Although the political debate on swift bricks continues (see the subsection on the context of the debate in Methods), the three cases above clearly represent the positions expressed by major stakeholders. Table 1 summarises our interpretation of the stakeholders’ positions regarding the swifts’ representation and agency. While the ecologically reflexive activist-conservationist Hannah Bourne-Taylor claimed to speak on behalf of the swifts, and MPs showed empathy and attentiveness to swifts’ interests, speaking as their stewards, the Government’s response represented a technocratic rationality, with swift bricks framed as part of ‘green infrastructure’ and ‘biodiversity net gain’. Although the Feather Speech may unnecessarily anthropomorphise the birds, Bourne-Taylor herself suggested that it ‘was really more of a song for swifts, an ode for their survival’43.
Both Bourne-Taylor and MPs agreed that swifts are a culturally iconic species that can potentially serve as an ecological umbrella for other species, thus alluding to their social-ecological importance49. Some MPs embraced the idea of the swift brick as a simple gesture that could help the swift population recover and saw it as a rare example of an easy measure to have such an important potential impact. MPs were largely sympathetic towards swifts and swift bricks, reflecting the broader social support captured by books also cited during the parliamentary debate46,47. Still, wary of enforcing any new obligations on developers, the Government and some MPs emphasised the opportunities to protect swifts within the existing legal framework, including via the biodiversity net gain provisions. Meanwhile, both Bourne-Taylor and some MPs highlighted the failures of the existing solutions to provide swifts with nesting sites. Even if the Government were right and swifts would choose not to use some of the bricks that might have been created for them, in this case, they were still not allowed to make these choices themselves.
Adopting a nonhuman perspective is meant to be an evocative conservation argument. It appeals to people’s empathy and attentiveness, trying to understand nonhuman actors, such as swifts, as their own beings whose needs are closely intertwined with those of humans. The language used matters a lot here, especially given that only humans took part in the debate. In a sense, all stakeholders referred to the swifts’ needs and spoke on their behalf. However, it was only the activist-conservationist who gave an imaginary voice to the swifts and, in this way, attempted to focus public attention on what the swifts demand. The example of the debate on swift bricks demonstrates the challenges of adopting a nonhuman perspective as a conservation narrative, which may be one of the reasons why established conservation organisations rarely refer to arguments such as multispecies justice or nonhuman rights. Most importantly, policymakers and politicians seem to be impervious to these rights narratives.
Below, we reflect on why different stakeholders acknowledge or refuse nonhuman representation and agency, offering additional insights into how multispecies justice could be further operationalised in the context of arguments that might speak to a broader range of stakeholders. In particular, we connect to the debate on the value of nature and the underlying worldviews to creatively address a multispecies perspective in standard political debates on infrastructural improvements and net gain narratives. Indeed, politicians and policymakers are so used to hearing standard narratives, including through interaction with established conservation organisations, that they have difficulty engaging with an alternative discourse that refers to nonhuman representation and agency. We hypothesise that had a critical mass of conservationists started using these arguments, policymakers would need to engage with them, too. Strategic exposure to these narratives in the formative stages of respective political debates might help to make a difference. And here is a crucial role to be played by more independent activist-conservationists, such as Hannah Bourne-Taylor.
Being a culturally iconic species, swifts are fortunate enough to attract broader attention to their troubles28,50,51. Unlike some other bird species, such as pigeons, which evolved from a symbol of peace and a rightful urban resident to a ‘rat with wings’52,53,54, swifts are typically considered eligible urban cohabitants. Meanwhile, pigeons provide an emblematic example that reflects a broader trend of banishing species considered ‘pests’ or ‘pollution’, categories which almost any nonhuman actor can fit, ‘unless it is controlled or civilised’53. These may include geese, crows, the Australian white ibis, as well as gulls, parakeets and even starlings, which were mentioned in the parliamentary debate. This links to the distinction between the beneficial and the harmful, which has always been fundamental to the debate on nature conservation. The ‘utterly unobtrusive’ and ‘clean and noise-free’ swift bricks remain a relatively safe option. They do not require any particular sacrifices from humans to make space for other species while providing the additional cultural and insect control services of swifts—humans’ ‘tidy and quiet neighbours’.
