Transcript
NATHALIE MEZZA-GARCIA: The thing is that for you to be accepted as a nation in the international arena, you have to be recognised by other nations. That's why there are territories that are in dispute internationally and they don't have the independence of a nation because they are not recognised as such. But in this case the French Polynesian government is accepting the think-tank, Sustaining Blue Frontiers, to develop a seastead here in international waters which makes it really interesting because it means that you don't need to oppose necessarily a nation state, you can actually make partnerships with them and benefit both. This is one of the things I find the most interesting.
SALLY ROUND: How can a community like this run seemingly without any rules? Would there be rules? Would there be leadership?
NM-G: No, no, no, no leadership but there are a few ways of looking at it. One way is for rules to be decided depending on the ownership of the seastead. So let's say you can be the owner of a platform and in your platform you can have several houses so it can be that you decide the rules. Or iIt can be that you create a platform and you say, OK, I sold you the platforms, I built them, you buy them, you manage them however you want so it really depends on how the people themselves who move there want to manage it but definitely no leadership because then there would not be any difference with how we have traditionally been organising ourselves.
SR: It's hard not to think that a community like this would not descend into chaos or oppression.
NM-G: I don't think it's going to happen with this one. The advantage that we have, and by 'we' I mean people who are studying this subject, is that we have the opportunity to set up which are the new rules of the game. I like a lot the example of behavioural economics the decision that hotels make to force people in a very undercover way to have to save energy because whenever people stay in a hotel, it wasn't their house, they didn't care about the electricity bills, they left the hotel rooms and left the lights on so the measurement the hotel did and similar things can be done in this floating city to make rules that are there but are not evident so we have an advantage now, these type of new human communities, of create better rules than the ones we massively exported especially after the industrial revolution and one of the reasons why I find this project and the one that will come afterwards so fascinating is because it allows change for the first time in a peaceful way the structure of governance and this is something that despite it can have its problems, it's really marvellous and that's why I'm putting my energy to try to make it as most harmonic as possible.
SR: You said there were other communities like this but do you think this is ground breaking in a different way?
NM-G: This is ground breaking in the partnership with the French Polynesian government. There's a micronation called Sealand near England. It has not gained the recognition of a nation but people live there, they were once hosting pirate (inaudible) service but they were not taken seriously. The French Polynesian government is being so cooperative that it makes me think that definitely Blue Frontiers is taking seriously all the environmental impact assessment reports they are doing because it is a wonderful opportunity both for tackling global climate problems and also for creating better architectures of governance.
