Every year, the MOTH Program hosts an interdisciplinary gathering which brings together leading thinkers and doers from diverse fields, from environmental and human rights law to philosophy to biological sciences to Indigenous advocacy to storytelling and communications. In building bridges across disciplines, the gatherings cut across the traditional silos that limit the exchange of ideas and perspectives, promote new and creative ways of thinking, and facilitate the development of the substantive details that will put more-than- human (MOTH) rights on firmer ground. The gatherings feed into the long-term work of MOTH and help the Program develop answers, through its various approaches, to the legal questions identified above.

Thus far, MOTH has run three Annual Gatherings. The first, held in 2022, focused on the foundations for more-than-human rights and was held in Tarrytown, New York. The second was co-hosted by the Fungi Foundation in Chile and was designed to explore more-than-human rights in practice.

The 2024 Gathering, meanwhile, was co-hosted by the Sarayaku Indigenous People and held in their territory. This third annual gathering built off the scaffolding laid by the previous two gatherings. While keeping with the general theme of “MOTH in practice,” the 2024 gathering was tailored to two new points of focus. First, as this gathering was co-hosted by the Sarayaku and held in their territory, the gathering spent substantial time on the Sarayaku People’s initiatives—including the Kawsak Sacha, or Living Forest, Initiative. Second, the gathering explored in particular the role of the arts in driving the MOTH paradigm forward—which is why the 2024 gathering included a significant cohort of artists, from musicians to visual artists to poets to ceramicists and beyond.

Building off the success of the first three MOTH gatherings, MOTH will host the 2025 MOTH Gathering at Hollyhock on Cortes Island in British Columbia, Canada. This next conference will focus on a glaring gap in more-than-human rights: the oceans. In doing so, the conference will incorporate participants from local and North American Indigenous communities with longstanding ties to the ocean. As with the previous conferences, the 2025 gathering will flesh out how to advance more-than-human rights in practice and identify concrete plans for action for the subsequent year.