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Planetary Design

Cf.

  • habitability
  • Gaia
  • Astrobiology
  • Niche, niche construction – design as enabling niche-making by multiple agents, not just human imposition1
  • Planetary
  • Ecocentric Design, value framework (intrinsic worth in all life/ecosystems)
  • Interspecies Design, design with, not just for, other stakeholders (co-design, ecosystem engineers, niche construction)2
  • Ecological Engineering, concrete practices (wetlands, permeable surfaces, mycelium-based materials)
  • design for planetary boundaries
  • design for Earth system stewardship3
  • Bioregion, unit of design coherence (climate, topography, biota, human culture unified)
  • Plurivers, multiple valid worldings/ontologies coexist; design facilitates plural rather than universal worlds

Definition

Design that engages all scales, across spatial (molecular to planetary), temporal (immediate to deep time), and organisational (individual to biosphere) dimensions, privileging no single scale. It respects place-based particularity, bioregional differentiation, and multispecies agency whilst attending to planetary habitability boundaries. It rejects universalising or globalising design that imposes uniform solutions.4

Key Distinctions from Global/Universalising Design

  • Scale paradox: Holds planetary boundaries (biophysical limits) and local specificity (ecological difference, cultural context, niche construction) in tension simultaneously.5
  • Avoiding homogenisation: Rejects notion that one solution works everywhere; honours Buffon's law (species in similar places are different) and biogeographic distinctiveness.6
  • Particular over universal: Earth is "unsubstitutable" and "escapes the hubris" of those who would remake it uniformly.7
  • Historical/ecological literacy: Requires understanding place history, pre-existing knowledge regimes, and settlement patterns—not blank-slate universalism.8

What It Is Not

  • Global design: Treating planet as single homogenous system.
  • Sustainable development: Framework deemed inadequate; planetary design goes beyond mitigation.9
  • Nature romanticism: Acknowledges "plenty of suffering" in environments without humans (invasive beings; natural extinctions, parasitism, predation, disease) and does not idealise "pristine" nature.
  • Top-down universalism: Rejects imposing solutions across different bioregions/knowledge systems.

Methods & Evidence

  • Biogeographic reasoning: Compare island groups (Hawai'i vs. Galápagos); trace evolutionary/extinction/migration drivers.10
  • Niche-mapping: Identify existing practices of ecosystem engineering; stakeholder-specific impacts (positive for some, negative for others).
  • Multi-scale design: Articulate participatory interventions at multiple levels.
  • Indigenous, traditional, scientific, engineering, everyday, tacit, and plural knowledge integration: Post-colonial place-making; "both ways" learning11

Example Projects and Case Studies

  • Mars planetary engineering: Thought experiment of importing biology and observing how weeds/spontaneity reshape design intentions.12
  • Rewilding with constraint: Modest wolf reintroduction vs. untamed Pleistocene rewinding; recognises limits and stakeholder conflicts.
  • Urban ecological design: Blue-green infrastructure; connectivity between green areas; character-based personas (bird, kampung resident).
  • Landscape-scale interventions: Practice-oriented approaches avoiding false precision and engaging alternative social practices.13

Planetary design is institution-building as much as material intervention: at planetary scale, to design is also to decide who governs Earth-system habitability, on whose behalf, and at what scale. The forms of governance below are its institutional repertoire, alternative and sometimes contradictory answers that track planetary design's own commitments:

  • Scale and locus: centralised and global,25 polycentric and bioregional,30 or held in common;23 the governance face of the note's scale paradox.
  • Standing and voice: not only acting on behalf of nonhuman beings (stewardship,20 guardianship,18 trusteeship28) or granting them legal standing,32 but extending nothing about us without us34 to nonhuman leadership (see Leadership). Institutions are therefore hybrid, refusing to separate humans, human culture, or human technology from nonhuman beings, and learn from no-harm human models, above all Indigenous and traditional relational governance (see Inclusion (Private)).
  • Governance as design: these forms are themselves designed artefacts open to redesign,14 so selecting and combining them is itself a planetary-design act.

For future impact, the closest communities already treat design and governance as one problem: Earth system governance and Earth system law,29, 31 ecological democracy and the politics of the Anthropocene,16 and pluriversal design and design-as-politics.15, 17

Relevant aligned, alternative, and contradictory concepts.

