The Environmental Performance Agency’s Multispecies Care Survey is a public engagement and data gathering initiative meant to provoke and articulate forms of environmental agency that de-center human supremacy and facilitate the co-generation of embodied, localized plant-human care practices. This continues the EPA’s work in response to the dismantling of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the 2016-20 presidential administration. With this project, the collective asks for public input: In a time of pandemic crisis, how do we re-value what care means for all living beings? An online survey and series of protocols, as well as facilitated Multispecies Community Care Circles, will integrate the need for social distancing with the encouragement of new discoveries, connections and understanding of diverse nonhuman life along the margins. With the data gathered through this survey, EPA will ultimately work towards drafting a new piece of policy, The Multispecies Act. This Act aims to offer a set of embodied, actionable principles for centering spontaneous urban plant life as one means (among many) of contending with the failure of our environmental regulatory apparatus to deliver policy that protects and values life both human and non-human.
This survey intends to frame embodied observation of everyday, easily overlooked lifeforms who live alongside humans as a means to broadening one's ability to sense and feel and value nonhuman life. That thriving of nonhuman life is essential to the future of human life as well. A more just, equitable future for all humans will also be one that sees nonhuman lifeforms, including plants and insects that live with us in urban and disturbed habitats, and helps them find space to thrive as well.
Explore the Humanities pathways that led to this project
Troy, New York, USA