It's perhaps an understatement to say that things are out of balance on planet Earth. The signs of crisis are all around us. CO2 levels are at 16-million-year highs. Biodiversity is collapsing. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and novel chemicals are choking our ecosystems. Our planetary health is dire, and we humans, or at least some subset of us, are the core reason.
What's more, the institutions we've tasked with addressing these crises, national policy and international diplomacy, are by definition serving human interests. What would it mean to broaden the conversation, to represent the interests of non-humans on our planet, to represent all the other species, the plants and rivers, the whole ecosystems, and the life-sustaining biogeochemical cycles? How can we create a new form of diplomacy with our planet, representing the interests of the whole Earth system?
Welcome back to Tectonic. I'm your host, Brendan Karch. This season, we take up a thought experiment, something we call planetary diplomacy. The idea emerges from the scientific call to take urgent action on the health of our planet, to restore balance and flourishing for non-human actors and ecosystems. As a network of science consulates, Swissnex has long explored new frontiers of diplomacy. This season, we ask, is planetary diplomacy the next iteration, and what might it look like?
To create an actual planetary diplomacy representing the interests of other species and ecosystems would require several transformations in scientific discovery, in human-centric beliefs and philosophies, and in our local, national, and multilateral governance structures. Make no mistake, we're far away from creating a real existing planetary diplomacy. But look closely, and new ways of planetary thinking start to emerge all over the place.
We have scientists across disciplines who have been unlocking the new complexities of animal language and plant intelligence and the myriad ways that our Earth systems exist in a delicate interdependence.
We also have humanities scholars and social scientists who have been calling into question the human-centric assumptions baked into our value systems, our laws, and our governance structures. They've also been exposing just how central indigenous knowledge is to rethinking the balance between humans and non-humans on Earth.
And NGOs, think tanks, indigenous advocacy groups, and multilateral institutions have been crafting experiments in planetary diplomacy, from granting rivers legal rights to creating enforcement bodies for ecosystem health.
This season, we pick up these signals for a future planetary diplomacy, talking to experts and advocates in Switzerland and around the world who are working to break down hierarchies between the human and the non-human world, in order to hopefully represent the interests and agency of other species, other biomes, and other actors on this shared thin crust of planet Earth that we call home.
We hope you'll join us.
