The Vol 2 No 2 2019
Ecological ISSN 2515-1967 A peer-reviewed journal Citizen www.ecologicalcitizen.net
CONFRONTING HUMAN SUPREMACY IN DEFENCE OF THE EARTH
IN THIS ISSUE
Saving wild rivers The ‘why’ and ‘how’ Pages 131 and 173
The case against ‘enlightened inaction’ Applying lessons from Henry David Thoreau Page 163
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118 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Contents
The Ecological Citizen | Vol 2 No 2 2019 For a listing of Friends of the Editorial Journal, please Water – a free-flowing subject that reveals the urgent need for humanity to change its course 121 see page 146 Joe Gray and Ian Whyte
Opinions The Anthropocene: Where on Earth are we going? 129 Will Steffen Fighting the disappearance of Balkan rivers 131 Cornelia Wieser Holistic versus individualistic non-anthropocentrism 137 Gregory M Mikkelson Addressing the decline in wetland biodiversity 139 C Max Finlayson Ecuador endangered: A call to action 141 John Seed
Reflections Limited civilization based on beauty (a vision) 147 Victor Postnikov Decoupling the global population problem from immigration issues 149 Eileen Crist
Special feature Neptune’s Navy: A global initiative 153 Captain Paul Watson
Photo feature Photo feature – The devastating scale of waste in the oceans 156 Caroline Power
Long articles Against enlightened inaction: Edification from Thoreau 163 Luke Philip Plotica Future rivers, dams and ecocentrism 173 John J Piccolo, Richard D Durtsche, Johan Watz, Martin Österling and Olle Calles Rights of rivers enter the mainstream 183 Grant Wilson and Darlene May Lee Dandelions are divine 189 Bill Vitek
Book and culture reviews
Damaging thinking: A review of Timothy Morton’s Being Ecological 198 Featured artists Adam Dickerson Looking beyond the past to give African wildlife a future: This issue also features A critical review of The Big Conservation Lie 202 artworks by Chris Alton, Tarik Bodasing Rebecca R Burrill, Tony Cassils, John Cussans, Poetry section Clare Price, Maggie Works by Wendell Berry, Aleksander Blok, Julia Travers, Rebecca R Burrill, Roberts, Marina Roy, Susan Wardell, Erica Stretton, Pete Mullineaux and Elizabeth Carothers Herron 213 Anna Sebastian and Selected by Victor Postnikov Franciska Tawetz.
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 119 Editorial Board www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Editor-in-Chief David Blackwell John J Piccolo Patrick Curry Educator and Nature-lover Associate Professor in Writer and Scholar Halifax, NS, Canada Environmental and Life Sciences London, UK Susana Borràs Pentinat Karlstad, Sweden Lecturer in Public International Law Deborah Rose Associate Editors Tarragona, Spain Adjunct Professor in Eileen Crist Tom Butler Environmental Humanities Writer and Teacher Writer and Activist Sydney, NSW, Australia Blacksburg, VA, USA Huntington, VT, USA Coyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil Adam Dickerson Nigel Cooper Environmental and Social Activist Writer and Gardener Chaplain and Biologist Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage, Mexico Gundaroo, NSW, Australia Cambridge, UK Dyane Sherwood Joe Gray Paul Cryer Jungian Psychoanalyst Field Naturalist and Eco-activist Conservationist Oberlin, OH, USA St Albans, UK Hillcrest, South Africa Vandana Shiva Ian Whyte Cormac Cullinan Scholar and Environmental Activist Field Naturalist Environmental Attorney and Author Delhi, India Ottawa, ON, Canada Cape Town, South Africa Steve Szeghi John Davis Professor of Economics Wildways Trekker Wilmington, OH, USA Art Editor Westport, NY, USA Bron Taylor Stephanie Moran Alan Watson Featherstone Professor of Religion, Nature Artist and Librarian Founder and Visionary – Trees for Life and Environmental Ethics London, UK Findhorn, UK Gainesville, FL, USA Mumta Ito Andrew Walton Art Advisor Lawyer, Zoologist and Bioregionalist Salomón Bazbaz Lapidus Founder – Nature’s Rights Birmingham, UK Director – Cumbre Tajín Festival Forres, UK Haydn Washington Papantla de Olarte, Mexico Marjolein Kok Environmental Scientist Environmental Activist and Researcher and Activist Poetry Editor Utrecht, the Netherlands Sydney, NSW, Australia Victor Postnikov Helen Kopnina Rachel Waters Poet, Essayist and Translator Environmental Anthropologist Academic and Advocacy Journalist Kiev, Ukraine Leiden, the Netherlands Brooklyn, NY, USA Joseph Lambert Fiona Wilton Consulting Editors Researcher in Earth Jurisprudence Programme Coordinator Sandy Irvine Brighton, UK – Gaia Foundation Political Activist Sandra Lubarsky Colombia/Uruguay Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK Scholar in Sustainability Doug Woodard Ted Mosquin Flagstaff, AZ, USA Environmentalist Naturalist Michelle Maloney St Catharines, ON, Canada Lanark, ON, Canada Lawyer and National George Wuerthner Convenor of AELA Photographer, Author and Activist Editorial Advisors