Workshop Recap: Rethinking planetary and sustainability governance through cosmological imaginaries
10 November 2025
In October 2025, the PlanetStewards Project co-hosted the international workshop on ‘Rethinking planetary and sustainability governance through cosmological imaginaries’, jointly organized with the EU COST Action FOGOS: Futures-Oriented Governance of Outer Space, the Earth–Space Sustainability Network, and the Space in Time initiative. Held at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, the workshop gathered thinkers from various disciplines and traditions to explore how diverse cosmologies can illuminate our constructions of the Earth-Space systems paradigm and offer alternatives to the unsustainable and hegemonic approaches that currently mark humanity’s relationship with the cosmos.
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Across two days of panels, from cosmic ethics and worldmaking in physics and astronomy, to discussions on planetarities and the limits of cosmological containerization, the workshop explored diverse perspectives and knowledge on cosmological imaginaries. Colleagues from history, philosophy, theology, space science, social science, and more presented on views from ancient astronomy, various cultures and religions, modern aesthetic black-hole imaging, the monsterization of extra-terrestrial life, and many more cosmologies. A recurrent thread was what it means to “not-do”: to resist the compulsion toward expansion, extraction, and domination, and instead cultivate imaginaries of reciprocity, humility, and care within Earth-Space systems.
The workshop opened a space for discussions on how Earth-Space governance can be addressed as a cultural, ethical and relational question. As such, participants reflected on how these shifts matter for the institutional future and how such re-imagined paradigms can meaningfully inform international sustainability governance, including possible pathways for engagement with the United Nations. These are issues central to informing our work at the PlanetStewards Project supported by the European Research Council (ERC), which leads the efforts to advance the Earth-Space systems agenda. The workshop is a follow-up from the 2024 Earth-Space Symposium in Utrecht.
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Read the abstracts of the talks, including propositions from our speakers here.
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