043? How could decision making in the future include the more-than-human world? Western worldviews and models of thinking have perpetuated the myth of human exceptionalism over hundreds of years. This also means that our non-human kin has been relegated to background, resource, and property. In this workshop we will explore an immersive, participatory, embodied taste of a more-than-human future, where human chauvinism and individualism have been replaced by principles of entangled coexistence with more-than-human kin.

MORE-THAN-HUMAN EMPATHY AND MORAL IMAGINATION

Interspecies empathy will be a core requirement for future, ecologically sound, decision making. But how might we cultivate interspecies empathy?

The moral imagination is our empathy muscle. It helps put oneself into the shoes of the other, looking through their eyes via the portal of imagination. Taking us out of our self-interested lens, imagination lets us expand the moral circle of concern, and imagine what it’s like to be someone, or something, else.

Imagine if we all cultivated our empathy muscles for the more-than-human world regularly. Would we be better able to include other voices in decision-making? What would the water vole say in response to poor legislation around sewage? When does the kingfisher draw a line on local levels of sound pollution? And how would these species engage in debate, negotiation and solidarity in a deliberative democracy process?

We imagine a future where decision making includes an expanded set of “stakeholders”, including the more-than-human world in all our decisions. Computer scientist Neil Gershenfeld says the idea that people are the only species with consciousness is a ‘human vanity’. What if we could develop the capacity to speak on behalf of more-than-human life, and better represent them in decision making?

A FUTURE OF INTERSPECIES DEMOCRACY

The year is 2043. Things have changed almost beyond recognition when it comes to decision making that impacts nature. The difference is - nature now has a voice. Through the work of thinkers, poets, legal activists, academics and more-than-human allies, governance and law is being completely transformed to incorporate the understanding that all beings have rights and personhood.

In 2043, eight years after the 2035 Interspecies Governance Act, imagine that Interspecies Democracy has become key to our democratic paradigm. What if every person in the UK were paired for a quarter of the year with a non-human species whom they represent in democratic decision making? What if everybody had to serve a term on a local Nature Assembly, representing keystone species and habitats of the area like the river, birds, insects, and trees? What else could this Interspecies Democracy future look like?

Imagine that machine learning AIs have been trained on massive non-human communication data sets and developed an Interspecies Alphabet, where any non-human sound can be fed into Google and will be translated into potential messages, ranked by % accuracy and probability.

Imagine that the skills of Moral Imagining are taught in schools and all lawyers take a regular exam to test their ability to empathise with the more-than-human world.

Imagine that Nature now sits as an active board member on the board of all companies by law. Each decision is first screened by a feral AI, CatGPT🐱, for interspecies alignment. If one or more ecologically deleterious impacts are detected as possible risks in the motion passing, the system flags the decision and it is immediately devolved to the local or bioregional level, where an Interspecies Council is assembled.

The Councils adhere to strict guidelines and quality assurance, with participants chosen via sortition from the area affected. The Interspecies Council gives the human beings a chance to grow their interspecies empathy. Following an Interspecies Council, the group’s verdict is fed back into the Interspecies Alphabet for final decision by non-human beings.

THE 2038 DORSET INTERSPECIES COUNCIL

Perhaps you remember how, in 2038, how CatGPT🐱 identified that a proposed new oyster and mussel farm off the coast of Dorset could negatively impact the local ecosystem for sea and land life, potentially disrupting human fishing routes and crustacean habitats. The Dorset Interspecies Council met over the course of six months. There was huge national attention on the Council, as one of the earliest, and knottiest Bioregional Interspecies Councils. Who could forget hearing from the oysters and mussels themselves via AI during the Council? They had pretty strong views about local water quality, and the level of filtration they could provide!

The co-designed solutions were elegant - local government granted a significant re-training budget for those in the Dorset fishing industry to re-train as bivalve farmers (a more regenerative harvesting method than fishing), and the farms were spread over a much wider geographical area to allow better balance for the crustacean habitats!

THE RIVER RODING DISPUTE OF 2043

We find ourselves in 2043, and a series of issues have been flagged by CatGPT🐱 and taken to the local, Interspecies Council level. You have been invited to attend this one-day workshop, attended by policymakers, ecologists, River Roding locals, activists and community members, to make a series of recommendations to the governance body…