This thesis focuses on the interspecies relationships of care in the Hambach Forest, Germany. It covers the caring relations between the human activists protecting the Forest by occupying it and the trees growing there. The text covers the affectionate dimension of the activists’ caring relation towards the trees as well as how the caring manifested in their attentiveness and actions. Apart from the traditional ethnographic methods, the research is rooted in multispecies methodology, particularly plant ethnography. As primary theoretical frameworks, the concepts of more-than human sociality and world-making by Anna Tsing were used, as well as the understanding of the interspecies ethics of care by Puig de la Bellacasa. The analysis shows that the caring relationship of the activists was often rooted in the situated relationality that emerges from particular relations with particular trees or other nonhumans. As a navigating tool, activists sometimes used also the nature-culture dichotomy, and sometimes they, on the contrary, contested it. I show that relationships of care were mutual and occurred in the direction from activists to the trees but also that the trees and Forest took care of many activists’ needs. I also demonstrate how the trees and other nonhumans actively participated in the processes of co-creating the more-than-human sociality in the Forest. The analysis shows that the activists’ behaviour was not always coherent or determined by the same values but was often ambivalent and changing depending on the situation.

Through human over-exploitation of nature, more and more ocean species approach ecological tipping points. On the other hand, more and more people suffer from climate anxiety. This thesis study explored an alternative relationship between humans and marine seaweed species through design research. Situated in posthumanist design, affirmative ethics, and kinship relations, the study experimented with non-exploitative human-seaweed encounters to stimulate reflection on the predominant perception of ocean species as resources for human use. By drifting through five design experiments, the study first investigated the current human- seaweed relationship at Ribersborg beach in Malmö and then invited participants to encounter seaweed from different perspectives in several interactive workshops. As the research study swayed through several threads of theory and practice, it found a prevalent distant stance towards seaweed. While participants who engaged in attentive interaction with seaweed showed an increased curiosity for the often- overlooked species group, the study found that an interdependency between humans and seaweed was either not perceived or negatively associated. Designerly speculation led to a performance of kinship rituals to encounter this vulnerability, which allowed room for reflection on current and future ways of being with seaweed in non-exploitative ways. The trialed practices of affirmative ethics involved human participants in coming up with these practices, which is of meaning in the further search for restoring the human relationship to nature through design.