As exemplified by the parliamentary debate, as stewards of nature, people may be willing to help birds, but they tend to selectively provide nest boxes to their preferred species (cf.55). Due to their priority status for many humans, the swifts’ case emphasises relationships with particular nonhuman species rather than broader multispecies sustainability26 or multispecies justice27,28. Embracing a multispecies perspective requires ‘the courage to question our most basic cultural narratives’56, most notably pertaining to the human–nonhuman divide. It might acknowledge kinship between humans and nonhuman entities23,57, or at least foster more convivial cohabitation33,58 or positive coexistence59 that acknowledges the nonhuman beings’ needs and capabilities.
Ultimately, what is at stake is not just the conservation/protection of an individual species but a broader acknowledgement of nonhuman rights and claims to space and resources. Acknowledging these rights translates into an obligation for humans to recognise and meet nonhuman needs18. Acknowledging nonhuman rights and agency would correspond with both parties consciously co-shaping or co-creating social-ecological reality, offering a transformative worldview change that lies at the heart of the social-ecological systems concept60,61. Indeed, the beneficial/harmful debate—reflected, for example, in debates on ecosystem services and disservices and the power of nature-based solutions to address human problems6—may favour swifts, but is also a way of reasoning that is fiercely rejected by some swift advocates44.
The Life Framework of values provides a helpful lens regarding the integration of intrinsic, instrumental and relational values in policy- and decision-making61,62, especially given the opportunity to apply it from the reverse nonhuman perspective63. It considers living from, in, with and as nature or its specific components, indicating why they matter to humans (or vice-versa, how humans may be perceived by nonhumans). While Bourne-Taylor tried to evoke a feeling of living as swifts, internalising a nonhuman perspective, MPs expressed the living with swifts perspective when referring to providing nest sites for these birds within human infrastructures. The government’s response is difficult to contextualise here because of its purely anthropocentric perspective and the fact that it treats swifts and their world as external to the world of humans that the government manages. It barely links to living in the broader environment, which the different legal instruments mentioned in the government’s response are meant to address. It also shows how easily the formal recognition of nonhuman rights, and even needs, can be sidestepped, despite these needs often being recognised in law, albeit with many loopholes. Meanwhile, swifts offer a perfect example of a nonhuman actor that has adapted to living with humans. From the swifts’ perspective, a city may be seen as ‘a petrified forest inhabited by strange creatures’45, but only Bourne-Taylor acknowledged this potential way of the swifts’ thinking.
The parliamentary debate, and certainly government policy, failed to acknowledge the stakes of nonhumans regarding different decisions and political choices62. Even when the swifts’ interests were represented, it was rather paternalistic (albeit well-intentioned), as reflected in MPs’ statements, such as ‘They are not here for terribly long, which is why we should give them a nice home to live in’ (Kit Malthouse) or ‘Swifts have been with us for millions of years [sic], and I hope that we can ensure that this remarkable species stays with us for much longer’ (Samantha Dixon, Labour). Perhaps the MPs considered the comforts of people caring for swifts, thus only indirectly acknowledging the swifts’ interests. While Bourne-Taylor’s campaign started with giving swifts a voice, acknowledging them as human co-inhabitants and thus being the closest to a pluricentric perspective, the government and MPs discussed these issues through an anthropocentric lens, leaving space only for the affection for swifts of certain members of the public. This reflects how the participation of many disadvantaged stakeholders is often tokenised, as seen in the cases of children64 or people with disabilities65. Indeed, most humans have difficulty envisioning nonhuman participation or representation other than through appointed guardians58,66, be it a benign steward (MPs) or a self-acclaimed ‘go-between’ (Bourne-Taylor).
Recognising the interests of nonhuman species requires a broader worldview regarding human–nonhuman or multispecies cohabitation59,67. Interestingly, with the progress of more-than-human design, representation increasingly involves ‘the creation of hybrid voices based on an ever-expanding array of beings that come to matter’68. This is shown by multiple examples of imagining exercises and role-playing games within which humans imagine and role-play the other species’ perspectives and use AI, field observations, and interactive agent-based models28,67,69,70. Nonhuman stories might be based on observing their behaviours, an approach that has also supported more-than-human design thinking related to swifts elsewhere71. While most debates remain selective about who is considered to matter enough to be represented, new approaches may be driven by addressing past harms incurred by multiple species in an attempt to repair human relations with the nonhuman actors69. This approach would be particularly relevant in the case of swifts, given that mandating swift bricks was intended to make up for past injustices—the loss of nesting sites due to new building techniques. Ultimately, empathy and attentiveness are always the first steps towards justice.
