Note: This is a follow-up piece. For more context about the Conference Of All Life, read Of All Life.

“You will represent the BIRDS.”

This had to be one of the most exciting and terrifying email subjects I have ever received. When I signed up to participate in the Conference of All Life (COAL) at Brown, I hoped to get the chance to represent a non-human entity. Now that my wish had been granted, I faced the challenge of advocating for ten thousand species of birds across seven continents, trying to distill what they would most want in a “Treaty of All Life.”

The three days of COAL were meant to simulate climate negotiations with delegations representing Birds, Artificial General Intelligence, and Social Entrepreneurship, along with traditional, nation-state entities such as China and Mexico. The conference attracted students and faculty from Brown, RISD, Johnson & Wales, and a few participants from universities further afield—all willing to take a chance on this potentially-foolish, potentially-groundbreaking experience. In the colorless, ultra-modern lobby of the new Watson Institute, we would try to shed our own skin and step into the feathers or binary code of our respective delegations. 

As a bird geek, I spent the days leading up to the conference toying with questions such as Are Arctic Terns depressed by ice melt in both their summer and winter homes? And Would feral pigeons oppose urban greening? My two fellow delegates—also birders— shared my curiosity and enthusiasm for getting to speak for our beloved animal idols. As the conference kicked off, however, we received a reminder of the seriousness of our task from Bella Noka, an elder of the Narrangasset tribe of present-day Rhode Island.

Among the speakers tasked with setting the tone of the conference, Bella Noka stood out. She took the podium without slides or a script and looked her audience in the eye. Empathetic but frank, she warned, “You say you want to speak for these creatures. Don't be so arrogant. You can't speak for them, but you can feel for them.” Her words gained even more potency as she connected this goal of speaking for the unrepresented to the decades of dispossession Brown University had perpetrated in Providence, stretching back to the violent removal of Narragansett and other Indigenous peoples from their ancestral homes by European colonists. Bella Noka herself is an elder of the Narangansset, a group usually excluded at Brown University. Her presence and decision to speak at this Brown-sponsored conference— despite her admitted reluctance due to the harm she and many others in Providence associate with the University—triggered a tangible change in the energy of the room.

This is the power of listening to silenced voices, I thought. But even as I started to appreciate the vision of this more-than-human conference, I realized Bella Noka was right. It was arrogant to think I could speak for birds, no matter how many of their scientific names and life-history facts I knew. Speaking as Charlotte, the only entity I can ever really embody, I would have to find a way to access a deep empathy for birds and let it guide me through the negotiation process: “you can feel for them.” Unfortunately, this is not something they teach you how to do in a typical Western education.

The rest of the conference consisted of artistic and gestural visualization of our delegation’s priorities, listening sessions with other groups, and lots of discussion within our teams. Throughout this process, I continuously chafed against a tendency to make my personal opinions on climate-related issues fit my delegation rather than permitting the exercise of embodying birds to prompt new thoughts about these issues. The Bird delegation, for example, brainstormed how we could align ourselves with the Clean Technology Industry and US Military-Industrial Complex delegations because birds’ incredible physiology gives inspiration to human engineers. Looking back, I wonder: would Birds really want to aid the continued existence, let alone technological development, of either of these groups? It was much easier for me to brainstorm ways I could theoretically justify why birds are important to humans (and therefore merit continued existence) than to question whether human enterprises are helpful to birds or any other life forms (and therefore merit continued existence).

In hindsight, other delegations seemed to struggle with the same thing. The Livestock delegation, for example, claimed to value the use of their entire bodies over being wasted. While I admired this idea, I wondered whether this would really make a difference to animals raised for slaughter, or if it just served to make humans feel better about raising animals for this fate. Stepping away from anthropocentrism was no easy feat for any of the human participants. Big shocker, I know. Although I never fully succeeded, the process of trying to de-center myself and my species generated new questions which I look forward to continuing to explore.

On the final day of the conference, the organizers presented us with a collection of rights of all life based on what each delegation had advocated for on behalf of their entity. This “Treaty of All Life” was a self-described work-in-progress, containing aspirations such as the right to self-actualization and autonomy of movement (a priority of us Birds). More insightful than the treaty document itself, however, was the accompanying discussion. Participants grappled with how many of the rights were necessarily contradictory, especially when applied to the delegations present. How could ExxonMobil and Coral Reefs, for example, both have a right to “as much life as possible?” Should a company’s existence even count as life? Maybe the answer is easily no for ExxonMobil. But what about a country such as Qatar whose economic and geopolitical interests align with the continued use of fossil fuels? Certainly the humans of Qatar deserve a voice, but representing them through the mechanism of a nation-state means delegates advocate for the continued existence of the state before that of the people within it.

Looking through the list of delegations at COAL, I realized how many were human categorizations projected upon living things. Without these tags, many of our entities actually overlapped. Livestock are Invasive Species, Invasive Species are sometimes Birds, Birds are often Climate Migrants, some Climate Migrants are part of Mexico, and Mexico includes Mexicans today and Future Generations. Maybe these categories were needlessly dividing us. Maybe, as delegates, we were unconsciously trying to advocate for the continued existence of our category rather than the life within it. I would guess this is certainly the case in real climate negotiations where the only entities represented are something as arbitrary as nation-states.

As my mind spiraled in this manner, I looked proudly down at my nametag: “Birds.” Birds, the last living ancestors of the dinosaurs, predated humans by millenia. They are a diverse, ingeniously-adapted, life-filled community not created to serve some human need. Maybe this started to explain why it was so hard for me to understand, let alone deeply empathize with, them. Today, scientists are working on decoding animal sounds, and I would not be shocked if we soon learn that bird communication is far more advanced than we ever dreamed. Maybe, one day, we can ask birds how to save the planet. For now, however, I will turn to them to help me interrogate myself when I say I am advocating for environmental policy that supports the thriving of all life on earth.