Workshop 1: Rights of Nature
For this workshop theme, groups gathered around the topic of 'Rights of Nature' in relation to the Ecovillage's biodiversity plan (read more about this plan in this older Logbook). During each round, groups selected up to three species from the biodiversity plan and speculated on the implications of granting rights specifically to this species. What would it mean to assign rights to selective species? How would this influence local policy for humans? And what could be the effect on ecosystems? To speculate further, groups also playfully imagined on what grounds this particular species could potentially sue the Ecovillage.

Workshop documentation outlining the collective task, detailing the 10 species in the biodiversity plan, and the notes people added during the sessions.
Participants came up with policy implications such as:
- Adapt the lights to my preferences (for the common pipistrelle bat)
- Do not cut the grass everywhere (for the great green bush cricket)
- Adjust homes so that I can nest there (for the red mason bee)
- Ensure that facilities such as deciduous trees continue to exist in the future (for the starling)
- Leave host plants and do not cut flowers (for the peacock butterfly)
- Avoid drones (for the common pipistrelle bat)
- Do not confuse me with wasps and do not encourage honey bees in my environment (for the red mason bee)
- Do not use chemical pesticides to fight lice (for the great green bush cricket)
Some of the speculative court cases listed include:
- Sue the neighbouring farmer for the use of pesticides that kills insects that the starling needs to feed themselves
- Sue the neighbouring farmer for the use of pesticides that kills me (the red mason bees), but do not turn me into food for the starling
- Sue the red mason bee for walling up the home of the common pipistrelle bat
- Sue the company Nestlé for proposing to use the great green bush cricket as a protein source
Discussions that came up during this task include the difficulty of assigning rights to certain species over others (these also become visible in some of the contradicting notes), leading to a never ending circle of conflicts between different species. Also interesting was that several groups discussed the problems of the neighbouring farmer's use of pesticides, albeit in different ways for different species. Relations to the use of digital technologies in this workshop theme became apparent through remarks on the use of drones that could negatively impact certain bat species, as well as the schedule for outdoor lighting in the Ecovillage to adjust to bat preferences.

One of the workshop groups working together on the 'Rights of Nature' theme.