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See your conservation decision from different perspectives.

Bring a question, plan or budget. Earth Council uses AI perspectives informed by research to explore different approaches to conservation.

See where they agree, where they disagree, and which assumptions could change your decision. Every piece of evidence is weighed for how relevant and how reliable it is, so you can see what a conclusion actually rests on. Compare what your budget could achieve under different assumptions.

You make the final decision.

Invite-only access. An admin must approve your account.

How it works

01
Describe your decision
Start with a question. Add your budget, project details and constraints if you have them.
02
Compare perspectives
Explore different arguments, supporting evidence and points of disagreement. See the assumptions your decision rests on, and which perspectives rely on each one. Ask follow-up questions to explore further.
03
Explore outcomes
Compare the numbers, then record your decision as a Decision Record: the context, the options, the evidence, what you chose and what would make you revisit it.

Each perspective is called an Earth. The council selects up to 12 of the 15 core perspectives for your question, including approaches focused on ecology, communities, finance and policy.

When to use Earth Council

Choose how to spend a budget

Bring a budget and two or three options. Compare what the same money could achieve and which cost assumptions matter most.

Check a plan’s assumptions

Bring your project brief. Explore assumptions you may have missed before committing resources.

Consider a hard-to-reverse decision

Bring a decision that would be difficult to undo. Explore the trade-offs and what evidence could help you choose.

More ways to use Earth Council

Explain a cost or target

Bring a cost estimate, price or promised target. Explore the range different perspectives support and why they differ.

Find missing evidence

Bring an unresolved question. Identify research, a pilot or data that could help resolve the disagreement.

Open up a team discussion

Bring a question your team is debating. Use different perspectives to explore views that may be getting overlooked.

Compare what your budget could achieve

The simulator compares outcomes using different assumptions. The AI suggests inputs and explains their basis; fixed formulas calculate the results. See which assumptions make the biggest difference.

For example, two perspectives may estimate different areas of habitat protected by the same budget. The comparison helps you see which cost or effectiveness assumptions explain the difference.

These are possible outcomes, not predictions.

How the calculations work

Five fixed formulas cover unit cost, cost per outcome, net present value (future costs and benefits in today’s money), break-even and adoption over time.

Each perspective supplies input values, ranges and reasons. The simulator changes one input at a time to show which assumption affects the result most.

Inputs without a named source are labelled as estimates from that perspective. If a perspective has no defensible basis for a number, it can leave it unquantified.

What you can explore

Check your numbers and assumptions

The perspectives are asked to question figures that look wrong and point out missing costs, with reasons.

Weigh the evidence

Each perspective scores every source three ways: how relevant it is to your situation, how reliable the source is, and how well established the information is. Unverified claims and estimates are still marked. Where two perspectives read the same study differently, you see it side by side — often an easier disagreement to settle than the rest.

Explore the disagreements

Compare two perspectives directly. See the assumption that matters most, what evidence could resolve it and where they agree.

Record your decision

Write down what you chose and why, with doing nothing always listed as an option you considered. The strongest opposing arguments are kept, each with what would have to change for you to revisit the decision. The council can draft it; you edit it, and nothing is saved until you do.

Your saved project details stay private. Saved budgets and constraints are available only to you and are excluded from published discussions.

Custom perspectives and technical options

Create a perspective. Describe it in Earth Studio and have AI draft it for you. You can also import a perspective as a JSON file using the published format.

Choose how to run it. Use your own Anthropic or Gemini API keys, select lower-cost models, or use a quick mode that skips live web research.

Continue elsewhere. Publish a discussion as a link, or export it for ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Simulator exports include the formula and inputs.

Inspect the code. Earth Council is open source under AGPL-3.0.

Keep in mind

These are AI-generated perspectives. They may share models and sources, so agreement between them does not establish scientific consensus. Check the cited evidence.
Earth Council supports your thinking. It does not replace field data, expert review or community consent processes, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
It does not collect field data, identify species or monitor habitats.

Built on published decision methods

Earth Council does not invent its own way of handling evidence. It adapts methods published by the Conservation Evidence programme at the University of Cambridge — the same methods used to appraise evidence and record decisions in conservation practice.

