Protocollary Ecological Institutions
* Article: Ecological Institutions → Protocols to Grow Autonomous and Convivial Ecological Actors. Austin Wade Smith. Regen Foundation, 2024.
URL = https://mirror.xyz/austinwadesmith.eth/tv9z1XXrtqQxDIxE8FygZ_W39NpkQJkVfrtjCtdbzA8
Topic: "autonomous and convivial ecologies". See also, our entry about the Sovereign Nature Initiative.
Contextual Quote
"The more than human world might be recognized as “legitimate” social actors, rather than objects and resources for extraction. The institutional forms of the future must reflect a more whole world, populated by more subjects than human beings, leading to the emergence of novel eco-social assemblages which redefine concepts like rights, ownership, identity, privacy, responsibility, and politics beyond solely the human realm. How might we create institutions which are living with and across diverse forms of life; which is to say, convivial?"
- Austin Wade Smith [1]
Description
"This essay outlines tangible means through which non-human organisms and ecosystems may not only have intrinsic rights , but further, the capacity to own their own currency, possess their own land titles and contracts, license their own data, compensate their guardians, safeguard their biodiversity, pressure their political delegates, etc.
Imagine if a sacred mountain was also a fund used to teach and preserve ceremonial rites, or a river directly compensated stewards for their cleanup efforts along its banks, or a pod of whales received royalties for the use of their imagery."
Contents
'This piece follows 4 sections:
A - Theoretical underpinnings of autonomous and convivial ecologies
B - How non-human agency is articulated across different infrastructures and technologies
C - The design of autonomous and convivial ecologies
D - Example implementations."
Characteristics
The method of Progressive Formalism
Austin Wade-Smith:
"Progressive Formalism
We focus on the mutual relationship of legibility and constitution of the more than human world across 5 primary domains.
- Biophysical systems
- Legal systems
- Economic systems
- Information Technology
- Political systems
These systems typify a spectrum, with the “hard” life sciences on one end and the “soft” social sciences on the other. Plants and animals are typically associated with the former, while human beings and our corporate creations are associated with the latter. We hold that the domain of social life cannot be exclusive to human beings, corporations, and pets, rather we must cultivate our imagination about what a social world not exclusively defined by human beings would look like.
This stance is progressive in the sense that it is an experimental application of social technologies in their current form to an expanded cast of non-human characters. Rather than replacing existing systems, we seek to transform them towards a more just and whole world through their own logic. The second sense of progressive reflects the nested nature of these systems. Patterns of agency in one system, create the possibility for relations in another. For example, legal recognition of personhood for a river or tree creates the potential for that river or tree to possess things like currency or information, because only legal persons have the capacity to own things. We define formalism in this sense, as an adherence to the prescribed forms different social technologies operate through. It is aligned with the belief that in order to be heard, you must speak the language of those who you want to listen [3]. Through what forms and media is agency conferred and maintained?
To date, one of the most successful applications of this broader approach is the “Rights of Nature movement. This network of eco-centric lawyers, activists, and scholars work to bestow legal standing to non-human actors in local and international courts of law. By formalizing that non-human entities can have personhood, like corporations do, they create the potential for non-humans to have rights, which can be observed and enforced within different legal systems. Rivers have the right to flow, and trees the right to stand. The result is that the legal system must work in service to the rights of non-humans, not just human individuals and corporations. If corporations are granted legal standing why can’t blue whales, and old growth Douglas Firs? [4] The Rights of Nature movement demonstrates how legibility to the legal system in the form of juridic personhood, forces courts to recognize the existence and rights of non-humans; altering them in the process. The agency of non-humans is expanded through anthropogenic means.
Legal personhood is a powerful vehicle for advancing socio-ecological change. Other legal wrappers such as Unincorporated Associations, and zero-member LLCs [5] are promising structures from which novel ecological institutions might emerge, and there will likely be more in the future. The designations which specify standing for non-human entities vary greatly across international legal systems, as well as within indigenous legal systems. A more thorough examination of non-human agency and legibility within different legal systems is beyond the scope of this paper. For the purposes of this essay however, we use the term “standing” to broadly refer to any legal designation which allows an organism, ecosystem, or bioregion to be legible to the legal system, and entitled to the rights therein.