Brisbane, QLD, Australia Bend, OR, USA David Abram Alexandra Marcelino Peter Jingcheng Xu Cultural Ecologist and Geophilosopher Jurist in Environmental Law Researcher in Literature Upper Rio Grande Valley, NM, USA Lisbon, Portugal Beijing, China Melinda Alfano Maria Carolina Negrini Mersha Yilma Graduate in Water Resources Lawyer Practitioner of Earth Jurisprudence New York, NY, USA São Paolo, Brazil Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Oussou Lio Appolinaire Vanja Palmers Suzanne York Practitioner of Earth Jurisprudence Buddhist Teacher promoting Animal Rights Director – Transition Earth Avrankou, Benin Lucerne, Switzerland San Francisco, CA, USA María Valeria Berros Alessandro Pelizzon Researcher in Rights of Nature Researcher in Earth-Centred Law Santa Fe, Argentina Lismore, NSW, Australia
120 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net EDITORIAL
Water – a free-flowing subject that reveals the urgent need for humanity to change its course
here is perhaps no theme that Editorial (see Box Essay 2) looks at how Joe Gray and reveals more than water does our aquatic contexts can help evoke such Ian Whyte T need to behave as a plain member empathy. of the Earth community. In this, the fourth We also explore, in this issue, ocean- About the authors issue of The Ecological Citizen, we bring you related matters. In a special feature (pages Joe is a field naturalist a collection of articles, poetry and artworks 153–4), Captain Paul Watson reflects on based in St Albans, UK. Ian on this subject, as well as a number of other the achievements of Sea Shepherd. We also is a field naturalist who pieces not specifically related to water. have a photo feature from Caroline Power lives in Ottawa, ON, Canada. Much of the aquatically themed content on plastics and other waste in the sea. We Joe and Ian are Associate focuses on freshwater, and, in particular, plan to return soon to the ocean, including Editors of the Journal. rivers. John Piccolo and his co-authors, in the looming threat of deep sea mining, an article starting on page 173, explore the with articles being in the works for our next Citation guidance that ecocentrism offers on the issue and an upcoming special supplement Gray J and Whyte I (2019) trade-off between ‘clean’ energy and the exploring the biodiversity crisis. Water – a free-flowing negative impacts of hydropower. Cornelia Rounding out the issue’s main theme, subject that reveals the urgent need for humanity Wieser, in her Opinion piece (pages 131–5), Max Finlayson describes what needs to change its course. The makes an empassioned plea to save the to be done to halt the loss of wetland Ecological Citizen 2: 12 1–7. Vjosa and other natural river systems in biodiversity (pages 139–40) while activist the Balkans. A protest that she organized John Seed presents a call for action to save Keywords for this cause is depicted on our cover. In the remarkable rainforests of Ecuador Conservation; addition, Ian’s mini-essay within this (pages 141–5). ecodemocracy; Editorial reflects on abuses by humans to There are also a number of water- ecological empathy; his local river, the Ottawa (see Box Essay 1). focused artworks in this issue, and we have societal change; water The ‘rights of rivers’ movement has Stephanie Moran (our Art Editor) and the received some press attention in the past many talented contributors to thank for couple of years, and Grant Wilson and this. Within this Editorial, photos by Tony Darlene Lee review this topic in an article Cassils appear in Ian’s mini-essay and the starting on page 183. They observe, more page that follows it (and can also be seen generally, that establishing legal rights elsewhere in the issue), and we conclude can give non-human nature a “seat at the piece with a digital illustration by the table.” This idea – as the recently Franciska Tawetz, titled Life, which is launched Global Ecocentric Network about the overarching importance of for Implementing Ecodemocracy (GENIE) water. “Making visible the indispensable,” states in its advert on page 125 – can be Franciska comments, “could help the extended to push for seats at not just legal planet in its struggle.” but political and adminstrative ‘tables’ In addition to these articles and too. Where such seats can be obtained, artworks, the issue’s poetry section, it will be important that those humans compiled by Victor Postnikov, exclusively speaking for non-human life have not comprises water-themed works, both just a sound ecological knowledge of classic and contemporary, including his the ‘silent stakeholders’ receiving their own translation of Aleksander Blok’s representation but also an empathetic understanding. Joe’s mini-essay in this Text continues on page 126…
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 121 EDITORIAL www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Box Essay 1. Can we stop choking the life out of rivers?
