Autonomous Forest

Autonomous Forest is a non-profit association and a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) dedicated to acquiring and collectively managing forest areas. Through decentralized platforms, members of the association make decisions collaboratively.

Autonomous Forest removes ecosystems from the economic sphere, protecting them from material- and profit-driven exploitation. Autonomous Forest is an association and a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) dedicated to acquiring and collectively stewarding forest land. Through the DAO, members participate in transparent, decentralized governance, voting on everything from administration to potential expansion. This hybrid structure fuses the legal status of the German Verein with the openness and accountability of blockchain, creating a techno-legal framework in which nature is collectively held, safeguarded from extraction, and allowed to regenerate on its own terms.

Autonomous Forest questions the notion of land ownership. In contrast to models driven by individual and market logic, it establishes a collective legal entity that enables democratic decision-making. Rejecting traditional industrial forestry practices, Autonomous Forest embraces ecological processes that allow the environment to evolve autonomously in response to change. To enable this form of regeneration, a new technological and legal entity was developed that combines German association law with decentralized ledger technology. In this way, this art project builds new digital and ecological spaces for care, experimentation, and shared responsibility. It sets a precedent for ecological responsibility that relies on neither state nor private ownership and designs regenerative, communal futures for human and non-human actors alike.

The project spawned out of a multi-year reseach from terra0, and was produced by LAS.