The Vol 1 No 1 2017 Ecological A peer-reviewed journal Citizen www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Advancing ecological knowledge | Championing Earth-centred action | Inspiring ecocentric citizenship

IN THIS ISSUE

Why ecocentrism? The ethical and the practical imperative Page 35

Wild democracy A grass-roots vision to transcend capitalism Page 45

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“The attempt to build ethical concern for the Ecosphere from the inside out, by add-ons starting with our selves and the human race, may soothe consciences for a little while, but it will be the kiss of death for wild nature.”

Stan Rowe

2 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Contents

The Ecological Citizen | Vol 1 No 1 2017

Editorial The Ecological Citizen: An impulse of life, for life 5 Patrick Curry

Opinions Why a new ecological forum? 11 John Davis Life’s defeat is imminent: We must become effective 13 Ian Whyte Reasons for a reduction of humans’ impact on the ecosphere 17 Cover photo Joe Gray Bear Wallow Canyon, Sedona, The Harmony with Nature initiative: Why it matters and what it might achieve 22 Arizona, USA, at sunset Michelle Maloney Brian Gold A positive future for beavers in Scotland 27 Alan Watson Featherstone Rethinking the United Nations’ concept of sustainability 29 Rachel Waters

Long articles Why ecocentrism is the key pathway to sustainability 35 Haydn Washington, Bron Taylor, Helen Kopnina, Paul Cryer and John J Piccolo Wild democracy: A biodiversity of resistance and renewal 45 Samuel Alexander and Peter Burdon Enacting the wisdom of Chief Seattle today in Latin America 55 Coyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil The affliction of human supremacy 61 Eileen Crist Noting some effects of fabricating ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’ 65 Sian Sullivan The twilight of anthropocentrism 75 John Michael Greer

Meeting reports Environmental humanities: A report on a seminar in Spain 87 Margarita Carretero-González Environmental humanities: A report on a symposium in the UK 90 Patrick Curry Rights of nature: A report on a conference in Switzerland 95 Featured artists Marie-Lise Schläppy and Joe Gray Towards a new paradigm for nature in the EU: A report on a meeting in Belgium 97 This issue also features Mumta Ito artworks by Angie Shanahan, Geoff Diego Book and culture reviews Litherland, Heather Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, by EO Wilson 101 Freitas, Holly Stevenson, Ian Whyte Jelena Micic, Juan Cisneros, Kate Knight, Korallia Poetry section Stergides, Leigh Gillam, Works by Marina Tsvetaeva, Robinson Jeffers, Emily Dickinson, DH Lawrence, Mer Maggie Roberts, Elizabeth Carothers Herron, Hannibal Rhoades, Fred Schueler and Helen Moore 107 Nicola Woodham, Priyanka Selected by Victor Postnikov Jena and Rebecca R Burrill.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 3 Editorial Board www.ecologicalcitizen.net

The Melinda Alfano Maria Carolina Negrini Graduate in Water Resources Lawyer Ecological New York, NY, USA São Paolo, Brazil Oussou Lio Appolinaire Alessandro Pelizzon EC Citizen Practitioner of Earth Jurisprudence Researcher in Earth-Centred Law Avrankou, Benin Lismore, NSW, Australia Editor-in-Chief María Valeria Berros John J Piccolo Patrick Curry Researcher in Rights of Nature Associate Professor in Writer and Scholar Santa Fe, Argentina Environmental and Life Sciences London, UK David Blackwell Karlstad, Sweden Educator and Nature-lover Deborah Rose Associate Editors Halifax, NS, Canada Adjunct Professor in Joe Gray Susana Borràs Pentinat Environmental Humanities Naturalist and Researcher Lecturer in Public International Law Sydney, NSW, Australia St Albans, UK Tarragona, Spain Coyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil Ian Whyte Tom Butler Environmental and Social Activist Field Naturalist Writer and Activist Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage, Mexico Ottawa, ON, Canada Huntington, VT, USA Dyane Sherwood Nigel Cooper Jungian Psychoanalyst Chaplain and Biologist Oberlin, OH, USA Art Editor Cambridge, UK Vandana Shiva Stephanie Moran Paul Cryer Scholar and Environmental Activist Artist and Librarian Conservationist Delhi, India London, UK Hillcrest, South Africa Steve Szeghi Cormac Cullinan Professor of Economics Art Advisor Environmental Attorney and Author Wilmington, OH, USA Salomón Bazbaz Lapidus Cape Town, South Africa Bron Taylor Director – Cumbre Tajín Festival John Davis Professor of Religion, Nature Papantla de Olarte, Mexico Wildways Trekker and Environmental Ethics Westport, NY, USA Gainesville, FL, USA Poetry Editor Alan Watson Featherstone Andrew Walton Victor Postnikov Founder and Visionary – Trees for Life Bioregionalist Poet, Essayist and Translator Findhorn, UK Birmingham, UK Kiev, Ukraine Mumta Ito Haydn Washington Lawyer, Zoologist and Environmental Scientist and Activist Sub-editor Founder – Nature’s Rights Sydney, NSW, Australia Adam Dickerson Forres, UK Rachel Waters Senior Lecturer in International Studies Marjolein Kok Academic and Advocacy Journalist and International Development Environmental Activist and Researcher Brooklyn, NY, USA Canberra, ACT, Australia Utrecht, the Netherlands Fiona Wilton Helen Kopnina Programme Coordinator Consulting Editors Environmental Anthropologist – Gaia Foundation Eileen Crist Leiden, the Netherlands Colombia/Uruguay Writer and Teacher Joseph Lambert Doug Woodard Blacksburg, VA, USA Researcher in Earth Jurisprudence Environmentalist Sandy Irvine London, UK St Catharines, ON, Canada Political Activist Sandra Lubarsky George Wuerthner Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK Scholar in Sustainability Photographer, Author Ted Mosquin Flagstaff, AZ, USA and Activist Naturalist Michelle Maloney Bend, OR, USA Lanark, ON, Canada Lawyer and National Mersha Yilma Convenor of AELA Practitioner of Earth Jurisprudence Editorial Advisors Brisbane, QLD, Australia Addis Ababa, Ethiopia David Abram Alexandra Marcelino Suzanne York Cultural Ecologist and Geophilosopher Jurist in Environmental Law Director – Transition Earth Upper Rio Grande Valley, NM, USA Lisbon, Portugal San Francisco, CA, USA

4 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net EDITORIAL

The Ecological Citizen: An impulse of life, for life

elcome to the first issue of reverence. (See Haydn Washington and Patrick Curry The Ecological Citizen! I would colleagues’ article in this issue and the W like briefly to outline our first associated Statement of Commitment to About the author principles and the facts to which they are a Ecocentrism, which we are proud to host on Patrick is a writer and response, in addition to some other essential the Journal’s website.) The most important scholar based in London, markers. You may also want to consult our thing, therefore, is the nature and quality UK. His works include Mission Statement (https://is.gd/umjXSP) of our relationships with the Earth and Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (Polity Press, and read John Davis’s generous endorsement our fellow-Earthlings. This means that far 2011). He is Editor-in-Chief in this issue. from being an optional add-on, questions of of The Ecological Citizen. The fundamental fact was summed up in ecocentric ethics are present from the start the WWF’s Living Planet Report 2016: by (Curry, 2011). Citation 2020, human activity will have destroyed We believe – or perceive – that nothing Curry P (2017) The Ecological two-thirds of the world’s vertebrate less will suffice to counter the destructive Citizen: An impulse of life, for populations relative to 1970, a mere 50 years impact of humanity so far. Certainly its life. The Ecological Citizen 1: 5–9. ago (W W F, 2016). The result of our relentless converse, anthropocentrism – or what assault on forests, oceans, rivers, air and the Eileen Crist, in this issue, calls ‘human Keywords world’s remaining wild places and animals supremacy’ – will not. According to this Anthropocentrism; is ecocide; and given that a healthy planet is modern de facto religion (albeit one with conservation movement; the prerequisite for everything we and our old roots), all value and meaning inheres overpopulation fellow-creatures are and do, there is no more in one uniquely special species: humanity. important issue. It is as important as climate The rest of the Earth, including all its change, for example, and more immediately places and creatures, is entitled to respect urgent. only instrumentally, insofar as it is needed Nor can there be any doubt concerning for humans to ‘progress’. An auxiliary the primary interlinked causes: too much assumption is that we know what we do human economic activity, too much human and do not need (Ehrenfeld, 1981). (See John consumption and, far from least, too many Michael Greer’s article in this issue for some humans. Yet in this era of truthiness and pertinent reflections.) alternative facts, building on our species’ A closely related term, often used already well-established propensity for synonymously with ecocentrism, is denial and wishful thinking in the service of ‘biocentrism’. Technically, the former is perceived self-interest, very few people are preferable, since it explicitly includes the facing up to reality. essential abiotic dimension of life. But This is the context for The Ecological Citizen. although we are passionately committed It will offer a platform for the ecocentric to ecocentrism, we are not concerned values, views and voices that are rarely heard with ideological or linguistic purity, and in mainstream and even alternative media, The Ecological Citizen will welcome non- yet have never been more important. By anthropocentric contributions of any ‘ecocentric’ I mean centred on the Earth as appropriate kind. By the same token, although a living ecosystemic whole, including all the it is not a requirement, we particularly seek life it supports. For ecocentrics, this is the contributions that include strategic advice ultimate source of value, locus of meaning, and practical steps for developing ways and appropriate recipient of respect and forward, and encouraging action.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 5 The Ecological Citizen: An impulse of life, for life www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Within that ambit there is room for bankrupt, it is a recipe for failure even in widely differing subjects, from rewilding its own terms. By making conservation and conservation biology to greening solely about us instead of the natural cities, from political strategy and green world as a whole (including us as one citizenship to green spirituality and tiny if self-important part), to be treated cultural expressions of nature. The well for its own sake and its intrinsic sciences, humanities and arts all have value, environmentalism ensures its own something vital to contribute, and none failure, as Neil Evernden (1985: 10) says, has the final say. (None is immune from “whenever self-interest can be perceived “Using the economy corruption, for that matter.) as lying elsewhere.” And led by developers, to frame the Our Journal’s title is a nod to Aldo planners, economists and politicians, it Leopold’s epically incisive comment that “A will be. natural world, upon land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens Indeed, using the economy to frame the which economies from conqueror of the land-community to natural world, upon which economies are are completely plain member and citizen of it” (Leopold, completely dependent, is allowing the tail 1 dependent, is 1987: 204). Perhaps our most important to wag the dog, and the end is the death single touchstone, however, is the work of of the whole animal. Logging – jobs and, allowing the tail to the ecologist Stan Rowe,2 some of it written for some, prosperity – will mean the end wag the dog, and the together with one of our Consulting of the woodland caribou. Oil pipelines and end is the death of Editors, Ted Mosquin (e.g. Mosquin and tankers – ditto – will probably finish the the whole animal.” Rowe, 2004). Of course, we have also been Salish Sea orcas; and so on. Framing these influenced by Deep Ecology (as was Rowe, conflicts economically is already a death- to some extent) and honour that ancestry. sentence for life, whatever ‘conclusion’ That said, there are a couple of significant is reached.3 It is our duty to contest such differences. As befits ecology, ecocentrism ways of thinking, not encourage them. (For values not Self but relationships. By the more on this, see Sian Sullivan’s article in same token, it emphasizes alliances and this issue.) solidarity across differences rather than a The Chief Executive of the Wildfowl metaphysical unity (Curry, 2011: 101-11). and Wetlands Trust, Martin Spray (2017), issued a subsequent editorial in which The need he acknowledged that “The use of terms To give you another perspective on why an such as ‘ecosystem services’, ‘natural ecocentric platform is needed, I recently capital’ and ‘millennium goals’ may be wrote to several conservation organizations fine for some audiences, but they simply in the UK concerning two things: their don’t work for most people. They don’t silence on human overpopulation and their touch hearts.” However, in the very endorsement of a recent report entitled next paragraph he asserted that “Our Response for Nature (https://is.gd/8sh3Hs) relationship with businesses is, in my which concluded that “The natural view, an increasingly important factor in world, its biodiversity and its constituent achieving environmental improvement.” ecosystems are critically important to Then, after admitting that “Promoting our well-being and economic prosperity” the need to conserve biodiversity for the and that conservation should be led by sake of the planet is, without a doubt, its “benefits for health and well-being”, absolutely right,” he advocated “a more adding that “natural capital” and “smarter realistic appreciation of the environment financial instruments of nature” should for a sustainable and successful future.” figure prominently. Another more direct response to my Our well-being, human health and enquiries was equally self-contradictory. humans’ economic prosperity; no mention, Beccy Speight, Chief Executive of the even, of the well-being or health or Woodland Trust (pers comm: 2016), prospering of the millions of other admitted that “Basic ecological theory Earthlings. This is not only ethically tells us that the human population

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globally is fast approaching and has The science editor for the popular TED perhaps already exceeded the planet’s Talks, David Biello (2016), asks “How carrying capacity. The UK is particularly do we make a good human epoch?” densely populated. […] However, it is not Having already framed the issues in within our remit to campaign for human anthropocentric terms, his answers are population control of any kind. Our characteristic of the denial and wishful charitable objectives are around trees and thinking that dominates such discussions. woods.” It takes wilful blindness not to One is ‘stewardship’, understood as the see the connection between the two. high end of techno-managerialism – as Speight also agreed that “Of course we if humanity knows enough to ‘manage’ want to see nature conserved for its own the natural world successfully, or (who intrinsic value. […] but the conservation knows?) one day might, and has a sector has held this line for more than a wonderful record of past interventions century with little success.” This is surely to give us confidence.4 He also favours false; environmentalists have mostly social justice. So do we, but without the “We should be emphasized a human services model. A illusion that it would automatically bring wary of any demand really serious case for valuing the natural about ecological justice. The two do not from official sources world for its own sake – educational, necessarily harmonize, and when they do cultural, social: across the board – is not, given what a dead planet would mean, (including non- something we still await. it should be clear which must take priority. governmental Speight concluded by reassuring me that (This is a point that will receive a fuller organizations) to be “the Trust has no intention of abandoning discussion in these pages.) ‘realistic’. It is too its core conservation principles, but we Even the excellent campaigning journalist must move with the times.” But valuing George Monbiot (2016) can write an entire often a call to adopt nature for its financial and economic article extolling the idea of the common a model of fantasy, value means it’s already happened. For a good – rightly, as far as that goes – without denial and wish- better sense of what that entails, imagine once mentioning the rest of the natural fulfilment. if the Western racial and sexual equality world except, and I quote, as ‘resources’: as ” movements had abandoned their initial if the rest of nature, the very basis of any convictions in favour of stating that we sustainable human polity, had no stake or need to ease up on protecting the rights even role in the matter. of minority races and women because Let me remind you that these are not they can then be of more benefit (as cold-blooded poachers or hunters, ruthless human capital) to white people’s and corporate racketeers or unscrupulous men’s needs (pers comm: Gray J, 2016). politicians. They are (if you’ll pardon the Humanity occupies just that privileged expression) the good guys. This is deeply place in relation to the rest of suffering worrying, and captures why there is a nature. need for The Ecological Citizen and other Meanwhile, the Canadian Prime Minister such projects. Justin Trudeau, while claiming to be In particular, we should be wary of any tackling climate change emissions, joins demand from official sources (including hands with Donald Trump resurrecting non-governmental organizations) to be the TransCanada Keystone XL crude ‘realistic’. It is too often a call to adopt oil pipeline and has approved a couple a model of fantasy, denial and wish- more on his own account, adding nearly fulfilment. In Kenneth Anderson’s words, a million barrels a day to the capacity of “It is not hard to see how [such] arguments the ecologically devastating Alberta oil seek in the end to draw radical ecology sands. “When people finally realize it’s a into the ‘conversation’ of bureaucracy and tremendous business opportunity to lead managerialism, from which, once drawn on climate change,” he crows, “Canada in, it will go nowhere that ‘progress’ does will already have a head start” (Kassam not approve that it should go” (Anderson, and Mathieu-Léger, 2016). 1995). A runaway population, supposedly

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 7 The Ecological Citizen: An impulse of life, for life www.ecologicalcitizen.net

endless economic growth and unlimited is paralysing, and thus self-fulfilling. And consumption are not things which we the fact is, in the words of someone in the should accept. They need urgent countering same plight in a similar story, “Despair is and stopping, not a mere desideratum but for those who see the future beyond any as an imperative. doubt. We do not.”5 So the virtue we most The alternative vision – the ‘new need is courage: the courage to resist and narrative’ that we really need – is, as to act, whatever the odds. Eileen Crist (2014) has shown, an abundant The second mistake is misanthropy. planet, overflowing with life. All that it Again, it’s understandable; why not hate requires is for we humans, collectively and the agent of such destruction? Nonetheless, individually, to learn to limit our numbers, it’s wrong. First, it is grossly inconsistent; economies, habitations and, to a large indeed, speciesist. We too are natural beings extent at least, insatiable desires. Even the sprung from the Earth, so why should this “The mainstream last is not as impossible as it sounds; it is one species be excluded from the care and prefers to follow quite possible to imagine a culture which concern we try to extend to all the others? the siren voices, encourages ‘the wisdom of limitations’ (in Second, misanthropy merely inverts a leading us into a Crist’s phrase), rather than fanning the linchpin of ecocide: the assumption that flames as does commodity consumerism. we are uniquely important. Becoming a planet of managed Indeed, the model already exists in plain member and citizen, so desperately dearth and death, traditional ecological knowledge. But the needed, once again drops out of sight. And that proclaim we are mainstream prefers to follow the siren third, it is far from true that all humans are radical exceptions, voices, leading us into a planet of managed equally destructive. So damning them all is dearth and death, that proclaim we are not only unfair, it drives away those whom universal beings. So radical exceptions, universal beings. So the we need on our – that is, the Earth’s – side. the real abundance real abundance that could be ours to share The poet Robinson Jeffers is instructive that could be ours turns into the destructive lie of limitless here. The poetry is unmistakably, resonantly to share turns into freedom. ecocentric, hymning “Organic wholeness, If anthropocentrism – always putting the wholeness of life and things, the divine the destructive lie of human interests first, and never less than beauty / of the universe. Love that, not limitless freedom.” equal to the rest of nature – supplies man / Apart from that…” (This is from The the entire context for the debates that Answer, carried in this issue.) As such, it has determine what actually happens, then been rightly influential; again, see Greer in the outlook is dire. So The Ecological Citizen this issue.6 But Jeffers called his philosophy will try to provide the missing ecocentric – not his poetry – ‘Inhumanism’, and in position, at the other end of the spectrum his life and letters, it frequently slid into from all-too-common narrow human self- an ugly misanthropy (Karman, 2016). We interest. Our intention is not to crush our have no interest in being either inhuman or foes (however nice that might be once in a inhumane; on the contrary, our concern is while) but to pull the centre of gravity of with the entire more-than-human world, such debates, and therefore their outcomes, to borrow David Abram’s (1997) term for in an ecocentric direction. the natural world which includes, but also vastly exceeds, humanity. The dangers Of course, I am not banning expressions There are two modes we will try to avoid. of despair or misanthropy. Who has never They are sins, or errors, to which Earth- felt that way? But they will find no advocacy lovers and defenders are particularly in these pages. prone. One is despair. What could be more Finally, on a more personal note, it has understandable? The power of what Lewis already been a pleasure to work alongside Mumford called the ‘megamachine’ is very my fellow editors, and I am grateful for the great, and the outlook is indeed very dark; fine support from Stephanie Moran (Art arguably even hopeless. But in that case, we Editor) and Victor Postnikov (Poetry Editor), must do without hope (Curry, 2014). Despair as well as that of our Consulting Editors

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and Advisory Board. From the beginning, Curry P (2004) Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth The Ecological Citizen has felt like something and Modernity (2nd edition). Houghton Mifflin, that wants to happen – an impulse not Boston, MA, USA. only for life but of it. We would be grateful Curry P (2011) Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (2nd edition). Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. if you would read it, share it with others, “From the beginning, Curry P (2014) May 12. In: MacLean T, ed. Global Hope: and send us your ideas, articles, poems and The Ecological Citizen 365 Voices on the Future of the Planet. RMB Books, artwork. Please spread the word! Victoria, BC, Canada: 151. Available at https://is.gd/ has felt like something Thank you. n zPxWE4 (accessed February 2017). that wants to happen Ehrenfeld DW (1976) The conservation of non- Notes resources: Conservation cannot rely solely on – an impulse not only 1 See also: Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature economic and ecological justifications. There is a for life but of it.” and Culture 2011 5(4) Special Issue, “Aldo Leopold: more reliable criterion of the value of species and Ethical and Spiritual Dimensions”; and Holdrege communities. American Scientist 64: 648–56. (2016). Ehrenfeld D (1981) The Arrogance of Humanism (2nd 2 A number of Stan Rowe’s pieces can be found edition). Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. at the website www.ecospherics.net, which is an Evernden N (1985) The Natural Alien: Humankind and the anthology of ecological, philosophical, spiritual, Environment. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, economic and cultural articles, editorials and ON, Canada. reviews exploring the values of the ecosphere. Greer JM (2010) The Falling Years: An Inhumanist Vision. 3 In addition to the pioneering work of John Available at https://is.gd/JGvMYp (accessed February Livingston and Neil Evernden, see Ehrenfeld 2017). (1976). Holdrege C (2016) Meeting nature as a presence: Aldo 4 Although it falls short of ecocentrism, ecological Leopold and the deeper nature of nature. In Context stewardship with its roots in religion, and Issue 36: 14–17. informed by the humility as well as knowledge of genuine science, has much to contribute to Karman J (2016) Robinson Jeffers: Poet and Prophet. the kind of outcomes we seek. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, USA. 5 Gandalf, in The Lord of the Rings, quoting almost Kassam A and Mathieu-Léger L (2016). Justin Trudeau: directly from Goethe’s Faust. For a discussion of ‘Globalisation isn’t working for ordinary people’. The the ecological dimension of Tolkien’s narrative, Guardian. Available at https://is.gd/qXHlz7 (accessed see Curry (2004). February 2017). 6 In addition to his article in this issue, see the Kingsnorth P and Hine D (2009) Uncivilisation: The Dark excellent discussion in Greer (2010) and, for a Mountain Manifesto. Available at https://is.gd/0JwDjj document and project strongly influenced by (accessed February 2017). Jeffers, Kingsnorth and Hine (2009). Leopold A (1987) A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. References Monbiot G (2016) The case for despair is made. Now let’s Abram D (1997) The Spell of the Sensuous. Vintage start to get out of the mess we’re in. The Guardian. Books, New York, NY, USA. Available at https://is.gd/GWTd3J (accessed February Anderson K (1995) Our natural selves. Times Literary 2017). Supplement 8 September: 10–11. Mosquin T and Rowe S (2004) A Manifesto for Earth. Biello D (2016) The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Biodiversity 5: 3-9. Civilization in Earth’s Newest Age. Scribner, New York, Spray M (2017) A shift in thinking. Waterlife Issue 199: 5. NY, USA. WWF (2016) Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and resilience Crist E (2014) Choosing a planet of life. In: Butler T, in a new era. WWF International, Gland, Switzerland. ed. Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot. G o ff Available at https://is.gd/rcbOx9 (accessed February Books, Novato, CA, USA: afterword. 2017).

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The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 9 Call for Papers www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Call for Papers

Patrick Curry, Editor-in-Chief

We are inviting authors to submit contributions to The Ecological Citizen. The pieces that we are seeking include: Long Articles (in general, 2500–3000 words plus up to 30 references, but please see the note below about the possibility for lengthier pieces*); Opinions (400–500 words plus up to five references); Book and Culture Reviews (500–1000 words); and Meeting Reports (500– 750 words). And we are interested in receiving contributions from a wide spectrum of authors, including philosophers, scientists, naturalists, indigenous thinkers, theologians, activists and poets. We are particularly interested in pieces with practical messages offering a ‘way forward’.

While we are looking for intellectual rigour, contributions should – owing to the breadth of topics covered within the scope of the Journal – be aimed at a non-specialist audience.

Read more about the Journal: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/about.html

See our submission guidelines: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/submissions.html

Contact us about submitting a piece: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/contact.html

*In general, Long Articles should be 2500–3000 words, plus up to 30 references, but it may not be appropriate to restrict pieces on all topics to this limit. If you would like to propose a piece that is longer than 3000 words, please let us know in advance.

Submit images for a ‘beautiful Earth’ photoessay

Ian Whyte, Associate Editor

I believe that beautiful images can be a stimulus needed to move people in an ecocentric direction. With this thought in mind, we are considering publishing a photoessay consisting of a collection of ecocentrically beautiful pictures. There will be minimal text.

These images can be of anything in the natural world, including landscapes, ecosystems, natural features, plants, animals, and any other natural things or parts of life.

We ask readers who are interested in this idea to submit one or two original photographs. We hope to be able to publish a photoessay in issue two, and again in one or more later issues if there is sufficient material. This project is separate from our usual illustrations and art as seen in this issue.

