It’s been planted in Antarctica, held up in the Himalayas and waved by conservationist Jane Goodall at a rally in New York City. But Ridgway could be the world’s first place to formally adopt and fly the International Flag of Planet Earth.

The symbol — a flower of seven interlocking silver rings overlaying a wash of royal blue — aims to represent and remind humans of the finite nature of their shared home.

Ridgway is already the headquarters of the nonprofit dedicated to championing the flag and its message, an organization headed by resident Hansa Devi. Devi’s brother, Oskar Pernefeldt, designed the flag in 2015, aiming to create a universal symbol able to bring people together across boundaries, in the name of caring for the planet and each other.

Devi will ask town leaders at a May 14 council meeting to adopt the Earth flag and fly it next to the Colorado and American flags in Hartwell Park. If councilors agree, Ridgway would become the symbol’s flagship home.

Creating a flag and a nonprofit

As it turns out, anyone can technically create a flag. The challenge is creating a symbol universal enough that most people recognize its design and message, such as the Pride flag.

When Pernefeldt decided to create a flag for the planet in 2015 as an undergraduate thesis project for design school in Sweden, he imagined creating a symbol embodying care for the Earth and all who share it.

His idea grew even more relevant as global leaders stepped up to combat climate change through landmark actions like adopting an international treaty to address the problem in 2015.

There’s no official design rules or flag police, but Pernefeldt created the International Flag of Planet Earth by following the principles of vexillology, the study of flags.

His flag has layered meanings. Close up, the blue background represents water and Earth’s oceans and the looped silver rings represent interlinked life on the planet. Zoomed out, the rings form a sphere, representing Earth within the universe.

As a vexillologist himself, Pernefeldt had seen others toying with designs for an Earth flag, but no one had put it in context, he said.

“If you see the French flag in the setting of a revolution it means something completely different,” he said.

He reached out to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration to ask permission to use their images to create renderings of his design used on astronaut uniforms and spaceships.

Pernefeldt said outer space was the obvious context for his thesis project, but he envisioned many other applications of the design. And once he launched the flag, its use exploded far beyond the bounds of what he imagined, he said. And that’s just on Earth. The design has yet to be taken to outer space.

He remembers stopping in his tracks hearing the flag was mentioned by the European Union in 2015 and when Goodall attended a rally holding his creation. Since then others have tattooed the symbol on their body or flown the flags in their neighborhoods.

It was five years after the flag’s initial buzz and recognition that his sister decided it was time to create a formal organization dedicated to spreading the design and its message.

Devi said the global pandemic created a landscape ripe for boosting the symbol.

“That was an obvious global problem or challenge that we were all in together, and that’s what the flag really symbolizes as well, the challenges and the possibilities,” Devi said.

So in 2020 she founded The International Flag of Planet Earth Organization out of her home in Ridgway, where she moved with her husband in 2009.

Since then the nonprofit has grown into a four-person team that continues to advocate for the flag’s use across the world.

Values, use and challenges

Although the flag was designed during intensifying conversations around climate change and political polarization, Pernefeldt said it’s important to keep the flag and its advocacy organization nonpartisan and as a symbol of what people share.

“But we understand, of course, the potent message in the flag, so we understand that it is political for a lot of people,” Pernefeldt said.

“For a lot of sustainability people, the flag represents what they are trying to save,” Pernefeldt said. “So that is very clear to me that it is the symbol of what team they’re on.”

The flag is freely downloadable and available for use as long as it’s used to represent the “astronomical body of planet Earth” rather than any individual, business or group, according to the advocacy organization’s website.

Pernefeldt has considered the possibility that his flag is adopted by dictatorships or militant groups. He said he’d have to think objectively about if the symbol is being used accurately.

“Let’s say it’s like [adopted by] a world-domination, kind of a militant organization … that is tricky. You know, I need to be very philosophical about that and say, if they want to conquer Earth, then it is the symbol of the Earth that they want to conquer,” he said.

But he said he’s seen many American groups use the symbol for anti-political polarization efforts.

Devi also said the flag is quite successful as a transnational symbol.

“We can be Texans and Americans at the same time. So we can be Americans and Earthlings at the same time,” she said.

“We get a lot of momentum through that, and I can only attest to it myself,” Devi said. “I am both a Swedish and an American citizen, and I feel like I belong to both. But even more so I feel like I belong to Earth. I am proud of, you know, the possibilities that we have if we can all come together.”

Just a couple of weeks after Earth Day, Devi hopes to bring that message home in Ridgway.

“I think it’s really important in this day and age to really emphasize that there is a lot that we share. There’s more in common between all of us than not. To have respect for one another is a very, very, very important core value right now,” she said.

She and Pernefeldt are hopeful that the headquarters of the organization also becomes the flag’s first permanent home. Devi is also asking the town to put up an informational plaque to provide context about its mission and message.

“I remember, before going into my graduation year, we discussed this a lot. This flag came about and from discussions that we had in Ridgway,” he said.

“Maybe 10 years from now, Ridgway citizens will be proud that that is the city where this flag came about.”

Lia Salvatierra is a journalist with Report for America, a service program that helps boost underserved areas with more reporting resources.