Ecological Emergencies

Intergenerational Knowledge Celebrating Care-Centered Societies

Project Team: Elaine Webster, Manisha Desai, Mara Ntona, Mauricio Salgado, Michelle Lobo, Shawn Fleek

Geography: Europe & North America

Summary: In this intergenerational, cultural, and narrative intervention the project team will facilitate a personal storytelling and community dialogue process for youth (18-30 years old, the youngest voting public) and elders (for whom the future has already arrived). Honoring diverse care-centered knowledge systems including of Indigenous, diasporic and other communities, the dialogues will explore wisdom and ways of being that ensure human and more-than-human beings sustainably coexist and thrive on planet Earth. 

Experimental Questions

  • How might we uncover little known or forgotten knowledge through intergenerational dialogues?

  • How might that knowledge seed a groundswell of interest in environmental/ecological justice and human/more-than-human rights?

  • How might the participation model and focus on a care-centered approach begin to challenge international/interstate governance?

  • How are guiding concepts of the convenings being reframed through this experiment? 

Methods & Themes

  • We are conducting intergenerational dialogues with different communities to learn about and share knowledge and practices of care. The dialogues will be framed around the passing of values and practices of care for self, community and the more-than-human, within and between generations. From this process of dialogue and participatory knowledge narration, we will build a collection to share with the participants and larger communities. 

  • The concept of the ‘cosmo-local’ captures both worldview and scale. Firstly, as a worldview, cosmo-local reflects a commitment to acknowledging the multiplicity of local cosmologies, or ways of understanding the world, that emerge from multiple localities. Secondly, cosmo-local as scale, refers to the movement and evolution of knowledge in multiple directions, between local communities and a networked global community. 

  • Contemporary neo-liberal societies have focused on growth and profit over people and planet that has led to unsustainable practices and intersecting inequalities. As a counterpoint, we seek to center care as a way to move towards societies that are more just and sustainable for people, communities and the more-than-human world, enabling all to flourish. 

  • Binaries between human and non-human, and nature and culture, have led to an impoverished imagination of ways to think about how all life on the planet can flourish together. Our focus is to center practices that open up new possibilities for generative care-centered responses, to push boundaries of our understanding of environmental/ecological justice and human/more-than-human rights.

Pathway to Transform International Governance

This experiment for change challenges foundational ways of thinking within, and reliance upon, international/interstate governance. Through a cosmo-local lens, storytelling and intergenerational dialogues, we hope to amplify political practices that provide an alternative vision of international governance. Rather than state- and intergovernmental-centric approaches, these practices promote multi-scalar local and trans-local governance structures that are in conversation with but not limited to or determined by the existing nation state-centered international order. They emerge from local struggles for environmental/ecological justice and human/more-than-human rights towards care-centered societies.

As such, the governance model they embody, like the diverse ecosystems within which they are located, is not of scaling up, but of scaling out.  The experiment is guided by values aligned with de-growth, post-capitalism, and nature-centered worldviews. Wisdom from the intergenerational dialogues will be shared in this initial stage across cosmo-local sites participating in the project, and later disseminated in a number of forms, including through a performative intervention.

Meet the Team

  • ELAINE WEBSTER

    CO-LEAD

    Dr Elaine Webster (LLM Hons, MA, MA, PhD) is Reader in Human Rights Law at the University of Strathclyde (Scotland, UK). Elaine’s background is in law, international politics, and multidisciplinary human rights research. One strand of her research on rights interpretation by diverse actors focuses on environmental governance and from 2019-2024 she was co-investigator on the One Ocean Hub project. A cross-cutting theme relates to the principle of respect for dignity.

  • MANISHA DESAI

    CO-LEAD

    Manisha Desai (PhD) is the Empowerment Charitable Trust Endowed Professor of Global Citizenship and the Executive Director of the Center for Changing Systems of Power at Stony Brook University. Her areas of research and teaching include gender and globalization, transnational feminisms, global justice, particularly climate justice movements and human rights. Manisha's current research includes women's rights, land rights, and climate justice in India and NE United States.

  • MARA NTONA

    CO-LEAD

    Mara Ntona is a Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde Law School, where she contributes to research and teaching at the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (SCELG) and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law (CSHRL). Her thesis explores the extent to which a human rights-based approach to marine spatial planning can serve as a legal tool for upholding and nurturing the multifaceted linkages between ocean health and human well-being.

  • MAURICIO SALGADO

    CO-LEAD

    Mauricio Tafur Salgado is an Assistant Arts Professor of Theatre Studies, Director of Applied Theatre and the Associate Chair at the Department of Drama. Mauricio is mestizo + first gen + born to proudly subversive Colombians + brown skinned + amateur bio-regionalist + aspiring theologian + cis-hetero + married + father + artist, pursuing justice and healing through a decolonial framework. He collaborates to organize space where folx rehearse revolution, compromise, rage, tolerance, strength, trust, and vulnerability.

  • MICHELLE LOBO

    CO-LEAD

    Michelle Lobo is a Research & Litigation Fellow at the Center’s Earth Rights Advocacy program, working closely on the More than Human Rights (MOTH) initiative to advance ecocentric stories and innovative legal strategies. She has a JD from the University of Minnesota where she was a Dean’s Distinguished Scholar. She currently also works with the Fungi Foundation as their legal counsel and board Chair, and is passionately dedicated to its vision and mission.

  • SHAWN FLEEK

    CO-LEAD

    Shawn Fleek, a Hinen (Northern Arapaho) professional management consultant, provides nonprofits, businesses, and political campaigns resources for shaping public narrative. I specialize in strategic storytelling, directing the creation of multimedia, navigating relationships with the press, and public speech preparation and coaching. This work is rooted in the thoughtful, rapid deployment of the written word and compelling content through digital and print channels, toward shaping organizations’ understanding of themselves, and decision-makers’ understanding of the systems around them.