To submit photos, please contact me here: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/contact.html

10 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net OPINION

Why a new ecological forum?

n an age of information overload and We need a new forum and a voice for nature- John Davis electronic bombardment, why start a first conservation, for ecological citizenship. Inew online journal, some readers may Much has changed, though, since journals About the author wonder. Why launch The Ecological Citizen, like Earth First! and Wild Earth (Figure 1) gave John is a wildways trekker when many good publications go unread? voice in print form to wild creatures. Print whose home is in Westport, “Because it takes a community to save a periodicals are prohibitively expensive to NY, USA. He works with corridor,” would be my answer. It will take a produce, unless one invites advertisements Wildlands Network, The Rewilding Institute and community to restore vital connections not from any and all corporations, regardless other rewilding groups. only between wild places on the ground but of their records of land exploitation. At the He was a Founding Editor also between people and the natural world. same time, electronic communications have of Wild Earth. The conservation cause needs a growing, proliferated to the point of drowning readers vibrant, exciting tribe, which attracts and themselves in excess verbiage. Citation people young and old, and helps them be Davis J (2017) Why a new better members of the biotic community. Rising above the fray ecological forum? The Ecological Citizen 1: 11–12. We need a forum to build this community How, then, do we rise above the fray and and a voice to emanate from it. We need share our message of rewilding, wildways Keywords that voice to speak for the full range and and ecological citizenship? I think part of the Conservation movement; glory of biological diversity, from ants and answer is an ecologically honest, nature-first, rewilding; wildlands butterflies, to forests and grasslands, to visually appealing and intellectually enticing salmon and streams, and to wolves and publication, building into an authoritative whales. voice for wild nature and forging a community Since the last issue of Wild Earth thirteen of advocates along the wild way. years ago and the publishing of Dave This publication must be forthright. Foreman’s landmark book Rewilding North It should, in my view, begin with the America, I’ve rambled countless miles of supposition that most of the world ought proposed local, regional and continental to be wild. (EO Wilson’s Half-Earth is a good wildways, looking at the feasibility of goal, but we should strive for even more.) It protecting them on the ground and talking should then accept, and purvey, the logical with key people along the way. The most conclusion that we humans have taken much frequent comment I heard on TrekEast in more than our share: we are far too many in “This publication 2011 and TrekWest in 2013 was, “We miss number, and we consume way too much. The must be forthright. Wild Earth.” One of the clearest conclusions Ecological Citizen should then point to specific It should, in my I reached on these conservation treks is ways we can help rewild lands and waters, that we need a community forum and reconnect protected areas, become plain view, begin with the communications vehicle. citizens of the biotic community (to borrow supposition that We wildlands advocates, we ecological Aldo Leopold’s apt phrase), scale back the most of the world citizens, are a talented and dedicated lot, but industrial enterprise, actively give back to ought to be wild. we are not yet a tight community, much less nature, restore degraded areas, reintegrate ” a powerful movement. We are voices not just ourselves into the natural world, convert a for, but in, the wilderness. Few outside our global economy based on exploiting nature small circles of friends and colleagues hear to local economies based on restoring us – even though we are speaking for the nature, and generally preserve and restore broadest imaginable interest: life on Earth. life on Earth.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 11 Why a new ecological forum? www.ecologicalcitizen.net

The Ecological Citizen should, I’d opine, be more global than past ecocentric or biocentric journals. For better or worse (mostly worse, I fear), the electronic web “The Ecological has shrunk the world. An ambitious forum Citizen can be for vibrant biotic communities, available a catalyst for to anyone with internet access (which, radical, egalitarian, let us never forget, is far from entirely inclusive), now has ample reason to cover compassionate, the whole of wild Earth, and even much of unifying change.” domesticated Earth, as it strives to grow a movement of people devoted to caring for and living with the rest of nature. Grassroots conservation and restoration folks in North America have much to learn from counterparts in Africa, for instance, and vice versa. Successful on-the-ground restoration efforts in South America’s Southern Cone, to imagine another example, might inform restoration ecology in Australia. Figure 1. The front cover of the winter 1994–95 Particularly since the disastrous 2016 issue of Wild Earth. election in the US, the fight for life on Earth can convincingly be portrayed can be a catalyst for radical, egalitarian, as a fight of good versus evil. Thinking compassionate, unifying change. It can people know this is an oversimplification be a voice for lions and tigers and bears – that American consumers, especially, and birds and bees and other creatures all share moral and physical culpability who are losing their homes and kin to the for the degradation of wild Earth. Yet the industrial juggernaut. May this much- lines between life-affirming and life- needed new forum lead to a truly wild destroying actions are now as clear as Earth, with secure homes for everyone in they’ve ever been. Friends of Earth can be the biotic community. n easily discerned from foes of Earth. Acknowledgement A catalyst for change The author acknowledges with gratitude the The Ecological Citizen can rally and empower helpful comments of Tom Butler, his long-time those friends of Earth. The Ecological Citizen colleague and successor as Wild Earth Editor.

You can discuss a range of Earth-centred issues by joining the Ecocentric Alliance’s email group

www.ecocentricalliance.org/#ju

12 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net OPINION

Life’s defeat is imminent: We must become effective

ife, as well as life’s diversity, is Livingston realized that conservation – Ian Whyte conclusively losing the battle for for what, partly at least, appear to be good LEarth. One might even say, given the reasons in the short term – has long been About the author momentum of the situation, that its defeat barking up the wrong tree (1981: 13): Ian is a field naturalist who is imminent. It is time – way past time lives in Ottawa, ON, Canada. actually – that those who wish to defend life Defensive action – delaying action – is He is Associate Editor of the Journal. on Earth became effective. always terribly busy and reflexive and The WWF’s startling Living Planet Report reactive, simply because there usually is not Citation 2016 documents major declines in life’s time in which to regroup, dig in, consider, Whyte I (2017) Life’s defeat is numbers from 1970 to 2016; for instance, and strategise. Confusion and fragmentation imminent: We must become there has been a 58% overall decline in – and exhausting flailing – often follow. effective.The Ecological Citizen vertebrate population abundance (W W F, Such would be my characterization of wildlife 1: 13–14. 2016). The report predicts a total loss of 67% conservation: we dart about, stamping at tiny by 2020 if current trends continue. This is a smoulders in the carpet, rushing from hot Keywords catastrophe of the first order for all life on spot to hot spot, when all the while the roof Biodiversity; conservation; Earth. is racing to a fire-storm and the walls are sixth mass extinction; societal change Making this situation even more creaking toward collapse. distressing is the fact that it has been long forecast. For instance, John Livingston, in In large part, it appears that it’s the very his book The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, foundations of our society which must wrote (1981: 19): change. Currently, society supports the never-sleeping, ever-watchful, always- When you [think about it], I am certain that malevolent megamachine, whose function you will come to the same conclusion: in the is to convert the Earth into cash for the broadest sense, wildlife preservation is a already rich. All ‘victories’ are necessarily catastrophic, heart-breaking disaster. temporary in such a system. This explains, partially, the problems described in the For crying out loud – and I do – this was preceding paragraphs. (Livingston offered published over 35 years ago and nothing has several more reasons.) Thus, we should be changed, except the outlook is worsening. focusing our time and energy on doing what Livingston also wrote (1981: 14): is necessary to change society, not fighting individual issues. The way we’re doing it, In conservation we have always assumed a we are losing, and life’s defeat is on the dialogue between ourselves and everyone horizon as we write and read. To attempt else; a civilized, adversary proceeding in to talk about life’s defeat, and have people which reason, logic and meticulous argument, understand what you mean, is an incredibly liberally laced in horrible precedent, would sad experience. But in some cases, people persuade just men and women to our don’t even grasp what I am saying. position. We have invested enormously in It is time that those on the Earth’s side that assumption. Unfortunately for reason reappraised and changed their tactics. and logic, and for wildlife, it has not worked. Livingston’s description above about the assumed dialogue “between ourselves And it’s still not working. and everyone else” is, I believe, highly

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 13 Life’s defeat is imminent: We must become effective www.ecologicalcitizen.net

accurate. It seems to me that almost none we don’t need a plethora of tiny groups, each of the great articles, wonderful research and jealously defending their minuscule turf and grand books reach anyone other than the each acting alone in the face of gargantuan already-converted few. Certainly, they have forces. The megamachine always wins in the We need to “ not sufficiently influenced the behaviour of end, in the current system. devote a maximum those with destructive power to stem the It seems to me that we need to devote a effort into the slaughter or to modify the system more than maximum effort into the problem which has problem which cosmetically. always beaten us: how to change humanity’s has always beaten It’s my opinion that we already know operating paradigm. We know what and why, what the problem is: humanity, its excesses but we don’t know how. Addressing this, us: how to change and its operating system. Because current I believe, is where all our efforts should be humanity’s operating efforts to defend life are losing, or have directed. This is where I hope The Ecological paradigm.” lost so badly, they must be changed. The Citizen will shine. n fundamental, underlying causes need to be identified (that is, of course, only if we References delude ourselves into thinking that they are Livingston J (1981) The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation. not now known) and addressed. We don’t McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, ON, Canada. need any more articles or research into the WWF (2016) Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and resilience cause of the problem. We need fewer single- in a new era. WWF International, Gland, Switzerland. issue campaigns of the “Save X” variety. And Available at https://is.gd/rcbOx9 (accessed April 2017).

Artwork Soul Chart III by Geoff Diego Litherland

Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

About the artwork: Woodcut print on paper (2016; one of a series of ten).

From the artist: The connections made in these woodcuts involve my relationship to my immediate landscape, the material properties of the medium in question and our perception and understanding of the macro and the micro. In the case of the woodcuts the macro and the micro is very much about our understanding time, the rings of the tree in relationship to the stars and how long it takes for them to perceptually reach us.

14 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net ARTWORK

About the artwork: Lithograph (2007) from a series of drawings of a landscape being developed for housing, in which certain trees were tagged for removal. by Angie Shanahan Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 15 ARTWORK www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Archean by Leigh Gillam

From the artist: This is a response to geological time narratives and lists of Earth and life creation and extinction events.

Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

16 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net OPINION

Reasons for a reduction of humans’ impact on the ecosphere

n a recent article in the journal Trends from continued unsustainable demands on Joe Gray in Ecology & Evolution titled “Reasons natural systems only serves to strengthen Ito conserve nature”, Pearson (2016) the ethical arguments for limiting human About the author presents a framework for conservation numbers and human economic demands Joe is a naturalist based that attempts to do justice to both the on the rest of nature. in St Albans, UK, who is intrinsic and the instrumental value of currently studying for a non-human nature. Pearson is motivated Value clashes as warning signals PhD on the conservation of insects and arachnids by a pragmatic desire to harness the When consideration of intrinsic and in temperate and boreal benefits of both anthropocentric and instrumental values point in the same forests. He is a Knowledge ecocentric arguments to achieve practical practical direction, it is important to use Network Expert for the conservation successes. One of his crucial this convergence to form the strongest United Nations’ Harmony suggestions is to limit intrinsic value claims possible arguments for the conservation with Nature programme and is Associate Editor of to higher levels of biological organization, of biodiversity (at all levels). On the the Journal. such as species and ecosystems, denying other hand, there will be cases where the intrinsic value of lower levels such anthropocentric and ecocentric concerns Citation as genes, individuals and populations. point toward different practical policies – Gray J (2017) Reasons for Pearson’s rationale is that a broader hence Pearson references an ‘infighting’ a reduction of humans’ application of intrinsic value would prove between ideologies. Instead of trying impact on the ecosphere. The too rigorous, “point[ing] toward a halt to to eliminate value clashes from our Ecological Citizen 1: 17–18. human progress.” With such a restriction conservation philosophy, I believe that Keywords on the scope of intrinsic value, the fate they should be used as warning signals, of individual organisms and populations alerting us that compromises are needed. Anthropocentrism; biodiversity; ecodemocracy; would be determined solely with reference And to reach these compromises, the needs intrinsic value; to their instrumental value to people. of the ecosystem must be placed above overpopulation Pearson’s attempt to explicitly those of any single species, no matter how include consideration of intrinsic special – because the well-being of all value in decision-making provides a species depends upon a flourishing global welcome counterpoint to the growing ecosystem (Curry, 2011). anthropocentric conservation paradigm focused solely on ecosystem services, as Ecodemocracy as an alternative recently critiqued by Silvertown (2015; I am aware that an insistence on 2016). However, the creation of a framework acknowledging the full breadth of intrinsic that obviates the need to call human value, when confronted with a framework progress into question ignores the single that attempts to achieve harmony between most significant practical implication different ideologies, might be seen as of non-human nature’s intrinsic and another example of ‘infighting’. Thus, I instrumental values: the human species feel obliged to point to an alternative to needs to lessen its negative impacts on Pearson’s framework: ecodemocracy (a the ecosphere, not least through reducing contraction of ecocentric democracy; Gray the global birth rate so that the human and Curry, 2016). This involves creating population will decline from its currently decision-making systems that respect unsustainable level (Cafaro and Crist, the principles of human democracy, while 2012). That humans themselves will suffer explicitly recognizing the intrinsic value

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 17 Reasons for a reduction of humans’ impact on the ecosphere www.ecologicalcitizen.net

of non-human nature and working to infighting, a resolution that continues ensure that this value is taken into account to define human progress primarily as in important economic and environmental rapid economic growth is a betrayal of our decisions. Interested readers are directed home planet. It is no real resolution to our “Consciously to a recent article presenting a number difficulties, since human progress, in this stepping back of ways that ecodemocracy might be modernist sense, is the chief force driving from our current achieved in practice (Gray and Curry, 2016), humanity to enact Earth’s sixth mass including: extinction (Butler et al., 2015). Consciously position as planetary n discursive processes; stepping back from our current position plunderers and n human proxies for other species with as planetary plunderers and learning to learning to appreciate voting rights; appreciate and respect Earth’s ecological and respect Earth’s n citizen juries; wonders now stands as the true path of human progress. n ecological wonders n statutory enforcement of strong laws preserving the right of other species to now stands as the Acknowledgements continued existence. true path of human The author is grateful to Philip Cafaro, for his critical input into this Opinion piece, and to Ian Conclusion progress.” Whyte, for his contribution of ideas that were To sum up, the real issue that Pearson helpful in shaping its writing. (2016) raises is not the lack of clear practical guidance resulting from too References broad an application of intrinsic value, Butler T, Crist E and Wuerthner G, eds (2015) since restricting intrinsic value claims as Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot. G o ff he suggests is both arbitrary and a failure Books, Novato, CA, USA. to clarify our ecological choices. The real Cafaro P and Crist E, eds (2012) Life on the Brink: issue is the fact that recognizing non- Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, USA. human nature’s intrinsic and instrumental values provides strong ethical grounds Curry P (2011) Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (2nd edition). Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. for redefining what constitutes human Gray J and Curry P (2016) Ecodemocracy: Helping wildlife’s progress on a planet that we share with right to survive. ECOS 37:–27. millions of other species, comprising Pearson RG (2016) Reasons to conserve nature. Trends in innumerable populations and an immense Ecology & Evolution 31: 3 6 6–7 1 . richness of genetic diversity, and which Silvertown J (2015) Have ecosystem services been over- we hope to pass on intact and flourishing sold? Trends in Ecology & Evolution 30: 641–8. to future human and non-human Silvertown J (2016) Ecologists need to be cautious about generations. While I agree that we need economic metaphors: A reply. Trends in Ecology & to find a way to move past ideological Evolution 31: 336.

Submit examples of ecocentrism

Joe Gray, Associate Editor

I am currently seeking details of ecocentric initatives and projects from around the globe, as well as examples of where humans within modern society are living in harmony with nature, with a view to publishing a review of these in a future issue of the Journal.

Please contact me here: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/contact.html

18 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net ARTWORK

Hadean by Leigh Gillam

From the artist: This is a response to geological time narratives and lists of Earth and life creation and extinction events.

Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 19 Provincetown Dune and Scrub Oak by Rebecca R Burrill

Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

Original: Watercolour on cold-pressed paper (2012; 20 x 13 inches). OPINION www.ecologicalcitizen.net

The Harmony with Nature initiative: Why it matters and what it might achieve

Michelle s the evidence of climate change key issues regarding the human–nature reveals itself around the world more relationship. The sixth dialogue, held in Maloney 2 A dramatically every year, and the 2016, achieved an important milestone. ecological crisis deepens, we desperately For the first time, a virtual dialogue About the author need nation states and major corporations was created, which invited experts in Michelle is the Co-Founder to engage with and implement Earth- Earth jurisprudence from around the and National Convenor of the Australian Earth centred governance. Despite around 30,000 world to provide short discussion pieces Laws Alliance and is the people creating the Universal Declaration from a range of perspectives. In all, 127 Australian representative on for the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia in international experts, from 33 nations, the Executive Committee of 2010,1 and a growing global movement of participated in the virtual dialogue and the Global Alliance for the people advocating for Earth jurisprudence addressed Earth jurisprudence from eight Rights of Nature. She holds a PhD in Law from Griffith and Earth-centredness, the ‘official’ disciplines: University. work of the United Nations (UN) and its n earth-centred law; nation state members continues to focus n ecological economics; Citation on human-centred, albeit ‘sustainable’, n education; Maloney M (2017) The growth. n holistic science; Harmony with Nature Within this context, the UN Harmony n the humanities; initiative: Why it matters and with Nature (HwN) programme can be seen n philosophy and ethics; what it might achieve. The Ecological Citizen 1: 22–3. as an extremely important initiative that n the arts, media, design and architecture; aims to build momentum for an ecocentric n theology and spirituality. Keywords worldview within the UN. The HwN website Earth jurisprudence; (www.harmonywithnatureun.org) states: I participated in this process and Harmony with Nature; can strongly recommend that anyone rights of nature; The Harmony with Nature initiative speaks interested in Earth jurisprudence and sustainable development; to the need to move away from a human- Earth-centredness read the papers United Nations centered worldview – or “anthropocentrism” submitted.2 They provide a snapshot – and establish a non-anthropocentric, of current thinking about how Earth- or Earth-centered, relationship with the centredness can be understood, and planet. Under this new paradigm, Nature implemented, in a range of disciplines is recognized as an equal partner with and across different aspects of human humankind and is no longer treated as merely societies. The final experts’ summary the source of raw materials to produce ever report from the 2016 HwN dialogues was more commodities and feed the indefinite presented to the UN General Assembly, private accumulation of capital. and on 21 December 2016 the General Assembly adopted eight resolutions from The HwN initiative began in 2009, under the report (United Nations, 2016). the leadership of the plurinational state The outcomes from this process are of Bolivia, who began intergovernmental important. The resolution called for negotiations about the principles of an interactive dialogue of the General harmony with nature. Since that time, Assembly, in which the experts’ summary the UN has hosted six annual HwN report will be further discussed, in April dialogues, which see spokespersons 2017, ahead of the next HwN dialogue. address the UN General Assembly about It also called for a report on how the

22 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net The Harmony with Nature initiative

Sustainable Development Goals could be HwN dialogues, and that the concepts implemented in harmony with nature, to and practice of Earth-centredness can be be submitted to the General Assembly. understood and implemented. n “Let’s hope that the The stated goals of the dialogues are United Nations can to “inspire citizens and societies to Notes be influenced by the reconsider how they interact with the 1 See https://is.gd/8fwpbW for more information natural world in order to implement on this. Harmony with Nature the Sustainable Development Goals in 2 For more information on this, please visit dialogues, and that the harmony with nature” (United Nations, https://is.gd/mef3QG. The papers submitted can be viewed at https://is.gd/Os7ofo. concepts and practice 2016). But the Sustainable Development of Earth-centredness Goals are fundamentally human-centred, References rather than Earth-centred. So with the can be understood United Nations (2016) Sustainable development: Harmony continued work of Earth jurisprudence and implemented. with Nature (report of the Second Committee). ” advocates around the world, let’s hope Available at https://is.gd/ZUwgYg (accessed March that the UN can be influenced by the 2017).

Turf Bank by Angie Shanahan

Original: Pastel on paper. Acknowledgement: Turf Bank was included in the book Contentious Terrains by Derek Gladwin. Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 23 by Priyanka Jena

Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork Advertisement

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Philosophy Activism Nature is a journal publishing articles, short prose pieces and poetry exploring cultural aspects of environmental crisis and cultural perspectives on resistance and renewal. PAN seeks in particular to provide a forum for the exploration of the interface between ecology and environmental philosophy, on the one hand, and religion, mythology and Indigenous thought on the other. Dialogue between modern science and ancient or more traditional understandings of reality is also encouraged. Recent themed issues include features on Ontopoetics, Plant Ethics, Fungi, Indigenous Ecological Knowledges, and Place, with an issue on Mythopoesis forthcoming. Regular features include an Ontopoetics Forum, Correspondents’ Reports, and Book Reviews. PAN is published by Informit Press (https://is.gd/searchPAN), but content from back issues is also available at http://panjournal.net/. www.ecologicalcitizen.net OPINION

A positive future for beavers in Scotland

n 24 November 2016 a decision dead wood, which is the habitat for many Alan Watson that had been long-awaited by specialist decomposer organisms. Featherstone Oconservationists was announced, Beavers play a crucial role in the when the Scottish Government recognized regulation of water flow in rivers and About the author the European beaver (Castor fiber) as a native streams, and their absence in the UK for Alan is the Founder of, and species in Scotland (Scottish Government several hundred years has compounded the visionary behind, Trees news, 2016). This gave official approval for problems of flooding that have been caused for Life, a charity based in the populations of beavers at Knapdale in by widespread riparian deforestation. Findhorn, UK. Argyll (from the Scottish Beaver Trial: Iason Beaver dams slow down and reduce the flow et al., 2014; Harrington et al., 2015) and on of water at times of heavy rainfall, while Citation Tayside to remain as wild and free animals during periods of drought the water held in Featherstone AW (2017) A in the country. It was especially significant the ponds and pools provides a sustained positive future for beavers in Scotland. The Ecological Citizen as it confirmed the reinstatement of the flow that would otherwise be much less. 1: 27–8. first of Scotland’s missing mammal species This reduction of the peaks and troughs of – previously only birds such as the sea eagle water flow also potentially reduces the need Keywords a nd red k ite had been officia l ly rei nt roduced. for expensive flood mitigation measures Rewilding; species It also means that Scotland has taken a downstream (Elliott et al., 2017). reintroductions positive step towards fulfilling both its While it’s great news that beavers are formal responsibilities under the EU’s here to stay in Scotland, their longer- Habitats Directive (whereby member states term future still needs to be secured. are obliged to investigate the feasibility The population at Knapdale in Argyll is and desirability of reintroducing extirpated small and geographically isolated, with species) and the moral imperative of no opportunity for expansion of its range redressing the eradication by humans of from there. Given the few animals in the one of the country’s native mammals. founding population, it is not genetically As a keystone species in freshwater viable for the long term, and additional aquatic and riverine systems, the beaver beavers need to be brought in, to broaden has been shown to provide tangible the genetic base. Similarly, the population ecological benefits for a whole host of on Tayside has grown from a very small other species. The ponds and pools created number of individuals and its enhancement by its small dams provide ideal breeding with animals from different sources is sites for a range of aquatic invertebrates, necessary. which are eaten by fish, amphibians, bats Beyond that, to ensure that beavers and predatory insects such as dragonflies. have a viable future in Scotland, further Those in turn are food for various birds populations need to be established in and mammals including the European other parts of the country. These will otter (Lutra lutra). The felling of trees such help to create a broader genetic base for as willows (Salix spp.) and aspen (Populus the species in Scotland. They’ll bring the tremula) by beavers stimulates the growth ecological benefits to more of the country’s of new shoots through natural coppicing river basins and catchments, and will also and suckering respectively, bringing a provide the back-up of additional colonies renewal of growth to riparian woodlands in the event that anything disastrous were while simultaneously creating a source of to happen to the existing populations.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 27 A positive future for beavers in Scotland www.ecologicalcitizen.net

In their announcement last November, have co-evolved together over long periods the Scottish Government made no reference of time, and reuniting them again now will to further possible licensed reintroductions benefit both. n of beavers, so it is uncertain what their References thinking is about the ecological future of Elliott M, Blythe C, Brazier RE et al. (2017) Beavers: the species here. Trees for Life plans to Nature’s water engineers. Devon Wildlife Trust, test the waters by preparing an official Exeter, UK. application for a reintroduction of beavers Harrington LA, Feber R, Raynor R and Macdonald DW to the Highlands north of the Great Glen Fundraising effort (2015) The Scottish Beaver Trial: Ecological monitoring – a region that it would take the existing of the European beaver Castor fiber and other riparian Trees for Life plans to test populations a long time to disperse into – mammals 2009–2014, final report (Commissioned the waters by preparing Report 685). Scottish Natural Heritage, Inverness, an official application for a and is currently running an appeal to raise UK. reintroduction of beavers funds for this, which can be supported to the Highlands north of here: https://is.gd/4Jd3uM. By bringing Iason GR, Sim DA, Brewer MJ and Moore BD (2014) The Scottish Beaver Trial: Woodland monitoring 2009-2013, the Great Glen, and it is beavers back home to the Highlands, we final report (Commissioned Report 788). Scottish currently running an appeal will be helping to create a positive future to raise funds for this, which Natural Heritage, Inverness, UK. both for the species itself in Scotland, can be supported here: Scottish Government news (2016) Beavers to remain in https://treesforlife.org.uk/ and for our riparian and freshwater Scotland. Available at https://is.gd/4iDBEg (accessed support/donate ecosystems. Those habitats and beavers March 2017).

About the work: On the theme of rewilding Britain, this work illustrates the difference between a region with excessive by Priyanka Jena unnaturally high grazing pressure, which has been reduced to simple grassland, and a region where more natural habitats have Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork developed from ecological restoration through the reintroduction Original: A textile piece based on slow stitch. of keystone predators.

28 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net OPINION

Rethinking the United Nations’ concept of sustainability

n an era of accelerating climate change when there’s nothing sustainable about Rachel Waters and deadly environmental crises the engines of growth? Ithat impact people from Guangdong They can’t. Mankind cannot save the About the author to Alberta, along with the rest of Earth and itself while churning out Rachel is an academic and life, ‘sustainability’ has become a global relentless economic growth. advocacy journalist based catchphrase. Touted by myriad businesses While this contradiction seems obvious in Brooklyn, NY, USA. and institutions, it evokes images of clean when explicitly stated, it’s often masked by Citation air, abundant forests and a future in which the language of sustainability, rendering Waters R (2017) Rethinking we can all prosper on a thriving planet. the term ‘sustainable’ little more than a the United Nations’ concept When the United Nations (UN) debuted its flimsy bridge between the disconnected of sustainability. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in concepts of mankind and nature, and Ecological Citizen 1: 29–30. September 2015, the document referenced the developed world and the developing. the word ‘sustainable’ more than 20 times This artificial disconnect lies at the core Keywords within its stated goals to tackle everything of UN thinking and is as old as Western Climate change; from poverty and hunger to biodiversity philosophy itself. human–nature dualism; decline and climate change (UN, 2015). The dominant Western worldview has sustainability; sustainable development; United While commendable for their breadth and for centuries made distinctions between Nations optimism, these aims also exposed a core ‘man’ and ‘beast’, creating an artificial problem in the organization’s approach divide between the ‘natural world’ and to social, economic and environmental humankind. Unfortunately, the separation philosophy. of these spheres has been to our global Jason Hickel, an anthropologist at the detriment. London School of Economics, points Extractive capitalism has long lacked out that in order to eradicate poverty constraining ideas of interconnectedness. through the existing model of free market Instead, it has left us with the indelible capitalism, the global economy would concept of nature’s bounty as a free need to expand to5 times its present size resource to be tapped at will to meet the (Hickel, 2015). A similar analysis, exploring demands of human consumption. Even as hypothetical rapid economic growth of these demands have grown and the worlds poor countries to catch up to the average from which resources are extracted and high-income country, estimates that this those in which they are consumed draw would require the resources of 3.4 Earths together and begin to overlap – even as (Hickel, 2015). And this latter estimate does new poverties of water, air, land, climate not take into account the need to leave a and biodiversity emerge – this binary has fair share of the one Earth we do have for persisted with the word ‘sustainability’ the rest of life. slapped on as a Band-Aid. Therein lies the greatest contradiction The binary, itself, however, has never within the SDGs: In a world whose been effectively challenged. Even as economies thrive almost exclusively on scientists and indigenous peoples protest industries which drill, deforest and pollute, against it through research and lived how can the SDGs simultaneously hold experience, governments, businesses and nations to the goal of poverty eradication bodies like the UN still fail to operate from while requesting they do so ‘sustainably’, a stance of interconnectedness.1

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 29 Rethinking the United Nations’ concept of sustainability www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Consider the 2014 Fifth Assessment planetary limits. Humans are only a small Report by the UN’s Intergovernmental part of nature; we cannot realistically Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2014). At extricate ourselves from each other or from first pass it reads as an urgent case for nature, or adapt it to meet our demands. changing how we interact with the planet Moreover, we should be ethically compelled within the global capitalist system, upon to reduce our negative impacts as a species “The United which human society currently depends. on the rest of the planet, as it has a right Nations must first However, close inspection reveals the to thrive independent of the benefit that we persistence of problematic dualisms that derive from it. tackle its dualistic mask the dire consequences of our current Though the UN has neither military nor thinking before it trajectory. financial might, it possesses the power can broach issues of The report notes that global warming of normative ideas, which are conveyed sustainability and above 2°C (3.6°F) will have detrimental through the language of documents like ponder the more impacts for “disadvantaged people and the SDGs and climate change reports. The communities” (IPCC, 2014: 13). This UN must first tackle its dualistic thinking radical change that language isolates the impact of climate before it can broach issues of sustainability such a concept truly refugees and ecological destabilization from and ponder the more radical change that entails.” the rest of the world, distancing one from such a concept truly entails. n the other and potentially affecting policy and practice within so-called ‘advantaged’ Notes societies. 1 The UN’s Harmony with Nature programme Furthermore, the report, much like the (see www.harmonywithnatureun.org) offers an important counterpoint to this trend (although SDGs, approaches sustainability from an its name does still imply a dualism). angle which seeks to maintain the ‘low cost’ of natural resources via unproven methods References of carbon capture and environmental Hickel J (2015) The Problem with Saving the World. Available ‘restoration’ in the face of accelerating at https://is.gd/VdxH9e (accessed March 2017). extraction. This reinforces the concept of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014) man outside of nature and ignores the fact Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of that the cost of natural goods is rising owing Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report to scarcity and environmental externalities. of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In doing so, it denies that we are married to Available at https://is.gd/xv7aiv (accessed March 2017). those price hikes, whether we like it or not. In our interconnected world, there United Nations (2015) Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (resolution is no containment of ‘advantaged’ and adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September ‘disadvantaged’, nor is there any harmony 2015). Available at https://is.gd/9ihmGe (accessed between relentless economic growth and March 2017).