by Ian Whyte cocentric principles accord intrinsic value to water. EThe reality of this value ought to be reflected in water’s treatment by humans. How does society reflect this? I’ll use the Ottawa, a big river with a mean annual discharge of around 2000 cubic metres per second (Pham et al., 2000), the river I know best, as an example. It flows within a rich country. How has the Ottawa been treated? I’ll bet you can guess: it’s more or less typical of how all free gifts from the commons are treated. A toxic disposal facility, five stories high and containing up to 1 million cubic metres of low-to- medium-level radioactive waste, is to be constructed within a kilometre of the river, and this by a company with a ten-year contract (CBC News, 2017b). That an Ontario’s Mississippi River, a tributary of the Ottawa River, in environmental impact assessment has been conducted spring flood (photo by Tony Cassils). is supposed to make us feel better (or at least those of us who have had no experience with such things). which, thankfully, is not at all related to today’s US Humans do not value the future of the river. Republicans. Here, educated, informed and substantive The City of Ottawa dumps sewage in the river on its voters take part in a government dedicated to the rainy days – lots of it: 2.1 million cubic metres in 2017, common good. In theory at least, greed is not part of it. and again, on only two days in 2018, nearly 600,000 In a similar manner, the Buddhists have a concept of cubic metres (CBC News, 2017a; Willing, 2018). Humans ‘right livelihood’, which could easily be turned to right treat the river like a sewer. behaviour (if it has not done so already). The river used to contain eels. Enough eels came to It would also be useful to many to ruminate on the Ontario to constitute up to 50% of the fish biomass in ideas that there is no right way to do a wrong thing, relevant waters (MacGregor et al., 2013). Now, owing to and before doing anything one ought to consider the dams, they are locally extinct. Humans are choking the needs of all species and the Earth. These concepts, life out of the river. married to ecocentric precepts, would go a long way By the personal observation of anyone who cares to towards allowing the world’s water problems to be look, there is lots of garbage along the shores. Humans remediated. n treat the river as if it is a trash can. And, of course, there is the endless infestation of CBC News (2017a) Ottawa sewage overflow in 2017 even more than future tunnel could handle. CBC News, 23 December. Available at: private dwellings and public infrastructure along both https://is.gd/SHBnHM (accessed November 2018). sides of the river; this actively blocks the usefulness CBC News (2017b) Proposed radioactive waste disposal site in of the riparian area for its rightful users. Humans try to Chalk River raises concerns. CBC News, 10 April. Available at: seize all value for themselves. https://is.gd/34kiem (accessed November 2018). How can these observations lead to action? I’ve come Curry P (2017) Ecological Ethics: An introduction (updated 2nd edition). to believe, over years of continuous battles featuring Polity, UK, Cambridge. few, often overturned or otherwise negated, victories, MacGregor R, Casselman J, Greig L et al. (2013) Recovery Strategy for the American Eel (Anguilla rostrata) in Ontario (Ontario Recovery Strategy that it is not rewarding to fight on individual issues. Series). Prepared for: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Their main use probably should be as examples in Peterborough, ON, Canada. a larger struggle. Without changing the paradigm, Pham T-T, Rondeau B, Sabik H et al. (2000) Lake Ontario: the nothing will really change; this is where we should predominant source of triazine herbicides in the St. Lawrence River. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 57: 78–85. work. Willing J (2018) Ottawa River’s big, gross gulp: city’s combined sewers Patrick Curry, in Ecological Ethics, mentions favourably dump in 340M litres of diluted sewage. Ottawa Citizen, 26 July. a form of government called ‘civic republicanism’, Available at: https://is.gd/J9hhNX (accessed November 2018).
