
August 1, 2025 | Global
Swissnex is launching the Planetary Embassy, a transdisciplinary platform sparking reflection on diplomacy in an era of planetary urgency. With editions at Climate Week NYC, COP30 in the Amazon, and additional activations across the global Swissnex network, the project convenes scientists, technologists, indigenous leaders, artists, and diplomats across geographies.
At its core, the Planetary Embassy explores the concept of planetary diplomacy, Swissnex’s invitation to imagine a new diplomacy that reaches across species, time scales, and natural forces, helping us negotiate our place within a more-than-human world. “Science has exposed deep fractures in the relationship between humans and the living systems they depend on,” says Benjamin Bollmann, CEO of Swissnex in Brazil. “How could diplomacy consider more than just human interests to help restore balance with the planet?”
A global laboratory
Part of the Swissnex for the Planet initiative, the Planetary Embassy is framed as a public laboratory with pop-up experiences that respond to their local contexts and partners. Physical installations will showcase visions of planetary diplomacy developed by young innovators, researchers, students, and artists from Switzerland, Brazil, the US, and beyond. These works were gathered through the global open call Imagining Planetary Diplomacy, organized by Swissnex in Boston and New York to mark Swissnex’s 25th anniversary.
At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the Planetary Embassy will take root in the zoobotanical gardens of the Goeldi Museum, a setting where the Amazon’s biodiversity, scientific research, and ancestral wisdom converge. It will draw inspiration from indigenous knowledge systems that regard rivers, forests, and animals as kin and beings with agency. At Climate Week NYC 2025, the Planetary Embassy will turn its attention to the intersection of technology, climate justice, and governance in an age of planetary-scale computation. Future editions in Boston, Hong Kong, and beyond will explore other dimensions of our entanglement with the Earth system.
Why now?
The Planetary Embassy responds to a world of accelerating planetary challenges – climate tipping points, mass extinction, technological disruptions – at a moment when geopolitical divisions are reaching new heights. It points to emerging ideas around planetary governance, enabled by the ability to read the Earth’s pulse through satellites and sensors, to recognize the legal rights of rivers and forests, or to explore interspecies communication with the help of AI, which itself has the potential to become a major planetary force.
“The Planetary Embassy does not seek to advance a specific vision,” Bollmann adds. “It aims to open a space for encounter and imagination. Diplomacy has always been about relationships. The question now is: Which relationships – between whom or what – should we be paying most attention to?”
About Swissnex for the Planet
Swissnex for the Planet explores the idea for a new planetary diplomacy. Its aim is to pioneer a science-based diplomacy that recalibrates the relationship between humans and the Earth. Inspired by a growing movement that questions human exceptionalism, the initiative emphasizes our deep embeddedness within the living systems of the planet. Planetary diplomacy would focus on balancing more-than-human interests, searching for an equilibrium in the relations between our species and the other living and nonliving entities that make up the Earth system, through new modes of dialogue, cooperation, and shared governance.