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30 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 Dawn in the Sierra de la Culebra, Spain The early-morning soundscape comprises the howls of wolves, the melodies of birds, and – during the rut – the roars of red deer stags. The Sierra is one of the strongholds for the Iberian wolf. The local economy is built on foraging of mushrooms, non-intensive honey production and small-scale forestry.

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34 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE

Why ecocentrism is the key pathway to sustainability

Ecocentrism is the broadest term for worldviews that recognize intrinsic value in all lifeforms Haydn and ecosystems themselves, including their abiotic components. Anthropocentrism, in contrast, values other lifeforms and ecosystems insofar as they are valuable for human Washington, well-being, preferences and interests. Herein, the authors examine the roots of ecocentrism Bron Taylor, and discuss its mixed history of international recognition. They argue that non-human Helen Kopnina, nature has intrinsic value irrespective of human preferences or valuation, and they refute the claim that ecocentrism is misanthropic. They then summarize four key examples from Paul Cryer and the academic literature in which anthropocentrism fails to provide an ethic adequate for John J Piccolo respecting and protecting planet Earth and its inhabitants. The authors conclude that ecocentrism is essential for solving our unprecedented environmental crisis, arguing its About the authors importance from four perspectives: ethical, evolutionary, spiritual and ecological. They See following page. contend that a social transformation towards ecocentrism is not only an ethical but a practical imperative, and they urge support for ecocentric understanding and practices. Citation Washington H, Taylor B, cocentrism finds inherent (intrinsic) Historical roots of ecocentrism Kopnina H, Cryer P and Piccolo JJ (2017) Why value in all of nature. It takes a In a sense, ecocentrism has been with ecocentrism is the key E much wider view of the world humanity since we evolved; it underpins pathway to sustainability. than does anthropocentrism, which sees what can be called the ‘old’ sustainability The Ecological Citizen 1: 35–41. individual humans and the human species (Washington, 2015). Many indigenous as more valuable than all other organisms. cultures around the world speak of lore Keywords Ecocentrism is the broadest of worldviews, and (in Australia) ‘law’ that reflects an Anthropocentrism; but there are related worldviews (that ecocentric view of the world (Knudtson and ecological ethics; might be called ‘intermediate varieties’ Suzuki, 1992). Ecologist Aldo Leopold (1949: geodiversity; intrinsic value; worldviews (Curry, 2011: 57). Ecocentrism goes beyond 203–4) provided a classic example of the biocentrism (ethics that sees inherent notion in what he called ‘The Land Ethic’: value to all living things) by including environmental systems as wholes, and The land ethic simply enlarges the their abiotic aspects. It also goes beyond boundaries of the community to include zoocentrism (seeing value in animals) on soils, waters, plants, and animals […] A account of explicitly including flora and land ethic of course cannot prevent the the ecological contexts for organisms. alteration, management, and use of these While other scholars may differ, we see ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to ecocentrism as the umbrella that includes continued existence, and, at least in spots, biocentrism and zoocentrism, because their continued existence in a natural state. all three of these worldviews value the non-human, with ecocentrism having Arne Naess (1973) coined the term ‘Deep the widest vision. Given that life relies on Ecology’ for similar sentiments, later geology and geomorphology to sustain it, articulating the notion in Principle 1 of and that ‘geodiversity’ also has intrinsic the Deep Ecology Platform (Devall and value (Gray, 2013), the broader concept Sessions, 1985: 69): ‘ecocentrism’ seems the more inclusive value (Curry, 2011) and hence most The well-being of non-human life on Earth appropriate. has value in itself. This value is independent

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 35 Why ecocentrism is the key pathway to sustainability www.ecologicalcitizen.net

of any instrumental usefulness for limited the United Nations means that it is not itself human purposes. binding, it does have “the character of a proclamation directed to states for their In terms of ecocentrism helping to solve observance” (Wood,85: 982). the environmental crisis, Stan Rowe (1994) The World Commission on Environment argued: and Development (WCED, 1987a: 45), in Our Common Future, argued that development It seems to me that the only promising “must not endanger the natural systems universal belief-system is Ecocentrism, that support life on Earth: the atmosphere, defined as a value-shift from Homo sapiens the waters, the soils, and living beings.” It to planet earth: Ecosphere. A scientific also (in a little-noticed passage) expressed rationale backs the value-shift. All the view that nature has intrinsic value organisms are evolved from Earth, sustained (WCED, 1987a: 57): by Earth. Thus Earth, not organism, is the metaphor for Life. Earth not humanity is [T]he case for the conservation of nature the Life-center, the creativity-center. Earth should not rest only with development is the whole of which we are subservient goals. It is part of our moral obligation to parts. Such a fundamental philosophy gives other living beings and future generations. ecological awareness and sensitivity an enfolding, material focus. However, the Tokyo Declaration that accompanied Our Common Future had Acknowledgment of intrinsic Principle 1 to “increase growth” while value internationally Principle 3 was to “conserve and enhance About the authors The intrinsic value of nature has had a the resource base” for humans (WCED, Haydn Washington is an environmental scientist, mixed history in terms of international 1987b). The Rio Declaration (see https:// writer and activist based recognition. The Stockholm Declaration of is.gd/TJjVAS) from the Earth Summit of at the PANGEA Research 1972 (see https://is.gd/89WDc2) noted that 1992, similarly, had Principle 1 stating: Centre, UNSW, Sydney, ‘natural resources’ must be safeguarded “Human beings are at the centre of concerns NSW, Australia. for future human generations. The World for sustainable development.” Bron Taylor is Professor Conservation Strategy (International Union The Earth Charter was finalized in 2000 of Religion, Nature and for Conservation of Nature and Natural (www.earthcharter.org) and was proposed Environmental Ethics at Resources, 1980) also took an anthropocentric for United Nations endorsement at the World the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA, and a approach, with three objectives: Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) Fellow of the Rachel Carson n maintaining essential ecological processes in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002. It Center for Environment and for human survival; strongly advanced an ecocentric worldview, Society, Munich, Germany. n preserving genetic diversity for the urging in Principle 1a that we: Helen Kopnina is protection of human industries that use an environmental living resources; Recognize that all beings are interdependent anthropologist at Leiden n ensuring the sustainable utilization and every form of life has value regardless of University, Leiden, and The of species and ecosystems for rural its worth to human beings. Hague University of Applied Science, The Hague, communities and human industries. the Netherlands. This visionary document expresses

Paul Cryer is a In contrast, the World Charter for Nature in compassion for humanity and nature as conservationist for the 1982 was underpinned by strong ecocentric a whole, and urges justice for both. It is Applied Ecology Unit, principles, stipulating that humanity and probably the best international document African Conservation Trust, culture are part of nature: “Every form we have to help demystify sustainability Hillcrest, South Africa. of life is unique, warranting respect (Soskolne, 2008; Washington, 2015).1 John J Piccolo is regardless of its worth to man, and, to Although it was mentioned positively Associate Professor accord other organisms such recognition, in some speeches at the WSSD, the final in the Department of Environmental and man must be guided by a moral code of Johannesburg Declaration (see https:// Life Sciences, Karlstad action” (United Nations, 1982: preamble). is.gd/Ve0Lnq) did not endorse the Earth University, Sweden. Whilst the inherent nature of the Charter of Charter. Likewise, The Future We Want, an

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output of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, also of an anthropocentric approach in failed to endorse the intrinsic value of government thinking and, indeed, the nature (see https://is.gd/vh5KQ0). However, anthropocentrism prevalent among the Point 39 did recognize that many people world’s religious traditions (Taylor et al., do have such moral sentiments (our 2016). It highlights the need for academics to “We maintain that emphasis): speak in support of ecocentrism. nature and life on

We recognize that the planet Earth and its Intrinsic value free Earth is inherently ecosystems are our home and that Mother from human valuation good. That is to say Earth is a common expression in a number We maintain that nature and life on Earth nature has intrinsic of countries and regions and we note that are inherently good. That is to say nature value, irrespective of some countries recognize the rights of has intrinsic value, irrespective of whether whether humans are nature in the context of the promotion of humans are the ones valuing it. It is true sustainable development. We are convinced that, as far as we know at present, we the ones valuing it.” that in order to achieve a just balance among humans are the only species that reflects the economic, social and environment on and applies moral values. However, we needs of present and future generations, can also understand that elements of the it is necessary to promote harmony with ecosphere have co-evolved to form the nature. wondrous complexity of the web of life – and contend that nature has value, whether This passage was in part in recognition humans perceive this or not. As philosopher that, in 2008, Ecuador enshrined rights of Holmes Rolston (2002: 118–20) put it: nature as a part of its new Constitution (see https://is.gd/5kBr9d): Some values are already there, discovered not generated by the valuer because the Nature or Pachamama, where life is first project here is really the natural object, reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, nature’s project; the principal projecting is persist, maintain itself and regenerate its nature creating formed integrity. […] The vital cycles, structure, functions and its theory of anthropogenic intrinsic value processes in evolution. needs to give place to a theory of autonomous intrinsic value. […] Those who value wild In concert, in December 2010, Bolivia nature, having discovered the intrinsic passed its own constitutional reforms, natural values that we have been defending, including the Law of the Rights of Mother wish to preserve natural processes as well Earth (see https://is.gd/j423Hk). It defined as natural products. Humans can and ought Mother Earth as “a collective subject of to see outside their own sector and affirm public interest” and declared both Mother non-anthropogenic, non-cultural values. Earth and life-systems (which combine […] At the same time, only humans have human communities and ecosystems) as conscience. That conscience emerges for the titleholders of inherent rights specified building of culture to relate humans to other in the law. Such positive and visionary humans with justice and love, but it also constitutional reform is an example for emerges—so environmental ethicists are all nations. By contrast, however, the now arguing—for the relating of humans United Nations’ Sustainable Development to nature, to the larger community of life Goals that were passed in 2015 failed to on the planet. That relationship, governed mention ecocentrism or the intrinsic value by conscience (and also by pragmatic self- of nature, or to acknowledge the rights of interest), requires a harmonious blending of nature (Kopnina, 2016). nature and culture, where this is possible. We can see above that there is a mixed The same conscience also generates a history of support for ecocentrism (and duty that respects wild nature at some the intrinsic value of nature). This likely times and places for values present there reflects the problem of the dominance independently of humans.

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The theory of autonomous intrinsic Ecocentrists overwhelmingly support value of nature frees humanity from its inter-human justice; however, they also anthropocentric obsession that it is all support inter-species justice, or ecojustice, about our valuing. It states clearly that for the non-human world (Baxter, 2005). “Ecocentrists nature has intrinsic value, whether or not Just as environmental systems involve humans perceive and acknowledge this. many interrelationships, we think overwhelmingly environmental and social systems are support inter-human Is ecocentrism anti-human? entwined, and so social and ecojustice justice; however, Ecocentrism has been labelled ‘anti-human’ concerns are (and must be) as well they also support (Smith, 2014), or as contrary to concerns for (Washington, 2015). inter-species justice, social justice. We reject this contention and agree with Stan Rowe (1994): Strength of anthropocentrism or ecojustice, for the in academia non-human world.” Ecocentrism is not an argument that all Anthropocentrism is the prevalent ideology organisms have equivalent value. It is not in most societies around the world, and it an anti-human argument nor a put-down also permeates academia and domestic of those seeking social justice. It does not and international governance. Four brief deny that myriad important homocentric examples are given in Box 1. problems exist. But it stands aside from The cases presented are but a few of these smaller, short-term issues in order the many possible examples of how to consider Ecological Reality. Reflecting anthropocentrism continues to be the on the ecological status of all organisms, it world’s dominant ideology, even in venues comprehends the Ecosphere as a Being that where ecological sustainability is a stated transcends in importance any one single goal. We contend, however, that a fully species, even the self-named sapient one. sustainable future is highly unlikely

Box 1. Examples of how anthropocentrism permeates academia and governance.

Ecosystem services organizations consistently prioritize human rights and ignore The influential term ‘ecosystem services’ was defined by the question of whether nature also has rights. The UNESCO the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA Board, 2005) 2014 ‘Roadmap’ for ESD (https://is.gd/ryk7K8), for example, as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems.” With this failed to consider worldviews, ethics or ecocentrism. Critics anthropocentric definition, nature’s services are for humanity have observed that ESD has remained anthropocentric and alone. Of course, nature provides services (habitat, nutrients have argued the approach promotes an industrial worldview and energy) to all species, and these too must be maintained antithetical to a holistic understanding of sustainability (Orr, (Washington, 2013). 1994; Spring, 2004). Kopnina (2012) concluded that, at present, ESD actually undermines efforts to educate citizens about the Strong sustainability importance of valuing and protecting the environment. Mainstream economists (e.g. Solow, 1993) have argued for New conservation approach ‘weak’ sustainability, where human capital (skills in society) and built capital can be substituted for natural capital Advocates of a ‘new conservation’ approach have argued that (another expression for ecosystem services). In this view human well-being should be at the forefront of conservation it is permissible to destroy natural areas and biodiversity efforts (Marris, 2011; Kareiva et al., 2012). It pursues economic as long as we pass on money, skills and buildings to future development, poverty alleviation and corporate partnerships generations. ‘Strong’ sustainability goes further and requires as substitutes for mainstream conservation tools such as that natural capital stocks be ‘held constant’ independently of protected areas (Soulé, 2013: 895). Miller et al. (2014) have human-made capital (Daly and Cobb, 1994). Although ‘strong’ compellingly argued that this anthropocentric approach is is an improvement over ‘weak’ sustainability, it remains based on a “human exceptionalism” that distorts ecological anthropocentric because it is only focused on minimum science while prioritizing capitalist development over biophysical requirements for human survival (Wackernagel ecosystem and societal health. Doak et al. (2015) similarly and Rees, 1996; Washington, 2015). conclude that new conservation is all about human interests, not nature’s. Batavia and Nelson (2016) make a compelling Education for sustainable development argument for the ethical view that nature has intrinsic The United Nations and UNESCO promote ‘education for value, and conclude that new conservation’s endorsement of sustainable development’ (ESD; https://is.gd/j2zmuc), but both anthropocentrism is highly suspect.

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without an ecocentric value shift that that human life naturally involves. History recognizes the intrinsic value of nature and science also note that many people and and a corresponding Earth jurisprudence. some societies have developed ecocentric Hence the need for academics to speak out in moral sentiments, and that these have support of ecocentrism. been ecologically and socially adaptive. In short, the role that religion and spirituality Why ecocentrism is an plays in environmental behaviours has essential solution been complicated and mixed (Taylor, 2005). We believe that ecocentrism, through There is evidence, however, that ecocentric its recognition of humanity’s duties values (often buttressed by, if not directly towards nature, is central to solving our rooted in, scientific understandings of unprecedented environmental crisis. Its ecosystem complexity) are increasingly importance is for multiple reasons, as being fused into nature-based, ecocentric described below. spiritualities, in many cases innovatively so (Taylor, 2010). With such spiritualities, In ethical terms even people who are entirely naturalistic Ecocentrism expands the moral community in their worldviews often speak of the (and ethics) from being just about Earth and its ecosystems as sacred and ourselves. It means we are not concerned thus worthy of reverent care and defence. only with humanity; we extend respect and care to all life, and indeed to terrestrial and In ecological terms aquatic ecosystems themselves. Ecocentric Ecocentrism reminds us that the ecosphere care for life has been an important theme and all life is interdependent and that both for many individuals and some societies humans and non-humans are absolutely for millennia. There is no philosophically dependent on the ecosystem processes or scientifically sound justification why that nature provides (Washington, 2013). moral concern should not be extended to An anthropocentric conservation ethic all of the ecosphere, both its biotic and alone is wholly inadequate for conserving “Ecology teaches abiotic components. biodiversity. Ecocentrism is rooted in an humility in another evolutionary understanding that reminds In evolutionary terms us that we are latecomers to what Leopold way, because from Ecocentrism reflects the fact that Homo (1949) evocatively called “the odyssey of it we recognize that sapiens evolved out of the ecosphere’s rich evolution” (in his musing ‘On a Monument we do not know web of life – a legacy stretching back an to the Pigeon’). This understanding also everything about the almost unimaginable 3.5 billion years. reminds us that every species and every world’s ecosystems, There is no logical dividing line (temporally organism living today got here through or taxonomically) that can define where or the same long struggle for existence. and never will.” when intrinsic value began (Piccolo, 2017). This logically leads both to empathy for Other species literally are our cousins and our fellow inhabitants (who have, like relatives (close and distant) – a biological us, managed to make it so far) and to kinship that many have recognized as humility, because in this process we are conferring moral responsibilities towards no different from the others. And ecology all species. So does the recognition that we teaches humility in another way, because are a part of nature, not apart from nature; from it we recognize that we do not know this erodes notions of human supremacy everything about the world’s ecosystems, (Crist, 2012; Taylor, 2013). and never will. This leads quite naturally to a precautionary approach towards all the In spiritual terms systems that constitute the ecosphere, so Ecocentrism has generally been at variance that where there are threats of serious or with the predominant religions in the irreversible damage, lack of full scientific world, which have tended to offer escape certainty shall not be used as a reason for from mortality and relief from the suffering postponing remedial action.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 39 Why ecocentrism is the key pathway to sustainability www.ecologicalcitizen.net

The role of science time to increasingly understand the way Western scientific thought corroborates we (and the rest of the living world) came an ecocentric worldview through the to be. And this has enabled us to see that, understanding it gives to us of eco- indeed, we are part of nature, embedded in evolutionary processes; from this we a beautiful and wondrous living world, the rediscover our evolutionary heritage and only place in the universe where we know our ecological dependence on nature. This for sure that life exists. Surely, if anything understanding may originally have come is worthy of respect, even reverence, it through reductionist methods, but these is life itself on our own home planet. We have also contributed to an awareness of maintain that a transformation towards an complex interconnectedness. This aligns ecocentric worldview, and corresponding the science of ecocentricity very closely to value systems, is a necessary path towards belief systems of those indigenous peoples the flourishing of life on Earth, including (and others) who have in various ways that of our own species. n come to see themselves as part of a sacred world. Indeed, many Western scientists Acknowledgement have recognized there has been a scientific The authors would like to thank the peer reviewers, method to many non-Western societies, whose comments added to the article. involving close observation of organisms and ecological systems and their effects. Notes This has led to increasing interest in 1 Although not an international statement, A Manifesto for Earth, written by Mosquin and Rowe traditional ecological knowledge and (2004), also argued strongly for ecocentrism: efforts to fuse such knowledge with https://is.gd/n7gIt2 (accessed March 2017). Western scientific understandings(Berkes, 2008). Many of those involved in these References cross-cultural discussions have come to a Batavia C and Nelson MP (2016) Heroes or thieves? The deeper respect for the knowledge systems ethical grounds for lingering concerns about new and ecocentric moral sentiments of those conservation. Journal of Environmental Studies and with whom they are intellectually (and Sciences doi: 10.1007/s13412-016-0399-0. sometimes practically) engaged. Baxter B (2005) A Theory of Ecological Justice. Routledge, New York, NY, USA. Conclusion Berkes F (2008) Sacred Ecology: Traditional ecological knowledge and resource management (2nd edition). We conclude that an ecocentric worldview Routledge, New York, NY, USA. follows naturally from our evolution- Crist E (2012) Abundant Earth and the population derived, empathetic and aesthetic question. In: Cafaro P and Crist E, eds. Life on the Brink: capacities, which, when combined with Environmentalists confront overpopulation. University of our rational abilities, have enabled us over Georgia Press, Athens, GA, USA: 141–53.

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40 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Why ecocentrism is the key pathway to sustainability

Curry P (2011) Ecological Ethics: An introduction (2nd Rolston H III (2002) Naturalizing Callicott. In: Ouderkirk edition). Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. W and Hill J, eds. Land, Value, Community: Callicott and environmental philosophy. State University of New York Daly H and Cobb J (1994) For the Common Good: Redirecting Press, Albany, NY, USA. the economy toward community, the environment, and a sustainable future. Beacon Press, Boston, MA, USA. Rowe JS (1994) Ecocentrism and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Available at https://is.gd/rkSgP5 (accessed Devall B and Sessions G (1985) Deep Ecology: Living as if March 2017). nature mattered. Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, USA. Smith W (2014) The War on Humans. Discovery Institute We maintain that Doak D, Bakker VJ, Goldstein BE and Hale B (2015) What “ Press, Seattle, WA, USA. is the future of conservation? In: Wuerthner G, Crist a transformation Solow R (1993) Sustainability: An economist’s perspective. E and Butler T, eds. Protecting the Wild: Parks and towards an ecocentric wilderness, the foundation for conservation. Island Press, In: Dorfman R and Dorfman N, eds. Economics of the Washington, DC, USA: 27–35. Environment: Selected readings (3rd edition). Norton, worldview, and New York, NY, USA: 179–87. Gray M (2013) Geodiversity: Valuing and conserving abiotic corresponding Soskolne C (2008) Preface. In: Soskolne C, ed. Sustaining nature (2nd edition). John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, value systems, USA. Life on Earth: Environmental and human health through global governance. Lexington Books, New York, NY, USA. is a necessary International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1980) World Conservation Strategy: Soulé M (2013) The “new conservation”. Conservation path towards the Biology 27: 8 9 5–7. Living resource conservation for sustainable development. flourishing of life on Available at https://is.gd/NzzGT4 (accessed March Spring J (2004) How Educational Ideologies are Shaping 2017). Global Society: Intergovernmental organizations, NGOs, Earth, including that and the decline of the nation-state. Lawrence Erlbaum Kareiva P, Marvier M and Lalasz R (2012) Conservation in of our own species. Associates, Mahwah, NJ, USA. ” the Anthropocene: Beyond solitude and fragility. Available at https://is.gd/YokXWI (accessed March 2017). Taylor B, ed (2005) The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Continuum International, London, UK. Knudtson P and Suzuki D (1992) Wisdom of the Elders. Allen and Unwin, Sydney, NSW, Australia. Taylor B (2010) Dark Green Religion: Nature spirituality and the planetary future. University of California Press, Kopnina H (2012) Education for sustainable development Oakland, CA, USA. (ESD): The turn away from ‘environment’ in environmental education? Environmental Education Taylor B (2013) “It’s not all about us”: Reflections on the Research 18: 6 9 9 –7 17. state of American environmental history. Journal of American History 100: 140–4. Kopnina H (2016) Half the earth for people (or more)? Addressing ethical questions in conservation. Taylor B, Van Wieren G and Zaleha B (2016) The greening Biological Conservation 203: 176–85. of religion hypothesis (part two): Assessing the data from Lynn White, Jr, to Pope Francis. Journal for the Leopold A (1949) A Sand County Almanac: With other essays Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 10: 3 0 6–7 8 . on conservation from Round River. Random House, New York, NY, USA. United Nations (1982) World Charter for Nature (resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 28 October 1982). Marris E (2011) Rambunctious Garden: Saving nature in a Available at https://is.gd/zXyzrB (accessed March post-wild world. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, 2017). NY, USA. Wackernagel M and Rees W (1996) Our Ecological Footprint: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board (2005) Living Reducing human impact on the Earth. New Society Beyond Our Means: Natural assets and human well-being. Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada. United Nations Environment Programme. Available Washington H (2013) Human Dependence on Nature: How at https://is.gd/AKtaKU (accessed March 2017). to help solve the environmental crisis. Routledge, London, Miller B, Soulé M and Terborgh J (2014) ‘New UK. conservation’ or surrender to development? Animal Washington H (2015) Demystifying Sustainability: Towards Conservation 17: 509–15. real solutions. Routledge, London, UK. Mosquin T and Rowe S (2004) A Manifesto for Earth. Wood HW (1985) The United Nations World Charter for Biodiversity 5: 3-9. Nature: The developing nations’ initiative to establish Naess A (1973) The shallow and the deep, long-range protections for the environment. Ecology Law Quarterly ecology movement: a summary. Inquiry: 95–100. 12: 977–96.

Orr D (1994) Earth in Mind: On education, environment, World Commission on Environment and Development and the human prospect. Island Press, Washington, DC, (1987a) Our Common Future. Oxford University Press, USA. Oxford, UK.

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The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 41 ARTWORK www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Artwork on the following two pages About the artwork: The film Unruly City, which was made for the 2016 0rphan Drift video collaboration, is built around Stills from the film Hexagram 49 of the I Ching. It charts a course through a shifting urban imaginary emerging in the shadow of climate change Unruly City and bio-capital, creating an amalgamation of potential spaces, materialities and creaturely life. by Mer Maggie Roberts Higher-resolution versions: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

Call for Artists

Stephanie Moran, Art Editor, and Salomón Bazbaz Lapidus, Art Advisor

We are inviting artists to submit artworks to The Ecological Citizen. We are seeking full-page spreads across 2–5 pages, single-page artworks and individual smaller drawings and images. We are looking for a range of artworks that fit with the ecocentric ethos of the Journal.

Artworks may relate to the Journal’s topic areas (see www.ecologicalcitizen.net/about.html), or be images of animals and other nature including but not limited to: observational drawings, landscapes of all kinds, macro and cosmic perspectives, and animal vision.

We are also looking for artists to respond to written articles with smaller drawings; please contact the Art Editor, via the contact form linked to below, if you would be interested in making work specifically in response to submitted articles.

Artworks must be suitable to place in an online journal format, to fit onto A4 pages, and should be provided in high resolution (300 dpi) at intended size for the A4 page.

