Biophilic Institutions: Building New Solidarities between the Economy & Nature

Abstract Climate change and economic insecurity are the two most pressing challenges for modern humanity, and they are intimately linked: climate warming intensifies existing structural inequities, just as economic disparities worsen climate-induced suffering. Yet precisely because this economy-nature interrelationship is institutionalized, there exists an opening for alternative institutional configurations to take root. In this essay, we make the case for that institutional remaking to be biophilic, meaning it supports rather than undermines life and livelihood. This is not speculative thinking: biophilic institutions already exist in the here and now. Their existence provides an opportunity to learn how to remake institutions founded on solidarities of shared aliveness and a shared alliance with life that advance the premise that nature and the economy are not just intertwined but indistinguishable.