The Plant Initiative
Building a movement to increase respect for plants
The Vegetal Turn: A Conversation with Marcello Di Paola
Thursday, January 30, 2025
12:00 - 1:00 pm Central US Time
Join us for this free online conversation with plant philosopher Marcello Di Paola about his new book on plants in the environmental humanities.
What are some new ways that scholars in the environmental humanities are thinking about plants, including plant intelligence, plant personhood, plant-human relations, and plant rights?
Join Dr. Marcello Di Paola in a conversation about his important newly edited book The Vegetal Turn: History, Concepts, Applications. The event will be moderated by Plant Initiative board member Dr. Laura Pustarfi.
Join us for this free interactive program!
There will be time for questions from the audience following the discussion. This free program will be livestreamed with a link to be sent to participants before the event and will also be recorded and available for viewing online afterwards.
About the book
The Vegetal Turn: History, Concepts, Applications charts the multidimensional course of what has come to be known as the “Vegetal Turn” in environmental humanities - a wave of theoretical and practical interest in the complexities and peculiarities of plant life and plant-human relations. The turn consists of increasingly sophisticated, inter- and trans-disciplinary, inter- and trans-cultural explorations of the multiple systems and networks of intelligence, communication, technical-operational capabilities, and relations articulated by and via plants. In its applicational aspects, it concerns itself with the ethical, economic, cultural, and political dimensions of plant-human and plant-mediated human relations and practices.
The volume includes contributions from philosophy and the humanities more generally that reflect on the history, prospects, and applications of four main themes that the Vegetal Turn has brought to general attention: plant intelligence, and what its peculiarities can tell us about intelligence more generally; plant personhood and/or moral standing, and the justifications and implications of attributions thereof; plant-human relations, plant-mediated human relations, and the ethics of human practices that concern or involve plants - from agriculture to the arts, from forest conservation to global health management; as well as the rights and/or political representation of plant life and the other life-forms that depend on it, human as well as non-human, present and future.
About Marcello Di Paola
Dr. Marcello Di Paola is an environmental philosopher, writer and public speaker. He writes on ethics, aesthetics, political theory, and the history of philosophy. Among his publications are Ethics and Politics of the Built Environment: Gardens of the Anthropocene (Springer, 2017) and the co-edited volumes Canned Heat: Ethics and Politics of Global Climate Change (Routledge, 2014), Climate Change and Human Rights (Global Policy, 2015), Plant Ethics: Concepts and Applications (Routledge, 2018), Handbook of the Philosophy of Climate Change (Springer 2023), and The Philosophy of Outer Space: Explorations, Controversies, Speculations (Routledge 2024).
Marcello is Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities at the University of Palermo in Italy. His teaching is entirely dedicated to contemporary readings and applications of the thought of Baruch Spinoza. He is the founding president of Minima Urbania, a network devoted to environmental education and various cultural and creative activities. He also grows succulent plants professionally and is in the management team of Vivai Cuba.
November 2024 Monthly e-mail newsletter
Each month, The Plant Initiative sends out an e-mail newsletter to provide timely information and resources about improving the plant-human connection as well as to keep you up to date on our work.
Here's the link to the November 2024 e-newsletter which was sent on November 15, 2024.
To subscribe to the e-newsletter, just visit our home page and enter your e-mail address on the form on that page. If you have a suggestion for a resource, event, or other item that may be of interest to subscribers, please consider sharing it with us at info@plantinitiative.org.
Thank you
13 grants awarded by the Plant Initiative in 2024!
We are pleased to let you know that 13 grants were recently awarded by The Plant Initiative!
These grants totaling $6,500 were provided in October 2024 to organizations working to increase respect for plants, encourage ethical behavior toward plants, and/or to support development of an effective movement toward these goals.
Grants of $500 each were provided to:
Center for Biological Diversity (Tucson, AZ) to support the Center's legal and other efforts to protect the Alaskan glacier buttercup, found only in the Kigluaik Mountains on the Seward Peninsula in Western Alaska, which is imperiled by climate change and rapidly warming Arctic climate as well as by potential mining activities and other threats.
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (Spokane, WA) to support the Center’s staff time and travel to advance and enforce the rights of manoomin (wild rice), which has been recognized in tribal law by the White Earth Band of Chippewa in Minnesota.
