Connecting Nature, People & Technology
Enabling spheres of influence in the ecosystem — to give Nature an active voice.
The Deodands Project is about redesigning our approach to conservation. It’s about enabling thriving natural ecosystems through stewardship, active technologies and a deep human reconnection.
What we do
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We want to give Nature a voice. We’ll do this by creating and managing digital twins of lands and rivers that have been granted legal personhood. These twins, called deodands, monitor the health of ecosystems using remote sensing and local expertise (for example, indigenous stakeholders). Deodands work to improve these biomes using a combination of AI-driven goal-seeking and community engagement.
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Our first and most important beneficiaries will be conservation trusts and indigenous groups that are protecting specific lands, in partnership with the community of online gamers who are conscious of their alienation from nature. Deodands offer a way for gamers to fund conservation projects from within their gameworlds. They tap into the vibrancy of digital culture to close the circle of engagement between the online and the natural worlds.
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The Deodands project will lead to a new, robust and flexible approach to conservation and a new way for ordinary people to engage with Nature. When managed by a deodand, natural systems function as our partners in restoring the Earth, rather than as resources to be exploited. Deodands are a solution to the “fox guarding the henhouse” problem of human-managed resource protection.
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We’ll measure our success according to how well we assist the healing of specific damaged ecosystems around the world. Constant measurement of ecological health is baked into the deodands architecture and is the primary metric for judging the success of the project. Along with this, we will measure the engagement and satisfaction of the people using the network to help them build new and genuine relationships with the places they help to support.
Giving a Voice to Nature
Protecting threatened species and habitats with a hands-on, practical conservation approach. The Deodands Project is committed to a process-oriented conservation approach, protecting the bio-diversity of ecosystems, species and habitats.
Our first Keystone Project is in Wales, UK, and will aim at rewilding a natural ecosystem of ancient forest located in Devonshire. Instead of a narrowly goal-oriented approach (such as improving the habitat of a single species), our plan is to rewild the land with active effects normally created by species currently missing due to biodiversity loss. For example, we will provide the kind of waterway disruption normally created by beaver dams, and the natural replanting normally created by seed-disruption caused by birds and herbivores. Conservation measures undertaken will reflect root causes and specific issues native to the ecosystem.
The Innovation. In addition to the above rewilding of the ecosystem, we plan to take existing forests on privately owned land and transfer legal ownership to the forests themselves. This follows the precedent set by the Magpie River and other grants of legal personhood to natural systems. Under the legal structure of the rights of Nature, the forest will have legal autonomy. We propose that at this stage of the project the legal entity have a supporting human-based governance organization for decision making, which will include the local land owners. The Deodands will act as a connective thread between ecosystem impacts in the environment, the rights of the forest, the local and global community engagement with people, and the hands-on rewilding work on-site.
Our Learning & Legacy. Our lessons learned will be shared and communicated across channels in order to be adapted by the (local and) larger community. Our legacy is to enable the rights of nature, to give natural systems a voice in the human world, and for all of this to be supported and enacted by a growing population of nature enthusiasts, who assist ecosystems and species in thriving, in order to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Deep Human Reconnection
Creating a tangible link to the outdoor enthusiast and inner conservationist. The Deodands Project is volunteer-driven and will provide hands-on training to enable volunteers to assist in ‘dancing with nature’ in situ, on the land — directing purposefully disruptive action that would otherwise be carried out by missing animals such as beaver, elk and bison. Volunteers will also help in actively rewilding by planting native species in the ecosystem.
Local engagement. Additionally, the Deodands Project is purposefully creating an opportunity for eco-tourism, in which nature enthusiasts can visit and participate in wild nature, with or without volunteering. This initiative is meant to involve and financially assist the local community, who are suffering due to current biodiversity loss.
Active Technologies for Good
Engaging the unexpected. Technology can be an asset, a tool, and an enabler; however, some technological advancements have resulted in unexpected outcomes — now more than ever, people are engaging in digital environments, and forgetting about the natural world. We are going to change this.
The Deodands Project is providing a ‘connective bridge’ across social media, existing gaming platforms, metaverse and web 3.0 engines to engage users with digital representations of the deodand in these environments. Actual, natural systems become players, social media contacts and chat partners online. Through them the deodand invites people to reconnect with the wild of the natural world, and through digital purchases and other initiatives, directs monies to helping the natural ecosystem that it represents.
Protecting the rights of Nature via technology. The Deodands Project is a project focused on representing the rights of nature by giving nature an active voice with the latest technologies (such as AI, blockchain, and smart contracts) - to enable thriving, measured, process-oriented ecosystem outcomes.