Contact us about making a submission: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/contact.html

Submit examples of ecocentrism

Joe Gray, Associate Editor

I am currently seeking details of ecocentric initatives and projects from around the globe, as well as examples of where humans within modern society are living in harmony with nature, with a view to publishing a review of these in a future issue of the Journal.

Please contact me here: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/contact.html

42 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017

www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE

Wild democracy: A biodiversity of resistance and renewal

Might the theory and practice of liberal representative democracy need to be rethought Samuel in and for the ‘Anthropocene’? What resources are available when trying to orientate oneself in radical political space today? In this paper, the authors draw on varieties of Alexander and anarchism and Marxism to develop a new, ecocentric political sensibility and practice, Peter Burdon which they call ‘wild democracy’. Calling for a ‘biodiversity of resistance and renewal’, this signifies an eco-egalitarian politics that privileges grassroots participation over About the authors parliamentary representation, with the aim of transcending capitalism and initiating Samuel is a lecturer a degrowth process of planned economic contraction. Focusing attention beyond the with the Office for Environmental Programs, ballot box, this analysis attempts to rethink the meaning of political participation in University of Melbourne, an age of ecological crisis and deepen the understanding of what it means to be an Melbourne, VIC, Australia. ecological citizen today. He is also Co-Director of the Simplicity Institute.

he great American philosopher John apathy at our own peril. It is government of Peter is Associate Professor Dewey once wrote: “Every generation the people, certainly, but not government at the Adelaide Law School has to accomplish democracy over by the people and increasingly not for the and Deputy Chair of the T International Union for the again for itself” (Dewey, 1981–90: 299). His people. Accordingly, with a deferential Conservation of Nature’s point was that at each moment in history nod to Dewey, below we offer an outline Ethics Specialist Group. citizens and nations inevitably face unique of a new political orientation, sensibility challenges and problems, so we should not and practice – a position we call ‘wild Citation assume the democratic institutions and democracy’. In a global tide that seems to be Alexander S and Burdon P practices inherited from the past will be drifting enthusiastically towards ecocide (2017) Wild democracy: A adequate for the conditions of today. Our and fascism, wild democracy signifies a biodiversity of resistance and ongoing political challenge, therefore, is radical and participatory eco-egalitarian renewal. The Ecological Citizen 1: 45–54. to ‘accomplish’ democracy anew, every politics that seeks to take root beyond the generation. tired parliamentary distinctions of left Keywords It seems we have forgotten Dewey’s and right. This is an attempt to rethink Anarchism; eco-anarchism; the meaning of political participation in lesson. Too often we assume instead that eco-socialism; Marxism; democracy is something that has been an age of ecological crisis and deepen the societal change achieved already, once and for all. Why do understanding of what it means to be an we need to reinvent it? Indeed, in the wake ecological citizen. of every election, it is easy to be seduced During the course of this preliminary back to the comfortable unfreedom of statement, we intend to show how wild the shopping mall or withdraw into the democracy can be enriched by drawing existential numbness of social media or on the resources of both anarchism and television, believing that, having voted, our political work is done. The task of Wild democracy in a nutshell. governing is now in the hands of our so-called ‘representatives’. That’s what Opposed to the conventional ‘top-down’ politics and economics of growth, political participation means in a market wild democracy recognizes that we are living in an age of gross ecological overshoot and seeks to establish an ecocentric, decentralized democratic capitalist society, doesn’t it? culture by privileging ‘grass-roots’ participation over parliamentary This is, of course, an impoverished, representation with the aim of transcending capitalism and initiating a even dangerous, conception of democracy, degrowth process of planned economic contraction. which we propagate by way of casual

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Marxism. For us, this involves living in So what are our options? What resources the utopian spirit of creative resistance and do we have to draw on when trying to renewal – prefiguring alternative, post- orientate ourselves in radical political capitalist modes of existence – even if space today? at first they are always and necessarily partial, compromised, temporary and Marxism small-scale. Whether engaging in acts of Marxism represents the most prominent resistance or renewal, we argue that the alternative to the capitalist mode of Today it is widely “ wild imagination is the most potent force economy and representative democracy, so assumed that it at the disposal of post-capitalist social it’s an obvious place to begin considering would be ‘illiberal’ to movements. The path beyond is, as yet, what a radical politics might mean, and a govern in such a way unimagined. This is the democracy “to useful point of departure for understanding come” (Derrida, 2010: 73–83). the politics of wild democracy. that would curtail What are we to make of Marx’s works ecocide.” Resources for wild democracy today? First, his critique of capitalism In recent years, the term ‘Anthropocene’ remains as relevant as ever, even if it has entered the vocabulary of scientists needs updating for the 21st century (Hardt and philosophers, and is slowly filtering and Negri, 2000). Marx fiercely objected into public discourse more broadly. In a to the concentrations of wealth and power sentence, this notion reflects the idea that produced within capitalist economies and human activity is now so fundamentally argued that this was not a conditional degrading the ecosystems of Earth that but an inherent feature of them. Recent this constitutes nothing less than a new evidence seems to support this (Piketty, geological era – the first geological era 2014). Indeed, today the richest eight ‘caused’ by humans. Like reckless gods, people now own more than the poorest we are transforming the face of the half of humanity (Hardoon, 2017). No fancy planet, a licence apparently granted to theorizing by liberal ‘free marketeers’ can humanity (or parts of humanity) under possibly justify this indigestible disparity the name of ‘freedom’, by the philosophy of wealth. It demands a political response, of political liberalism. Today it is widely driven by the citizenry. assumed that it would be ‘illiberal’ to Furthermore, a strong (though not govern in such a way that would curtail absolutist) case can be made that the ecocide. Such governance would interfere ‘superstructure’ of democracy and culture illegitimately with our so-called freedoms under capitalism is insidiously shaped – our apparent human right to commit by the ‘economic base’ of privatized, ecocide. “Freedom for whom?” we might corporate interests, in ways that entrench fairly ask. the underlying policy aim of profit- Is it not reasonable to believe that we maximization in undemocratic ways. For might need to rethink politics, especially these reasons, among others, we contend liberal democratic politics, in and for that Marx was right to reject capitalism the Anthropocene (Purdy, 2015)? This as unjust and undemocratic, and the is especially so, we argue, to the extent position of wild democracy expounded and that the nations making the heaviest defended in later sections rests, in part, and most unsustainable demands on the upon this Marxian critique of capitalism. planet are the hyper-consuming capitalist What of Marx’s theory of social change? economies of the democratic West. From While Marx is sometimes interpreted as a this perspective, the ecological reality can staunch materialist who was fixated on the become a political imperative, leading to laws of history, another reading is available collective environmental decision-making which is more helpful for the current project. where for now there is only collective As David Harvey (2005: 1) notes, Marx was vulnerability to ecological change as a deeply influenced by Saint-Simon and his consequence of collective inertia. suggestion that “[n]o social order could

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achieve changes that are not already latent evolution from the perspective of one of the within its existing conditions.” Put another moments or examine interactions among way, a society cannot make a radical break them; for example, we might consider how from its past and every significant social our relationship with the rest of nature change must first build the conditions for changes in light of new technology. its emergence in the present society. This This brief description highlights was true in the transition from feudalism something of crucial importance to the to capitalism and Marx recognized realization of projects seeking to reinvent “In practice, that it would be necessary for whatever democracy for present conditions. Often major social came next. social theorists focus on one or two ideas transformations are Marx offers his most complete and position them as determinants of elaboration of this idea in Capital – A all others. For example, it is common for far more complex Critique of Political Economy: Volume 1.1 In environmental philosophers to ground and produce all Chapter 15, Marx provides an example of their analysis purely in the sphere of kinds of localized transformation during the development ‘mental conceptions’ (e.g. shifting from contingencies. A of machinery and large-scale technology anthropocentrism to ecocentrism [Devall deterministic stance into the workforce. In the fourth footnote, and Sessions, 2001]). In contrast, we Marx unpacks a series of conceptual contend that a deterministic focus on any fails to capture this elements which, David Harvey (2010: one of the elements identified by Marx complex interplay 189) argues, provide a framework for is insufficient. In practice, major social and misrepresents thinking about “dialectical and historical transformations are far more complex and the requirements for materialism.” Marx (1992: 492, footnote 4) produce all kinds of localized contingencies writes: (Harvey, 2010: 196). A deterministic stance social change.” fails to capture this complex interplay and Technology reveals the active relation of misrepresents the requirements for social man to nature, the direct process of the change. production of his life, and thereby it also While Marx offers tools that are useful lays bare the process of the production of for critiquing capitalism and thinking the social relations of his life, and of the about social change, it is also vital to note mental conceptions that flow from those that his thinking was embedded in the relations. ‘productivist’ growth paradigm that is responsible for so much ecological harm. In this single sentence Marx identifies We can hardly blame Marx for this blind six elements that are in motion during spot, however, because he was writing the shift towards large-scale technology. at a time when the ecological effects of They are: industrialization were only just beginning 1 technology; to show themselves. He wrote in an age 2 the relationship between humans and before climate change, peak-oil concerns, nature; topsoil erosion and biodiversity loss were 3 the actual process of production; factors, among others, that any coherent 4 the production and reproduction of social politics had to address. The earth was not life; yet ‘full’. The Anthropocene had not yet 5 human social relations; set in. 6 mental conceptions of the world. Nevertheless, knowing what we know now, Marxism must undergo a deep These elements are not static but in revision in order to remain relevant in our motion and linked through a process of era of overlapping environmental crises. production that guides human development. First and foremost this means transcending Each element constitutes a moment the ecocidal economics of growth. in the process of social development Promisingly, this theoretical revision is and is subject to perpetual renewal well underway, with a sophisticated body and transformation. We can study this of scholarship on eco-socialism developing

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in recent years (Sarkar, 1999; Foster, 2000; lived without domination in any form; we Baer, 2016). While this literature draws on understand this practice to belong not only traditional Marxism, it also transcends it in to a better future but to the here and now, important ways. The essential argument of where we strive to prefigure our ends in the eco-socialism can be briefly summarized: means we choose to reach them. if capitalism has a growth imperative built into its structure, and limitless In its broadest terms, this is the basic growth is ecologically unsupportable, anarchist vision of an ideal society, and it then capitalism is incompatible with implies that the best strategy for moving sustainability (Smith, 2016). towards such a society is for individuals Therefore, if sustainability is to be taken and communities to live the new world seriously, capitalism must be replaced into existence, here and now, without with a post-growth or steady-state employing state support (and probably form (which eco-socialism exemplifies), receiving a lot of state resistance). operating within planetary limits. In the The defining antagonism between most developed regions of the world, this anarchism and Marxism lies, obviously, in ecological equilibrium must be preceded by the differing roles the state is assumed to a phase of planned economic contraction, play in the transition to a post-capitalist or degrowth. Obviously, degrowth by society. Whereas Marxism sees the state definition is incompatible with the growth as being central and necessary to that “If sustainability is imperative of capitalism, so here we have transition, anarchists tend to believe to be taken seriously, an environmental logic to support the the state both should not and could capitalism must social justice logic forcefully presented by not be the tool through which the ideal Marx: capitalism cannot be reformed; it society is established. Other strains of be replaced with has to be replaced. anarchism argue that, if necessary, the a post-growth or state should be captured by anarchists via steady-state form Anarchism the democratic process (or, if necessary, (which eco-socialism Anarchism is a political worldview and through revolution) in order to initiate the exemplifies), practice that rejects not rules but rulers. process of decentralizing the state out of Anarchism, we argue, is not chaotic but existence. That is, capture the state for the operating within represents a way of reasserting a human- purpose of abolishing the state (Bookchin, planetary limits.” based politics. Its method is to submit 2001a; Bookchin, 2001b).2 every decision and every action to politics. Given that the question of transition Under anarchism, there is no voting for is central to understanding political someone else. People speak as themselves engagement today, this is not a tangential and decisions are made by processes that or inconsequential debate within radical cannot bypass or elude collective models politics. Rejecting the need for the state, of decision-making. The ‘method’ in this anarchists practice what is sometimes case then is a decidedly horizontal one, called ‘prefigurative politics’. The best rather than a top-down model. introduction to this topic is Wini Breines’ While anarchism defies a unified seminal 1989 book Community and theory, there are a few general principles Organization in the New Left, 1962–1968. that can be stated that help, at the very Breines argues that in the movements least, to delimit a boundary within which of the 1960s, there developed a whole anarchism occurs. One idea recently offered new way of thinking about political by the North American Anarchist Studies organization that was opposed to the Network seeks to lay out general anarchist vanguardism of the left politics. She principles (https://is.gd/kQAVSm): writes (Breines, 1989: 6):

We understand anarchism, in general terms, The term prefigurative politics is as the practice of equality and freedom in used to designate an essentially anti- every sphere of life – life conceived and organizational politics characteristic of the

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movement […] and may be recognized in are living out your values with integrity counter institutions, demonstrations and and authenticity. the attempt to embody personal and anti- Like classical socialism, classical hierarchical values in politics. Participatory anarchism needs to be revised in light of democracy was central to prefigurative the ecological predicament. Traditionally, politics […] [The guiding task] was to create anarchists saw the state as the primary and sustain within the live practice of the enemy. Today, however, that focus seems movement relationships and political forms too narrow. After all, we could conceive that “prefigured” and embodied the desired of an anarcho-capitalist society that future society. had abolished the state but nevertheless remained shaped by an economics of growth, In prefigurative movements, participants leaving the question of sustainability (and are reweaving the social fabric and therefore justice) unresolved. Anarchism, creating an alternative social world along therefore, must evolve into eco-anarchism the lines of the six spheres identified to remain relevant, and this revision has by Marx. The dynamic interplay within been led by figures such as Murray Bookchin these spheres provides the foundation (1990) and Ted Trainer (2010). Whereas for the alternative social world that is democratic eco-socialists, as we have seen, being formed. Moreover, as evidenced by tend to argue that a post-growth or steady- Breines, those engaged in prefigurative state economy should be designed and politics believe that the means they use in instituted via the apparatus of the state, the present are intimately connected with eco-anarchists often envision a similar the world that they are striving to create. ‘ideal society’ but argue that it should be Put otherwise, means are deeply connected (or can only be) produced through localized with ends. Consistent with this, movement grass-roots activity, where individuals and communities essentially create the new participants are encouraged to treat one If it turns out you another with respect and pay attention to society themselves, without state support. “ are alone building race, class and gender dynamics within institutions. While such movements have Wild democracy: A biodiversity the new world, or the encountered considerable resistance, of resistance and renewal social movement is there are also examples of prefigurative Despite key differences, there is much for too small to achieve movements which have flourished over those engaged in reinventing democracy to its ambitions, then many years and incorporated hundreds of sympathize with in Marxist and anarchist participants (Cornell, 2011; Lakey, 2012). political theory. First, both recognize, at least you are There is something very attractive, unlike reformist political movements, living out your values even compelling, about the immediacy, that capitalism cannot be reformed but with integrity and directness and lived commitment of must be replaced; secondly, they recognize authenticity. anarchism. To employ the famous that any coherent politics today must ” Gandhian dictum for anarchist purposes: transcend growth economics; and, thirdly, “be the change you wish to see in the both recognize the importance of creating world.” The idea is that if enough people alternative structures and systems within adopt and apply this attitude, the world which society can develop. If we can change will change, without the need for taking or reimagine societal structures in line with state power. Do not make demands of the environmental goals, new ways of living state – it will ignore you. Do not wait for and being will emerge and become possible. the Revolution – it may never arrive (or if Moreover, while Marxists and anarchists it does, it will fail to live up to its ideals). have different views concerning the role Just get active in your local community and of the state in a radical transition, it is not start building the new world today. And if necessary for most people to adopt a one- it turns out you are alone building the new size-fits-all perspective. It is the purpose world, or the social movement is too small of our exploration to carve out such a space to achieve its ambitions, then at least you between (and sometimes against) Marxist

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and anarchist theory. With the background cultural consciousness about the need to theoretical groundwork complete, a transcend capitalism and move beyond preliminary statement of wild democracy the ecocidal economics of growth that can now be made, which weaves together both camps should proceed as allies, at the threads of the preceding analysis. least for the foreseeable future. Certainly, Let us acknowledge, first, that voting it is too early to try to get eco-socialist itself is not much of a burden. It typically ideas through parliament because there is takes less than an hour, once every three or not yet anything near a mandate for such four years, so we propose that even radicals ideas. That would be to put the cart before who have lost faith in representative the horse. Recent elections in Australia democracy should still vote as strategically and overseas are campaigned primarily as possible (which is always a context- on the issue of which party could grow dependent issue) and to take that act as the economy best, while climate change, the ‘starting gun’ of political participation, for instance, is almost never mentioned not the finish line. While some anarchists (Milman, 2016). Obviously, the culture shift will object that voting implicates one in an must get well underway in advance of any The starting point “ illegitimate form of government, others culturally digestible political campaign for of wild democracy like Noam Chomsky have argued that eco-socialism. is simply that voting voting is a legitimate strategy in attempts In fact, such a culture shift may even does not end one’s civic to keep reactionary candidates like Donald begin (and only begin) in the soil of Trump from office. In this example, while subjectivity – in a politics of the subject duty, which itself is voting is not a moral duty, it might have – implying that we are being called to a radical statement a material impact on people’s lives and resist or refuse the apolitical, consumerist in today’s largely provide a better foundation to advance subjectivities which capitalist culture apolitical cultures.” radical politics (Halle and Chomsky, 2016). has tried to impose on us – and to create With this in mind, the starting point of someone new. That is, we must rewild our wild democracy is simply that voting does not subjectivities in order to be better citizens end one’s civic duty, which itself is a radical of and for an ecozoic era. statement in today’s largely apolitical Therefore, we contend that the primary cultures. For the foreseeable future, at task today, for both eco-anarchists and eco- least, and possibly forever, a citizen’s socialists, is to provoke a cultural revolution most important political contributions in consciousness. First and foremost, this can only take place in the wild, beyond the can take the form of consciousness-raising mechanisms of representative democracy. and educational activities and strategies; Now, having voted (or having but, in line with traditional anarchist conscientiously objected to voting), one is strategies, it should also take the form of again faced with the question: how should resistance and renewal. That is, resisting one contribute now to a radical politics in the most egregious aspects of the status the most strategically effective way? This quo (e.g. by protesting, direct action, civil seems to present a fork in the road, at which disobedience), and also by engaging in eco-anarchists and eco-socialists might acts of prefigurative politics that create or part company: eco-anarchists should set demonstrate small-scale examples of new out to live the new world into existence, post-capitalist modes of existence. while eco-socialists should establish a Not only do those small-scale political party or attempt to influence demonstrations function to begin the existing political parties to push an eco- dauntingly large task of building the new socialist agenda through parliament. world within the shell of the old, they Each side of this divide currently accuses can also be justified on the grounds of the other of pursuing the wrong strategy, being a practical form of education. After and the in-fighting begins. In an attempt all, being exposed to new experiments to stem that infighting, we contend that in living can be one of the most effective there is so much work to be done raising ways to engage people with the issues

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motivating the experiments. Nothing Furthermore, we need to think carefully persuades, inspires or educates quite like about how a successful transition might a real-world example of a new mode of transpire. Eco-anarchists might well argue living and being, even on a small scale. that we will never need a state-driven eco- And eco-socialists and eco-anarchists are socialism, because by the time there is likely to share a great deal in terms of what enough social support for an eco-socialist a prefigurative politics should look like e.g.( agenda to be passed through parliament, non-consumerist, egalitarian, community- the grass-roots social movement should orientated sustainable experiments that already have been able to create the new challenge capitalist economic relations as world. That is a perspective worth taking far as possible). seriously; however, it risks jumping from a From the anarchist perspective, completely capitalist culture to a completely these three (infinitely diverse, context- eco-anarchist culture too sharply. The dependent) practices of education, transition, after all, is likely to take some resistance and renewal, are the most time, and as the eco-anarchist movement defensible strategies to adopt. But we grows, it is quite possible that the emerging argue also that at this early stage of the social movement – midway through, for post-capitalism transition, it makes sense example – could influence parliamentary for eco-socialists to adopt, support and politics (and certainly local politics) in encourage these same strategies, in the ways that actually advance the eco- “There will be no hope of building a social movement that, anarchist cause. We maintain that it would deliberate transition in time, could provide the mandate for be better to achieve anarchism with the beyond capitalism an eco-socialist agenda in parliament. partial and temporary support of the state Indeed, anarchists should not be bothered than not achieve anarchism at all. For these – whether eco- by eco-socialists advocating their bold reasons, if an eco-anarchist movement socialist, eco- legislative agendas because (even if one were to emerge strongly in culture, it may anarchist or another rejects centralized government) the visions find it expedient, at some stage, to use the way – until more of eco-socialism can help people see that state (or some other polycentric system of people see that other other worlds are possible. governance) to advance the eco-anarchist This opening or rewilding of the agenda (Ostrom, 2010). worlds are possible. imagination is not an insignificant In this light eco-anarchism and eco- In that light, visions precondition of transformative change. socialism can be conceived of as being two of alternative modes There will be no deliberate transition sides of the same coin of wild democracy. of living should beyond capitalism – whether eco-socialist, On the eco-anarchist side, the political eco-anarchist or another way – until more task is to get active building the new be encouraged people see that other worlds are possible. world, raising consciousness about the in order to help In that light, visions of alternative modes necessity of degrowth, and resisting the ignite people’s of living should be encouraged in order most egregious aspects of the status quo, revolutionary to help ignite people’s revolutionary in order to build a new, engaged, post- imaginations. We need a flourishing capitalist consciousness. On the eco- imaginations.” biodiversity of resistance and renewal.3 The socialist side of the coin, the task is to assist real problem today isn’t so much getting and support in the building of this grass- the alternative vision or visions correct. roots post-capitalist movement through The real problem is figuring out how to similar acts of education, resistance open up people’s imaginations to the very and renewal, while at the same time possibility of alternative modes of existence developing a legislative agenda that, when (Haiven, 2014). Too often today we hear the social movement is strong enough, that it is easier to imagine the end of the could coherently restructure society in world than the end of capitalism. All radical ways that could would more easily permit imaginations must unite to overcome and encourage local, highly self-reliant or deconstruct this tragic, powerful but eco-communities to govern themselves – invisible obstacle – or all else is lost. beyond a centralized state.

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Of course, this form of radical politics One point on our mind throughout has will not satisfy those who believe that been the troubling fact that mainstream nothing but violent revolution can bring culture today tends to be instinctively about a just and sustainable post-capitalist put off by both the terms ‘anarchism’ and society. In response, we argue that the ‘socialism’ – let alone ‘degrowth’! This is approach to transition outlined above is partly owing to a conscious effort by the more coherent and defensible than calls powers that be to undermine any sense of for violent revolution. After all, revolution there being an alternative to capitalism. today should not be conceived of as some This should prompt us to think seriously future event where a mobilized citizenry about how best to share our ideas and storms the Bastille, so to speak – for perspectives with others. Wouldn’t it be Empire has no Bastille to storm anymore. foolish, for example, to ignore the fact Its nodes of politico-financial power are that the term ‘anarchism’ has been so so widely dispersed and decentralized misleadingly presented in mainstream that the system can evade a centralized culture that using it could often do more confrontation of the old revolutionary harm than good, at least to some audiences? kind. The same goes for eco-socialism and Consequently, the new revolutionary degrowth, two terms that also have huge politics must be brought into the moment public relations challenges. If a mass – into the present tense. We should not movement is what is needed and desired “Wild democracy aim to destroy capitalism in the future but by these various radical imaginations, holds that our broad rather stop creating it, here and now, as then recognizing the importance of post-capitalist cause best we can, knowing full well that we are ‘marketing’ or ‘presenting’ our visions too often locked into reproducing it against in the best way possible is an issue that may be best served our wishes. But we must try to break free cannot be dismissed as unimportant or by using a multitude and swim against the tide, no matter tangential. of vocabularies. how futile it seems. Revolution should be It may seem theoretically unnecessary, Indeed, this is part of conceived of as a way of life rather than even lacking in intellectual integrity, why wild democracy a goal to be achieved, and this revolution to think about how best to ‘brand’ one’s makes sense no matter what our prospects political perspectives. Shouldn’t we just is ‘wild’. It defies of success are. be as clear as possible, even if culture and resists singular isn’t ready for us? Plausible though that expression.” Conclusion sounds, such an approach is arguably The purpose of this paper has been to pragmatically or politically naive. We can’t provide an introductory statement of just be right. We also need to be heard, wild democracy. To achieve this, we and that means being cognizant of the drew specifically on resources from both diversity of audiences, and the differing Marxism and anarchism and sought to find vocabularies that may need to be used to points of similarity and cooperation. There maximize our engagement with them. are certainly some factions which will be Admittedly, this is not theoretically or dissatisfied: first, those who advocate conceptually neat – there is a tendency violent revolution as the only coherent to desire a single banner under which the strategy to bring an end to capitalism; Great Transition should march, in the hope secondly, ‘reformists’ who think that of unifying diverse threads of opposition. capitalism can be regulated to advance the But the position of wild democracy holds causes of justice and sustainability; and, that our broad post-capitalist cause may thirdly, those strict anarchists who reject be best served by using a multitude of any political strategy that entails working vocabularies. Indeed, this is part of why through the mechanisms of parliament wild democracy is ‘wild’. It defies and (even if engagement with the state is for resists singular expression. the sole purpose of advancing anarchist In fact, we see this diversity of causes). expressions already in existence today.

52 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Wild democracy: A biodiversity of resistance and renewal

Just think of the range of activities and and responsibilities. We are left with no movements that could easily be considered firmer ground to stand upon than the elements of wild democracy: potential of our imaginations to creatively n transition towns; engage the present as we move forward n the divestment movement; together into an uncertain future. But Although beyond n sharing networks; that is ground enough to proceed without “ n intentional communities and ecovillages; despair. Our greatest fear should be that our conventional political n permaculture groups; modes of resistance and renewal become classification, wild n the Occupy movement; conservative or reactionary rather than democracy can be n n manifestations of the gift economy; progressively transgressive (Robin, 2013). seen already growing n the voluntary-simplicity and tiny-house out of the ever- movements; Notes n deliberative democracy activities; 1 Our analysis is indebted to David Harvey’s widening cracks of a n community energy projects; interpretation of Marx. See Harvey (2010: 189– globalized capitalism 212) and Harvey (2011: 126–30). n activist hubs; in decline.” n artist hubs; 2 Under Marxism, the communist utopia is assumed, eventually, to be without need of a n alternative journalism websites; state. In the words of Engels (1969), eventually n volunteer groups; the state under advanced communism will n farmers’ markets; “wither way” and be replaced merely with an n reskilling workshops; “administration of things.” n charities; 3 The phrase ‘biodiversity of resistance’ is from n progressive non-profit enterprises and Arundhati Roy. worker cooperatives; n the ever-expanding network of radical References environmental and social justice groups Baer H (2016) Toward Democratic Eco-socialism as the that exist across the cultural landscape. Next World System. Available at https://is.gd/YjjFeo (accessed April 2017). The list could go on. Bookchin M (1990) Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Although beyond conventional political Future. South End Press, Boston, MA, USA. classification, wild democracy, in these Bookchin M (2001a) To Remember Spain: The anarchist and syndicalist revolution of 1936. AK Press, Oakland, CA, various forms, can be seen already USA. growing out of the ever-widening cracks Bookchin M (2001b) The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic of a globalized capitalism in decline, as yet Years 1868–1936. AK Press, Oakland, CA, USA. unaware of its potential to re-enchant the Breines W (1989) Community and Organization in the New political spirit of our times. Left, 1962–1968: The Great Refusal. Rutgers University None of these movements or approaches Press, New Brunswick, NJ, USA. have all the answers but arguably all of Cornell A (2011) Oppose and Propose: Lessons from Movement them will need to play a role moving beyond for a New Society. AK Press, Oakland, CA, USA. the dystopia of capitalism. Of course, Derrida J (2010) Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the they risk being easily accommodated and Work of Mourning, and the New International. Routledge, subsumed by the existing order of things. London, UK. The important point is for each of these Devall B and Sessions G (2001) Deep Ecology: Living as if movements for change to continually nature mattered. Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, USA. reflect on the question of strategy: the Dewey J (1981–90) In: Boydston JA, ed. The Later Works: Volume. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, question of how can we best direct our IL, USA: 299. limited energies, time and resources to Engels F (1969) Anti-Duhring. Progress Publishers, advance the necessary causes of justice Moscow, Russia. and sustainability. That question, however, Foster JB (2000) Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and nature. does not allow for a generalizable answer. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA. Political engagement is always relative to Haiven M (2014) Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power: our contexts and relative to our unique Capitalism, creativity and the commons. Zed Books, set of skills, limitations, connections London, UK.

