Cutting Edge Lecture in Science: Towards a reciprocal environmental governance

By Nicolas Kosoy (Associate Professor, Natural Resource Sciences, McGill).  We are in urgent need of an agreement novel in spirit and unheard of in our times, one that calls for the unity of all species in our planet, one that embraces the singularity of our universe, the evolutionary history of our species, and the common path that we, human and non-human species, share in our one and only spaceship. I propose that such an agreement be based on alternative governance frameworks stemming from the notion that humans are part of nature and hence placing the concepts of embeddedness and relational inter-dependence at the core of any policy recommendation to manage socio-ecosystems. This talk will cover some of the experiences on alternative environmental governance in the past, present and imagined future to draw basic lessons for fairly sharing our planet with other species.