Action

Giving Back to Nature

Humans benefit enormously—materially, culturally, intellectually—from the more-than-human world. Indeed, many of humanity’s finest achievements would be unthinkable without nature—from the development of modern medicines to aviation to clothing design and beyond. And, yet—partly flowing from the distinction drawn between nature and culture—law, governance, and corporate practices rarely recognize the key role played by the living world and its many beings. What would better practices look like? How can humans and human organizations embed reciprocity with the more-than-human world into their laws, rules, and operating principles?

The MOTH Program develops answers to these questions through the actions it takes in collaboration with partners.

What would better practices look like? How can humans and human organizations embed reciprocity with the more-than-human world into their laws, rules, and operating principles?

One such effort is the Song of the Cedars, a song that was collaboratively created by four humans—the musician Cosmo Sheldrake, the writer Robert Macfarlane, the legal scholar César Rodríguez-Garavito, and the mycologist Giuliana Furci—and a cloud forest, namely the Los Cedros Forest in Ecuador. With the crucial assistance of the Ecuadorian organization Celid Plural, a legal petition was filed with the Ecuadorian copyright office, seeking to have the Los Cedros Forest recognized as an author of the Song of the Cedars along with the four human authors. 

The aim of the song and its accompanying legal petition is to recognize—legally and culturally—the inextricable agency and participation of the natural world in the making of art. The song could not have been made without Los Cedros, legally and philosophically justifying the effort to acknowledge the forest’s “moral authorship” in the song’s creation. Moreover, the hope is that pushing for recognition of Los Cedros’ authorship will trigger a change in the profoundly anthropocentric realm of copyright law.

While human musical creations have used sounds of nature since time immemorial—and some have recognized nature’s role in them—this initiative is the first known legal attempt to recognize an ecosystem as the moral co-author of a song or other work of art.Song of the Cedars is available on Spotify and YouTube.