  • Governance
  • governance as design,14 treating institutions, law, and decision-making as designed artefacts open to redesign15, 16, 17
  • management (see Decision Making)
  • custodianship
  • guardianship,18 responsible guardianship, effective deoccupation19
  • stewardship20, 21, 22
  • planetary commons23, 24 (see Commons)
  • global governance25
  • Mother Earth kinship26
  • the Earth Charter27
  • trusteeship28
  • Earth system governance29
  • polycentric governance, subsidiarity, multi-level governance30
  • Earth system law,31 more-than-human legal standing32 (see Law)
  • the global vs the planetary33 (see Planetary)
  • planetary boundaries as governance targets23, 3
  • One Rights35

Acampora, Ralph. “Oikos and Domus: On Constructive Co-Habitation with Other Creatures.” Philosophy & Geography 7, no. 2 (2004): 219–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/1090377042000285426.

Brooman, Simon. Animal Law: Challenges and Themes. With Debbie Legge, Rachel Dunn, and Deborah Rook. Essex: 5m Publishing, 2025.

Brauch, Hans Günter, ed. Towards Rethinking Politics, Policy and Polity in the Anthropocene: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Cham: Springer, 2025.

Monnin, Alexandre. “Planetary Negative Commons.” Translated by Isabelle Chaize. Multitudes 85, no. 4 (2021): 117–25. https://doi.org/10/g993tc.

Peters, Anne. Animals in International Law. Leiden: Brill, 2021.

Working Group of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture. Terra Viva: Our Soil, Our Commons, Our Future. A New Vision for Planetary Citizenship. Tuscany: Navdanya International, 2015.

References

Deckha, Maneesha. Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021.

Koffel, Thomas, Tanguy Daufresne, and Christopher A. Klausmeier. “From Competition to Facilitation and Mutualism: A General Theory of the Niche.” Ecological Monographs 91, no. 3 (2021): e01458. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1458.

Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten. "The Earth's Living Infrastructure: Multispecies Niche Construction in the Gaian Cité." In Cross-Disciplinary Dialogues with the Earth Sciences, edited by Martin Bohle and Cornelia E. Nauen, 187–224. Cham: Springer, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-97445-8_7.

Swartz, Brian, and Brent D. Mishler, eds. Speciesism in Biology and Culture: How Human Exceptionalism Is Pushing Planetary Boundaries. Cham: Springer, 2022.

Notes

Footnotes

  1. Odling-Smee, F. John, Kevin N. Laland, and Marcus W. Feldman. Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.˄

  2. Tironi, Martín, Marcos Chilet, Carola Ureta Marín, and Pablo Hermansen, eds. Design for More-than-Human Futures: Towards Post-Anthropocentric Worlding. London: Routledge, 2024.˄

  3. Gupta, Joyeeta, Diana Liverman, Klaudia Prodani, Paulina Aldunce, Xuemei Bai, Wendy Broadgate, Daniel Ciobanu, et al. “Earth System Justice Needed to Identify and Live within Earth System Boundaries.” Nature Sustainability 6, no. 6 (2023): 630–38. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01064-1.˄

  4. Samson, Kristine, and Michael Haldrup. "A Planetary Turn for Design? Speculations on Withdrawal and Cohabitation." In Nordes 2023: This Space Intentionally Left Blank, edited by Stefan Holmlid, Vanessa Rodrigues, Carl Westin, Peter G. Krogh, Maarit Mäkelä, Dag Svanæs, and Åsa Wikberg-Nilsson. Norrköping: Linköping University, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2023.81.˄

  5. O'Neill, Daniel W., Andrew L. Fanning, William F. Lamb, and Julia K. Steinberger. "A Good Life for All within Planetary Boundaries." Nature Sustainability 1, no. 2 (2018): 88–95. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0021-4.˄

  6. Cox, C. Barry, Peter D. Moore, and Richard J. Ladle. Biogeography: An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach. 1973. 10th ed. Hoboken: Wiley, 2020.˄

  7. Neyrat, Frédéric. The Unconstructable Earth an Ecology of Separation. Translated by Drew S. Bruk. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019.˄

  8. Mattern, Shannon. Code + Clay... Data + Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.˄

  9. Washington, Haydn, Guillaume Chapron, Helen Kopnina, Patrick Curry, Joe Gray, and John J. Piccolo. “Foregrounding Ecojustice in Conservation.” Biological Conservation 228 (2018): 367–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.09.011.˄

  10. Lomolino, Mark V. Biogeography: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.˄

  11. Sale, Kirkpatrick. Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985.˄

  12. Gao, Weijun, Xiangru Kong, and Nan Zhang. "From Survival to Symbiosis in Mars Planetary Engineering." Journal of Asian Urban Environment 2025, no. 1 (2025): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.69457/aiue.20250008.˄

  13. Pedroso-Roussado, Cristiano, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Vera Fearns, Mariana Pestana, Valentina Nisi, Ann Light, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. "Zoöp Futures: Towards an Organisational Framework for Ecological Cooperation between Humans and More-than-Humans." Futures 169 (2025): 103584. https://doi.org/10/g9bh4v.˄