Weighing evidence

Relevance, source reliability and information reliability are scored separately, so a strong study of the wrong system is not mistaken for strong evidence about yours. The combined weight is calculated in code, never produced by the AI.

Christie et al. 2023

Recording the decision

The Decision Record follows the Evidence-to-Decision framework: context and goal, options considered, evidence gathered, the decision, and how it will be monitored. Preserving the opposing arguments is Earth Council’s own addition.

Christie et al. 2022

Naming what it rests on

Before weighing evidence, the council names the assumptions the decision depends on, and shows which perspectives rely on each and which dispute it. An assumption nobody argued about is not settled — it is unexamined.

Sutherland et al. 2021

How it is written

Every recommendation carries its source or says plainly that it is an estimate. Conflicting evidence is stated rather than smoothed over, and the language stays neutral: what the evidence suggests, not what you should do.

Downey et al. 2022

The scoring scales are printed in every export, so anyone reading your record can check the judgements rather than take them on trust. How each method was adapted — and what Earth Council added — is documented in the open-source repository.

Earth Council also adapts multi-criteria analysis (Shackelford et al. 2019) and cost reporting (White et al. 2022) from the same programme. Adaptations are Earth Council’s own. Conservation Evidence has not reviewed, endorsed or been consulted on this product, and Earth Council does not query their database.

Research background for funders

In January 2026 the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program published AI for Discovery, synthesising ten closed-door roundtables with researchers across biodiversity, climate and Earth science. Its conclusions describe, closely, the problem Earth Council was built for.

“for AI to be useful in policy, uncertainty should be quantified and communicated transparently”

AI for Discovery, ch. 1 §E, p. 15

The simulator shows a range of outcomes for each perspective. It explains the assumptions behind the numbers so you can compare them in context.

“greater transparency … is needed so that AI does not become an ‘easy scapegoat’ for officials seeking to evade political accountability”

AI for Discovery, ch. 1 §E, p. 15

Earth Council records the assumptions, evidence and approach you chose. It also preserves opposing arguments as reasons to review your decision later. Responsibility for the decision stays with you.

“there will never be enough [separate] investment [in] each of those applications” — on bespoke, last-mile decision tools

AI for Discovery, ch. 2 §D, p. 29

You can save your project details and budget for future discussions. In the app, this is called a Situation. It lets you reuse the same context without entering it again.

“That means [you can] ask questions, not just look at forecasts” · and, without transparency, researchers “are only consumers of tools that other people design and give to them”

AI for Discovery, ch. 2 §F, p. 34 · ch. 1 §D, p. 13

You can inspect and edit perspectives in Earth Studio, create your own, use your own API keys and read the source code. Earth Council is open source under AGPL-3.0.

“extraordinary results require extraordinarily high levels of proof” — against a literature filling with “AI slop” and “dodgy data”

AI for Discovery, ch. 2 §E, p. 32

Source links identify evidence retrieved during research. Claims without matching sources are labelled for verification. The research also looks for evidence that challenges the question’s assumptions.

“connections between nature data and social metrics are important for making restoration work resilient, durable, and beneficial for communities”

AI for Discovery, ch. 1 §E, p. 14

Each perspective considers people and livelihoods alongside conservation outcomes. The council includes community, policy, finance and health perspectives, and instructions to consider Indigenous consent. Saved project details are private to their owner and are excluded from published discussions.

“The AI part of whatever you do, whatever you invest in, is the part that will get obsolete the fastest.”

AI for Discovery, ch. 1 §G, p. 19 — a funder recommendation

Earth Council uses existing AI models, web research and fixed calculations. The models can change while the process of comparing evidence, assumptions and decisions remains.

Quotations are from AI for Discovery: New Frontiers, Challenges, and Opportunities for Scientific Research, The Aspen Institute Science & Society Program, 2026, reproduced for commentary. The Aspen Institute has not reviewed, endorsed, or been consulted on Earth Council, and nothing here implies its endorsement.

Bring a decision you’re working on.

Explore the evidence, compare the options and decide what comes next.