How might the rights-based approach inherent in the “Rights of Nature” movement be bolstered by a value-based approach from regenerative economics? Might we advocate that not only do non-humans have rights, but they also hold and contribute value to sustain life on earth? Ecological institutions seek to expand the legibility of the more than human world beyond the legal system into economic, informatic and political domains in order to substantiate and enforce nature’s rights through systems of value, data, and governance.
As the case of Unincorporated Associations demonstrates, there are promising opportunities for this approach to grow through conventional systems of economics, information and politics. We believe these efforts can be complimented with the opportunities made possible through decentralized protocols which provide novel means to define identity, ownership, sensing, and governance for non-human entities. In what follows we outline the current potentials such protocols to foster ecological institutions, and explore two typologies for their implementation."
(https://mirror.xyz/austinwadesmith.eth/tv9z1XXrtqQxDIxE8FygZ_W39NpkQJkVfrtjCtdbzA8)
Excerpt
Austin Wade Smith:
"We propose a simple framework designed to expand the legibility of the "more than human world" (such as ‘Nature’, Non-Humans, “More-than-Human Ecologies”, etc.) to various anthropogenic infrastructures and technologies, with the aim of increasing the "surface area" through which non-humans directly exert influence on human-made systems. This approach falls within a progressive application of law, economy, information technology, and governance; leveraging anthropogenic forms to fundamentally transform the systems from which they originate towards a more inclusive and just world for all beings. We refer broadly to the resulting entities as Ecological Institutions, and our approach as a kind of progressive formalism. [1]
Our goal is to outline explicit processes by which non-humans, (meaning individual organisms like trees and primates, populations like packs and flocks, and whole ecosystems like forests, and watersheds) have expanded influence on human society. We do this to catalyze a more inclusive definition of society, where non-humans are not considered solely passive objects nor resources, but rather, are afforded the possibility to be societal actors with the potential for rights analogous to those recognized for humans and corporations, on the basis of relevant attributes and capacities. How might the technologies and infrastructures which configure society express and affirm an expanded notion of kinship?
This project begins from a proposition; that we call agency is oftentimes less a reflection of an organism’s innate capacities or attributes, but rather their ability to be legible to the contexts within which they operate, living or otherwise. Legibility in this sense, is a kind of measure by which a being is able to be recognized, deciphered, or understood within the space, system, or environment in which it acts. Through the concept of ecological institutions and legibility, we explore progressive forms of non-human agency at the intersection of earth-centric law, and emerging technologies of ownership, governance, sensing and verification. Many of these processes are greatly enabled and expanded through the use of decentralized protocols, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
We believe a hybrid approach which leverages the different domains of information, governance, rights, and value strengthens an understanding of non-humans as beings in a “more whole society”, and fosters a transition for the more-than-human world away from solely objects / resources, into agential subjects, and ultimately novel ecological institutions. Using this framework, we conclude by identifying a potential design space of ecological institutions and populate it with example implementations, from more programmatic and autonomous approaches on one end to more socially interdependent and convivial approaches on the other."
(https://mirror.xyz/austinwadesmith.eth/tv9z1XXrtqQxDIxE8FygZ_W39NpkQJkVfrtjCtdbzA8)
Using Decentralized Protocols To Create Ecological Institutions
Austin Wade-Smith:
"Decentralized protocols are systems of rules and standards that enable computers, devices, or individuals to communicate and share information without relying on a central authority or server. They enable distributed ownership of goods, and cooperative decision making around the use of those common resources. Organizations which hold resources, and record the governance related to those resources on the blockchain, are referred to as DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations). Unlike cloud computing and conventional data storage which are authoritative and centralized, decentralized protocols uphold consensus between many different actors in a manner which is similar to ecological networks.
This makes them well suited for applications of ownership and governance of common resources which are:
- easily accessed
- easily depleted
This includes many planetary systems like the atmosphere, water cycle, and the ozone. In short, commons. As such we feel it is important to consider how decentralized protocols might substantiate and amplify existing efforts for non-human agency.
We identify 4 domains in which decentralized protocols may further enable non-human agency and the creation of ecological institutions.
- Identity
- Ownership
- Sensing / Verification
- Governance "
(https://mirror.xyz/austinwadesmith.eth/tv9z1XXrtqQxDIxE8FygZ_W39NpkQJkVfrtjCtdbzA8)