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Halle J and Chomsky N (2016) Noam Chomsky’s 8-Point Milman O (2016) Why has climate change been ignored Rationale for Voting for the Lesser Evil Presidential in the US election debates? The Guardian. Available at Candidate. Available at https://is.gd/MmwCwL https://is.gd/TkXBPt (accessed April 2017). (accessed April 2017). Ostrom E (2010) Beyond markets and states: Polycentric Hardoon D (2017) An Economy for the 99%. Available at governance of complex economic systems. American https://is.gd/xCAgie (accessed April 2017). Economic Review 100: 641–72.

Hardt M and Negri A (2000) Empire. Harvard University Piketty T (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Press, Boston, MA, USA. Harvard University Press, Boston, MA, USA. Purdy J (2015) After Nature: A politics for the Anthropocene. Harvey D (2005) Paris, Capital of Modernity. Routledge, Harvard University Press, Boston, MA, USA. London, UK. Robin C (2013) The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Harvey D (2010) A Companion to Marx’s Capital. Verso, Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. London, UK. Harvey D (2011) The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Sarkar S (1999) Eco-socialism or Eco-capitalism: A critical Capitalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. analysis of humanity’s fundamental choices. Zed Books, Lakey G (2012) Toward a Living Revolution: A five-stage London, UK. framework for creating radical social change. Wipf and Smith R (2016) Green Capitalism: The god that failed. Stock, Eugene, OR USA. College Publications, London, UK. Marx K (1992) Capital – A Critique of Political Economy: Trainer T (2010) The Transition to a Sustainable and Just Volume 1. Penguin Classics, London, UK. World. Envirobook, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

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Enacting the wisdom of Chief Seattle today in Latin America

Humanity is currently dominated by an anthropocentric interpretation of the value of the Coyote Alberto rest of nature. The history of this paradigm is briefly explored before the author turns to review recent and ongoing initiatives in Latin America aimed at promoting the ecocentric Ruz Buenfil worldview and developing the necessary supporting legislation. In particular, the author About the author describes major political developments in Bolivia and Ecuador, as well as more local changes Coyote Alberto is an in Mexico. The 1st International Forum for the Rights of Mother Earth, which took place in Mexico environmental and social City between 1 and 5 June 2016, is reviewed. The article concludes with a rallying call for activist who lives in the local endorsements of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, a continuing Mexican ecovillage of of national and global actions to stop destructive projects wherever they are happening, and Huehuecoyotl. the mobilization of a global ecocentric alliance. Citation

“The Earth does not belong to us; we evolution of the whole known universe. Ruz Buenfil A (2017) Enacting the wisdom of Chief Seattle belong to the Earth.” Culture became anthropocentric, and a today in Latin America. The small part of humankind turned ‘owner’, Ecological Citizen 1: 55–9. Chief Seattle by right, of a large part of the planet, including territories, natural ‘resources’ Keywords and the lives of its inhabitants. Direct action; Earth- espite the many interpretations and The Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania centred law; Earth controversies related to the above became the main targets of this process, jurisprudence; rights of D proclamation, it remains one of but the original nations from Europe nature the most accurate and simple statements were also colonized and dominated by for expressing that the Earth is a living the grace of their kingdoms and churches. being, and that all the other living beings And with this, natural law was gradually that exist on, above and under its surface, replaced with Roman law and the Christian including the human species, depend on religions. her continuing to be a healthy organism. It took centuries for some individuals, In all the original cultures, since the and small organizations, networks or beginning of civilization, natural laws alliances of persons, to begin questioning set the foundation of a respectful and this paradigm and promoting actions to harmonious conviviality among humans change it. First, in the second half of the and non-humans. This non-written 19th and beginning of the 20th century, agreement was broken at a certain point in it was the voice of a few naturalists, history, when slavery, colonialism, religion poets, philosophers and conservationists, and legislations were adopted systematically advocating for the animals, the mountains, to justify the domination of the ‘other’, be it the forests – the last pristine reserves of another person, another culture or race, or the Earth. the elements of nature herself. It took until the 1970s for a new generation This development radically changed our of activists to take up the baton and become governing systems and our understanding more proactive. Greenpeace, an early of the relationships not only among global environmentalist organization, was ourselves as human beings, but also of the created and began using non-violent direct Earth to the solar system, the process of action to bring awareness of the dangers of evolution of life, and the movements and an ecological planetary crisis. And, in 1970,

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 55 Enacting the wisdom of Chief Seattle today in Latin America www.ecologicalcitizen.net

the first Earth Day celebration signalled which is a social philosophy inspired by that environmental issues had begun to ancient cosmogonies from the indigenous take an important place in the growing Andean peoples. The term translates to conscience of larger sectors of society. “good living” – in harmony with ourselves, In the 1980s, other individuals, groups our communities and, most importantly, and organizations, such as Earth First!, our living, breathing ecosphere. questioned the anthropocentric worldview Two years later, Evo Morales, the first and proposed equality of rights for humans indigenous Bolivian president to be elected in and non-human species. Others began his country, also modified the plurinational questioning the use of nuclear technology state’s Constitution. The amendment was both for weapons and for electricity, and inspired by the Suma Qamaña, which also even for medical purposes, and opposed means “good living” and translates as the proliferation of such industries. They a way of living in harmony with the rest began advocating, instead, the use of non- of nature that reflects how the ancient contaminating and regenerative energy cultures of this region lived (considering sources. Early environmental movements human rights as secondary in importance thus began to grow and then facilitated the to the rights of Pachamama, or Mother sprouting of other allied organizations. Earth). The Earth Summits of Stockholm in David Choquehuanca Céspedes, Bolivian 1972, Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Johannesburg Minister of the Exterior, expressed the in 2002 (Rio+10) and Rio again in 2012 concept employed in the Constitution very (Rio+20) brought to the attention of clearly in an interview in 2010:1 all nations and governments that the global ecological crisis was no longer Good living is a process that is just beginning just a banner of radical and romantic and will soon be a common practice, because environmentalists, committed ecologists for those of us who belong to the culture and brave defenders of the Earth, but a of life, neither silver, gold nor humankind real threat to the survival of our species in are more important, because we came here the immediate future. in the last place. Most important are the The World Social Forums originated rivers, the air, the mountains, the stars, the Key dates in Brazil in 2001, and have, since then, ants and the butterflies. Humankind came 1972: Stockholm Earth Summit brought together hundreds of thousands last to the Earth; the most important thing 1992: Rio Earth Summit of eco-activists and social activists each is life itself.1 2001: 1st World Social Forum 2002: Rio+10 Earth Summit year from across the world in an effort to 2007: Election of Rafael Correa create an alternative society (hence their We can see here how two small countries as President of Ecuador nickname altermundistas). This alternative in South America have been able, in the 2009: Adoption by the United society is based on values that promote not 21st century, to reflect in their legislation Nations’ General Assembly only a global social justice and civil human the proclamation of Chief Seattle. In doing of its first Resolution on rights but also a harmony with natural Harmony with Nature so they have asserted that “the Earth does (https://is.gd/lQLy3Y) laws and a fruitful and respectful relation not belong to us; we belong to the Earth.” 2010: 1st International Mother between humankind and the Earth. Also in 2010, the World Conference on Earth Day (22 April) At the presidential elections of 2008 Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth 2010: People’s Conference on in Ecuador, the candidate Rafael Correa took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia. This Climate Change and the was elected on a platform generated by was a response to COP in Copenhagen, in Rights of Mother Earth (Cochabamba, Bolivia) the social, indigenous and environmental which the countries taking part agreed to 2010: Amendment to the movements of that nation that questioned create and present a project for a Universal Constitution of Bolivia the worldwide dominant legislations Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth 2012: Rio+20 Earth Summit based on the anthropocentric Roman at the General Assembly of the United 2016: 1st International Forum law. In its place was adopted the rights of Nations in 2011. for the Rights of Mother Mother Earth as the basis of their federal Earth (Mexico City, Mexico) Between 2008 and 2011, Pablo Solón 2017: New Constitution of Constitution. This legislation originated as a Romero, Ambassador to the United Mexico City approved contemporary version of the Sumak Kawsay, Nations for Bolivia, was instrumental in

56 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Enacting the wisdom of Chief Seattle today in Latin America

campaigns that culminated in agreement of the following by the General Assembly: n the adoption of 22 April as International Mother Earth Day; n a first resolution on Harmony with Nature; n the recognition of the human right to water and sanitation; n the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In response to these initiatives, several organizations in Mexico City began to lobby at the Chamber of Deputies for a law that included the recognition of the Earth as a living organism, with its own rights. Adopted in September 2013, it is titled the Environmental Law of Protection of the Figure 1. Official opening of the1st International Forum for the Rights of Mother Earth. Earth in Mexico City. Although still not a truly ecocentric law, it was nonetheless a documentaries relating to the subject step in the right direction, and this small of Earth rights, including a magnificent success gave some colleagues and me the video shown at the Plaza de las Tres confidence to set about organizing an Culturas. Then, on the fourth day, we international forum on the rights of Mother held a musical festival with 16 bands from Earth, in Mexico. Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, After a year of preparations we were all of whom were artists and groups finally able to send out invitations across committed to the defence of nature. This the globe for this ambitious project. With event was attended by nearly 4000 people. the help of Mexico’s National Human On the last day of the forum, which Rights Commission we were able to grant coincided with World Environment Day, we official invites to Pablo Solón, as well as established a temporary peace ecovillage Vandana Shiva from India, Leonardo Boff in one of the central parks of Mexico from Brazil, Saamdu Chetri from Bhutan, Esperanza Martínez from Ecuador, Maria Mercedes Sanchez from the United Nations and some other 20 special guests to take part in the 1st International Forum for the Rights of Mother Earth. Between 1 and 5 June 2016 nearly 800 people attended the forum at the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Figures 1 and 2), and for the first three days we ran keynote presentations from some of the most respected national and international speakers, as well as panel and round-table discussions aimed at developing an ecocentric approach to Earth jurisprudence. We also held two main sessions for articulating the different proposals coming from these discussions. In addition to these daytime sessions, Figure 2. Vandana Shiva, Swami Paramadvaiti and Coyote Alberto, keynote we had three evening presentations of speakers at the 1st International Forum for the Rights of Mother Earth.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 57 Enacting the wisdom of Chief Seattle today in Latin America www.ecologicalcitizen.net

“The peace ecovillage proved to be a very effective way of reaching out to thousands of people who, for the first time, heard of the possibility for all of nature to have rights.”

Figure 3. Preparations at the peace ecovillage, El Parque México de la Condesa, 5 June 2016.

City, El Parque México de la Condesa living organism with rights of its own. The (Figure 3). Here,0 civil, social and ecological event was organized by the University of organizations set up stands showing Guerrero and the local state government dozens of options for more sustainable city with the support of a dozen organizations living. There was also a full programme from the region. of conferences, workshops, ecumenical More recently, Mexico City adopted a ceremonies and cultural and other artistic new Constitution. Most relevant to our activities. The peace ecovillage proved to purpose is Article 18, which was approved be a very effective way of reaching out between on 4 and 11 January 2017. In the to thousands of people who, for the first second paragraph it states: time, heard of the possibility for all of nature to have rights. The right of the preservation and Overall, the forum attracted significant protection of nature will be granted by the attention on social media, and even among authorities of Mexico City, in the area or the traditional media, and therefore field of influence or application, always served as a showcase for our purposes. In promoting citizen participation in these the six months following the forum, our matters. common issue received more exposure in Mexico than ever before. This has all And in the third paragraph it notes: taken place within a political landscape in which Mexico City is transitioning from a For the accomplishment of this disposition federal district to a new state. […] Mexico’s Congress will have one month On 17 and 18 November 2016, a seminar to issue a secondary legislation on how to for the rights of nature was held in recognize and regulate the wider spectrum the capital city of the Mexican state of of the rights of nature, comprising all its Guerrero, the first part of the country to ecosystems and species as a collective approve a law recognizing the Earth as a entity, subject to its own rights.

58 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Enacting the wisdom of Chief Seattle today in Latin America

This same Constitution recognizes animals as sentient beings, and therefore needing to be treated with dignity. In Mexico City all persons have an ethical duty and legal obligation to respect the life and integrity of animals. These [are] subject to a moral consideration. Their tutelage is a common responsibility.

Laws such as these, including some more explicitly ecocentric, have begun to be applied in Mexico and other places in the world. On the other side of the coin, the case of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian activist who was murdered in 1988 while defending the Amazon rainforest and fighting for the rights of its indigenous people, warned us of a growing repression of environmental leaders and organizations. Almost 30 years n local endorsements of a Universal Laurie later, the murdering of Earth’s defenders Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth; by Juan Cisneros shows no sign of abating. But the fight n a continuing of national and global actions Higher-resolution version: goes on. to stop destructive projects wherever they https://is.gd/ecoartwork At the time of writing, thousands of are happening; indigenous Dakota people, along with n and the mobilization of a global ecocentric representatives from more than 200 other alliance. tribes and thousands of other supporters, have been resisting the construction of We are conscious that laws and the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect declarations are never enough, but when the sacred waters in Standing Rock from the actions have a legal framework to contamination by oil. defend the actors, who are vulnerable to This is just one example of humanity the power of multinational companies and being conscious of the importance of this corrupt local governments, we can better type of action. Many others group are hope to offer opposition not only on the “I feel that a ripple struggling across the globe to protect the battlefronts but also in the courts. There effect has been Earth’s heritage and all the living beings is a long journey ahead to make ecological co-existing within it. issues a priority in personal lives, collective produced by the I feel that a ripple effect has been decisions and international jurisprudence. approval of laws produced by the approval of laws for Any step, and any small victory, needs to be for the Rights of the rights of Mother Earth, and their promoted through our social networks and Mother Earth. endorsement by organizations such as the all the available forms of media, in order to ” Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, inspire the many billions of us who continue Nature’s Rights (formerly Rights of Nature thinking and acting as if we are the centre Europe), the World Conscious Pact, the of life on the Earth and in the Universe. Pachamama Alliance, Derechos de la Madre I thank The Ecological Citizen for opening a Tierra (Mexico), the International Rights of space for my contribution to this first issue, Nature Tribunal, Eradicating Ecocide and and I have great confidence in its efforts. n the United Nations’ Harmony with Nature programme, along with campaigns on Notes platforms such as Avaaz. 1 Translated from the article “Vivir bien” - Propuesta The next steps for building Earth de Modelo de Gobierno en Bolivia, which is available jurisprudence, I believe, are: at https://is.gd/9kWzxF (accessed February 2016).

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 59 Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork by Holly Stevenson Original: Watercolour on hand-made paper (2017; postcard size). www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE

The affliction of human supremacy

This article dissects the motivations behind and consequences of the worldview of Eileen Crist anthropocentrism, or human supremacy. Firstly, the author presents the just-so stories arising from the notion that the impact of humanity stems from our species’ essence. Instead, About the author the author argues, it is socio-cultural conditioning – specifically, the human-supremacist Eileen has been teaching credo propagated by the dominant culture – to which we must turn in order to properly at Virginia Tech in the understand humanity’s impact. Next, the typical beliefs arising from human supremacy Department of Science and are exposed, as are examples of its products: ideational and physical displacements. The Technology in Society since 1997. She has written and author also discusses the wisdom of limitations, the danger of shifting ecological baselines co-edited numerous papers and general ignorance of the current mass extinction event. Finally, after cautioning against and books, with her work the cult of techno-fixes, a brighter future is presented, which would be made possible by focusing on biodiversity rejecting the human-supremacist credo. loss and destruction of wild places, along with pathways to halt these trends. Eileen 2013 Economist article titled By contrast, the positive version of is a Consulting Editor to “Robochop: An Automated Jellyfish human nature as underlying driver of the Journal and lives in A Exterminator Takes to the Sea” planetary impact insists that we are after Blacksburg, VA, USA. reported a problem: innumerable jellyfish all special, perhaps even god-like. But so clogged the pipes of a Swedish nuclear far, this storyline continues, humans have Citation power plant, forcing it to shut down. been like reckless gods, so we need to get Crist E (2017) The affliction The article also reported a solution: the better at being all-powerful; above all, of human supremacy. The Ecological Citizen 1: 61–4. deployment of a fleet of killer robots that we need to use our science, technology, turn jellyfish into mush. These devices and managerial skills to put our problems Keywords follow a lead robot, and working in behind us. Then humanity can get on with Anthropocentrism; human formation can chop up to 900 kilograms of its destiny as a truly distinguished species. supremacy; shifting jellyfish an hour. In this article I direct the spotlight on baselines; techno-fixes Here’s a two-word rejoinder to this anthropocentrism – or what I prefer to call techno-fix ‘solution’:how disturbing. human supremacy – as a way of getting around the pitfalls of both these views * * * * * About this article about human nature. The pitfall of the This piece is taken from a In facing the huge ecological problems negative view is that it inclines us to shrug forthcoming book edited by our shoulders in the face of humanity’s we have created, we encounter a notion Trevor Goward and entitled that the impact of humanity stems from uncontrolled expansionism, and let nature Speak to the Wild: Gaia in Mind our nature – from our species’ essence. (supposedly) ‘red in tooth and claw’ take its (https://is.gd/nMLWMi), There are negative and positive versions inevitable course. The pitfall of the positive intended as a hand-up for of this belief. The negative version view is its implicit or open invitation to Millennials attempting to come to terms with a world asserts that humans are greedy, selfish embrace the colonization of the planet and much diminished and a and aggressive by nature. Or, along the the domination of nature as humanity’s future much compromised same lines, that the human impact is manifest destiny. by decisions still being made, an expression of a ‘Darwinian’ process, But focusing our critical gaze on human above all, by their forebears and that like any other multiplying supremacy shifts attention away from in the Baby Boomer and Gen X generations. The book species with nothing to check its growth, various just-so stories about human nature will be published by Regina to the far more relevant issue of socio- human beings are over-exploiting the University Press in 2018. environment and heading for a self- cultural conditioning. We must focus on the The piece has been edited inflicted crash. paramount role of the human-supremacist minimally for house style.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 61 The affliction of human supremacy www.ecologicalcitizen.net

credo that the dominant culture propagates: There has been no shortage of proposed the credo that affirms that human beings distinguishing attributes: reason, language, are superior to all other life forms and morality, civilization, technology and free entitled to use them. will, among others. These attributes have In our time the human supremacy been offered again and again as traits complex has come to manifest as three of human distinction. They have also invisible, widespread beliefs: that the enjoyed foundational status in hierarchical Earth belongs to humanity; that the planet narratives about life that have dominated in consists in resources for the betterment the history of Western civilization. of people; and that human beings are The most enduring of such narratives, ‘obviously’ superior to all other species. threading through very different traditions These beliefs are invisible in the sense that of thought, has been the Great Chain of they are rarely explicitly stated. Yet they Being, with man at the top, minerals at are clearly discernible as the underlying the bottom - and we all know how to fill assumptions according to which people act the space between. This hierarchical order in the biosphere. has not only been about the nature of being The invisible operation of this belief (what philosophers call ontology), but it has system is the consequence of a long history also imposed a moral order sanctioning of anthropocentrism – a history that man’s unrestrained use of everything reaches back to classical antiquity and has supposedly beneath him. its roots in the birth of civilization. We are The physical displacements are all too Human supremacy “ the inheritors and products of this history. familiar. Before the civilized conqueror, is not just a Our impact on the biosphere derives from forests have given way, and so have worldview, not just this supremacist legacy – and not from grasslands and wetlands, and rivers and a story about how any inherent demonic flaws or god-like lakes, and more recently the seas. Wild things are: it is a attributes of human nature. animals have been killed, enslaved, forced To look at the legacy of human supremacy to remote and shrinking areas, and driven lived worldview. is to zoom in at who and what have to regional or total extinction. Indigenous It constitutes an been displaced to the periphery: namely, people have been labeled ‘savages’ or actionable credo indigenous people (‘uncivilized’ people), ‘animals’ and endured genocides and that has carved the wild non-humans and wild nature overall. subjugations. The displacements can be grouped in Human supremacy is not just a worldview, world we inhabit, two broad categories. First, there are the not just a story about how things are: it is a both mentally and ideational displacements, involving belittling lived worldview. It constitutes an actionable physically.” ideas about non-humans, about so-called credo that has carved the world we inhabit, savages and about the wild. Such ideas have both mentally and physically. For a long enjoyed cultural pre-eminence. Second, snapshot of what that worldview is capable there are the physical displacements, having of, consider the 19th century takeover of the to do with geographical conquests that have American Plains. Neither supremacist ideas exterminated and dislocated others. nor technological power, by themselves, can Ideational displacements are tied to a explain the brutality with which the buffalo, leading motif in Western thought that the Plains Indians, the prairie species and contemplates the phenomenon of the the grasslands themselves were treated. human by posing the question, “How are But the alliance between the superiority human beings different from other species”? delusion and the technical prowess of the Political scientist John Rodman called this civilized conqueror, the lived worldview pervasively posed question the Differential of human supremacy, sheds light on this Imperative, and identified it as the and so many other crimes civilization has Western cultural proclivity for searching committed against the living world. and acclaiming those characteristics that So far I have covered the ideational ostensibly distinguish the human from all and physical displacements that human other life forms. supremacy has effected. I turn to briefly

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consider what this lived worldview does to A phenomenon profoundly indicative human beings who come under its spell. I of this alienation is what is known as the touch on two momentous consequences for shifting ecological baseline. Ecological humanity: firstly, the inability to discern impoverishment has generally increased any reason for limiting expansionism; with each generation, yet each generation and secondly, the loss of appreciation ta kes t he i mpover i shed cond it ion t hey fi nd as and gratitude for the planet’s stupendous ‘normal’. Ever since wild beings have ceased richness and beauty. being neighbors, neither their presence nor On the first point, it needs to be said their local or regional disappearance has, “No mainstream that the wisdom of limitations belongs to for the most part, warranted recording. politician, media or peoples who respect their non-human and Amnesia about the living world is the non-governmental human neighbours. It is that respect that existential condition that we have reaped gives rise to restraint. But the worldview in exchange for the supremacist exercise organization has of human supremacy extinguishes respect in power over the natural world. Another called out the for neighbours and for their homes by pinnacle indicator of human alienation is the anthropocentric constructing and circulating disparaging ongoing invisibility of the mass extinction worldview. Rather, beliefs about them: either they do not episode underway. Mass extinction remains morally count, or they are inferior, or they publicly largely unknown, little understood the prevailing are nothing but ‘resources’, or (usually) all and rarely talked about. response to of the above. Thus, the conditioning of the ecological challenges * * * * * human into a culture that has declared itself has been a riff on the superior and entitled precludes the arising Recent decades have witnessed humanity’s human supremacist of restraint that comes from respect, from dawning recognition of the dangerous side caring, and from a desire to fit in rather effects of expanding civilization: a sense storyline.” than take over. Non-stop expansionism is of big trouble mounting and more trouble thus effectively built into the worldview of coming our way. Yet what is the prevailing human supremacy. response? Do we see a trend to confront Today, the absence of limitations, of the historical legacy of human supremacy restraint, is a rampant malady all around – its displacements, extinctions, lack of us. It has become a kind of madness. We restraint, alienation from the living world see the madness in the normalized violence and ecological amnesia? of factory farms, in the trashing and Not to date. No mainstream politician, biodepletion of the seas, in the drive to dam media or non-governmental organization the rivers of the world, in the rendering of has called out the anthropocentric whole landscapes in pursuit of fossil fuels, worldview. Rather, the prevailing response in the non-stop ‘harvesting’ of carnivores to ecological challenges has been a riff on and in the insane trading of rainforests for the human supremacist storyline: We are crop plantations and cattle ranches. We see the resourceful race; the technological the absurdity of human supremacy and its magicians; the God species. Such are the descent into madness in ‘rational’ solutions exhortations we hear nowadays. like Robochop. It therefore comes as no surprise that the Beyond the inability to discern any standard approach to solving the enormous reason for limitations, humanity has also problems of our time is piecemeal and blindsided itself to the loss of so much of technological. Here are some high-profile the natural world. In the words of critical examples: theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor n Shortages of freshwater will be tackled Adorno, “Men pay for the increase in power with desalinization or by redirecting with alienation from that over which they entire rivers. exercise power.” This is as true of human n Diminishing fossil fuels will be countered relationships as it is of the relationship with extreme technologies that extract between humanity and the more-than- them from deep sediments, mountaintops human world. and deforested landscapes.

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n In the near future, algae, switchgrass or human expansionism; on the contrary some other biomass will be repurposed it seeks to make the human sprawl over for fuel. the biosphere sustainable. It holds fast n If climate disruption gets out of hand, to the three overriding assumptions of maybe geo-engineering will save the day. human supremacy: that the Earth belongs n Industrial civilization and consumer to humanity, that the planet consists of The piecemeal- society will be sustained and globalized resources for the betterment of people, and “ via nuclear fission or fusion technologies. that human beings are obviously superior technological frame n Adequate food? That will be secured and entitled vis-à-vis all other species. diligently avoids by genetically engineering crops and I close this brief article with a question: challenging human animals, among other innovations. What possibilities will open when we expansionism; n As wild fish become depleted, we can just finally choose to refuse the credo of human escalate fish factory farms. supremacy? Another way of life will emerge on the contrary n And… when jellyfish clog up nuclear or into view when we embrace another it seeks to make desalinization power-plant pipes, we’ll worldview to live by. Namely: that Earth the human sprawl deploy high-tech robots to cut them into is a community of unique and exquisite over the biosphere bits. (Never mind that the jellyfish blooms beings, places and cultures; that the planet today are a direct consequence of the inhabited with restraint and respect is sustainable. ” destruction of the ocean.) abundant for our material sustenance and ravishing for our spirit; and that the more- When we consider all these approaches than-human world, from singing whales to as a whole, we can discern that they are networking fungi, abounds in diverse forms so many examples of the one chosen way of intelligence, awareness and mind. n of framing all problems. A way of framing Notes that not only keeps the spotlight on human This article has been adopted from Eileen Crist’s ingenuity to solve everything, but also presentation, “Confronting Anthropocentrism”, invites admiration for that ingenuity. Most delivered at the Teach-In meeting Techno-Utopianism importantly, the piecemeal-technological and the Fate of the Earth, October 2014, New York City, frame diligently avoids challenging NY, USA.

