Interactive workshop board
Who Speaks for Animals? A governance review board for biodiversity AI.
Developed by Space4Innovation and the GEO Indigenous Alliance, this Indigenous-led browser-based board supports workshops, audits and community review of AI, data and sensor-based biodiversity projects involving more-than-human beings — including animals, plants, fungi and ecological systems. It is grounded in Indigenous worldviews of relational responsibility, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and accountability to future generations. Add evidence, unresolved questions, risks, decisions and red lines as movable notes. Nothing is sent to a server.
This static version runs entirely in the browser. User answers, notes and doodles are not saved to a database or transmitted anywhere.
About this toolkit
For decisions that should be made before biodiversity becomes data.
This tool helps project teams, Indigenous governance bodies, community reviewers, funders and auditors examine whether a biodiversity AI project is legitimate, proportionate, accountable and governable before methods, data access, model training, open sharing or publication become fixed. It centres Indigenous-led decision-making, responsibilities across generations, and the authority to decide when restraint is more ethical than extraction.
How this board can be used
The board is intended to sit alongside the GEO Indigenous Alliance Ethical Toolkit and can be used as a live workshop canvas, an internal design review, an independent/community-facing review record, or a facilitated protocol for deciding whether a project should proceed, pause, restrict, not publish or stop.
Use it to make visible the governance decisions, evidence gaps, red lines and conditions that should be addressed before biodiversity data, AI models, sensor outputs, labels or derived products are shared, published or deployed.
Toolkit check-in
Document the review before decisions are locked in.
Use this check-in to record who is reviewing, where the project sits in the research or AI workflow, what evidence is available, what remains unresolved, and which decisions require Indigenous governance authority. The board below remains the working space; this section creates the review record.
Governance progress tracker
Track progress across the toolkit. This does not judge the project with a score; it records what is ready, what is missing, and what requires authority before the work proceeds.
Choose before using the canvas
Two versions of the board are available.
Use the project-team canvas when a project is still being designed. Use the auditor/community review canvas when the purpose is to examine whether the work was conducted fairly, what evidence is missing, and whether corrective action, restriction, non-publication, redesign or stopping is required.
Auditor / community review canvas
For community reviewers, independent auditors, funders, institutions or governance bodies reviewing evidence, consent, data control, model claims, harms, red flags and corrective action.
Active review board
Project team / researcher canvas
Use this board while designing a biodiversity AI project. Capture legitimacy, relational method choices, interpretation authority, data and model governance, and stopping conditions before decisions are locked in.
Contact
Contact / bespoke support
For bespoke workshops, consultation, facilitation, or adaptation of this toolkit to the needs of a specific community, institution or biodiversity AI project, contact diana@space4innovation.com.