122 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net EDITORIAL
Photos of Gatineau Park, Quebec, Canada
by Tony Cassils
Higher-resolution versions: https://is.gd/ecoartwork
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 123 EDITORIAL www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Box Essay 2. A spring of empathy in a barren landscape
by Joe Gray “Why should one of those damn plants get the water? source… The mammals must have been thirstily waiting for […] Lots of people could use the water.” their turn… What a warm afternoon it had been, and what a An exasperated outburst from Lolo, the tough summer… Why did I stay so long?… And there it was: main character, in the The Tamarisk Hunter a spontaneous, emotionally powerful feeling of empathy for other creatures. (This empathy born of a shared aolo Bacigulapi’s 2006 short story The Tamarisk Hunter yearning and need for water can also extend to insects, as Ppivots around the life of Lolo, who is paid “$2.88 a Ed Abbey wrote [Gray, 2018].) day, plus water bounty” by the Bureau of Reclamation to * * * * * remove tamarisks from the riverbanks of the US’s desert south-west. In this tale, which is set in 2030, the alien Two weeks earlier, I had been walking near my home in status of these plants is not the issue; rather, it is that England when I came to an unexpectedly high stream. they are using water that humans do not want to give up. Rather than see the challenge of picking a route across Our refusal to share water – in this imagined, but easy- the larger stones through human eyes, my immediate to-believe, near future – with riverine vegetation is a thoughts as I approached it were as a badger – specifically, frightening idea. a female badger looking to find a safe crossing for her We know that water tables are dropping (e.g. Chaudhary, cubs. The reason for this is that a couple of days earlier 2018) and that lakes are drying up (Weiss, 2018); yet the I had been playing the video game Shelter (by Might and human population continues to swell. With the intense Delight [2013]), in which the player experiences the wild as water-based conflicts that seem sure to arise between a female badger sheltering her cubs from hazards. Again, humans and the rest of life over the coming decades, a feeling of empathy for another creature had arisen in we must not waste the current window for building a me, but this time through a virtual experience (for more platform of ecocentric understanding and empathy. on this, see Seegert [2014]). A similar experience with the potential to evoke empathy for aquatic life is the Ocean * * * * * Odyssey digital aquarium, in which visitors are able to In September, my wife and I spent a week in an abandoned interact, virtually, with creatures of the sea (National village in rural Aragón. Walking late one afternoon down Geographic, 2017). I truly think there is something in this. a path that took us from the restored house in which we * * * * * were staying through the barren and ruggedly pleated landscape, we bumped into a walker who told us of a To conclude, sharing water is going to be an increasingly secret river. More through good fortune than a knowledge stern test of our willingess to behave as plain citizens, but of the local dialect, we managed, after about half an our shared need for this life source also presents a rich hour’s exploring, to find a safe descent to the river – a context for the development of true empathy for other waterway named el Río Susía in Aragonese. creatures, something which can be fostered through Rejoicing in the serenity of this hidden place, I spent experiences both real and virtual. n some time leaping between the dry patches of the river’s exposed slabby bed in search of aquatic life, before the Bacigalupi P (2006) The Tamarisk Hunter. High Country News, 26 June. pressing of dusk sent us homeward. Chaudhary J (2018) Delhi’s groundwater plummets. Down to Earth, 12 June. Ascending, we noticed on the otherwise dry track a Available at https://is.gd/Q9yyEg (accessed November 2018). muddy patch. This natural canvas was crammed with Gray J (2018) Armchair ecotourism: A tribute to Edward Abbey. The Ecological Citizen 1: 145–7. tracks of the river’s mammalian visitors: deer of different National Geographic (2017) National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey sizes, the splaying of their slots suggesting urgency; officially opens October 6, 2017. Available at https://is.gd/Dq1wLj possibly a fox; and almost certainly at least one wild (accessed November 2018). boar, with dewclaw indentations having the wide spacing Seegert A (2014) Pixels and pathos: Video games and empathy. Presented characteristic of its kind. We skirted the mud to avoid at: Interdisciplinary Symposium on Empathy, Contemplative Practice and Pedagogy, the Humanities, and the Sciences, University of Utah, UT, USA. erasing the beauty of the prints with our Vibram soles, Weiss KR (2018) Some of the world’s biggest lakes are drying up. Here’s as strong thoughts began to cycle… There were so many why. Inter Press Service, 1 March. Available at https://is.gd/V4dKiE prints… The river was not my playground but a vital water (accessed November 2018).
