An Online comic that gives form to nature as a human figure, inviting reflection on the systems we live in and the environment that sustains them.
Episode 4
Having observed human daily life, Magna Mater turns her attention to the system that seem to structure it: the economy. She studies how labor and value is measured, priced, and exchanged — while her own labor, the work of sustaining life, remains unaccounted for. With this question at heart, Magna Mater enters a bank.
She comes not as a supplicant, but as a provider. What she offers is tangible and indispensable: clean air — oxygen — the condition of every breath; rainforests that store carbon, cool the atmosphere, and regulate the global water cycle; biodiversity as the architecture of resilience. These are not luxuries but infrastructure — the living systems upon which all economic activity depends.
And yet, where do they appear in the ledgers? In which balance sheet is the atmosphere listed as an asset?
The role of storytelling
Scientific research shows that storytelling is a powerful way to engage with complexity. It activates more cognitive and emotional regions of the brain than facts alone, fostering empathy, memory retention, and reflection. This project explores how visual storytelling can support ecological literacy and systems thinking by translating abstract challenges into emotionally resonant, visually accessible narratives.
What’s next?
In Episode 5, Magna Mater shifts from inquiry to embrace. Like a mother addressing her children — who, in a planetary sense, we indeed are — she seeks not to accuse but to guide. The question becomes no longer whether nature has value, but how our economic instruments might begin to reflect it.
What if we were to account for “green infrastructure” — the forests, wetlands, soils, and oceans that constitute the biophysical foundation of all markets—within our financial systems? What if balance sheets expanded to include the regenerative capacity of ecosystems as tangible assets? Early models already exist. The task ahead is neither utopian nor naïve; it is an invitation to align economic logic with ecological reality.
Magna Mater does not demand the end of markets. She asks for their maturation.
