RainMaking as Meta-crisis Diplomacy

RainMakers: Agents of Ecological Citizenship presents a methodological and imaginative framework for co‑creating biodiversity‑centric scenarios that foreground ecological citizenship, contribution systems, and more‑than‑human agency. Responding to calls for inspirational methods that “open up” novel futures, the presentation introduces RainMakers as civic‑ecological mediators who design conditions—roles, rhythms, boundaries, and infrastructures—under which communities can co‑imagine, test, and inhabit biodiversity‑positive futures.

Methodologically, RainMakers introduces a continuity‑oriented scenario grammar that values long‑term ecological metabolics (soil, watersheds, cultural stewardship) as the core narrative arc, rather than short‑term impact metrics. The RainMakers position blends design for sustainability, Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge, BioKultural Design, and commons governance into a biomythical practice that treats scenarios as lived experiments in metabolic governance rather than abstract storylines. It employs concepts such as bioKreatures (e.g., Rivers, Money, Technology), oracles (e.g., prophecy, scientific research, planetary boundaries) and interobjective value to personify ecological and infrastructural actors, making them legible participants in scenario co‑creation and enabling communities to negotiate with, not just model, their influence on biodiversity. This imaginative personification complements quantitative and narrative approaches by expanding who counts as a scenario “stakeholder” and how their contributions are tracked. 

The framework outlines practical techniques: RainMaker‑led “rainmaking embassies” that convene local stewards, policymakers, and technologists; contribution‑mapping that visualizes cumulative care work for habitats or bioregions; and narrative design exercises that prototype institutions and civic technologies around continuity and ecological legibility. These methods help participants move beyond dystopian or technocratic defaults, generating biodiversity‑centric scenarios where ecological citizenship is structurally supported.

For transdisciplinary researchers, practitioners, and communities, RainMakers offers both conceptual tools and facilitation practices to co‑create scenarios that integrate scientific models, local and Indigenous knowledge, and imaginative storytelling. In doing so, it advances methodological innovation by making scenario work itself a site of ecological citizenship, where the act of co‑creating futures becomes part of building the metabolic conditions that those futures require.