Sustainable Futures

"Plants are central to human culture, inextricably linked via innumerable material relationships. This is our entry point into the idea of plant agency. Considering how plants have shaped dominant economic systems over the last five hundred years leads to me to ask how can plant agency shape sustainable futures?

Plant agency is composed of a number of diverse aspects that draws from an interdisciplinary framework. These aspects include their behaviour and autonomy; their role in the carbon-oxygen cycle; how their stems, leaves and flowers form the materials making our foods, medicines and clothing; how they are weaponised in colonial enclosures; the speculations on their intelligence and sentience; their ability to go rogue and rebel, to subvert and disrupt our social and nervous systems. From the domestication of grains to the tobacco plantations of West Virginia, plant agency has always been shaping anthropocentric economies both materially and discursively.

Using specific plants as case studies, I will be exploring how their agency is enacted through diverse economic relationships and how this can contribute to a liveable sustainable future for all of Earth’s beings. "

In order to make progress with anything, we must first measure it. Then we can compare measurements with each other and assess whether progress is being made. With sustainability, this is hard. In this talk, I will discuss whether measuring net zero is enough, or whether we need to include other measurements. If so, what? And how do we tie them all together and make trade-offs?