This project aims to realize a knowledge infrastructure for biodiversity justice by expanding the role and meaning of public libraries through situated engagements with biodiversity and art-based practices. This will be achieved through developing participatory methods and situated hybrid (digital/analogue) tools for generating living repositories or archives of local biodiversity as part of re-invented ‘public’ libraries, where the notion of ‘public’ expands to a multispecies world. Building on existing networks and organizations, pilot biodiversity libraries in Enschede and Amsterdam and a mobile version will act as vehicles for public engagement, local biodiversity data collection, and memories and cultural knowledge. By empowering and partnering with existing activities, the project will create stronger Netherlands-wide networks of learning, and catalyze a broader and political discussion about how Dutch society can embrace biodiversity justice. This means exploring possible futures in which biodiversity justice is fully embedded into planning and policy, our economic decision making, and everyday culture, lifestyles, and practices. Artistic engagement and local positioning of facilitated research engagements would allow for dilemmas and frictions to emerge in discussion and be explored through creative futuring methods and simulations.