The Cultural Conservancy (San Francisco, CA) to support the Conservancy's Native Foodways Program, in partnership with Intertribal community, including purchasing California ethnobotanical seeds and plant starts for ecological restoration in their land base, as well as to purchase additional heirloom seeds, fruit tree starts, and seeds for winter crop planting.
Dogwood Alliance (Asheville, NC) to support the Alliance's forest advocacy activities, which seek to protect the forests of the US South and to work in partnership with frontline communities to develop economic alternatives that work with and for the Southern forests.
Earth Law Center (Durango, CO) to support the Center in developing a policy report and blog on the concept of plants as kin and family members, as well as other innovative and ecocentric protections, and exploring legal and cultural frameworks worldwide, with the grant supporting staff time and design costs for this work.
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (San Francisco, CA) to support GARN's work to advance the "Declaration of the Rights of the Amazon", including developing and distributing educational materials to be shared with GARN's members and allies that highlight the importance of recognizing the Amazon as a subject of rights.
Institute of Relational Being (Los Angeles, CA) to support initiatives that are focused on enhancing appreciation for plant life through community engagement events and materials for educational workshops in the Los Angeles, CA area, to help cultivate a deeper respect for plants within that community.
The Land Institute (Salina, KS) to support the Institute's sustainable agriculture work, including expanding and accelerating perennial grain research, building network,s and helping to develop perennial grain supply chains and markets.
Native Seeds/SEARCH (Tucson, AZ) to support their mission of conserving and sharing the seeds of the people of the desert Southwest and Mexico by establishing a new dedicated rainwater harvesting basin for dry-farm crop seed production on their Conservation Farm that will also serve as a crucial habitat for beneficial insects and pollinators.
Old-Growth Forest Network (Easton, MD) to help support the purchase of an ArcGIS Online subscription to help the organization to increase its mapping capabilities in order to fill a gap in the nationwide accounting of remaining old-growth forests and lands that are set aside for protection as well as to help create educational materials for visitors to their website.
Re:wild (Austin, TX) to advance the recovery of Ekman's Magnolia, a Critically Endangered tree endemic to the biodiversity-rich Tiburon Peninsula of Southwest Haiti, through working to conserve its habitat and propagating these rare trees in field nurseries for reforestation, in collaboration with the Haiti National Trust.
Seacology (Berkeley, CA) in support of Seacology's seagrass project in Las Calderas, Dominican Republic, where seagrass faces threats such as sedimentation, runoff, and coastal development, with the project supporting community patrols, educational workshops, signage, stakeholder engagement, and strengthening ecotourism in collaboration with local partners.
WildEarth Guardians (Santa Fe, NM) to support implementation of a communications and outreach plan to highlight the need to protect the Joshua Tree which is facing threats from climate change, including a digital communications campaign which will help to build extensive support in Southern California around this issue.
With your support, The Plant Initiative plans to continue to provide grants in 2025 to organizations working on behalf of plants!
the Plant Initiative's 2023 annual report
Check out The Plant Initiative's 2023 annual report to learn more about our work in the past year!
2023 was the third full year of The Plant Initiative and we experienced a lot of growth in our programing this year as is described in this report. This included online events, grants, our monthly e-mail newsletter, podcasts, a report, social media, and collaboration with Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene.
A big thanks to Plant Initiative board member Mya Hummel for donating the design for the report and to Betsey Crawford of The Soul of the Earth for allowing us to include her beautiful photos of flowers. Also, thanks to Vegan Printer for their generous discount on the printed version of the report .
As an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff, we have done a lot with a modest budget. Thank you for all of the support and interest you have shown over the past year!
Learn more about our work by reading or downloading the report here or by clicking on the report cover..
The Plant Initiative Podcast - New Episode
The Plant Initiative is posting podcast episodes on our YouTube channel.
Our fourth episode, recorded on March 29, 2024, features a wonderful conversation with Grant Wilson, Executive Director of the Earth Law Center and Plant Initiative board member Sue Fager about the Rights of Nature.
New online plant networking site!
Join the new Plant Networking site on Hylo!
This new free Hylo networking tool is a special interactive web site set up for those interested in the human-plant connection supported by The Plant Initiative and Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene. It's a space for sharing active research, collaborations, art, and any forms of humans and plant relations. Use this page to collaborate, share, and to connect with others interested in thoughtful ways of relating to plants.
Visitors to The Plant Initiative's web site are especially invited to join this online community!