124 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 Advertisement
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A brown pelican near … continues from page 121 198 and 202). We also have articles by Gulf Shores, AL, USA Luke Plotica, arguing against enlightened (Ian Whyte). Marsh Priestling. Victor has also contributed inaction, and by Bill Vitek, on how we can prose to the issue, in his Reflection titled find “grace, beauty, love and even divinity” ‘Limited civilization based on beauty in wildness. These pieces, which have been (a vision)’ (pages 147–8). This provides inspired in different ways by the life of a taster of another special supplement Henry David Thoreau, start on pages 163 in preparation, on ‘ecocentric visions’. and 189, respectively. Victor’s piece is followed by a Reflection Finally, Earth-system scientist Will from Eileen presenting her view that Steffen bemoans the lost connection the global population problem should be between contemporary human societies decoupled from immigration issues. and the rest of the living planet (pages 129– Elsewhere in the issue, there are a pair 30), while philosopher Gregory Mikkelson of book reviews by first-time writers for argues the case for ecocentrism over the Journal. Adam Dickerson (an Associate sentientism and biocentrism (pages 137–8). Editor of the Journal) and Tarik Bodasing As always, we hope you enjoy reading the critique, respectively, Being Ecological and issue as much as we enjoyed assembling it, The Big Conservation Lie (starting on pages and we very much welcome your views. n
126 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net EDITORIAL
Life by Franciska Tawetz
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The Anthropocene: Where on Earth are we going?
he advent of the Anthropocene, half of human emissions of carbon dioxide Will Steffen the proposed new geological epoch are absorbed by the land and the ocean, T in Earth history, serves as a stark much of it by biosphere processes. But that About the author reminder that humanity’s destructive is being eroded: proportionally less carbon Will is an Emeritus Professor assault on the rest of the living world has dioxide is being absorbed by a biosphere at the Australian National now reached the global level. Geological that is increasingly stressed by direct University, and a Senior time intervals are often marked by changes human pressures. The integrity of critical Fellow at the Stockholm to the biosphere – the appearance of new biomes, such as the Amazon rainforest Resilience Centre. organisms through evolutionary processes and vast boreal (northern) forests, is being or the sudden disappearance of whole eroded by direct human actions such Citation families of organisms through shocks as land clearing and industrial forestry, Steffen W (2019) The Anthropocene: Where on to the Earth system (such as a meteorite making them more vulnerable to massive Earth are we going? The strike or a massive volcanic eruption). disturbances such as wildfires and insect Ecological Citizen 2: 129–30. But for the first time in Earth history, a attacks. biological species itself – Homo sapiens – The problem runs far deeper than Keywords is knowingly driving a multitude of other just putting a dollar value on so-called Anthropocentrism; species towards extinction and drastically ‘ecosystem services’. The core problem is biodiversity; nature; reducing the numbers and range of many that contemporary human societies have sixth mass extinction other species. lost their connection to the rest of the There is now little doubt that the Earth living planet and are becoming increasingly is headed for its sixth great extinction alienated from it. Nature is no longer valued event. Current rates of extinction are now and respected as our planetary life support at least tens or hundreds of times greater system, and in its own right as a realm of than background rates (Ceballos et al., beauty and solace, but rather viewed simply 2015). Human domination of the terrestrial as a ‘resource’ to be costed, exploited, biosphere is particularly striking. The wasted and then abandoned as investment mass of humans – the sum of the body dollars move elsewhere. Put simply, weights of all 7.5 billion people on Earth – contemporary human civilization has lost now comprises 32% of the total mass of all its moral guidance system with respect to vertebrates (mammals, reptiles, birds and the biosphere, something that indigenous amphibians) on land. Our domesticated cultures are often reminding us – as well animals, such as cattle, pigs and sheep, as providing us with valuable wisdom about comprise another 65%. That is, humans the proper relationship between humans and our domesticates comprise 97% of and the rest of the living world. the mass of all terrestrial vertebrates – Contemporary science, which some argue leaving only 3% for all of the Earth’s wild is part of the problem, is, finally, starting to terrestrial vertebrates (Smil, 2011). move beyond the simple cause–effect logic Humanity’s rapid erosion of the of the Newtonian world and beginning to biosphere’s integrity also has implications embrace a ‘systems view of life’. In fact, a for the functioning of the planet as a whole. recent book by that name (Capra and Luisi, The biosphere plays an important role in the 2014) clearly shows how our physiology, climate system by regulating the amount and indeed our consciousness, have of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; about evolved as part of life itself, and continually
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 129 The Anthropocene: Where on Earth are we going? www.ecologicalcitizen.net
