Everywhere you look, the pressure to radically rethink how the economy interacts with nature is mounting. Climate urgency has a way of narrowing the field of vision, locking people into the belief that clever financial products can somehow fix everything. Adrienne Buller captures this dynamic perfectly in The Value of a Whale, pointing to an IMF initiative that puts a $2 billion price tag on a whale. How come? Because of its supposed value in carbon sequestration and eco-tourism. It is seductive to think that saving the planet can be a matter of tweaking balance sheets, but does it really get us where we need to go? And more importantly - how do we break out of this narrow frame without collapsing into hopeless cynicism?

This is what the workshop tried to address. Our central question: How do we flip the economics of ecology? Not just tweak it, not just criticise it from the safety of academia, but actually reimagine and reconfigure it. How do we craft systems of value that do not just reflect capitalist logic but actively challenge and subvert it?

The Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI) is experimenting in this space, treating data from ecological stewards as the foundation for so-called eco-derivatives. The idea is to build digital products and assets that root economic activity in the preservation of biodiversity not as a side benefit, but as the point. In exploring SNI’s partnership with the organisation ‘Forgotten Parks’ stewarding wildlife in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the workshop provided pragmatic insights into the everday life of biodiversity stewards and the challenges and possibilities of engaging with the digital economy.

In that sense, the beauty of the workshop was not just in the ideas but in the mix of people around the table. Ecologists side-eyeing technologists. Legal scholars and anthropologists pushing back against financial logics. People who measure biodiversity for a living debating with those trying to code ethical principles into blockchain. It was not always comfortable, but it was alive, messy, and urgent. Some were deeply skeptical of the idea of monetising nature, while others saw it as the only viable way forward. But in the mess, there was movement.

For me, this workshop distilled what makes IAS such a special place. It is not just a venue for thinking big thoughts, it is a space where ideas can collide, mutate, and grow into something unexpected. It is rare to find an institution that is willing to take intellectual risks, to host conversations that do not fit neatly into disciplinary boxes, and to see what happens when you throw unlikely people into a room together.

Walking away from the ‘Treasuries for Planetary Survival’ workshop, I did not have answers. But I had better questions and sharper insights. And it’s exactly the kind of work that IAS makes possible.

The fellowship enabled me to develop the following contribution

Leiter, Andrea, ‘X’ in Marie Petersmann and Dimitri Van Den Meerssche (eds), Underworlds – Sites and Struggles of Global Dis/Ordering (Cambridge University Press, 2025)

And a terrific interview with IAS journalist in residency Sanne Bloemink:

Bloemink, Sanne, ‘Het wonder van complexiteit Leeuwen-avatars en parkranger-outfits’ (18 March 2024) De Groene Amsterdammer

English translation here.