Join us for an ONLINE LEARNING SESSION for practitioners, as part of the Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox
Public Governance Beyond the Human learning session
Join us for our 18th learning session on Public Governance Beyond the Human, with Mumta Ito from Nature’s Rights, taking place on Tuesday 10 November at 5pm CET | 4pm GMT | 11am EST | 8am PST | 9.30pm IST.
What if the challenge isn’t simply how we give the more-than-human a voice in governance, but how we redesign the foundations of public governance itself?
Public authorities and agencies make daily decisions on land use, water, food, energy and infrastructure that reshape the lives of rivers, soils, forests and species. Yet the more-than-human world is still primarily governed as property, a resource or an externality, rather than recognised as the living foundation upon which human wellbeing and economic prosperity depend.
From recognising the rights of nature to rethinking how public institutions make decisions, new approaches are now increasingly beginning to challenge some of these foundations of contemporary public governance. If we aim to rethink governance to be in right relationship with the living world, how would it shape how public institutions understand their responsibilities, establish priorities, and make decisions about and with the places we inhabit?
In this Learning Session, we explore these questions with Mumta Ito, founder of Nature’s Rights and author of the UK Nature’s Rights Bill, currently before UK Parliament.
The Bill proposes a framework that goes beyond recognising Nature as a legal subject. Its Integrated Rights Framework seeks to move beyond treating nature, people and the economy as separate or competing interests, towards an integrated, relational approach to rights and responsibilities that enables them to thrive together. Through proposals including duties of care, bioregional councils and new structures for guardianship, implementation and enforcement, it explores how this interdependence might be reflected in the legal frameworks, institutional relationships and responsibilities that shape public life.
Using the Bill and its proposed Integrated Rights Framework as a starting point, we will explore some of its more novel propositions and the questions they raise about the future of public governance.
- What changes when the living world is recognised as the foundation upon which human and economic activity depends, rather than as a resource to manage or an interest to accommodate?
- How might public institutions work with the living systems of the places they govern, allowing these systems to shape how priorities are established and decisions are made?
- What might it mean to move from governing over Nature to governing in right relationship with Nature?
- And what new relationships, responsibilities and decision-making processes could this require?
The conversation will also draw sideways on a proposition for Biocratic Governance, and its accompanying call for prototyping a Minimum Viable Proposition, as developed by the Sandbox. This proposes a shift in the starting point of local governance - “letting land speak first” - through a process of re-story-ing the landcape and letting the place-based living logic become a foundational layer in local governance, thereby shaping how decisions are framed.
This session is an opportunity to explore the thinking behind such approaches, imagine what this could mean in practice, and consider the possibilities and tensions involved in rethinking public governance beyond the human.
Our speaker Mumta Ito is a lawyer, founder of Nature’s Rights, architect of the Integrated Rights Framework, and author of the UK Nature’s Rights Bill
She began her career in the City of London as a structured finance lawyer, advising governments, multinational corporations and investment banks. Since founding Nature’s Rights in 2015, she she has worked internationally to advance the legal recognition of Nature’s rights, including initiating a European Citizens’ Initiative, serving as a European facilitator for the UN Harmony with Nature expert dialogues, and developing legislative and policy approaches with organisations ranging from grassroots movements to international institutions.
Her current work focuses on transforming the foundational relationship between Nature, people and the economy in law — and translating that transformation into practical frameworks for governance, finance and society
