Reimagining democracy: how diverse knowledges are creating more-than-human justice

What would our world look like if we included nature and other animals in our political and social decision-making? This event brings together leading environmental figures to explore models of more-than-human governance, drawing from Indigenous knowledges, creative practices, and innovative research.

The news is full of stories about worsening climate change and the deepening degradation of nature, and at the same time high-profile processes like the Paris Agreement and government commitments seem to be failing to make a noticeable mark. This can leave us feeling despondent. Yet around the world, communities and organisations are taking truly radical actions, not only to protect our planet, but to transform how people relate to the natural world. In this sense, they are doing more than providing hope that the climate, nature and biodiversity crises we are facing may be abated. Rather, they enable us to imagine what our worlds would look like if all animals and ecosystems were truly included in the decisions that are shaping how we live.

This event brings together leading environmental figures across cultures and geographies to explore how other animals, forests, rivers, ecosystems and so on can be included in decision making practices. World leaders from South America, Australia and Europe will share stories of radical change: from the Living Forest movement, to representing animals in political decision-making, to how Indigenous kinship systems can guide us toward living well with the Earth.

Join us for this one-hour panel discussion followed by a half an hour of networking.

This event is hosted by the Sydney Environment Institute in partnership with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Strategy and Services).

This event is part of SEI’s Climate Justice Series. This panel series brings together leading thinkers and practitioners to explore the urgent intersections of climate action, equity, and systemic change.

Speakers

Danielle Celermajer (Chair), Sydney Environment Institute

Danielle Celermajer is a Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, Deputy Director – Academic of the Sydney Environment Institute and lead of the Multispecies Justice project. Her professional life has been characterised by moving between organisations whose principal focus is human rights or more broadly justice policy and scholarship, and seeking a greater integration between these dimensions of justice work. In recent years, she has turned her attention to questions of how institutions could be transformed to support the relational flourishing of all Earth beings, or multispecies justice. With her multispecies community, she lived through the Black Summer fires, writing about the killing of everything or “omnicide.” Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future (Penguin Books, 2021), the creative non-fiction book she wrote from that experience asks us to look around – really look around – to become present to all Earth others who are living and dying through the loss of our shared home.

Shrishtee Bajpai, Indian researcher-activist

Shrishtee is a researcher, writer, and activist working on themes of interspecies justice, earthy governance, and systemic transformations. She is a member of Kalpavriksh, an environmental action group in India and coordinates Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) network that researches, documents, networks around systemic alternatives. She is the core team member of Global Tapestry of Alternatives , and part of Emerging Futures: Visionaries Programme of Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She also serves on the executive committee of Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.

Melanie Challenger, public intellectual on more-than-human decision-making

Melanie Challenger is a writer, researcher and broadcaster on environmental history and philosophy of science, Deputy Co-Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and a Vice President of the RSPCA UK. She wrote How to Be Animal: What it Means to Be Human (2021). Her first non-fiction book On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature was published in 2011. It was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best non-fiction books of 2012. She is a founding member of the Animals in the Roomproject, involved in devising new models for representing the interests of non-human animals in decisions critical to their lives, and a 2025 National Geographic explorer.

Patricia Gualinga, Sarayaku Indigenous rights advocate

Patricia Gualinga is a defender of native rights and Mother Earth, and the former foreign affairs leader of the Native Kichwa People of Sarayaku, a community located in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Patricia’s leadership has contributed to the struggle of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku for the protection of the Living Forest in their ancestral territories. Patricia Gualinga presented a historical case before the Inter-American Human Rights System (SIDH) that ended in 2012. The Native Kichwa people of Sarayaku is now facing other threats such as oil extraction projects by Chinese companies in their territory, and the long conflict over the exploitation of the sacred Bobonaza basin. Patricia is known nationally and internationally because of her ongoing work in defending the rights of native people and the call she has made to amplify the call to keep fossil fuels underground in the Amazon.

Nardi Simpson, Yuwaalaraay storyteller and performer

Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller and performer living in Sydney. Training as a musician, Nardi began her artistic journey as a songwriter and performer with vocal duo Stiff Gins. This has seen her travel both nationally and internationally for over twenty-five years releasing four albums, two singles, an EP and countless compilations during that time. Nardi was a winner of the 2018 Black & Write! Fellowship for a manuscript that would eventually become her first novel, 'Song of the Crocodile.' Published in 2020 by Hachette Australia, Song of the Crocodile won the 2021 ASAL Gold Medal and was long listed for the 2021 Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Awards. Nardi's second novel 'the belburd' was published by Hachette in October 2024. Nardi continues to perform with Stiff Gins, works with student ensembles and directs cross-cultural choir Barayagal at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is also currently a Postdoctoral Researcher working with Prof. Liza Lim on the 5-year research project that is communicating the urgency of climate change through music.

Image by Josie Weiss, via Unsplash