Learning to speak anew

Does the tech being built around "nature risk" and "biodiversity risk" reinforce the fragmented thinking behind the crisis of collapsing ecosystems and vanishing species? A reflection on perception, responsibility, and the search for a different approach.

We have always been namers, classifiers, and thus, dividers. We draw lines on maps, lines between fields, lines between what is mine and what is yours, between what is nature and what is human. We draw lines between me and you.

We're also managers, controllers, exploiters of one thing or another. We attempt to be stewards, while often mistaking what stewardship means, as we've been managing and manipulating natural systems for too long. We focus so intently on the single leaf we forget the forest, or gaze so broadly at the distant mountain we can't feel the soil eroding beneath our feet. Our perception is fragmented, struggling to hold the entirety of the living world — the intricate, dynamic web of which we are a part; but only play a part.

The consequences of our fragmented seeing are becoming undeniable. Stressed, even collapsing ecosystems, the — sometimes quiet — disappearance of species once common. So now we speak of "nature risk," "climate risk," "biodiversity risk," all curiously sterile terms for the profound imbalances threatening the systems that sustain us. Imbalances that stem from our actions and inactions.

Nature risk

Born out of boardrooms and balance sheets, a language designed not primarily for understanding, but for managing liability within existing financial frameworks, attempting to quantify the unquantifiable, aiming to put a price on the cascade of terrifying effects when a wetland is drained, a forest fragmented, a pollinator vanishes.

During customer research I've been told many times that "if you manage to build something that puts a price on nature, we'll buy it."^[1] But such sterile nature accounting inevitably falls short and will leave us adrift even more. How can we care for what we cannot adequately perceive, and even more so, when we believe that nature and us are not one and the same? Especially when the dominant language actively prevents a perception rooted in anything other than utility and risk? Or might we — the big collective business we — really only care for nature when there is a price tag on the "services" it provides us?

Ecosystem services: service to whom?

Another term that I'm not sure helps or hinders the work of preserving our habitats, species, and ecosystems. A service is usually provided by someone for someone. Are servant and server inherent to a service? That makes me wonder: ecosystem service as a service to whom? The human-centered lens immediately thinks in service to us, to our wellbeing.^[2] It is even in the definition itself: "Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans get from nature." The intention, at least of creating this term, is likely well-meaning. But isn't it exactly the human-centered vantage point that has led to nature in crisis?

For as long as I can remember, I have always felt like I was a part of nature, that I was nature. I believe all children do, yet when we grow up, many lose that sense of belonging and interconnectedness — and the systems we find ourselves in daily support the latter notion more than the one we were born with.

What this has to do with building a nature tech startup

You might wonder what these reflections have to do with building a nature tech startup. It seems to me: everything.

The way we perceive the world is represented in the products we build, the systems we design. And in turn, they have the power to either reinforce our perception or to change it — something evident even in the practical elements: the very methods we choose, the data sources we deem relevant, and the narratives embedded in our technology itself, all reflect our underlying perceptions, belief systems, and our sensemaking of the world.

But it goes deeper still: the way we perceive the world and our place in it shines through the knowledge we privilege (and that which we ignore), the outcomes we choose to measure (and those we leave unseen), and the assumptions that underlie all these choices.

Teaching machines to see

The consequences of these choices sharpen considerably when we begin to teach machines. The data we select, the patterns we highlight, the outcomes we ask algorithms to optimize for — these become the bedrock of their learning. Our ways of seeing, our embedded assumptions and privileged knowledge, risk becoming encoded and amplified within the very "intelligence" we seek to create.

Recognizing this weight, this potential for our own fragmented perceptions to become embedded, we attempt to build Archaster with a kind of internal and external stewardship: we try to remain attentive, questioning our assumptions even in the smallest choices — the nuance of microcopy in the interface, the specific datasets we prioritize, the larger architecture of the analyses and algorithms we select, and those we may one day build. It is a continuing, imperfect practice of trying to see our own seeing, to ensure the tool reflects the world more fully, not just our preconceptions of it.

Finding a different vocabulary

Part of this struggle lies in the vocabulary we inherit. Terms like "nature risk" or "biodiversity risk," born of calculation and commerce, feel inadequate to the intricate, life-giving reality they attempt to describe.

I have been feeling uncomfortable with these terms for a while. Now that we're in the process of building our frontend — the user-facing, potentially public-facing part of our product — I feel the need to find a different vocabulary for the insights, the knowledge, or even intelligence our software aims to deliver. Perhaps even requiring a new or, at the very least, different visual language that supports the reimagination of nature's place in business decisions.

Because we inevitably shape our world through our designs. Through the language we use on our interface, the concepts we allow space on the screen. What we present and represent, and how we do it, matters.

If other words, other concepts rooted perhaps in reciprocity or kinship, arise in your own reflections, they would be welcome additions to this necessary conversation. Naming, after all, is where understanding often begins, and where new patterns of thought can take root.

And, maybe, learning to speak anew is a necessary precursor of learning to see anew.

Beauty alongside data

My hope is that we are somehow able to build a product that includes space for beauty and awe alongside the data and risk metrics, and through that, maybe, possibly, play some kind of driving part in restoring the sense of belonging to nature that the preceding paragraphs argue has been systematically eroded.

But what makes this endeavour even more complex is that this state of erosion is reinforced by the very economic structures this product must, paradoxically, engage with and, almost surely, even depend upon for its own survival.

Building tools that honor this complexity, rather than ignore it, requires diverse perspectives. If you are exploring similar questions and see potential pathways for collaboration, I invite you to connect.