However, as the case of the demand to mandate swift bricks demonstrates, the nonhuman or more-than-human approach above is distant from the world of formal politics. It is a language and a broader worldview that politicians and policymakers are reluctant to embrace. In its response, the Government used very few counterarguments to directly try to reframe the swifts or their needs. Instead, it sought an elusive ‘biodiversity net gain’ that fits into and reinforces a neoliberal economic approach of biodiversity offsetting72 that has already been shown not to benefit individual species73. Similar problems have been observed in other cases of biodiversity offsetting74,75,76. Moreover, it is ineffective and leaves space for multiple abuses, as evidenced by developers not respecting guidance or even legally binding planning requirements. This raises broader doubts about the delivery of ecological mitigations, enhancements and offsets within the biodiversity net gain framework77. Although Bourne-Taylor and MPs raised similar concerns, the government sees biodiversity net gain as a potential primary solution to the loss of nesting sites, along with other similarly ineffective measures, such as the mention of swift bricks in the Government’s planning practice guidance.
What mattered to politicians in the House of Commons and policymakers in the Government was the political choice of whether decisions should be made in a top-down or a bottom-up manner, i.e. mandating vs leaving it to developers and local authorities to find the best solution for swifts on a case-by-case basis. Labour MPs were particularly sympathetic ‘with the Government’s position that local authorities and developers should not be compelled to include swift bricks in every single housing unit that they respectively authorise or construct’ and keen on allowing ‘for maximum local discretion’ (position summarised by Matthew Pennycook). Meanwhile, Conservative MPs were more eager to support mandating permanent and weather-resistant swift bricks, observing that developers were not necessarily complying with the NPPF guidance on biodiversity net gain and that, at best, they put up ‘wooden boxes here and there that will deteriorate over three or four years and then be gone’ (highlighted by Kit Malthouse). Clearly, the pursuit of economic growth and the interrelated processes of capital accumulation, economic liberty, and urbanisation affect not only the environment in general but also individual species and their rights15,69,78. Meanwhile, one of the challenges that planners and other stakeholders experience when trying to do something out of the ordinary is that the system within which they operate does not grant them the resources or the flexibility to do so28. This may be the case even when there are general guidelines that they could potentially use to support the cause, such as in this example. This underlines the importance of solutions that level the playing field for all stakeholders by mandating swift bricks rather than merely recommending them.
Beyond issues related to environmental values and worldviews, this case provides insights into debates on built, non-biological infrastructure. It differs from discussions about green spaces and more conventional habitat resources and extends the question of multispecies justice even further into the human realm. In this way, it invites multiple stakeholders to rethink the role of constructed infrastructure for nature conservation and restoration. Conventionally understood as ‘artificial’ and largely separate from (and often interfering with) nature, constructed infrastructure is also a place where nonhuman agency could be written into the human experience. Instead of an artificial world where most human constructions—buildings, transportation infrastructure, and so forth—offer little in terms of supporting biodiversity or our relationships with it, repositioning the artificial as something with the potential to also support nonhuman interests may provide an interesting opportunity to think differently about how life-worlds meet.
This perspective, however, remains distant from the current political debate. Legislation and pro-environmental policies are still positioned as having a bearing primarily on the green, not the grey. The opportunity to design for justice may help make an abstract concept more concrete and relatable. Design and the artefacts it creates mediate the capacity to empathise, understand, and, not least, compromise in daily interactions with the many human and nonhuman cohabitants79. While the discourse surrounding nature-based solutions typically focuses on biological components, non-biological components have much to offer, even regarding ecological compensation that underlies biodiversity net gain. Including the functions of non-biological components as nesting sites or potential substrates for soils might be the examples to start with, along with other debates on making human-built infrastructures less detrimental to nonhuman actors (such as preventing bird collisions with windows, powerlines and wind turbines).
