The Council of the People and the Bears: Vision of animal-inclusive democracies - Melanie Challenger - Hoofdinhoud

At the tail end of 2024, around 70 participants from 30 different countries gathered in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, for the annual Animal Politics World Conference.

This years’s theme was ‘Human - Wildlife Conflict: let’s coexist peacefully!

Keynote speaker Melanie Challenger gave a lecture on 'The Council of the People and the Bears: A vision of animal-inclusive democracies.'

Melanie is the co-director of Animals in the Room and Vice President of the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). She is a writer, specializing in ideas about nature.

As co-founder of Animals in the Room, she works on arts and tech-based models for representing non-human life in decision-making. She’s the author of How to be Animal and Animal Dignity (ed.), among other books.

Bears in the Room is a talk on how to bring the voices and perspectives of large carnivores and other animals into decision-making contexts that will directly impact them. Melanie will introduce a forthcoming pilot in Trentino Italy to represent the voices of bears in a participatory process around human-bear co-existence, and suggests ways forward for deliberation that includes other species in policy and social change.

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