interact with it. We are embedded in the of the only living planet that we know biosphere, a critical relationship that is of, our relationship with the biosphere increasingly being broken by the high- is a deeply ethical and moral issue. As paced, technology-driven, competitive, indigenous cultures already know, we need exploitative culture that we have created to show respect for the rest of life and act and is rapidly expanding around the responsibly to the Earth. n world via globalization. Recent research shows that our health and our cognitive References functioning both suffer from breaking this Capra F and Luisi PL (2014) The Systems View of Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. evolutionary bond with the rest of life. How to deal with this? Clearly it is in Ceballos G, Ehrlich PR, Barnosky AD et al. (2015) Accelerated modern human-induced species loss: our self-interest – our health and well- Entering the sixth mass extinction. Science Advances being both individually and as a society 1: e1400253. – to reconnect with the biosphere. But Smil V (2011) Harvesting the biosphere: The human more fundamentally, as creatures that impact. Population and Development Review 37: are now driving the future trajectory 613–36.
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130 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net OPINION
Fighting the disappearance of Balkan rivers
f you follow a wild river from its Balkans. The volatile political situation Cornelia Wieser source in the mountains to its mouth and economic stagnation that followed Ito the sea, the river reveals a variety the Yugoslav Wars have kept these rivers About the author of characteristics. In its upper course it is safe from ‘development’ for decades. Cornelia (Conny) is fast-flowing, steep and narrow, carving Thus, the rivers have remained widely Executive Assistant at its way through deep gorges. In its middle unimpaired and have become the most RiverWatch, working on section it slows and widens into a braided important freshwater biodiversity hotspot project coordination for the river section, dividing into anabranches in Europe: they host 113 endangered ‘Saving the Blue Heart of as it finds its ever-changing paths fish species and 40% of the continent’s Europe’ campaign. through huge amounts of pebble carried endangered freshwater mollusc species, Citation from the mountains. Even further down such as mussels and snails (Neslen, 2018). its course, the river starts to meander, Furthermore, the Balkan rivers constitute Wieser C (2019) Fighting the disappearance of Balkan flowing slowly through the plains and Europe’s El Dorado for outdoor lovers: fly rivers. The Ecological Citizen providing the river’s floodplains with fishing, kayaking, climbing, exploring 2: 131–5. water. Each of these characteristic stages waterfall spectacles or untouched gorges of a wild river comes with its own unique – the rivers in the Balkans provide all of it. Keywords ecosystem, providing habitat to a vast However, the situation of these rivers Biodiversity; conservation; number of species. has recently changed for the worse. A direct action; water Such a river is the Vjosa in Albania – gold rush atmosphere for hydropower one of the very last big wild rivers in has emerged in the region: 2800 dams Europe, and probably the very last river are planned to be constructed between whose tributaries are also unimpaired. Slovenia and Greece (Figure 1), leaving As such, it forms an intact river system virtually no river undammed (Neslen, that is without par in Europe. 2017). Thirty-eight dams are projected Wild rivers are disappearing at an in the Vjosa catchment alone. Corruption alarming rate (Yaggi, 2018), and many of and weak environmental laws (or weak us living in industrialized countries no implementation thereof) have nourished longer know what such a river actually this spate of destruction. Without respect looks like. The characteristics of a wild for nature and endangered species, rivers river are lost when it is dammed and are being destroyed, their water is being put into an artificial corset. A dynamic diverted and whole landscapes are drying river turns into a stagnant water body up. Not even national parks are to be above a dam; its sediments are trapped spared, with more than a third of the dams behind the dam walls and no longer planned inside protected areas. Affected reach the sea; fish cannot migrate to residents are rarely consulted or even their spawning grounds. Embankments informed. Many projects are funded by restrict the river to a fixed rather than multilateral development banks such as dynamic riverbed and disconnect it from the European Bank for Reconstruction and its floodplains. We grow up thinking that Development or the European Investment the embanked channel in our backyard Bank, as well as by commercial banks constitutes a river. (Vejnović and Gallop, 2018). Most of Europe’s last natural or near- The absurdity of this situation becomes natural rivers can be found in the evident if one considers that millions
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 131 Fighting the disappearance of Balkan rivers www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Map of existing and proposed hydropower plants on Balkan rivers
Legend Existing dam Dam under implementation Planned dam
Size in megawatts 0.1–<1* 1–<10 10–50 >50
*Not exhaustive for existing dams
0 50 100 150 200 km N
Figure 1. Map of existing and proposed hydropower plants on Balkan rivers (modified from a graphic produced by Fluvius in 2017).
