Published: 04-12-2025
We live in a century shaped by loss – of habitats, species and ecological certainty. The idea of reviving extinct creatures can be seductive. But resurrection isn’t just scientific: it is deeply moral, forcing us to ask what a virtuous relationship with nature – based on respect, care and humility – should look like in an age of extinction.
Published: 07-10-2025
As the IUCN World Conservation Congress opens in Abu Dhabi, members face a pivotal choice between embracing genetic engineering as a conservation tool or pausing to apply the precautionary principle to these rapidly advancing technologies.
Published: 12-06-2025
A Bigger Conversation will be collaborating with the University of Edinburgh, The Nuffield Council on Bioethics and others on a new project from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). Part of its Synthetic Plants programme, the aim of the project is to take a holistic approach to designing governance frameworks.
Published: 01-05-2025
As the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) begins its formal deliberations on synthetic biology applications, we find ourselves in a critical window where governance frameworks around the use […]
Published: 18-02-2025
As the UK pushes ahead with plans to deregulate both environmental and commercial releases of gene-edited crops and foods – and, soon, farm animals – this thoughtful long-read considers whether we are building a bright new future or just a more sophisticated form of man-made pollution.
Published: 26-09-2024
A new report from A Bigger Conversation argues that the concept of sustainability has become distorted and compromised, and needs to be radically rethought. It explores how we can shift to a life-centric approach, linked to a core philosophy that sustainability must first and foremost sustain life.
Published: 01-07-2024
A day-long workshop on The Future of Digital Technology in Agroecology co-hosted by the University of Exeter and A Bigger Conversation presented a timely opportunity to disrupt common assumptions that digital technology serves industrialised approaches to agriculture.
Published: 04-10-2022
Calls for sustainability criteria for genome edited organisms are welcome and long overdue, but sustainability cannot be used as a substitute for risk assessment
Published: 14-01-2022
Technology isn’t values neutral and treating it as if it is diminishes discussions around innovation and appropriateness and diverts from much needed dialogue around sustainability and sufficiency.
Published: 27-07-2020
Panellists at our recent webinar Sense, Science and Sustainability tackled the question of genetic engineering in food and farming through a sustainability lens– leading to some surprising admissions. Co-hosted with […]
