Biodiversity Love And Law: How Stories, Art, And Law Come Together For Biodiversity Protection

​A conversation, strategy session, and live humpback whale Artivism experience.

​With the harm clause stripped from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and our oceans and national parks opened to mining and drilling, it feels like a bleak moment for biodiversity in the United States.

​So we're going straight to the people doing something about it, on both fronts this fight needs: the law, and the culture change that supports it.

​Earthjustice is suing the Trump administration over the harm clause. We'll hear from the team on that case: what we should know, what happens next, and how we can help as storytellers, strategists, artivists, and movement builders.

​More Than Human Life is fighting for the other half — the rights of nature — and it's the hopeful half. A river in New Zealand has legal personhood. So does a cloud forest in Ecuador. Enough people came to feel that a river was a someone rather than a something, and lawyers spent years turning that shift into language a court would accept.

​And on the culture side— culture shift supports policy shift. Stories and art move people in ways arguments can't reach; law makes the shift real, enforceable, hard to undo. So we've asked Roxi Shohadaee of Design Science Studio — a regenerative incubator training artists and designers to shape what comes next — to bring the culture side to the table: how creative practice becomes a cultural movement. She’ll share activations she’s done all over the world, including renegade projections in front of biodiversity COP delegations’ windows, and many other wild stories. Along with insights from Climate Shifted, an award-nominated podcast about best practices in climate Artivism, psychology, and behavior design.

​Together we'll chart the path ahead — how we support biodiversity, and each other, with the skills each of us brings.

​Plus, a live taste of the culture shift: host Eva Frye will guide you through an Artivism experience she’s been using to end commercial whaling in Iceland- powerful recordings of humpback whales hunting in Gitga'at waters, using awe to help people fall in love with these creatures so they want to protect them.

​DETAILS

​Thursday, September 24 · 4:00–6:00pm

​Caravan of Dreams · 405 E 6th St, East Village, NYC

​4:00–5:30 Whale acoustics + conversation

​5:30–6:00 Mingle

​SPEAKERS

​César Rodríguez-Garavito — Founding Director, More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program, NYU School of Law

​MOTH advances legal recognition for rivers, forests, fungi, and whales — including a partnership with Project CETI on the legal implications of decoding sperm whale communication.

​Ben Levitan — Senior Attorney, Earthjustice

​Lead counsel on the ESA "harm" fight. Earthjustice is the nation's largest nonprofit environmental law organization, litigating on behalf of clients free of charge.

​Roxi Shohadaee — Director + ARTchitect, Design Science Studio

​Roxi builds programs that builds capacity for artists and designers to become regenerative-futures practitioners, and has created a multitude of activations for wildlife, like for the Campaign for Nature and the 30x30 Challenge, and Biodiversity COP in Montreal.

​Moderated by Eva Frye — Host, Climate Shifted; whale artivist

​Climate Shifted is an Ambies-nominated podcast about what actually works to move people on climate. Eva works with the emotion of awe to help people fall in love with whales — so they want to protect them.

​In the Dream Room at Caravan of Dreams. Part of Where Climate Week Comes to Dream: https://dearcrisis.com/climateweek

​Tickets are on sliding scale, please donate to the level of comfortability. We are opening up 10 spaces for César’s law students to attend, please consider donating to cover their ticket costs if accessible to you 🤍

​We aim to keep our events accessible. If money is an issue, please apply for financial assistance from our Community Fund.