Kinship with the Non-Human World

Reconnecting Before It’s Too Late

Kinship with the non-human world: What if the smallest lives—those we rarely notice—have the most to teach us about belonging?

For centuries, we (us humans) have torn through this planet with devastating arrogance. Destroyed forests. Killed species. Extracted resources without care for the delicate, intricate webs of life we are part of.

And its come at a cost, one that is accelerating.

The Cost of Forgetting: Biodiversity Loss in 2025

In 2025, we are witnessing the fastest rate of non-human extinction in recorded history.

• The Living Planet Index shows a 69% decline in monitored wildlife populations since 1970 and it continues to drop.
• An estimated 1 million species are currently at risk of extinction, according to the UN IPBES Global Assessment.
• Three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface and two-thirds of the marine environment have already been significantly altered by human actions.
• Insects are essential pollinators and ecosystem engineers. They are declining so rapidly that some scientists have called it an “insect apocalypse.” Studies indicate a loss of up to 75% of flying insect biomass in certain regions.

Kinship with the Non-Human from Indigenous Cultures

Yet this wasn’t always the way. For millennia, Indigenous communities understood the Earth, not as a resource, but as kin. They listened, observed, and lived in reciprocal relationship with land, water, animals, insects, and plants. They understood life not through dominance, but through connection. Through balance. Through respect.

Modern civilization, in its hunger for profit and power, chose to forget. We severed these threads of kinship. We mechanised, extracted, and justified our conquest of the living world.

Now too late for many species, too late for many ecosystems, academics, professionals, and artists are scrambling to remember what was forgotten. Desperately trying to learn from the more-than-human world before it disappears entirely.

Are We Finally Remembering How to Belong?

Thankfully the world is starting to wake up: Kinship with the non-human world is not just about biodiversity… it’s about the collapse of the systems that support life, including our own.

But something is shifting. Slowly, painfully, but undeniably.

Across the world, scientists, educators, artists (and countless others), are no longer dismissed as fringe “hippies” for speaking of connection, reciprocity, and respect for life. Ecological knowledge and kinship wisdom are stepping out from the shadows of ridicule into the light of evidence and urgency.

From cutting-edge biology to regenerative farming, from climate psychology to artivism, a new language is emerging. One that values real experience, rigorous data, and embodied practice. One that finally honours what Indigenous communities have known all along:

That to survive, let alone thrive, we must live in kinship with the more-than-human world.

There is hope in these efforts. 

Tools for Kinship with the Non-Human World

Projects like Kincentric Leadership are showing us pathways back to kinship with the non-human world. This week, they launch a powerful new Toolkit and Online Measurement Tool helping us reconnect with nature, from businesses to policy making, considerations and evaluate our actions, not as “users” but as kin. (You can find it here: Kincentric Toolkit).

Elsewhere, projects like the I.N.S.E.C.T Summer Camp invite people to rethink insects, not as pests, but as profound teachers. (More info here: Design and Posthumanism).

Exploring Kinship with the Non-Human World

So the questions remain:

What can bees, insects, animals, and plants teach us now if we are willing to listen? Where did we go so disastrously wrong? Is it too late… or just late enough to finally change?

Can you imagine what it would feel like to walk through the world with conscious, embodied awareness of your connection to all life around you?

To feel the rhythm of the seasons in your bones. To listen to the wisdom of insects and animals. To experience the forest, the ocean, the soil—not as scenery, but as kin.

Perhaps this is the work of our time: to let go of that ‘human arrogance’ that answers lie not in technology or extraction, but to remember what it means to belong, to relearn what was forgotten, to live with kinship.

Not to dominate life. But to be part of it. To rebuild a future where life thrives—not just human life, but all life.

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