Accompanying artwork Tornado abstract by Nicola Woodham

Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

About the artwork: Digital image (2017). For more information about this artwork, see the description on page 83 of Nicola’s other piece in this issue.

64 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE

Noting some effects of fabricating ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’

The contemporary moment of global ecological crisis is also a moment wherein ‘nature’ is Sian Sullivan being named and framed as ‘natural capital’. This article considers aspects of this fabrication of ‘natural capital’, drawing attention to three connected processes: [1] commensuration, About the author through which different elements of the natural world are made to correspond to one Sian is Professor of another through applying a common measure; [2] aggregation, through which different Environment and Culture at aspects of the material world are conceptualized together, enabling calculations of a total Bath Spa University, Bath, or ‘net’ quantity; and [3] capitalization, through which conserved ‘standing natures’ can be UK. financed and developed as capital assets. The article queries the social and environmental benefits claimed for these processes of fabrication, drawing attention to some of the justice Citation implications of asserting natural capital valuations for nature. In considering whether the Sullivan S (2017) Noting some effects of fabricating ‘nature’ conservation of ‘natural capital’ is the same as the conservation of ‘nature’, the article as ‘natural capital’ The emphasizes the constitutive (i.e. world-making) implications of the naming and framing of Ecological Citizen 1: 6 5–7 3 . ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’. Keywords fab∙ri∙cate conserves natural capital (Natural Capital Conservation; natural 1 To make; create. Coalition, 2016). At least one Congress capital; nature; values 2 To construct by combining or assembling session, entitled “Matters of value: Natural diverse, typically standardized parts. capital, cultural diversity, governance and 3 To concoct in order to deceive. rights” (IUCN, 2016b), sought to open a (The Free Dictionary, 2017) space for expressions of concern regarding possible “unforeseen impacts of natural capital on broader issues of equitability, t the World Conservation Congress ethics, values, rights and social justice.” of the International Union for It is certainly the case that ‘natural capital’ A Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in as a noun indicating a fact that exists in the September 2016, Motion 63 on ‘natural world is becoming increasingly normalized, capital’ proposed development of a “natural even ‘naturalized’, in environmental capital charter” as a framework “for the governance. Natural capital initiatives application of natural capital approaches arising in the last few years include: and mechanisms” (IUCN, 2016a). In “noting n the World Forum on Natural that concepts and language of natural Capital, described as “the world’s capital are becoming widespread within leading natural capital event” (see conservation circles and IUCN,” Motion www.naturalcapitalforum.com); 63 reflects the IUCN’s prior adoption of “a n the Natural Capital Declaration, a substantial policy position” on the theme statement which commits the financial of “natural capital” (IUCN, 2014: 4). Eleven sector to the mainstreaming of programmed sessions scheduled for the “natural capital considerations” into Congress included ‘natural capital’ in the all financial products and services (see title. Many were associated with the July www.naturalcapitaldeclaration.org); 2016 launch of the global Natural Capital n the Natural Capital Financing Facility, Protocol, which brings together leaders a financial instrument of the European in the business community to create a Investment Bank and the European world where business both enhances and Commission aiming “to prove to the

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Box 1. Brief definitions of key terms. It seems as though increasingly where people in the past might have spoken of Aggregation – bringing different things together into a collection for ‘nature’ or ‘the natural environment’, it is which a total or ‘net’ quantity can be calculated. the term ‘natural capital’ that is invoked. Capitalization – a mix of types and sources of financing that funds This momentum begs the question: what development and commercialization of owned assets. does the term ‘capital’ do to the category Commensuration – the process of making different things appear ‘nature’ when these terms are joined? to correspond to one another through assigning and applying a Additionally, what work does the metaphor common measure. nature-is-as-capital-is do in the world, Debt-based financing and credit–debt mechanism – the loan of money by investors that confers credit through creating debt in return for promises and why exactly should nature be seen in of repayments of the original sum loaned plus interest on the debt. terms of capital? And why is it that this Dividend-bearing asset – an entity or ‘stock’ whose ownership includes particular fabrication is intensifying in payments, usually through the distribution of profits. this particular historical moment? Market-based instrument – policy instruments designed to shape behavior Explored below are three connected by using markets, prices and other economic variables and techniques. processes enacting this fabrication that Marketization – exposure to market forces, often through reductions of perhaps shed some light on the questions public subsidies and regulation. above. These processes are: Monetization – conversion of an entity into money or monetary forms 1 commensuration – making different of value. natures interchangeable; Natural capital – nature and the ‘natural world’ approached in terms of 2 aggregation – focusing on total asset values for human organizations and societies that can be calculated quantities over differences and in monetary units using economic and accounting techniques. particularities; Substitutability – where one thing can replace or substitute for 3 capitalization – leveraging conserved another thing. ‘standing natures’ as capital assets.

market and to potential investors the Key terms are further defined in Box 1. attractiveness of biodiversity and climate adaptation operations in order to promote Commensurating natures sustainable investments from the private Table 1 presents what is now a somewhat sector” (see https://is.gd/04GzdA). iconic calculative device in the making of nature as natural capital, namely the All these initiatives take natural capital biodiversity offsetting metric published as an apparently exterior ‘matter of fact’, by the UK’s Department for Environment, sharing definitions along the lines of that Food and Rural Affairs(DEFRA, 2012). This sanctioned by the UK’s Natural Capital device is designed to enable the combined Committee that it consists of “our natural scoring for a hectare of habitat of its assets including forests, rivers, land, qualities of ecological distinctiveness and minerals and oceans” (see https://is.gd/ its condition. Through this mechanism a a7NMDP). value for a hectare of biodiversity habitat is generated as a numerical surrogate Table 1. Habitat scoring system for biodiversity offsetting in England, also with a score of between 2 and 18. This known as the ‘biodiversity offsetting metric’ (DEFRA, 2012). numerical scoring makes different habitats in different places and temporal Biodiversity distinctiveness Habitat moments commensurate with each other. condition Application of the device permits scored Low (2) Medium (4) High (6) habitat units lost through development-

Good (3) 6 12 18 related transformation at one site to be ‘offset’ against investment in a similar Moderate (2) 4 8 12 number of units of conserved habitat somewhere else. The intention is to Poor (1) 2 4 6 generate a measurable ‘no net loss’, or even a ‘net gain’ in total or aggregate

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biodiversity, even though a loss has been Aggregating natures enacted through development impacts.1 Applying tradable scores to natures in Appearing in DEFRA’s technical different spaces and moments that can documentation in 2012, the biodiversity be exchanged in service to conservation offsetting metric was designed by private is connected with a perception that these sector consultants through a series of numbered natures can be managed in overlapping commissioned reports. Taken terms of aggregated or total quantities. A together, these reports are suggestive of the now familiar example is the use of capped entanglements of state and non-state actors totals in the management of carbon and organizations at different scales that emissions. Caps in this case affirm a logic are coalescing around and working towards of trading between sites of emission and the design of biodiversity offsetting as a sites of sequestration that demonstrate market-based instrument for environmental reduced total carbon emissions beyond a protection.2 A 2009 scoping study for DEFRA counterfactual scenario without a carbon (Treweek et al., 2009) was thus followed by trade or offset. a long technical report published in 2010 by In the UK this logic is being extended the European Commission and involving into what is termed a ‘natural capital some of the same authors. Entitled The use aggregate rule’, as proposed by the Natural of market-based instruments for biodiversity Capital Committee (NCC), which since protection – the case of habitat banking, the 2012 has advised the UK Government The aggregate latter report was written by the UK-based on the sustainable use of natural capital “ Economics for the Environment Consultancy (Helm, 2015). The NCC advocates a target natural capital rule (eftec) and the Institute for European of incorporating natural capital losses and is consistent with a Environment Policy (eftec and Institute for gains into national gross domestic product weak sustainability European Environmental Policy, 2010). Eftec accounts by 2020, so as to establish “a perspective through subsequently was involved in preparing a set of properly maintained and enhanced report for DEFRA called Costing potential natural assets” that are quantified. This which aggregate actions to offset the impact of development set of natural assets is also associated with quantities can appear on biodiversity (GHK Consulting and eftec, the attribution of monetary value for these to be maintained, 2011). Its lead author was also the head of the assets (Office of National Statistics [ONS], even though losses Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme, 2016). For example, in 2015 the UK’s ONS, an international consortium of financial in partnership with DEFRA, produced an in specific ‘natural institutions, corporations (particularly those initial estimate of the ‘aggregate’ (i.e. capital assets’ have in extractive industries), environmental ‘total’) value of natural capital in the UK occurred.” non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as approximately £1.6 trillion (ONS, 2015). and government departments (see https:// The natural capital aggregate rule states is.gd/lVFarI). that it is the aggregate or total value of The DEFRA biodiversity offsetting natural capital assets – as expressed metric is one of a range of new tools of through numbered and priced indicators commensuration that distil a perception – that should be maintained over time. that values for natures in different places Echoing calculations for biodiversity and at different temporal moments can offsetting, as per the metric above, the rule be interchangeable with each other. It thereby permits substitutabilities between is also a tool whose use in application different natural capital assets as long as acts in the world so as to bring these ‘no net loss’ occurs in the overall balance commensurabilities into existence. The sheet of indicators. In other words, the empirical questions then become, to what aggregate natural capital rule is consistent extent are these commensurabilities real or with a weak sustainability perspective illusory? And to what extent is aggregated through which aggregate quantities can ‘no net loss’ or ‘net gain’ in nature measures appear to be maintained, even though genuine or spurious? These questions are losses in specific ‘natural capital assets’ considered further in the next section. have occurred.

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Figure 1 depicts the NCC’s schematic actors. Significant environmental justice representation of natural capital trends issues thereby remain in the conception in the UK, leading up to 2015 and thinking and application of biodiversity offsetting forwards towards 2040. It indicates a and aggregate natural capital rules. framing of natural capital in aggregate But, further, there are conceptual and terms, which here can be equivalently calculative problems with conceiving of signalled through either monetary or capital in terms of aggregate or total values. physical quantities, as suggested on the When extended into biophysical domains y-axis. An improvement in aggregate (i.e. to so-called ‘natural capital’), these natural capital values from 2015 is desired – systemic issues generate a conceptual “Significant at least to reach no net loss, and preferably and measurement minefield. Economist a net gain in values over time – above a Alejandro Nadal has worked this through environmental counterfactual scenario of continuous in some detail, arguing that the natural justice issues remain decline in natural capital values. capital “metaphor does not have rigorous in the conception One issue here is that the socio- foundations in economic theory and that and application economic causes of decline in ‘natural it cannot provide adequate economic of biodiversity capital’, combined with the implications measurements of what are supposed to be of considerable time-lags in the ‘nature’s assets’” (Nadal, 2016: 79). Clive offsetting and ecological impacts of past actions, are Spash (with Anthony Clayton) and Molly aggregate natural little addressed in such representations Scott Cato (with Rupert Read) are other capital rules.” and associated policy recommendations. prominent economists who have made Instead, marketized reward structures similar arguments through drawing on such as biodiversity offsetting tend to disciplinary debates within economics be proposed to incentivize developers itself (Spash and Clayton, 1997; Read and and existing land-owners to shift their Scott Cato, 2014). practices into green economic renderings. As these authors assert, a reason for Little attention is paid to the ecological why the metaphor nature-is-as-capital-is debt experienced by broader society that breaks down in economic terms is because at least in part has been generated by the the category ‘capital’, like the category historical production and appropriation ‘nature’, is incommensurably plural. This practices often associated with these same is even when restricting consideration of

Improvement Goal No net loss

Business as usual 2015 level

(on a physical(on or monetary scale) ‘Protection’

Natural capital Natural

2015 2040

Figure 1. Schematic representation of ‘natural capital’ trends in the UK leading up to 2015 and thinking forwards towards 2040 (based on NCC, 2015).

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capital to physical and economic capital rich) is currently linked with the design of only. Capital exists variously as: financial products based on the putative 1 heterogeneous and not fully substitutable value of dividends (i.e. payments) arising or commensurable physical factors of through conservation markets associated production, such as machinery and with natural capital assets. Led by financial fixed assets like land, that on balance services company Credit Suisse, with the sheets also constitute liabilities with backing of international environmental maintenance costs; organizations WWF and the IUCN, a series 2 the medium (i.e. money), through which of reports proposes capitalizing conserved factors of production might be valued, natures in situ – or what might be thought of bought and sold and thus fabricated as as ‘standing natures’ – in exactly this way. substitutable through markets; In 2016, and following a 2014 report 3 interest-bearing assets that can called Conservation finance: Moving beyond accumulate financial value so as to donor funding to an investor-driven approach “It is not clear generate flows of money dividends that (Credit Suisse et al., 2014), Credit Suisse and whether the nature- can also be leveraged through credit– collaborators published two documents as-capital metaphor debt mechanisms. outlining proposals for debt-based is being invoked conservation finance. The most recent to affirm the To put it simply, often it is not clear is called Levering ecosystems: A business- whether the nature-as-capital metaphor is focused perspective on how debt supports maintenance costs being invoked to affirm the maintenance investments in ecosystem services. It opens of a natural capital costs of a natural capital asset, the with a 2015 quote from Mark Tercek, CEO asset, the possibilities possibilities of substitutabilities between of the environmental NGO The Nature of substitutabilities assets (as in biodiversity offsetting) or the Conservancy (Credit Suisse et al., 2016: 1), possibility of generating dividends from who observes of emerging conservation between assets an asset. These dimensions of capital have finance deals that: (as in biodiversity different implications for how capital is offsetting) or valued, and thereby treated, and by whom. This reminds me of my Wall Street days. I the possibility of To add complexity, prices for monetized mean, all the new markets—the high yield assets are themselves not fixed: they markets, different convertible markets, generating dividends shift relative to each other as well as to this is how they all start. First they start from an asset.” other conditions. This means that it is with one-off project financings, you do almost impossible ever to assert a stable them one-by-one, you demonstrate how value of an asset, and in turn means that these products work, deals work, and then any aggregated or total value is itself it grows into a much more liquid market continually changing. In other words, any where many people can participate in it at quantified or monetized aggregate or total smaller dollar sizes. That’s what I think lies value for ‘natural capital’, whilst perhaps ahead for us. instructive in a heuristic sense, begs understanding as constructed on a series This statement is followed quickly by of flawed assumptions that may generate the CEO of Credit Suisse stating that not wildly misleading measures. only is saving ecosystems affordable, but it is also profitable, if turned “into an asset Capitalizing natures treasured by the mainstream investment Consideration of ‘natural capital’ as a market” (Credit Suisse et al., 2016: 3). The potentially dividend-bearing asset that report proposes a number of mechanisms can be leveraged through credit–debt whereby “businesses can utilize debt as a mechanisms does, however, appear to be tool to restore, rehabilitate, and conserve attractive. A nascent interest in scaling- the environment while creating financial up debt-based conservation finance from value”. The idea is that as “environmental institutional investors and ultra-high-net- footprints move closer to being recognized worth individuals (i.e. the super-super- as assets and liabilities by companies, debt

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can be used to fund specific investments Investor risk is proposed to be reduced in ecosystems that lead to net-positive through mobilizing such newly legible and financial outcomes.” Debt-based financing leverageable assets, as well as the ‘land or – for example, through tradable securities usage rights’ from which they derive, as such as bonds, or debt-instruments underlying collateral. that finance a portfolio of aggregated What these financing proposals imply, conservation-oriented loans – is framed then, is that countries of the global south as attractive because interest received with remaining high levels of ‘standing by investors is “usually tax-deductible” natural capital’ may become indebted (Credit Suisse et al., 2016: 8). to ultra-high-net-worth investors, who The Levering Ecosystems report will access returns on their investments followed quickly from Conservation finance: from new income streams arising from What the financing From niche to mainstream – the building these conserved natures. The charts in “ of an institutional asset class, steered by a present two schematic diagrams redrawn proposals imply is small group including the Director of the from texts referenced above to indicate that countries of IUCN’s Global Business and Biodiversity how these flows of value are envisaged the global south Programme (Credit Suisse and McKinsey to be ‘leveraged’ from natures capitalized with remaining high Center for Business and Environment, as investable natural capital. These 2016). This report estimates the investment possibilities are perceived to be boosted levels of ‘standing potential for conservation finance to be through recent support from the United natural capital’ may roughly US$200–400 billion by 2020. Nations Framework Convention on Climate become indebted As noted above, a major focus here is Change for international compensation to ultra-high-net- the design of scaled-up conservation mechanisms that “balance anthropogenic investments that attract institutional emissions by sources and removals by worth investors, who investors and (ultra-)high-net-worth sinks of greenhouse gases” (see https:// will access returns individuals through financial products is.gd/s5nFV6 Article 4.1). Such mechanisms on their investments linked with emerging or predicted are expected to release new long-term from new income conservation markets. Of course, such sources of additional funding. streams arising from investors loaning finance to projects It seems worth mentioning a few associated with conservation also expect potential concerns here. One is that it is these conserved market-rate returns to compensate for unclear what safeguards will be in place natures.” investments considered to conserve, to prevent debt-financing structures restore or rehabilitate ecosystems and for natural capital conservation from associated ‘services’. As the Chair of UK’s exacerbating existing processes whereby Natural Capital Committee, Dieter Helm people, especially in tropical landscapes, (2016: 3), states in a text offering cautious may be forced from land and livelihoods support for such debt-based financing for as standing ‘natural capital assets’ become natural capital assets: able to generate monetizable dividends (e.g. Cavanagh and Benjaminsen, 2014). any investor in equity or debt is going to For these contexts, some of which may be want an answer to the question: where is perceived by those living there as managed the money coming from to make the public under common property arrangements, it environmental dimension into a defined is also unclear who or what the ‘firm’ is that revenue stream and hence make the project would be able to sell bonds representing privately investable? natural capital value for the receipt of private investment. And, further, laudable In the documents referenced above, claims of concern for environmental returns are projected to materialize in sustainability seem awkward when set part from new markets in the potentially against other dimensions of company monetizable ‘dividends’ of ‘standing practice. In the case of Credit Suisse these natural capitals’ represented, for example, have led to recent fines of more than by billable ecosystem services and carbon. US$80 million for violating securities law

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and gaming markets through ‘dark pool’ nature is being fabricated as natural trading practices (BBC News, 2016). capital. I have raised some concerns that As with other processes of asset creation a burgeoning ‘natural capitalism’ and its and enclosure, these proposals for making supportive calculative techniques may fail investable natural capital assets out of on distributive, procedural and recognition A burgeoning conserved natures in situ open possibilities justice grounds (Martin et al., 2013). This is “ for profit generation by high-net-worth both through creating new pathways for ‘natural capitalism’ individuals and institutional investors. In asset creation and concentration, as well as and its supportive doing so, investors may become able to through manipulating human relationships calculative with beyond-human nature into those that assert ‘virtual ownership’ (i.e. ownership techniques may from a distance) of large blocks of newly are instrumentally calculable only (Sullivan, fail on distributive, investable stocks. Such moves, nascent 2017). and clunky as they may be (Dempsey Naming and thereby framing nature procedural and and Suarez, 2016), generate concern that as natural capital is an important part of recognition justice natural capital thinking may simply sustain this process. We can see the significance grounds.” capitalist trajectories that entrench highly of naming nature through the actions inequitable relationships in both social and of another prominent environmental environmental arenas. organization. In 1986 the central secretariat of WWF decided to change the name of the Is conserving ‘natural capital’ the organization from the World Wildlife Fund same as conserving ‘nature’? to the World Wide Fund for Nature (W W F, In the text above I have sought to elaborate 2017). The thinking was that an emphasis on some key mechanisms through which ‘wildlife’, borne of a concern for endangered

A Ecosystems with Activation of Investment Investors conservation needs cash flow structures or funds

n Oceans n Service payments n Trust funds n New sources n Freshwater n Offsets n Bond of private Conservation Conservation Financial n Forests impact n Compensation investment investments investment investment n Other terrestrial payments or fees n Project finance n Government habitats n Product sales n Other budgets n Other n Permit trading n Philanthropy

Some payments Impact remain locally, Financial return on measurement regionally or investment nationally Cash flows returned to investors

‘Green’ impact reporting to investors

B

Funds Investment ‘Green’ or ‘Green’ or conservation‘Green’ or Financial conservation conservation Investors project Cash flow(s) vehicle Financial return project projects

Conservation impact Non-financial return

. Schematic representations of new forms of private sector conservation finance proposed by Credit Suisse and collaborators to be leveraged in association with increasingly legible natural capital value flows: [A] Conservation Finance Framework (based on Credit Suisse et al., 2014); [B] ‘Demand and Supply Side of Conservation (based on Credit Suisse and McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, 2016). (Also, see Sullivan, 2017: 414.)

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s p e c i e s , n o l o n g e r r e fl e c t e d t h e o r g a n i z a t i o n’s Carver L (2015) Measuring the value of what? An scope of work for the conservation of the ethnographic account of the transformation of ‘Nature’ diversity of life on Earth. It was considered under the DEFRA biodiversity offsetting metric (LCSV Working Paper). Available at https://is.gd/d1nzwO that overall the organization would be better (accessed April 2017). served by the term ‘nature’ as opposed to Carver L and Sullivan S (2017) How economic contexts the term ‘wildlife’. In other words, it seems shape calculations of yield in biodiversity offsetting. that naming and framing ‘nature’ matters Conservation Biology doi: 10.1111/cobi.12917. (Lakoff, 2010; Sullivan, 2016), and that the “To what Cavanagh C and Benjaminsen TA (2014) Virtual nature, term ‘natural capital’ is far from neutral in extent does the violent accumulation: The ‘spectacular failure’ its connotations as far as the ‘natural world’ of carbon offsetting at a Ugandan national park. conservation of is concerned. Geoforum 56: 55–65. natural capital equate This article is intended to add to debate Credit Suisse, Climate Bonds Initiative and Clarmondial with the conservation regarding the current and consolidating (2016) Levering ecosystems: A business-focused naming of nature as ‘natural capital’. What perspective on how debt supports investments in of nature? If these ecosystem services. Available at https://is.gd/6Sp8aH does this renaming do to how natures are terms in fact invoke (accessed April 2017). conceptualized and approached, and whose Credit Suisse and McKinsey Center for Business and different things, interests does this remaking of nature Environment (2016) Conservation finance: From niche then it seems worth as capital serve? And how is our ability to mainstream – the building of an institutional asset clarifying whether to encounter other-than-human natures class. Available at https://is.gd/MGHJqH (accessed in their multiplicitous and wonderful April 2017). the conservation differences affected by a tendency to see Credit Suisse, WWF and McKinsey & Company (2014) of natural capital everything through the lens of capital? Conservation finance: Moving beyond donor funding is indeed good for Importantly, given the debates at the IUCN’s to an investor-driven approach. Available at https:// is.gd/375LXU (accessed April 2017). the conservation World Conservation Congress with which this article opened, to what extent does the Dempsey J and Suarez DC (2016) Arrested of nature. development? The promises and paradoxes of ” conservation of natural capital equate with “selling nature to save it”. Annals of the American the conservation of nature? If these terms Association of Geographers 106: 6 5 3–7 1 . in fact invoke different things, then it seems Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs worth clarifying whether the conservation (2012) The metric for the biodiversity offsetting pilot of natural capital is indeed good for the in England. Available at https://is.gd/HuOzD5 conservation of nature. n (accessed April 2017). Economics for the Environment Consultancy and Acknowledgements Institute for European Environmental Policy (2010) The author is grateful for research funding from The use of market-based instruments for biodiversity the Leverhulme Trust (RP2012-V-041) through protection – the case of habitat banking. Available at the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value https://is.gd/Oipf7T (accessed April 2017). (www.thestudyofvalue.org) and the Arts and GHK Consulting and Economics for the Environment Humanities Research Council (AH/K005871/2) Consultancy (2011) Costing potential actions to offset through Future Pasts (www.futurepasts.net). the impact of development on biodiversity. Available at https://is.gd/PNVX0T (accessed April 2017).

Notes Hannis M and Sullivan S (2012) Offsetting nature? 1 For detail and discussion see Hannis and Sullivan Habitat banking and biodiversity offsets in the English (2012), Sullivan and Hannis (2015), Carver and land use planning system. Available at https://is.gd/ Sullivan (2017) and references therein. sbv7P5 (accessed April 2017).

2 See also Benabou (2014) and Carver (2015). Helm D (2015) Natural Capital: Valuing the planet. Yale University Press, London, UK.

References Helm D (2016) Green bonds for natural capital: Some BBC News (2016) Barclays and Credit Suisse are fined issues. Available at https://is.gd/DcywiT (accessed over US ‘dark pools’. BBC News. Available at https:// April 2017). is.gd/KhDDRp (accessed April 2017). International Union for Conservation of Nature Benabou S (2014) Making up for lost nature? A and Natural Resources (2014) 84th Meeting of the critical review of the international development IUCN Council, Sydney (Australia), 8–10 November of voluntary biodiversity offsets. Environment and 2014: Decisions. Available at https://is.gd/pxLCOE Society: Advances in Research 5: 102–23 . (accessed April 2017).

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International Union for Conservation of Nature (2016a) Motion 63 – Natural Capital. Available at https://is.gd/ Del Valle Z79Go2 (accessed April 2017). International Union for Conservation of Nature by Juan Cisneros (2016b) Matters of value: Natural capital, cultural diversity, governance and rights. Available at https:// Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork is.gd/pjuVXg (accessed April 2017).

Lakoff G (2010) Why it matters how we frame the environment. Environmental Communication 4: 70–81.

Martin A, McGuire S and Sullivan S (2013) Global environmental justice and biodiversity conservation. The Geographical Journal 179: 122–31.

Nadal A (2016) The natural capital metaphor and economic theory. Real World Economics Review 74: 64–84.

Natural Capital Committee (2015) The state of natural capital: Protecting and improving natural capital for prosperity and wellbeing. Available at https:// is.gd/7zpRyZ (accessed April 2017).

Natural Capital Coalition (2016) The Natural Capital Protocol. Available at https://is.gd/e2cMwj (accessed April 2017).

Office for National Statistics (2015) How much are the UK’s natural resources worth? Available at https:// is.gd/d7b5Cn (accessed April 2017).

Office for National Statistics (2016) UK natural capital: monetary estimates, 2016. Available at https://is.gd/ pNTWjF (accessed April 2017).

Read R and Scott Cato M (2014) A price for everything? The natural capital controversy. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 5: 153–67.

