The “dichotomy” between humans and nature was always a fiction. A useful one for some economic accounting – reinforcing a license to extract and plumping up productivity numbers by ignoring essential inputs. A distracting one in other ways – a false sense of insulation from the vagaries of storms, floods, nutrient cycles, and other feedback from the world around us. A deeply embedded one – built into modern governance, science, economics, politics, education, and more.
But what’s the alternative? If the separation was imagined, what comes next? What new forms of institutional architecture are and might emerge as more humans recognize themselves and nature as inseparably entangled?
This question took center stage at the final panel of the 2025 Istanbul Innovation Days. Speakers reflected on a number of new relationships and the institutional innovations that are starting to codify and support these relationships. This blog reflects on their insights, surfacing some of the experiments, provocations, and possibilities ahead.
Emerging Institutional Innovations Embed a Spectrum of Underlying Relationships
Piotr Domek started the discussion recounting his work using mussels to detect water contamination and help protect the water supply in Poznan, Poland. Thanks to their innate sensitivity to toxins, eight mussels are being used as living sensors for pollution in the water supply to a city of more than half a million people. Similar systems are in place across North America, Europe, and Russia. The approach is one example of a broader family of efforts to harness plants’ and animals’ unique senses to inform services as varied as earthquake detection to hurricane warnings. The “Internet of Animals,” which tracks wildlife in real-time for climate and ecosystem data, is another example.
Leena al-Olaimy, founder of Symbaiosis, offered further examples of these kinds of relationships: mangroves providing flood protection, bees as collectors of environmental DNA (eDNA) offering valuable insights into biodiversity and ecosystems. She also asked the additional question: “What would a public-planet partnership look like that was mutually beneficial?” adding that “in order for [a partnership] to endure, it has to be mutually beneficial.” If we think of nature as our greatest social and economic collaborator, what does it mean to give back? What rights should nature hold? Should ecosystems be able to “invoice” us? Enabling transactions is one direction for institutionalizing reciprocity.
Erin Ryan’s discussion of Animals in the Room continued the thread on building toward reciprocity – and offered another avenue for rebuilding relationships across the dichotomy. She opened with a provocation passed on from her collaborator, Melanie Challenger to “think critically about the scale of nature to include in institutions. Start with the individuals.” This is important to avoid replicating the essential view of nature as a uniform other rather than as individuals with particular needs. Their initiative, Animals in the Room, asks what happens when we treat animals not as abstract entities, but as stakeholders in governance processes. How might laws, policies, or city planning change if animals were not merely protected by us but consulted? While symbolic at present, this approach lays the groundwork for a more empathetic and inclusive institutional imagination.
Maja Groff introduced a broader vision: building institutions capable of operating at the scale of the Earth system. Her work explores frameworks like the Global Environmental Authority (GEA) and draws from efforts such as the Climate Governance Commission and the Mobilizing Earth Governance Alliance (MEGA).
Her proposition: retain national sovereignty but recognize the planet’s ecosystems as a shared heritage, co-managed across nations. What if planetary boundaries—not just carbon emissions, but biodiversity, soil integrity, and freshwater flows—became the basis for international cooperation?
Importantly, this isn’t about imposing global control. It’s about aligning our fragmented institutional world with the interconnected reality of the planet. Her vision is one of scaffolding: building institutional “spaces” that support responsive, evolving governance, without locking us into rigid or outdated systems.
Alfredo del Valle concluded the panel by grounding the discussion in systems theory. Drawing on Ross Ashby’s principle that systems must be as complex as the challenges they face, Alfredo warned against the oversimplifications of modern governance. The polycrisis—climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality—is a product of institutions unable to match the complexity of the world they seek to govern.
To move beyond the dichotomy, we need governance models that embrace this complexity. That means not only new structures but also new ways of thinking: participatory systems, iterative learning, action-research models. Alfredo emphasized that we should resist the urge to formalize too soon. First, we must understand—deeply, empathetically, and relationally—before we institutionalize.
Emerging Patterns and Reflections
With the benefit of hindsight, several themes emerged from the panel:
A Proliferation of Relationships: The projects discussed are part of a much broader movement. From legal frameworks like the “rights of nature” to localized community-ecosystem partnerships, new kinds of relationships are forming everywhere. What we saw in Istanbul was just a glimpse—a cross-section of an evolving ecosystem of innovation.
The underlying tug of connection: The panelists were not just advocates; they were emotionally engaged—and this emotion, far from undermining rigor, became a source of insight. This was partly visible in the ways that cases were presented. Piotr’s presentation of the water alarm systems started with a clip from Fat Kathy, showing a row of vulnerable-looking mussels lined up like sentinels in the movie, underwater, small bubbles burping before moving to a clip of mussels lined up with springs glued to them and then circuit diagrams of the alarm system. The words may have said “mussels are useful” but the imagery recognized something more. Leena gave imaginary voice to trees – “Hello I’ve been doing this [carbon capture] for hundreds of millions of years. I’ve already perfected this technology and I’m also providing all kinds of co-benefits that other technologies can’t provide.”
The emotional underpinning also appeared in the panelists’ reflections on how they found themselves in the position of building new practices and institutions for interacting with nature. Leena described her inspiration as being partly based on an intuition, a kind of “download from nature” along with the more analytical self-assessment of what she herself knew how to do (speaking to asset managers.) Erin described her transition from being an animal welfare scientist to wondering why more humans were not actually seeing, or recognizing the insights.
The Institutional Road Ahead: Seeing nature differently is only the beginning. Institutional change means weaving that recognition into our social, legal, and economic structures. Leena posed tough questions: Can we avoid commodifying nature? Can we imagine boards with ecological representatives—not just to manage risk, but to learn from how nature governs itself?
Maja emphasized the significance of diverse components operating within a holistic framework, eschewing artificial fragmentation. Her work illuminates a dichotomy between the expansion of tenuous, partial regulations and the interconnectedness of the Earth’s systemic reality. Reconceptualizing reform through the lens of fragmentation and consolidation is vital, with a central tenet being the recognition, respect, and adaptation to the surrounding realities. Adaptation acknowledges a more complex relationship beyond simple human impact on the environment, posing a substantial challenge.
Alfredo suggested that legal systems must mirror societal complexity by fostering analogous complexity, which includes participatory governance from the grassroots level, thereby establishing a governance structure that reflects the inherent complexity of the phenomenon. A research agenda oriented toward complexity governance is advocated, utilizing strategic leverage points such as education, business, and other crucial communities. Pilot programs should be implemented to facilitate learning and knowledge transfer, deriving lessons from practical demonstrations and their collective outcomes.
The Joy of Learning and the Power of Experimentation: A sense of discovery ran through the panel. Erin’s journey began with a curiosity: why wasn’t animal welfare data being used? That curiosity led to a crisis of empathy, and eventually, to the concept of “animals at the table.” Maja and Alfredo emphasized the need for experimentation: for creating temporary, flexible spaces where new forms of governance can be tested before they’re formalized.
Final Thought: Toward Communion
Perhaps the most powerful takeaway is this: the goal is not simply better “management” of nature. It is communion—living together in reciprocity, complexity, and care. Moving past the human-nature dichotomy isn’t about abandoning humanity; it’s about expanding our sense of belonging to include the more-than-human world.
We are not apart from nature. We are a part of it.
And as our institutions begin to reflect and support that truth, the possibility for a more just, resilient, and beautiful future comes into view.
