Each year in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, around 25 infant gorillas are named and celebrated in the Kwita Izina ceremony, modelled on the country’s baby-naming tradition.
The event attracts world leaders, celebrities and wildlife champions, and the rangers, trackers, veterinarians, and local communities who protect and care for Rwanda’s gorilla population every day.
Naming gorillas gives them dignity, or agaciro, a Kinyarwanda concept that has underpinned Rwanda’s development journey, including its approach to sustaining its natural economy.
But the country’s gorilla population – now growing at 3% a year – also has financial value.
What if there were a way to pay these magnificent animals what they are worth?
‘Interspecies money’ could do just that.
A BOOST FOR COMMUNITIES
This radical new approach provides a mechanism for living creatures – such as Rwanda’s gorillas – to express simple preferences and creates strong financial incentives for local communities to protect and nurture them.
By awarding economic value to wild animals, trees and other species, interspecies money increases the opportunity cost of their decline and extinction and enables the circular flow of resources between humans and non-humans.
Tehanu, led by futurist Jonathan Ledgard, has estimated the financial value of the gorilla population at nearly US$1.4 billion (about N$26.8 billion) – close to 10% of Rwanda’s GDP.
Tehanu recently worked with the Rwandan government to complete the world’s first cross-species payment.
In August 2024, a family of mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park received a digital identity and wallet.
Acting as a trustee, Tehanu used artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify these animals’ interests and made mobile payments to the neighbouring citizens who could meet those needs.
Many of the services a gorilla requests through its trustee should boost investment in stewardship and therefore increase incomes for the human populations living alongside them.
These could include mobile phones and sensors to collect data about the gorillas’ wellbeing, and extra security to ward off poachers and deforesters.
Interspecies money thus enables countries and communities to foster economic growth by protecting, rather than exploiting, biodiversity.
GROUNDBREAKING
As early adopters, Rwanda’s gorillas are pioneers in what we believe can become a new model for human-wildlife economic collaboration.
The main justification for interspecies money is that it largely passes from the beneficiary species to human service providers, because if it does not work for people, it will not work for animals.
This requires equity across species and communities.
Buoyed by the Rwanda pilot’s early results, we co-chaired a working group of leading ecologists, ethicists and AI and finance experts.
We discussed the technical, governance and financial needs for expanding interspecies money to 100 species globally by 2030.
Fortunately, many of the technical requirements already exist.
Non-humans can acquire a digital wallet linked to their identity – gorillas, for example, are identified by facial and gait characteristics, as well as other markings.
AI enables humans to infer other species’ preferences and financial value.
The increasing availability of distributed computing makes it possible to build a data-verification system that markets, governments, and, above all, local communities trust.
Crucial to scaling interspecies money is capital.
Philanthropic organisations, multilateral institutions and governments in the Global North, which already invest more than US$16 billion (about N$306 billion) annually in biodiversity, should provide funding for human-wildlife collaboration.
A ‘Bank for Other Species’ dedicated to investing in non-human infrastructure – like the World Bank does for humans – should be established to manage these resources.
EQUITY AND PROSPERITY
As a next step, Tehanu plans to pilot interspecies money with elephants in rural India and ancient beech trees in Romania, among other species.
Of course, many details must be worked out for such experiments to be effective at scale.
Policymakers and stakeholders must create mechanisms to prevent theft and adjudicate ownership disputes and design a strong selection process for human trustees.
Moreover, guardrails are needed to ensure trustees act as responsible fiduciaries.
Some may object to putting a price on nature. But the environment is already being monetised and the interests of non-humans are being sidelined.
Interspecies money seeks to change that with its vision for a new planetary economy that can support prosperity and equity for people and animals alike.
As a form of universal basic capital, interspecies money aims to redistribute billions of dollars in a way that increases non-human participation in the economy and encourages solidarity and collaboration among species.
But that will require us to treat other living creatures with the dignity they deserve.
- – Nils Gilman, chief operating officer and executive vice president at the Berggruen Institute, is deputy editor of Noema Magazine. Mutesi Rusagara is state minister of finance in charge of resource mobilisation and public investments of Rwanda.
– Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024; www.project-syndicate.org
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