Spash CL and Clayton AM (1997) The maintenance of natural capital: Motivations and methods. In: Light A and Smith JM, eds. Space, Place and Environmental Ethics. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, USA:3– 73.

Sullivan S (2016) Beyond the money shot; or how framing nature matters? Locating Green at Wildscreen. Journal of Environmental Communications 10: 749–62.

Sullivan S (2017) On ‘natural capital’, ‘fairy-tales’ and ideology. Development and Change 48: 397–423.

Sullivan S and Hannis M (2015) Nets and frames, losses and gains: Value struggles in engagements with biodiversity offsetting policy in England. Ecosystem Services 15: 162–7 3 . Never miss an issue of The Free Dictionary (2017) Fabricate. Available at The Ecological Citizen https://is.gd/qXn8sJ (accessed April 2017).

Treweek J, ten Kate K, Butcher B et al. (2009) Scoping study for the design and use of biodiversity offsets in an Sign up for content alerts at: English Context - Final Report to Defra. Available at https://is.gd/rattdG (accessed April 2017). www.ecologicalcitizen.net/#signup

WWF (2017) WWF in Brief. Available at https://is.gd/ fSfYWJ (accessed April 2017).

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The twilight of anthropocentrism

This article examines the common ground and contrasts between the non-anthropocentric John Michael outlooks of horror–fantasy writer HP Lovecraft and poet Robinson Jeffers. Within this scope, the author considers how indifferentism, inhumanism and nihilism have been presented as Greer alternatives to religious or secular anthropocentrism. After cautioning that a reversion to About the author ethnocentrism is one potential route following the rejection of anthropocentrism, the author The author is Past Grand presents ecocentrism as another possible course. The fact that a leap from ethnocentrism Archdruid of the Ancient to anthropocentrism was made with some degree of success by a great many people in the Order of Druids in America past is presented as suggesting that a general embrace of ecocentrism is at least possible. and the author of more than thirty books on a wide “The most merciful thing in the world, the universe exists solely as a stage on range of subjects, including the future of industrial I think, is the inability of the human which the drama of humanity’s fall and society. He lives in the mind to correlate all its contents. We redemption is played out, and once that north central Appalachians, live on a placid island of ignorance in drama is over, God can be expected to haul in the US, and blogs at the midst of black seas of infinity, and it away the universe as we know it and replace www.ecosophia.net. was not meant that we should voyage far. it with one that humanity likes better. The sciences, each straining in its own To the believer in progress – the ersatz Citation direction, have hitherto harmed us little; religion that has replaced Christianity Greer JM (2017) The twilight of anthropocentrism. The but some day the piecing together of and Judaism across much of the Western Ecological Citizen 1: 75–82. dissociated knowledge will open up such industrial world (Greer, 2015) – the terrifying vistas of reality, and of our universe exists solely as a stage on which Keywords frightful position therein, that we shall the very different drama of humanity’s Anthropocentrism; either go mad from the revelation or flee conquest of nature is to be enacted, and ethnocentrism; from the deadly light into the peace and the replacement of the universe as we indifferentism; safety of a new dark age.” know it with one more subservient to our inhumanism; nihilism whims is supposed to be accomplished by science and technology rather than any hese are the opening lines of more obviously theological potency. “The Call of Cthulhu” by the A subtler form of anthropocentrism Ticonic horror–fantasy writer HP underlies both of the views just outlined, Lovecraft (Lovecraft, 2014). Someday, I and it was this at which Lovecraft took suspect, they may be remembered as a aim in the passage cited above. Both the Artwork in this article proclamation in literature of a profound religious anthropocentrist and the believer Space Ship Earth series shift in the collective consciousness of in human progress take it for granted, the Western world. That shift, which has first, that human beings are capable of by Geoff Diego Litherland proceeded further since Lovecraft’s time understanding the universe, and second, Higher-resolution versions: but remains incomplete today, is the slow that when this understanding comes – https://is.gd/ecoartwork abandonment of anthropocentrism as the whether by way of divine revelation, in the Originals: Oil on canvas foundation of the intellectual culture of former example, or the exercise of human (2015; 100 x 100 cm, first modernity. reason in the latter – the truths thus and last; 150 x 150 cm, As the word implies, anthropocentrism revealed will be comforting to our species. second and third). Lovecraft asks us to consider a harrowing defines humanity as central to the Further information on this universe. That centrality can take many alternative: that our minds may simply series is presented at the forms. To the religious anthropocentrist, not be up to the job of making sense of the end of the article.

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universe, and if by some chance we should The assumption that the universe must happen to do so, the truths uncovered in be simple enough to be understood by the that hideous moment of discovery might limited cognitive equipment given to our be terrifying enough to leave sanity or species by natural selection was never civilization itself shattered in their wake. more than an act of faith, after all, and the This is a daunting prospect, not least achievements of science – set in motion, because there are good reasons to think ironically enough, by the Enlightenment’s that Lovecraft’s first point was certainly trust in the omnipotence of reason – have correct, and his second is hard to rule out. brought the sheer incomprehensibility

Accept What You Destroy

76 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net The twilight of anthropocentrism

of the universe into clear focus in recent frameworks through which their very decades. different literary works took shape, but Thus the faith that the universe must be both took the time to sketch out some of at once comprehensible and congenial to their basic ideas in other settings. It’s not surprising the human mind is fraying around us. As Lovecraft, for his part, described his “ it unravels, the narratives of the religious philosophy in one of his letters (Lovecraft, that HP Lovecraft anthropocentrist and the believer in 1973): should have penned progress alike become increasingly hard his epitaph for the to take seriously. Alternative sources of Contrary to what you may assume, I am Age of Reason at meaning exist that could take the place not a pessimist but an indifferentist—that a time when most of anthropocentrism as an organizing is, I don’t make the mistake of thinking principle for human thought. Not all such that the resultant of the natural forces people throughout alternatives, though, are of equal value. surrounding and governing organic life the Western world will have any connexion with the wishes rested comfortably Indifferentism and inhumanism or tastes of any part of that organic life- in the belief that Transformations of collective consciousness process. Pessimists are just as illogical as routinely show up in the work of artists, optimists; insomuch as both envisage the the universe around writers and poets long before they find aims of mankind as unified, and as having them could be made their way into the conventional wisdom of a direct relationship (either of frustration wholly transparent the age. Thus it’s not surprising that HP or of fulfillment) to the inevitable flow of to the human Lovecraft should have penned his epitaph terrestrial motivation and events. That intellect and wholly for the Age of Reason at a time when most is—both schools retain in a vestigial people throughout the Western world way the primitive concept of a conscious subservient to the rested comfortably in the belief that the teleology—of a cosmos that gives a damn human will.” universe around them could be made one way or another about the especial wholly transparent to the human intellect wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, and wholly subservient to the human will. rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, He was neither the first or the only trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of creative mind of his period to turn his biological energy. back on the popular anthropocentrism of his era. The “revaluation of all values” Jeffers, in turn, described inhumanism that Nietzsche predicted (Nietzsche, 1974), in a preface to one of his collections as though it was arguably set in motion by the (Jeffers, 2001): general scientific acceptance of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection … a new attitude, a new manner of thought in the second half of the 19th century, and feeling, which came to me at the end of got under way in earnest in intellectual the war of 1914, and has since been tested circles in the Western world during the in the confusions of peace and a second first decades of the 20th. The challenges world-war, and the hateful approach raised against anthropocentrism of a third; and I believe it has truth and during that latter period took many value. It is based on a recognition of the forms, some more comprehensive and astonishing beauty of things and their challenging, some less. Lovecraft’s own living wholeness, and on a rational views, which he summed up under the acceptance of the fact that mankind label of ‘indifferentism’, belong to the is neither central nor important in the former category, and so do the ideas of universe; our vices and blazing crimes are the other creative mind discussed here as insignificant as our happiness. – the Californian poet Robinson Jeffers, who gave his own philosophy the parallel Note the common ground between these title ‘inhumanism’. Neither author was two visions – and the contrast. Both the a systematic philosopher, and their horror writer and the poet recognized that ideas found their primary expression as humanity is of no noticeable importance

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in the overall scheme of the cosmos, that ebbing faith had to be abandoned, and acknowledged that our species resulting in the revaluation of all values cannot expect the cosmos to conform already mentioned, and potentially in the to human desires. To Jeffers, though, an emergence of a new type of human being. ecocentric outlook that revelled in “the The Overman, as Nietzsche termed this astonishing beauty of things and their hypothetical being, could freely embrace living wholeness” was a potent source of the meaninglessness of the universe, consolation in the face of a radically non- abandoning one temporary viewpoint anthropocentric cosmos; to Lovecraft it after another in a perpetual process of was not – “mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, self-overcoming. men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, In Nietzsche’s thought, the Overman dodos, or other forms of biological energy” was always an individual, never a member were ultimately of no greater concern of any identifiable group – least of all to him than they are to the cosmos as a an ethnic or racial group. It was left to “To Robinson whole. That difference in values, as we Nietzsche’s tenth-rate epigones in early will see, has serious consequences. 20th-century Germany to stretch and lop Jeffers, an ecocentric his philosophy to fit the Procrustean bed outlook that revelled The consequences of nihilism of their own racial obsessions, drafting in ‘the astonishing In a book widely discussed in its time, the prophet of the free individual into beauty of things Michael Novak described the “experience the service of ethnocentric ideologies that ended up taking the form of German and their living of nothingness” as the defining feature of modern thought (Novak, 1972). The National Socialism. Yet that was the only wholeness’ was a experience he described is the same response to Nietzsche’s challenge to find potent source of that Lovecraft and Jeffers explored in even a temporary general acceptance in consolation in the their creative works: the discovery that his wake; the only widespread revaluation face of a radically traditional anthropocentric narratives of all values that followed the death of fail to provide meaningful guidance God turned out to be the one displayed to non-anthropocentric in a universe that grants no special the world at Dachau and Auschwitz. cosmos.” importance to our species. Novak argued, In the same way, although with less though, that this confrontation led not ghastly consequences, the collective to madness or civilizational collapse, encounter with the experience of but to a higher form of sanity in which nothingness that Novak hailed in humanity’s delusions of importance were its 1960s expression ended not in a set aside once and for all. Writing just as general abandonment of traditional the cultural convulsions of the 1960s were anthropocentric narratives, but in a passing their peak, he suggested that the flight back to those narratives, in the experience of nothingness was on the form of Christian fundamentalism and brink of becoming commonplace, and the conservative counter-revolution thereafter would become the foundation spearheaded by Margaret Thatcher and of future thought in the industrial world. Ronald Reagan. The lesson here was Behind this argument, as Novak detailed long ago by psychologist Viktor acknowledged, stands Friedrich Frankl: human beings cannot exist Nietzsche’s challenge to the supposed without a source of meaning, and if their certainties of 19th-century European culture or upbringing denies them access thought. Controversial as it was, to established sources of meaning, they Nietzsche’s famous announcement will find others wherever they can, no of the death of God (Nietzsche, 1974) matter how dangerous or destructive was meant as a simple statement of those turn out to be (Frank l, 1959). fact: since most people in the Western The resurgence in ethnic nationalism world no longer believed in the literal and xenophobic attitudes evident in truth of Christian revelation, the entire recent news has many causes, and the structure of values and ideals based on disastrous impact of neoliberal trade and

78 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net The twilight of anthropocentrism

Always Returning

immigration policies on working class in progress as a secular surrogate for incomes across much of the industrial religion. At this point, however, the world cannot be ignored in this context. repeated failures of the prophets of At the same time, the collapse of religious progress to make good on their promises and secular anthropocentrism is also a of universal betterment have made faith in factor to consider. The ongoing decline progress increasingly difficult to sustain. in traditional religious faith in Western As secular anthropocentrism accelerates industrial nations has heretofore been down the curve of its own decline, the counterbalanced by the rise of faith collective need for a new foundation for

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 79 The twilight of anthropocentrism www.ecologicalcitizen.net

meaning and value can be expected to that class by a cascade of reverses, he grow increasingly acute. turned the pervasive status panic of the downwardly mobile into the raw material The search for a centre for horror fiction. In his tales, the social In this context, the intellectual trajectory order of his upbringing – white, male, of HP Lovecraft has uncomfortable lessons Anglocentric, rational – is constantly to teach. Born into the Anglo-American threatened by the upsurge of amorphous upper class of his native Rhode Island powers from the depths of being, which but driven down to the bottom edge of sprawl indiscriminately across the

Venture in the Slipstream

80 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net The twilight of anthropocentrism

accepted boundaries of the age: between option exists. His ecocentric vision, rooted white and non-white, male and female, in a clear sense of natural order as a source human and unhuman. of meaning and value, demands a leap Lovecraft’s status panic was not as significant as the one that replaced restricted to his fiction, however. As he ethnocentric with anthropocentric ideals. neared the end of his relatively brief life, Just as the proponents of universal he turned with increasing force to his own religions and the prophets of faith in ethnic and cultural background as a source progress called upon their listeners to set “Robinson Jeffers’ of meaning and value. Much has been made aside an assortment of ethnic, cultural and ecocentric vision, of his racism, and not inappropriately, racial prejudices in order to join in a sacred but that was only one facet of a broader or secular community that was meant to rooted in a clear affirmation of an ethnocentric agenda: include all of humanity, those who hope sense of natural not merely his race but his cultural to spread ecocentric views will have to call order as a source of background and his social class became, upon their listeners to abandon familiar meaning and value, for him, defences against the shapeless prejudices that favour our species ahead of horrors from below. all others. demands a leap as The development of Lovecraft’s thought, The fact that the earlier leap was made significant as the chronicled mostly in his voluminous with some degree of success by a great many one that replaced letters and assembled after his death by people in the past suggests that a general ethnocentric with such scholars as ST Joshi (Joshi, 1990), is embrace of ecocentrism is at least possible. anthropocentric among other things a sharp challenge to ‘Possible’ of course, is not the same thing Novak’s claims about the consequences as ‘inevitable’. As the converging crises ideals.” of the “experience of nothingness.” of our time unite with the revelations That experience, in Lovecraft’s case of science to make humanity’s modest as in so many others, did not result in role in the universe harder and harder to any transcendence of human delusions, ignore, a great deal of well-focused effort but rather in a deliberate flight back to will be needed to promote ecocentrism ethnocentrism as the only remaining as a viable alternative to the madness bulwark against a meaningless cosmos. and civilizational collapse that Lovecraft It bears remembering, after all, that predicted. n religious and secular anthropocentrism were both attempts to broaden human References ideas of meaning and value beyond the Frankl V (1959) Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, limits of a single ethnic, cultural or racial Boston, MA, USA. group. Religions of universal salvation, Greer JM (2015) After Progress: Reason and Religion at the whatever their other flaws, tried to enact End of the Industrial Age. New Society, Gabriola Island, a vision of the universe in which every BC, Canada. human being had a rightful place, just Jeffers R (2001) Preface to The Double Axe and Other as the secular faith in salvation through Poems. In: Hunt T, ed. The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, USA: progress imagined itself as lifting up every 719–22. human being from the caves to the stars. Joshi ST (1990) H.P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West. The failures that bedevilled religious and Wildside, Berkeley Heights, NJ, USA. secular anthropocentrisms alike, and so Lovecraft HP (1973) Selected Letters 1911–1937 (Vol 3). often kept them from expressing their Derleth A, Wandrei D and Turner J, eds. Arkham House, ideals in practice, should not be allowed to Sauk City, WI, USA . erase the significance of their attempt to Lovecraft HP (2014) The Call of Cthulhu. In: Klinger LS, transcend the merely ethnocentric. ed. The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft. Norton, New A reversion to ethnocentrism, though, York, NY, USA: 123–57. is not the only possible outcome of the Nietzsche F (1974) The Gay Science (translated by twilight of anthropocentrism in our time. Kaufmann W). Vintage, New York, NY, USA.

Robinson Jeffers is among the cultural Novak M (1972) The Experience of Nothingness. Harper figures who pointed out that another Colophon, New York, NY, USA.

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A Quiet Explosion

The thoughts of Richard Davey on Geoff Diego Litherland’s Space Ship Earth series.

“Through octagonal ‘portholes’ Litherland allows us to through patinas of light and rust, painterly veils that enhance glimpse dramatic landscapes; oceans, forests and mountains this sense of ambiguity, leaving us to ask, are we witnessing that are in a state of flux, hovering between solid and liquid, the final hours of a dying world, or the first minutes of one that abstract and figurative, creation and destruction. They are seen is newly born?”

82 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net CALL FOR PAPERS

Call for Papers

Patrick Curry, Editor-in-Chief

We are inviting authors to submit contributions to The Ecological Citizen. The pieces that we are seeking include: Long Articles (in general, 2500–3000 words plus up to 30 references, but please see the note below about the possibility for lengthier pieces*); Opinions (400–500 words plus up to five references); and Book and Culture Reviews (500–1000 words). And we are interested in receiving contributions from a wide spectrum of authors, including philosophers, scientists, naturalists, indigenous thinkers, theologians, activists and poets. We are particularly interested in pieces with practical messages offering a ‘way forward’.

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You can participate Artwork overleaf in discussions on a Amplified Trees range of Earth-centred by Nicola Woodham

issues by joining the Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork Ecocentric Alliance’s About the artwork: Digital image (2017). From the artist: This image and the one accompanying Eileen Crist’s article earlier in the issue are originally stills from email group security footage captured during tornado impact. The site was an empty school in Joplin, MO, USA. The stills are imported www.ecocentricalliance.org/#ju into audio software using particular settings and then effects are added such as echo, phase and amplify. The files are then exported and opened as images again. The process creates a mix of predictable and random corruption and colour change to the image. This process has been called ‘databending’.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 83

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Environmental humanities: A report on a seminar in Spain

rom 28 to 30 November 2016, the ways in which citizens and scholars can Margarita Universitat Politècnica de València work together in developing projects Carretero- Fin Spain hosted the first of three oriented to raising environmental seminars planned by a research project awareness. The arts can certainly play a González labelled ‘Environmental Humanities: key role in leading cultures of transition; Strategies for ecological empathy and the indeed, they are already doing so, as About the author transition towards sustainable societies’. amply evidenced by the last plenary Margarita is Senior As is suggested by the title of this first speaker, Anne Douglas, from Robert Lecturer in English Literature at the University seminar – Times of transition: The role Gordon University. of Granada, Spain, a of humanities facing the socio-ecological Because the Environmental Humanities Fellow of the Oxford crisis – participants exchanged ideas on initiative comprises two sub-projects Centre for Animal Ethics the different ways the humanities can – ‘Visual Arts, Ethics and Ecological and a member of GIECO, contribute to raising awareness about the Empathy’ and ‘Stories for Change’, led, a Spanish research group pressing environmental crisis, at a time respectively, by head researchers José in ecocriticism. Her research interests include when socio-economic issues have once Luis Albelda (Universitat Politècnica de ecocriticism, ecofeminism again relegated the environment to the València) and Carmen Flys (Universidad and posthumanism. background of most citizens’ concerns. de Alcalá) – the seminar also offered The research project brings together simultaneous workshops on creative Citation scholars from different universities in writing (coordinated by José Manuel Carretero-González M (2017) Spain who are working in the visual Marrero Henríquez, from the Universidad Environmental humanities: A arts, literary criticism (ecocriticism de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and a report on a seminar in Spain. The Ecological Citizen 1: 87–8. and ecofeminism) and environmental writer himself) and artistic expression ethics. This particular seminar included (coordinated by artist and researcher Keywords presentations not only by members of the Lorena Lozano). Marrero-Henríquez Crowdsourcing; ecological project but also by related scholars and asked participants to write about one empathy; environmental grass-roots activists. Plenary speakers natural spot that they considered worth humanities; visual arts Jorge Riechmann (Universidad Autónoma preserving, with the goal of exploring de Madrid) and Ernest García (Universitat how individual memory and personal de València) looked into the possible experience can be interwoven in a text shapes that post-carbon societies could in order to evoke ecological empathy. take in the ‘Anthropocene’, with both Lozano, on her part, provided participants agreeing that the role humanity can with the tools to create pieces of art which play is now actually one of mitigation – could function as vectors of change and rather than prevention – of the effects of empathy in the transition towards more Meeting title anthropogenic climate change, given the sustainable societies, one of the goals of Times of transition: The Role of impossibility of reversing them in the the visual arts sub-project. The seminar Humanities Facing the Socio- short term. In another plenary session, I was organised by members of this sub- ecological Crisis examined the different projects active in project; therefore most of the papers Spain in the fields of citizen science and that were presented dealt with individual Location citizen humanities, contrasting them artists’ and scholars’ explorations Valencia, Spain with other crowdsourcing initiatives of how they engage with their work being developed in other countries. This as an instrument to effect social and Date generated a lively debate on the different environmental change. 28–30 November 2016

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Delegates also had the privilege of visiting the urban orchards of Benimaclet (Figure 1), a successful, inspiring example of the triumph of neighbourhood cooperation and self-management against real-estate speculation. The community association of Benimaclet reclaimed an area that had been abandoned after the construction firm in charge of building an urban project that included a park went bankrupt, transforming it into a magnificent series of urban orchards, and giving to the land a less intensive function in this fertile region of the Iberian peninsula. The orchards are self-managed and, by ensuring food sovereignty, have completely transformed the lives of those in the neighbourhoods. Furthermore, they have been instrumental in tightening the social fabric – even filling in generation gaps. All in all, the seminar succeeded in being transdisciplinary not only in its intersectional approach to studying the role of the humanities in bringing about socio-environmental change, but also in looking into ongoing projects that are changing people’s realities and favourably contributing to preserving Figure 1. A view across the urban orchards of Benimaclet, which were visited by their most immediate social and natural delegates at the meeting. environment. n

Artwork: exhibition view right; detail on next page by Jelena Micic

Higher-resolution versions: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

About the artwork: Constructed from waste nets from food packaging.

From the artist: These nets are a potential ecological danger. The usual act following the consumption process would be to simply throw them away and pretend they never existed. Instead, I use them as building blocks, making them more visible.

88 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017

MEETING REPORT www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Environmental humanities: A report on a symposium in the UK

Patrick Curry n 16 December 2016, an inaugural anything else, including the things we are symposium took place at Bath supposed to be studying. In other words, About the author OSpa University’s Research Centre methodology becomes an end in itself. Patrick is a writer and for Environmental Humanities, directed That tendency is potentially both scholar based in London, by Professor Kate Rigby (see https:// anthropocentric and scientistic. The UK. His works include is.gd/NV0XGe). The symposium was unspoken assumption seems to be that the Ecological Ethics: An called Environmental Humanities: Doing supposedly correct method will produce Introduction (Polity Press, Interdisciplinarity with Depth. truth. This magical thinking gains a 2011). He is Editor-in-Chief of The Ecological Citizen. Presentations were dense and varied specious authority from the widespread and can only be summarised very hegemonic belief that the ‘hard’ sciences Citation briefly. Their subjects included termites should be the model for all forms of Curry P (2017) Environmental and human culture in West Africa, enquiry, including the humanities. Its humanities: A report on a the new animism and its potential, emphasis on epistemological rectitude symposium in the UK. The ethnography and ethics in reconciling comes at the expense of ontologies, ways Ecological Citizen 1: 90–1. local with universal knowledge-claims, not of knowing and representing but of interdisciplinary German Studies, North being and understanding. As such, an Keywords Sea reflections, writing the past in a time over-emphasis on methodology is already Environmental humanities; methodology of ecocrisis, practices of hydrocitizenship, prejudicial to an environmental humanities inter-species connectivities, turning post- that is genuinely ecological and not Brexit localism to good environmental merely environmental, that is, confined account, transdisciplinary methodology, to nature as an external setting and set of personal and natural narratives in resources, whether material or cultural, writing, societies living with volcanoes, for us. For a discipline that is supposed to meta-reflections on the environmental engage with others of all kinds, not only humanities, the cultural dimensions of other human communities but those of histories of catastrophes, a critique of the more-than-human world, that would models of interdisciplinarity, aesthetics be most unhelpful. (It is also why I would and environmental ethics, putting prefer the subject was rechristened the interdisciplinary into practice in literary ecohumanities.) studies, ecopoetics, and liaising with Over-simplifying but not without truth, relevant extra-academic communities. the matter can be put thus: no animal That range gives some idea of the studies how to find its food and then goes environmental humanities’ extraordinary out and does it. Animals learn how to potential, and I applaud the evident find their food in the course of doing it (a Meeting title commitment of the participants. However, process in which mistakes naturally play Environmental Humanities: Doing Interdisciplinarity some presentations also inadvertently an important part). That includes humans. with Depth illustrated some of the dangers that could Anyone who studies mainly how to study prevent realizing that potential. Writing as something is only learning how to study its Location a sympathetic critic, I hope I will be forgiven study, because that is all they are actually Bath, UK for taking this opportunity to flag them doing! The living world with its places and up. One problem was an excessive focus on beings remain untouched. Date methodology – questions of how to study Another, related danger is posed by 16 December 2016 things – to the point where it replaces excessively abstract language, pretentious

90 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Environmental humanities: A report on a symposium in the UK

neologisms and tortuous constructions. afflicts much, maybe most, of the modern These tend to replace actual thinking, academy: an excessively self-referential obscure more than they clarify and scholasticism practised by an inward- fall dead on the ear, or page: to pick looking professional caste. The ideals of The combined effect only a few examples, ‘inter-species the environmental humanities, however “ of methodolatry and connectivity’, ‘spatio-temporalities’, ‘onto- – to reach out to and connect with not epistemologies’ and ‘material-discursive only other human communities but those esoteric language is to catastrophic assemblage’. In contrast, the of the rest of nature too – throw it into encourage something day’s more substantive presentations – particularly sharp relief. Staying within which afflicts much, on extending urban citizenship to good existing intellectual and institutional maybe most, of the practices respecting water, for example, or comfort-zones will not help. the effect on attitudes to the natural world Resisting these temptations will be modern academy: of different historical realizations of the among the primary duties of the present an excessively Reformation – were noticeably free of in- and future generations of its scholars. self-referential house academic jargon; they could have I take heart from the fact that the scholasticism practised been understood by informed laypersons. symposium did in fact make room for They also engaged with the world rather some sparkling contributions that evinced by an inward-looking than engaging in sophisticated meta-level passion, vision and insight. Furthermore, professional caste.” acrobatics. its director, Professor Kate Rigby, brings The combined effect of methodolatry to the job an impressive record of enquiry (the worship of methodology) and esoteric and clear writing. That’s a very promising language is to encourage something which start. n

A scene in Bath, the location of Environmental Humanities: Doing Interdisciplinarity with Depth.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 91 Horses by Rebecca R Burrill

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Rights of nature: A report on a conference in Switzerland

he Geneva Forum is a yearly event ecological destruction of the Great Barrier Marie-Lise run by Objectif Science International, Reef, the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic; Schläppy and Ta not-for-profit organization with (see www.sustainablequalitypurpose.com). consultative status at the United Nations Under the Rome Statute, Miriam continued, Joe Gray (UN). Within the programme for the 2016 the assets of those committing acts of iteration was the 5th International Annual ecological destruction against those About the authors Conference on Rights of Nature, which ecosystems could be seized and frozen. By Marie-Lise is a comprised thirteen oral presentations effectively rendering such destruction ‘not Research Fellow at the Environmental Research along with follow-up workshop for profit’, this would strongly incentivize Institute, University of the discussions (for presentation videos and the use of environmentally responsible Highlands and Islands, UK. slides, see https://is.gd/9NVAtK). Below we practices, she concluded. Joe is a naturalist based summarize those sessions with the most in St Albans, UK, who is relevance to fostering the development of Making sentient animals stakeholders currently studying for a an ecological society. Laura Bridgeman (www.wearesonar.org) PhD in conservation. He presented a proposal for non-humans is a Knowledge Network Session summaries to be be granted stakeholder status in Expert for the United Nations’ Harmony with Giving Mother Earth legal rights ecological participatory projects. Laura’s Nature programme and Doris Ragettli (Rights of Mother Earth) discussion was focused on cetaceans, is Associate Editor of the reported on an initiative that is underway animals whose behaviour has been studied Journal. to lobby the UN for adoption of a Universal in depth and whose ecological needs are Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. well understood. For these reasons, it Citation To this effect, a petition is being circulated was argued, their requirements should Schläppy M-L and Gray J (http://petition.rightsofmotherearth.com/) be recognised when making decisions (2017) Rights of nature: A report on a conference in and, at the time of writing, it has gathered that affect ecosystems e.g.( when creating Switzerland. The Ecological over 847,500 signatures. The goal is to reach marine protected areas). While in a later Citizen 1: 95–6. 1 million signatures in time to prompt presentation, which is described below, the UN General Assembly to accept the one of us (Joe) argued against restricting Keywords declaration in 2018, the 70th anniversary stakeholder status to sentient organisms Earth jurisprudence; of the of the Universal Declaration of (arguing, instead, for its validity across ecodemocracy; Harmony Human Rights. biotic and abiotic parts of ecosystems), it with Nature; rights of is certainly true that what we know about nature Blocking ecological destruction cetaceans presents an emphatic case for Miriam Clements (Sustainable Quality questioning the legitimacy of decision- Purpose) noted the minimal consequences making processeses that are based on that exist, at present, for those committing narrow anthropocentric interests. Meeting title ecological crimes. However, one of the 5th International Annual core international crimes specified under Enabling the rights of nature Conference on Rights of Nature the Rome Statute of the International through ecodemocracy Criminal Court, she argued, can be used Joe explained how ecocentric democracy Location to prosecute such offenders. Using this (or ecodemocracy; Figure 1) could be used Geneva, Switzerland mechanism, she has submitted six case to enable the rights of nature and how it profiles to the International Criminal might be practically implemented at a Date Court for review (with coverage including range of scales. The proposed mechanisms 15 December 2016

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 95 Rights of nature: A report on a conference in Switzerland www.ecologicalcitizen.net

included deliberative ecodemocracy, argued, that hope arises. Furthermore, ecodemocracy by human proxies with the postulation of harmony with the rest voting rights, ecodemocracy by juries of of nature as an axis for systems of law and citizens and ecodemocracy by statute. governance can be used to generate a new Earth-centred worldview. Redefining the relationship between humanity and Mother Earth Expanding the UN Harmony Germana de Oliveira Moraes (Nación with Nature initiative Pachamama) spoke about the philosophy Finally, Maria Mercedes Sanchez, who of Pachamama, an eco-spiritual and is coordinator of the UN’s Harmony cultural movement inspired by the with Nature programme, gave a remote traditions of the Andes and the Himalayas. presentation from New York that updated The philosophy is based on the realization delegates on progress with the initiative. that nature is an organic and interrelated In particular, it was noted that a trust fund whole, and it is through understanding has been created to support the activity, that humanity belongs to this whole, it was and that Bolivia is leading the way by being the the first country to contribute to the fund.

