Nature On The Board. Giving Nature a voice and a vote.

In early 2021, my partner, Anne, and I started to wonder: ‘Could Nature run the company?’ The company in question was Faith In Nature – a UK soap company (of which we’re both directors).

In August 2022, Faith In Nature became the first company in the world to make Nature a director — giving Nature a voice and a vote on all matters that impact upon it. Which, let’s face it, are all matters.

But what happened in between felt like an odyssey. We approached the move from a place of idealism, not knowledge, so we learnt in dog-years about schools of thought we didn’t even know existed. We made calls to people who we half-expected to laugh us out of town — and, instead, found ourselves welcomed by brilliant minds and open hearts.

Here’s the explainer film we put out for the day the news launched:

Most often the response we hear is: “That’s so simple, I can’t believe nobody’s done it before”. Which, having seen a lot of ideas come and go, I know is the mark of a great idea. Great ideas should be simple. And I’m allowed to say it’s a great idea without blowing my own trumpet because it was actually Anne’s brainwave, not mine. All I did was run with it.

But nobody wakes up of a morning and thinks ‘today we’re going to make Nature a director of our company’ without a backstory. There are also hours upon hours of interviews that didn’t make that video. And months upon months of research that lead to those interviews. And years upon years of prior work fighting for the Rights of Nature that laid the foundations for that research. So this publication is where I intend to unpack a lot of that.

In the film I say ‘It becomes meaningful when it’s not just us doing it’. Broadly, I still agree with that sentiment. But, in hindsight, perhaps I would have worded it slightly differently. Even if this was just a symbolic appointment, it would still have meaning. But the fact that one company somewhere in the world has really gone and given Nature an actual vote on proceedings is the shift. The idea has been had, the legal legwork has been done and the move has been implemented. This isn’t just a thought experiment or more blah blah blah. It’s a fundamental change to how a business can run, if a business wants to. It’s already meaningful.

This publication is also where I’ll share as many of the ongoing learnings as possible. Because for all the work that was done to get here, the real work is not in the appointing, but in the ongoing doing. Nature On The Board is not a product, it’s a process. And processes develop. They evolve. And they lead to other things.

One of the things I trust this will lead to is other companies doing the same. It’s why, from the beginning, I set out to create something that could be shared and replicated. And for that, despite the initial question sounding like a flight of fancy, the solution needed to be uncomplicated, practical and legally sound.

It’s also why, now, this publication sits outside of Faith In Nature. So much of what I share will be learnings observed within Faith In Nature, but I can already see so much growing around Nature On The Board that it needs its own home. I hope to eventually share learnings from other companies here too. And developments that are far beyond the boundaries of a wonderful, but humble, soap company.

It feels a bit early to be calling Nature On The Board a movement. (One company doing this does not a movement make!) But there are whisperings in the background. And all the early signs point to this being just the beginning of the story.

And, wherever this leads, it is a story in any case.

The notion that Nature is a resource from which business can go on extracting its profits is the most destructive story ever told. Thankfully it’s also a story that so many of us have seen straight through. If it was a film, we’d have walked out by now. Or slashed the seats in protest. We can smell the ending, and it stinks.

So the only real option open to us is to write a different story. To imagine a different ending and plot a course towards it.

Nature On The Board is far, far from the only story nudging us towards a different ending and one of the great discoveries of starting this is just how many other great storytellers there out there too — whether they think of themselves in that way or not. But Nature On The Board is the only story I’m in a position to tell. And I intend to keep telling it from the place it started — a place of creativity, curiosity and idealism.

I’m massively grateful to, and in awe of, the incredible lawyers who translated what sounded like a child’s question into workable corporate governance. They’re the ones in the video speaking from iPads stuck to trees near my home (because how else do you show gratitude?) Namely, they’re Paul Powlesland and Brontie Ansell of Lawyers For Nature (in the UK) and Grant Wilson, joined later by Alexandra Pimor, of Earth Law Center (in the US). In ad-land, we think of ourselves as working in the creative industries. Now, having met these particular lawyers, I’m beginning to wonder whether the dusty old law might have a place in those industries too. (And something tells me that’s a whole other post…)

In any case, that’s one of the things I love most about Nature On The Board. That it bridges so many different worlds. Most obviously, it bridges the business world and the natural world. It was made possible through collaboration between lawyers and advertising creatives. And support for it comes from across the spectrum. From academia to horse communicators. From board rooms to people whose idea of hell would be sitting in one.

And that’s precisely the point, isn’t it? Because it’s going to take a huge collective effort from all of us — wherever we are, doing whatever we do — to turn this thing around. It’s going to take an abundance of ideas as wild and relentless as Nature itself to save it.

Which is where this builds the greatest bridge of all: between the idea of us as seperate to Nature to being part of Nature itself. When I cross this bridge, every emergent idea of how to protect the natural world become’s Nature’s own idea of how to save itself. Of how to save our collective self. When I start to think in these terms, I feel creatively free. Status quo breaks apart like a crack in the concrete. And in that crack can grow any future of our choosing.