The draft of this declaration that has never been signed, but which is discussed in the book by Gagliardi, Reijnen and Valentini, takes up a new light now that Pope Francis has written Laudatio Si!. It is published here to continue the conversation that is triggered by the encyclical letter. Assembled in Venice, the most beautiful, most technology dependent, most threatened creation of human audacity and ingenuity, we wish to bear testimony that there exist other ways to handle ecological conflicts. Gathered for three days in the island of San Giorgio at the initiative of foundation Cini, our self-assembled group of ecologists, theologians, anthropologists and social scientists, offer the following testimony encouraging other participants around the world to dismiss, discuss or amend their propositions.

https://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/hau4.2.014 I read How forests think as part of a vast movement to equip anthropologists, and more importantly, ethnographers, with the intellectual tools necessary to handle a new historical situation: the others are no longer outside; nonhumans have to be brought back in the description in a more active capacity. Both of those features, naturally, mark the disappearance of older notions of nature and of its counterpart, namely culture; disappearance, that is itself due to the fact that everybody—ethnographers as well as former informants—are pulled deeper and deeper into the same ecological maelstrom. Whatever the term—is it an ontological or a semiotic turn?—the importance of the book relies on the most crucial turn of all: that is, a turn to experience and how to describe it empirically.

I take “critical zone” to mean a spot on the envelope of the biosphere (Gaia's skin in Lovelock's parlance) which extends vertically from the top of the lower atmosphere down to the so-called sterile rocks and horizontally wherever it is possible to obtain reliable data on the various fluxes of ingredients flowing through the chosen site (which in practice generally means water catchments)3. “Ingredients” here does not mean only chemicals or physical elements since “EU legislation”, “agricultural practices” or “land tenure” might be part of the data to recover from the study just as well as the amount of nitrates. In the eye of an outsider, what are the advantages of the notion of critical zones for geopolitics?

Research in history, management and sociology of technology has shown that innovations fail to explore their environment in a way that ensures a positive learning process for four basic reasons: • Lack of realism; • Lack of strategy; • Lack of falsifiability; • Lack of innovativeness. It is around these four pathologies and their associated indicators that a relationship between an “innovator” and an “evaluator” is built. The methodology encourages the two to engage in a learning process to analyse and discuss the project in these “PROTEE" terms. It provides tools to assist this process and analyse the results. To achieve this, PROTEE establishes a paper trail that provides a principled description of the project by documenting the successive meetings between the innovator and the evaluator in terms of PROTEE indicators. This paper trail allows for the progressive build-up of a file allowing the innovators and evaluators to assess the quality of the exploration trajectory of the innovation. The comparison of the indicators over time makes it possible to grade the quality of the learning curve and to decide whether or not to continue the exploration. Class 1: Realism or "anti-ballistic" The whole class makes sure that innovators have not started with a project and then looked for a world in which to implement it with as little deformation as possible (the ballistic pathology) but are able to first describe a future world and only then search out elements that render their innovation more realistic. The evaluator will then grade the description given of the project at hand: I,a): by its richness; I,b): its heterogeneity; I,c): its uncertainty; I,d): its contingent. Class 2: Strategy or "anti-paranoia" This second class makes sure that the project is now thought of in strategic terms, that is, considers every opposing view as an opportunity to modify the project and entering into a negotiation as to its character, goal and functions. The evaluator will grade the description according to the following indicators: II,a): opposition; II,b): justification; II,c): specification; II,d): negotiability. Class 3: Falsifiability or "anti-manipulation" The third class of indicators makes sure that the trials proposed by experts, politicians, technicians, public etc. for assessing various aspects of the future project are themselves relevant, useful and quality controlled. Without this double checking of the relevance of the trial objectives, the trials would be carried out in vain. The evaluator will grade the research PLAN proposed by the innovators according to the following indicators: III,a) arbitrariness; III,b) openness; III,c) proof of proof; III,d) criticality. Class 4: Innovativeness or "anti-monsters" The fourth class of indicators makes sure that the process of exploration itself should not be continued without good reason, either because the project should be discontinued (it is a "white elephant") or because, on the contrary, it is a very innovative and long-term risky project (a “hopeful monster") or, finally, it has matured so that other project management techniques are applicable. The evaluator will grade the description given by marking the following indicators: IV,a) retroactivity; IV,b) reconciliation; IV,c) risky diagnosis: IV,d) limit conditions.