Conclusion The conference succeeded in bringing together people from a range of specialities and backgrounds for a cross-disciplinary discussion of the rights of nature, and it featured a number of excellent presentations. One criticism that can be made is that the programme at times drifted from its intended focus on the rights of nature to anthropocentric concerns. In addition, the only presentation given a lengthy slot was on animal rights; while a very important topic, this would probably have been better placed at another forum, giving more time for talks on the rights of ecosystems and wild nature. Overall, Objectif Science International did a commendable job of getting such an array of people together. We are both hopeful that in future years the conference can be further used as a platform for facilitating Figure 1. A photo presented by Joe during his session on ecodemocracy. ongoing collaborative action. n

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96 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net MEETING REPORT

Towards a new paradigm for nature in the EU: A report on a meeting in Belgium

n 29 March 2017, Nature’s Rights – In our current system of law, ecosystems Mumta Ito a non-profit organization seeking and living species are treated as objects, O to establish legal personality property and resources – whilst About the author and rights for ecosystems and species – corporations are made subjects of the law Mumta is a lawyer and the held an event (Figure 1) at the European with legal personality and rights. This Founder of Nature’s Rights, Parliament in Brussels, to launch its enables an economic system based on which is based in Findhorn, UK. initiative in Europe and to explore the unlimited growth that is coupled with the possibilities that recognizing nature’s destruction of nature. Our current system Citation rights could offer. of environmental law simply manages the Ito M (2017) Towards a new Co-hosted by Pavel Poc, Benedek Jávor externalities of business as usual without paradigm for nature in the and Marco Affronte (Members of the addressing root causes. It can only slow EU: A report on a meeting in European Parliament [MEPs]), the event the rate of degradation – it cannot stop or Belgium. The Ecological Citizen brought together a high-level panel reverse it. 1: 97–8. to discuss how recognizing nature’s inherent rights in law might help to create Humanity is facing unprecedented Keywords the paradigm shift needed for humans to global environmental problems, and Earth jurisprudence; rights of nature live more sustainably and harmoniously, experts, non-governmental organizations and within our planet’s limits. and environmental institutions have been In the panel, I was joined by: working for years to develop ways to protect n Hans Bruyninckx (Executive Director, ecosystems against the harms of economic European Environment Agency); development. “Current indicators, focused n Luc Bas (Director of the European on economic growth, don’t reveal how Regional Office, International Union [un]sustainable our development really is,” for Conservation of Nature [IUCN]); observed Luc Bas. “Incorporating the value n Professor Massimiliano Montini (Fellow of natural capital in economic decision- of the University of Siena and the making,” he added, has been presented University of Cambridge); as one way to address this. “However, n Sirpa Pietikäinen (MEP); to prevent a commodification of nature, n Jen Morgan (Systems Change Consultant). approaches such as the rights of nature need to be part of the debate.” As ancient as they are new, the This is why the IUCN, the leading global rights of nature – and their underlying authority on nature conservation, adopted philosophy of Earth jurisprudence – are rights of nature in its resolutions and growing in significance as more and 2017–20 work programme. Additionally, more countries adopt them at national the United Nations’ Harmony with Nature Meeting title and local levels, as well as in court network has over 200 experts devoted Nature’s Rights Conference: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle decisions. In March 2017 alone, the rivers to promoting Earth jurisprudence and Whanganui, Ganges and Yamuna were all nature’s rights as a systemic solution to granted legal personality and rights (the support the sustainability transition. Location first rivers to be given such status). The organizers were very pleased with Brussels, Belgium In Europe, however, the rights of the success of this conference on the rights nature are yet to come, as I noted at the of nature at the European Parliament. Date meeting: Through this, we feel that the EU has 29 March 2017

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 97 Towards a new paradigm for nature in the EU www.ecologicalcitizen.net

begun to catch up with the international protected in the future. Integrated across trend and started to look into possibilities all policy areas it has the potential to bring of adoption of the rights of nature. lasting systemic transformation. As was reiterated by Hans Bruyninckx in One way to bring rights of nature onto his keynote speech, the causes of climate the European legislative agenda is to change – to cite a major threat to the initiate a European Citizens’ Initiative thriving of nature – are systemic. Current (ECI), which is a democratic mechanism approaches may get us to goals for 2030, open to citizens of the EU. Nature’s Rights he opined, but to get us to where we need is proposing an ECI to include the rights to be by 2050 we must look at systemic of nature in EU law and policy. This is a solutions. development that is long overdue, as Pavel Adopting rights of nature in EU law Poc explained: “Decades of insane growth and policy would not only help to deal worship brought us to the edge of the cliff. About Nature’s Rights with current environmental issues but Now it is time to look underfoot and stop, Nature’s Rights (previously also induce a profound change in the way otherwise nothing follows but a deep, deep known as Rights of that nature in Europe is perceived and drop.” n Nature Europe) is a young international non-profit organization committed to establishing rights of nature in law and policy in Europe and around the world and to transforming our inner and outer relationship with nature. With its international network of experts and volunteers, it works to address the systemic root causes of the interconnected global challenges that humanity faces today.

To find out more, visit www.natures-rights.org or follow @NaturesRights on Twitter. Figure 1. A photo of the meeting taken during the first plenary session.

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100 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net BOOK REVIEW

Book review – Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life

“For the first time in history a conviction extinctions, and the resulting simplified Ian Whyte has developed among those who can ecosystems render the remaining species actually think more than a decade ahead more vulnerable to continuing reductions About the author that we are playing a global endgame. and extinctions. Wilson estimates that Ian is a naturalist who lives Humanity’s grasp on the planet is not perhaps half, but more likely fewer than a in Ottawa, ON, Canada. He strong. It is growing weaker.” (p 1) quarter, of current species will last to the end is Associate Editor of the of the century, if present conditions persist. Journal. “The Half-Earth proposal offers a first, In time, a tipping point will be reached in Citation emergency solution commensurate with ecosystems, with collapses resulting. Whyte I (2017) Book review – the magnitude of the problem: I am These things matter to us: Wilson makes Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight convinced that only by setting aside half the point, over and over again, that we are for Life. The Ecological Citizen 1: the planet in reserve, or more, can we save organisms and that we remain “absolutely 101–2. the living part of the environment and dependent on other organisms” (p 12), achieve the stabilization required for our which, in turn, depend on fully functioning Keywords own survival.” (p 3) ecosystems in which to live. Despite his Biodiversity; protected obvious love for the natural world, Wilson areas; self-interest; wildlands usually states its benefits to humans as the O Wilson has a towering presence reason to save it (see Chapter 2, “Humanity among those, including myself, Needs A Biosphere”). Einterested in the natural world. His Wilson devotes a whole chapter to knowledge of that world is immense, and he opposing the “Most Dangerous Worldview”, shares it freely in his books. the Anthropocene idea. “Like most The ecosphere, which both birthed life mistaken philosophies,” Wilson writes, “the and constitutes its only source of nurture, Anthropocene worldview is largely a product About the book has been stable and able to support all life of well-intentioned ignorance” (p 83). Author: Wilson EO including us. This is because it is composed of Year: 2016 an immense number of very diverse species, The real living world Publisher: living on a healthy Earth, which together The second section, The Real Living World, is Liveright create the web of life. This symbiosis is being rich with information about living species, Hardback ISBN: smashed by human activity. Everywhere ecosystems, their importance and how they 978-1631490828 extinctions are rampant and the numbers are braided together. He questions that when within species still extant are being “in most ecosystems even the identities of significantly and disastrously reduced.1 The most of the species are unknown, how are current anthropocentric paradigm, for me, is biologists to define the many processes of the source of the problem. Unfortunately for their interactions?” (p 89). Good question! this book, and life in general, this view is not And further down the page: “To save much expressed by Wilson. biodiversity, it is necessary to obey the precautionary principle in the treatment The problem of Earth’s natural ecosystems, and to do so The source of The Problem (Section one) is strictly.” glaringly obvious: humanity. Human-driven Later, he observes: “Overall, theorists have reductions and extinctions, notes Wilson, not been able to grasp the near-bottomless are accelerating; the reductions feed the complexity of the real world” (p 102). Wilson

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 101 Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life www.ecologicalcitizen.net

is certain that, in principle, owing to the Deep Ecology promoted, or is life’s value for limits of knowledge in both the species itself cited. Nowhere is it stressed that the present and their interactions, mathematical Earth is the matrix which birthed us along models cannot work. with the rest of life. The desperate need for an ecocentric The solution paradigm, a need made obliquely obvious The third section, The Solution, starts well by many passages in the book, is never with the statement, “The only solution to the made explicit. The closest Wilson comes is ‘Sixth Extinction’ is to increase the area of a sentence, buried in a paragraph about the inviolable natural reserves to half the surface economy: “The central idea is to view the of the Earth or greater” (p 167). However, planet as an ecosystem, to see Earth as it the reasons to preserve biodiversity remain is and not as we wish it to be” (p 193). Near anthropocentric (p 173): the end of the book, it is plainly stated that human needs are the reason to act: “It is The pivotal conclusion to be drawn remains past time to broaden the discussion of the forever the same: by destroying most of the human future and connect it to the rest of biosphere with archaic short-term methods, life” (p 207). And later: “Only a major shift in we are setting ourselves up for a self-inflicted moral reasoning, with greater commitment disaster. given to the rest of life, can meet this greatest challenge of the century” (p 211). Contrary to what I believe is compelling This welcome analysis is incomplete, as evidence, Wilson expects the world it is driven by concerns for human needs. population to decline on its own owing to Wilson’s analysis, I believe, suffers from the the good effects of bettering the condition conflict between his obvious love of Earth’s of women. Somehow, he believes, the life and his relatively uncritical acceptance of free-market system combined with high humanity’s current death-dealing paradigm. technology will lessen the human footprint. Here, Moore’s law is evoked, although it Conclusion applies to transistors. Several improbable In conclusion, this book contains conflicting things “will” happen, although how is not juxtapositions, without resolving the explained: the footprint will reduce; a shift sharply conflicting views. On one hand, will take place in worldview from quantity Wilson’s nature writing is excellent, as is his to quality; more will be done with less; the understanding of the catastrophic problem biosphere will no longer be a commodity; and and its only solution: preserving at least half technology will save us. Growing “if we are the Earth in an effectively wild state. For lucky (and smart)” to over 10 billion by 2100, these things alone, it is a book well worth both population and footprint will decline reading. The case for absolutely preserving because “we are thinking organisms trying at least half the Earth is well made. Earth’s to understand how the world works. We will life is collapsing; half the Earth is required to come awake” (p 205). Where is the hope reverse the collapse; what could be stronger? in this, when by Wilson’s own estimate, On the other hand, he accepts business as mentioned earlier, that it is likely for fewer usual, with tweaks, as the solution. Such than a quarter of current species to last till acceptance strains credulity. the end of the century? It would have been a much stronger book I see it as more than a little strange that if Wilson had given free rein to his evident such faith is put in the current paradigm’s love for the Earth and drawn the obvious Notes ability to reach the goal of protecting half of conclusion: it is humanity which must 1 Those wishing to learn Earth. It is odd that Wilson, who so obviously radically change. Wilson’s closing words, more can download the loves the Earth, her ecosystems and her while offering insufficient advice, at least WWF’s 74-page report at https://is.gd/rcbOx9 or the life, can find and state no stronger reasons point to the needed path: “It is simple and eighteen-page summary at for humanity to reform than narrow self- easy to say: Do no further harm to the https://is.gd/A6Q2cg. interest. Nowhere is beauty mentioned, is biosphere” (p 212). n

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An Agama lizard, South Africa

Joe Gray The longhorn beetle Rhagium mordax on an oak leaf, UK The colour effect in this photo resulted simply from converting the image to CMYK and applying ‘Auto Tone’ in Adobe Photoshop.

Joe Gray Call for Poetry www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Call for Poetry

Victor Postnikov, Poetry Editor

Life far exceeds humans. For millennia, ecopoets have understood it as a far greater enterprise. In their poetry, we can hear the voices of those who came before us and those who live alongside us. Now, however, they face extinction and die in silence, deafened by the roar of civilization. The time has come to renew the old understanding that all life, including humanity, speaks a common language.

The mission of ecocentric poetry, or ecopoetry, is to help us empathize with non-human entities, be they a whale, a tree or a mountain. For we are all kin. Through metaphor and imagery, it speaks directly to our hearts and genes. We begin to realize that we have evolved together and share a common fate. They don’t deserve to die from our greed and stupidity. Indeed, if they perish we too will die from a “great yearning of Spirit” (in Chief Seattle’s words).

To a large extent, we are still in the infancy of poetically describing ourselves as fully natural beings. Philosophically and scientifically there are ecocentric discourses, but we haven’t evolved poetically en masse, and our language is quite poor in that respect. Before Dante and Petrarch, the poetry of romance struggled to be heard; prior to the Beatles and Dylan, the world was unfamiliar with poetry of younger generations as such. In a similar manner, by breaking through old anthropocentric ideas and life-modes, ecopoetry discovers the richness and unfathomableness of a more-than-human world.

The change to an ecopoetic world is more complex than one might assume. It will require a change in the whole attitude to life, including language. (Whitman speaks to this.) A mindset that is bogged down in the anthropocentric limitations of present-day language is incapable of recognizing and transcending Otherness – whether of a creature or a ‘thing’ – and therefore can’t respond appropriately. The whole system of discourse must be changed, the whole system of values. And this is what ecopoetry seeks and stands for.

Robinson Jeffers, an American ecopoet of great moral stature, gives one of the best definitions of ecopoetry: “It is based on a recognition of the astonishing beauty of things and their living wholeness, and on a rational acceptance of the fact that mankind is neither central nor important in the universe; our vices and blazing crimes are as insignificant as our happiness… Turn outward from each other, so far as need and kindness permit, to the vast life and inexhaustible beauty beyond humanity. This is not a slight matter, but an essential condition of freedom, and of moral and vital sanity.”

In the Journal, we are planning to include work in the traditions of classic ecopoets such as Jeffers, DH Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry and Denise Levertov, as well as translations of some of the world’s great poetry, old and new. But we also encourage our readers to send us poems that embody an ecocentric perspective. They will all be considered and as many as possible published.

Contact us about submitting a poem: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/contact.html

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Poetry section

Life far exceeds humans. For millennia, ecopoets have understood it as a far greater Selected by enterprise. In their poetry, we can hear the voices of those who came before us and those Victor Postnikov who live alongside us. Now, however, they face extinction and die in silence, deafened by the roar of civilization. The time has come to renew the old understanding that all life, including Victor is a poet, essayist humanity, speaks a common language. Thus, the mission of ecocentric poetry, or ecopoetry, and translator based in is to help us empathize with non-human entities, be they a whale, a tree or a mountain. For Kiev, Ukraine. we are all kin. Through metaphor and imagery, it speaks directly to our hearts and genes. We begin to realize that we have evolved together and share a common fate.

CLASSIC POETRY Young Sonorous Grove

Marina Tsvetaeva The poems of Marina Tsvetaeva are a testimony Young sonorous grove of human predicaments A woodcutter hewed. caused by inter-human relations and relations with All that God conceived – nature. Her verse is piercing Man reviewed. and heartfelt. In some, almost imperceptible, ways, And the grove no more – her style recalls that of Only rusted stubs. Emily Dickinson, although In the native voice – her verse is much more bitter and satirical. She Only foreign sobs. committed suicide in 1941.

Haunted are the rings The poems of Robinson In your darkened eyes. Jeffers are dedicated to Now that we become – wild beauty, rocks and the Close-knit enemies. ocean, trees and creatures, with no humans in sight, and almost devoid of Source: Public domain (original version) – translated by Victor Postnikov (2013) ‘normal’ human emotions. Yet, the disgust at what humans have inflicted on nature impregnates every The Answer poem. He’s minimalistic in his poetic expression Robinson Jeffers and the words he uses very much resemble the rocks Then what is the answer? – Not to be deluded by dreams. he loved. To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence, and their tyrants come, many times before. When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose the least ugly faction; these evils are essential. To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted and not wish for evil; and not be duped By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will not be fulfilled. To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand

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Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history… for contemplation or in fact… Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.

Source: The editors thank Stanford University Press, sup.org, for permission to publish this poem from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Volume 2. Robinson Jeffers, edited by Tim Hunt; 1938, by Garth and Donnan Jeffers; renewed 1966; all rights reserved. No reproduction, distribution, or any other use of the poems in any way and form is permitted without the publisher’s prior permission.

1706

The poems of Emily Emily Dickinson Dickinson are a true bible for nature lovers. Being a When we have ceased to care naturalist herself, she was a The Gift is given great connoisseur of various For which we gave the Earth ‘moods’ of plants, birds, insects and other animals And mortgaged Heaven – ‘nature’s people’ – that But so declined in worth invariably were of primary ‘Tis ignominy now concern in her poems. Her To look upon — artistic vision covered such existential categories as Source: Public domain death, faith, sanity and madness. She has some subtle infatuation with the ‘small and beautiful’, and in that resembles 41 Japanese masters. Emily Dickinson

I robbed the Woods— The trusting Woods. The unsuspecting Trees Brought out their Burs and mosses My fantasy to please. I scanned their trinkets curious—I grasped—I bore away— What will the solemn Hemlock— What will the Oak tree say?

Source: Public domain

The Triumph of the Machine DH Lawrence

They talk of the triumph of the machine, but the machine will never triumph.

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Out of the thousands and thousands of centuries of man The poems of DH Lawrence the unrolling of ferns, white tongues of the acanthus lapping at the sun, are more complex to for one sad century fathom than those of other machines have triumphed, rolled us hither and thither, classic eco-poets. He probes both human and non- shaking the lark’s nest till the eggs have broken. human nature, sometimes revealing depths never Shaken the marshes, till the geese have gone seen before. He is a great and the wild swans flown away singing the swan-song at us. psychological master. It is hard to name another Hard, hard on the earth the machines are rolling, poet who would depict wild nature with such intimacy but through some hearts they will never roll. and compassion. He was one of the few poets who The lark nests in his heart paralleled nature’s beauty and the white swan swims in the marshes of his loans, with the feminine, and and through the wide prairies of his breast a young bull herds his cows, praised their wildness. lambs frisk among the daisies of his brain.

And at last all these creatures that cannot die, driven back into the uttermost corners of the soul, will send up the wild cry of despair.

The thrilling lark in a wild despair will trill down arrows from the sky, the swan will beat the waters in rage, white rage of an enraged swan, even the lambs will stretch forth their necks like serpents, like snakes of hate, against the man in the machine: even the shaking white poplar will dazzle like splinters of glass against him.

And against him inward revolt of the native creatures of the soul mechanical man, in triumph seated upon the seat of his machine will be powerless, for no engine can reach into the marshes and depths of a man.

So mechanical man in triumph seated upon the seat of his machine will be driven mad from within himself, and sightless, and on this day the machines will turn to run into one another traffic will tangle up in a long-drawn-out crash of collision and engines will rush at the solid houses, the edifice of our life will rock in the shock of the mad machine, and the house will come down.

Then, far beyond the ruin, in the far, in the ultimate, remote places the swan will lift up again his flattened, smitten head and look round and up to greet the sun with a silky glitter of a new day and the lark will follow trilling, angerless again, Artwork overleaf and the lambs will bite off the heads of the daisies for very friskiness. But over the middle of the earth will be the smoky ruin of iron Swan by the triumph of the machine. Rebecca R Burrill

Source: Public domain Higher-resolution version: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

Original: Watercolour on cold-pressed paper (2017; 20x15 inches).

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POETRY www.ecologicalcitizen.net

CONTEMPORARY POETRY Meanwhile, Music

Elizabeth Carothers Herron Elizabeth Carothers Herron writes poetry and articles on art and ecology. She is Tree to tree the birds fly to perch and sing based in California, USA. amid the sway and swing of spring’s busy wind, while wars go on, while the sea rises and the ice melts.

In the midst of life narrowing to the onyx box, the house of Anubis side by side with the house of music, sun blesses the breakfast table.

All is perishing, and yet they sing, they sing.

Flint

Hannibal Rhoades is a Hannibal Rhoades journalist and indigenous and environmental rights Pick a stone from the path. advocate who works with Any one. the Gaia Foundation in The flint, blue-merle and grey London, UK. A good choice. They are common here.

This stone is a billion times your age. It was born backwards in an ocean’s mouth Wombed in striations That would leave you flat Dead.

Formed to a sharp knuckle fair boned, in a glorious body A hundred miles long Time itself stopped by To hew it from the hand And cast it, chuckling, over this land.

Its cousin fingers Fed your greatest grandmothers. Flayed deer, schucked shells Took lives, gave them sustenance.

Now drop the stone. Kick it along the path. You will hear it

And know a laugh so old It is its own reverence.

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To the Tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic

Fred Schueler Fred Schueler is a naturalist, herpetologist, I’d been licking his hot spots and she’d been licking mine, and scholar who lives As we hung there on the cable of our high tensile-strength slime, in Ontario, Canada. (In 1990, he discovered Knowing our extrudables were fully intertwined – the Bruce Peninsula, as sperm gets passed around. Ontatio, population of the accidentally introduced Sluggish, sluggish copulation, slug Limax maximus.) Sluggish, sluggish copulation, Sluggish, sluggish copulation, I lay her eggs, he lays mine.

In the beauty of the compost eggs are placed where none can see, In a slimey sort of substrate that preserves integrity, and they hatch out spotted sluglets that resemble you and me, when sperm got passed around.

Sluggish, sluggish copulation, Sluggish, sluggish copulation, Sluggish, sluggish copulation, I laid his eggs, she laid mine.

River Finds Its Tongue Midsomer Norton, Somerset

Helen Moore Helen Moore is an award-winning British Pawnshop to chippie, the high street artery ecopoet and socially blocked with junk, engaged artist based in north-east Scotland, UK. Her poetry collections a supermarket trolley’s ribcage sunk include Hedge Fund into this backwash that had somatised & Other Living Margins (Shearsman Books, 2012). the town’s spirit – through concrete shafts the dull mien, sluggish passage,

mute depression since the mines shut down – old river choked.

Then the clear-up – fishing for rubbish, people wearing rubber boots & gloves;

tankers sucking up the sludge; later, rocks brought from a local quarry

to curve the water’s course; & patched into the mud, aquatic plants.

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Now flicking over the pebbles, river licks at fronds of Mint nodding in its path;

Water Forget-me-Not carpets the stones where Duck & Drake have bedded down;

and from its banks, Meadowsweet strews a merrie scent as Yellow Flag

runs its masts up to the Sun. And this alongside the road – that loud asthmatic wheeze of traffic drowning low watery

intonements – but all around other voices flow. “Hello, little ducks!”

Drake tips his head, fixes an eye – is wary sentinel & shrewd exemplar

of what seems a parallel world. “They got no ducklings left; rats must’ve had ‘em!”

a tattooed bloke grunts. “Here little duck, come here!” For what do

the children long? A woman points: “Baby Trouts, look they stay so still!”

Hanging on the current’s every word these fingerlings, as river finds its tongue.

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114 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Last Word

Last Word

“I believe that the ultimate success of all our efforts to stop ruining nature will depend on a revision of the way we use the world in our everyday living when we are not thinking about conservation. If we have to conserve the Earth in spite of ourselves, we will not be able to do it.”

David Ehrenfeld

From Beginning Again: People and Nature in the New Millennium (Oxford University Press, 1995)

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The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 No 1 2017 115 Published in association with the Ecocentric Alliance www.ecocentricalliance.org