Next, we address the question of when ‘nature-based solutions’ are also ‘solutions for nature’. Perhaps most importantly, the question that needs to be addressed in this context is: Whose problems are nature-based solutions meant to solve? While the classical definitions mentioned environmental, social and economic problems, clearly the focus has been on the problems experienced by humans. Our case study shows the potential to broaden this perspective by referring to multispecies justice, treating nature as a partner rather than a tool7,80. Indeed, multispecies justice considerations represent a cutting-edge area for nature-based solutions research, with a particular emphasis on relational thinking and a pluralistic approach to human–nonhuman interests16,28,81.
Our case study connects issues of justice with a broader emotional appeal, connecting nonhuman interests with the design of built, non-biological infrastructure. Could swift bricks that involve the creation of nesting sites for swifts within new human infrastructures be considered nature-based solutions for the sake of providing a just and equitable arrangement of shared multispecies space? Historically, swift nest holes were integrated into buildings to collect their chicks for food46,82. Recent attempts at mandating swift bricks, however, are targeted at benefiting swifts and restoring the habitats they are losing due to changes in human building techniques and broader sterilisation of human habitats. Hence, we explore a nature-based solution that is intended to restore nature for nature’s own sake. We argue that calling this a nature-based solution is as valid as any other intervention intended to protect, restore or provide habitats for nonhuman beings. It shows how the development of infrastructure that serves human needs can also support the interests of nonhuman cohabitants. Unlike in the conventional interpretation of nature-based solutions81,83, mandatory swift bricks would primarily benefit swifts, with any advantages to humans and other species being secondary co-benefits. Similar arguments (and indeed a similar petition and debate) could be made about the loss of insects with the ongoing use of chemical pesticides, which directly threatens the insects themselves, but also other species, such as swifts, who depend on them for their survival.
Further research could explore such an alternative framing of nature-based solutions. Studies could also investigate how the interests of swifts have actually been considered by those local authorities and developers who introduced the respective local requirements or voluntarily installed swift bricks in their new developments, despite the lack of formal requirements. The developers’ role could be explored within the framework of exploratory research on multispecies entrepreneurship, within which humans and nonhumans work as partners to deliver solutions, ultimately promoting nonhuman welfare84.
Finally, the issue of providing nesting sites is perhaps still easier to address—including by adopting a nonhuman perspective—than challenges such as insect availability or pollution, both of which are important interrelated problems for swifts and many other urban birds. While people may be relatively eager to help by providing alternative nesting spaces (and even acknowledge the rights of swifts to such spaces), they may be less likely to make larger sacrifices, such as changing their mobility, food consumption patterns or gardening practices. Nonetheless, the main point that we made in this paper is the need to go beyond technocratic rationalities (represented here by concepts such as biodiversity net gain and offsets) and genuinely recognise the rights of nonhuman species to the shared space, by recognising their representation and agency. Following a relational approach that is intended to overcome the human–nature dualism provides a foundation for a genuine multispecies cohabitation and justice18,31,85.
In conclusion, only Hannah Bourne-Taylor, the activist-conservationist, recognised the swifts’ agency and representation. Reflecting the broader societal perspective44,46,47, the parliamentary debate showed many expressions of admiration for the wonder of nature that the swifts epitomise, but not so much in terms of justice and recognising their rights and agency. Although the debate was initiated by an activist-conservationist who claimed to give voice to swifts, when confronted with formal politics, the questions of representation and agency of swifts receded to the background. The political debate over mandating swift bricks, and thus normalising human–nonhuman cohabitation, at least with regard to certain nonhuman actors, has been dominated by human perspectives on sharing space. While politicians welcomed the idea of humans living with swifts, some were sceptical of normalising it through legislation that might then be translated into an obligation to recognise and meet nonhuman needs. Broader exposure to arguments regarding nature’s representation and agency, particularly those rooted in non-Western and non-anthropocentric worldviews and value systems, might increase the opportunities to include them in political debates. Similarly, broadening the debate on nature-based solutions and biodiversity net gain to cover non-biological components and nonhuman interests would help to make human-built infrastructure less detrimental to nonhuman beings.
