THE WHAT? Faith in Nature is claiming to be the world’s first company to appoint Nature to its Board of Directors, allotting the natural world a vote on the future of the business. In a move that encourages other businesses to follow suit, Faith in Nature has decided to open-source the legal process.

THE DETAILS The natural personal care brand worked with leading environmental and corporate lawyers to officially amend its company constitution to include Nature as a director, with the same voting rights as its human directors under the legal ‘guardianship’ model.

Nature will be represented through a proxy role whereby a human who is legally bound to speak on behalf of the natural world acts on Nature’s behalf. The representative will speak and vote for Nature in a similar way to a guardian does for a child in legal proceedings, supported by a committee of environmental experts, who will make the case on behalf of Nature for all major board decisions.

THE WHY? Simeon Rose, Faith In Nature’s Creative Director and driver of the initiative, explains, “We’re delighted to be the first to do this but we don’t want to be the last. Our hope is that other businesses who take their responsibility to the natural world seriously will follow suit – and we’re really happy to share details of how and why we did this. We’ve always wanted Nature to be at the heart of what we do and this felt like this is the next serious step we could take to make that a reality. This is much more than spin: by changing our governance structure we are making sure we’re legally accountable and that what’s good for Nature informs our strategy.”