  14. Burdon, Peter D. “Rethinking Global Ethics in the Anthropocene.” In The Crisis in Global Ethics and the Future of Global Governance, by Peter Burdon, Klaus Bosselmann, and Kirsten Engel, 92–108. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019.˄

  15. Ostrom, Elinor. “Polycentric Systems for Coping with Collective Action and Global Environmental Change.” Global Environmental Change, 20th Anniversary Special Issue, vol. 20, no. 4 (2010): 550–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.07.004.˄

  16. Rockström, Johan, Louis Kotzé, Svetlana Milutinović, Frank Biermann, Victor Brovkin, Jonathan Donges, Jonas Ebbesson, et al. “The Planetary Commons: A New Paradigm for Safeguarding Earth-Regulating Systems in the Anthropocene.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 5 (2024): e2301531121. https://doi.org/10/gtfk3h.˄

  17. Steffen, Will, Åsa Persson, Lisa Deutsch, Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Katherine Richardson, Carole Crumley, et al. “The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship.” Ambio 40, no. 7 (2011): 739. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-011-0185-x.˄

  18. Peretz, Roee. “Guardians, Not Masters: A Systems-Level Humanism for a Biodiverse Planet.” Transactions in Earth, Environment, and Sustainability 3, no. 2 (2025): 106–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/2754124X251385749.˄

  19. Bosselmann, Klaus. “The Role of Trusteeship in Earth Governance.” In Ecological Integrity in Science and Law, edited by Laura Westra, Klaus Bosselmann, and Matteo Fermeglia, 241–52. Cham: Springer, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46259-8_20.˄

  20. Petersmann, Marie-Catherine. “Sympoietic Thinking and Earth System Law: The Earth, Its Subjects and the Law.” Earth System Governance 9 (2021): 100114. https://doi.org/10/gmvh58.˄

  21. Charlton, James I. Nothing about Us without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.˄

  22. Simon, Herbert A. The Sciences of the Artificial. 1969. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.˄

  23. Biermann, Frank. Earth System Governance: World Politics in the Anthropocene. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.˄

  24. Kotzé, Louis J., Rakhyun E. Kim, Catherine Blanchard, Joshua C. Gellers, Cameron Holley, Marie Petersmann, Harro van Asselt, Frank Biermann, and Margot Hurlbert. “Earth System Law: Exploring New Frontiers in Legal Science.” Earth System Governance 11 (2022): 100126. https://doi.org/10/gtztgj.˄

  25. Dryzek, John S., and Jonathan Pickering. The Politics of the Anthropocene. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.˄

  26. Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.˄

  27. Boehnert, Joanna. Design, Ecology, Politics: Towards the Ecocene. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.˄

  28. Mancilla, Alejandra. “Effective Deoccupation: Towards Responsible Guardianship of Nature.” Political Philosophy 2, no. 2 (2025): 450–72. https://doi.org/10.16995/pp.23671.˄

  29. Seitzinger, Sybil P., Uno Svedin, Carole L. Crumley, Will Steffen, Saiful Arif Abdullah, Christine Alfsen, Wendy J. Broadgate, et al. “Planetary Stewardship in an Urbanizing World: Beyond City Limits.” Ambio 41, no. 8 (2012): 787–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-012-0353-7.˄

  30. Barritt, Emily. “Conceptualising Stewardship in Environmental Law.” Journal of Environmental Law 26, no. 1 (2014): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/jel/eqt030.˄

  31. Steele, Wendy. “Protecting Planetary Commons: More-than-Human (in)Security in Climate Change.” In Global Security Reimagined: A Multi-Disciplinary Exploration, edited by Tuba Boz, Hariz Halilovich, and Aiden Warren, 229–48. Cham: Springer, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-89632-3_13.˄

  32. Gauthier, Pilar E., Dekila Chungyalpa, Robin I. Goldman, Richard J. Davidson, and Christine D. Wilson-Mendenhall. “Mother Earth Kinship: Centering Indigenous Worldviews to Address the Anthropocene and Rethink the Ethics of Human-to-Nature Connectedness.” Current Opinion in Psychology 64 (2025): 102042. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102042.˄

  33. Westra, Laura, and Mirian Vilela, eds. The Earth Charter, Ecological Integrity and Social Movements. London: Earthscan, 2014.˄

  34. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Planet: An Emergent Humanist Category.” Critical Inquiry 46, no. 1 (2019): 1–31. https://doi.org/10/gg2rj7.˄

  35. Stucki, Saskia. One Rights: Human and Animal Rights in the Anthropocene. Cham: Springer, 2023.˄