of euros are being invested in river protect the most valuable rivers in the restoration in the rest of Europe, as Balkans. the EU has stipulated that freshwater There are several ways you can help us to systems are to be restored to a good protect the Balkan Rivers. status by 2020 (European Commission, 1 Please sign the petition that is calling on The absurdity “ 2016). Restoration scientists need river international banks to stop funding the of this situation systems like the Vjosa as a reference destruction of Europe’s last wild rivers: becomes evident if point in order to study the functioning of https://blueheart.patagonia.com/take-action. one considers that natural, intact river dynamics. 2 And please spread the news about both the beauty of, and the threat to, these millions of euros are Call for action: rivers by sharing our Facebook posts: being invested in Save the Blue Heart of Europe https://www.facebook.com/balkanrivers/posts. river restoration in The Vjosa and other natural river systems 3 You can also donate to our campaign at the rest of Europe.” in the Balkans need our protection. https://balkanrivers.net/en/donate. Your Together with local partners and affected donation will be used to hire lawyers to communities in the respective Balkan support local communities in their fight countries, the conservation organizations against these proposals and to continue EuroNatur (https://www.euronatur.org/) and our lobbying on behalf of Europe’s last RiverWatch (https://www.riverwatch.eu/) wild rivers. are trying to stop the destruction. Our campaign ‘Save the Blue Heart of Europe’ It will require a major effort from many (https://www.balkanrivers.net/) aims to people if Europe’s blue heart is to be saved. n
132 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Fighting the disappearance of Balkan rivers
References Neslen A (2018) Balkan dam projects could Yaggi M (2018) Let our rivers run free: A European Commission (2016) EU Water Framework result in loss of one in 10 European fish global look at how dams are destroying our Directive. Available at https://is.gd/Ue0LlQ species. The Guardian, 18 April. Available at waterways. Waterkeeper Alliance Magazine (accessed August 2018). https://is.gd/hSouX8 (accessed August 2018). 14(2). Available at https://is.gd/w694fh Neslen A (2017) Balkan hydropower projects Vejnović I and Gallop P (2018) Financing for (accessed August 2018). soar by 300% putting wildlife at risk, hydropower in protected areas in Southeast research shows. The Guardian, 27 November. Europe: 2018 update. CEE Bankwatch Available at https://is.gd/zkKtT4 (accessed Network. Available at https://is.gd/oypaCt August 2018). (accessed August 2018).
The ‘queen’ of European rivers, the Vjosa in Albania. If the Albanian government has its way, this braided river section will be drowned in a dam reservoir (photo by Gregor Subic).
Scientists studying a tributary of the Vjosa. The river system serves as a rare (and perhaps unique) reference point for future river restoration. Until recently, this river system had not been explored by scientists (photo by Thuile Bistarelli).
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 133 Fighting the disappearance of Balkan rivers www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Construction of the Medna Sana hydropower plant near the source of the river Sana, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Sana is one of six most important rivers for the huchen, a globally endangered fish species (photo by Matic Oblac).
Dam construction site at the Valbona, in northern Albania. Construction continues even though the appeal court has ordered a construction freeze (photo by Cathrine Bohne).
134 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Fighting the disappearance of Balkan rivers
A protest against damming of the Vjosa on the river’s banks near Qeserat, Albania (photo by Oblak Aljaz).
The ‘brave women of Kruščica’, Bosnia-Herzegovina, who kept a construction site occupied for a year as part of efforts to prevent the construction of a dam and save their local river (photo by Andrew Burr).
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 135 Advertisement
A Sense of Wonder Towards Nature Healing the Planet through Belonging
Haydn Washington, University of New South Wales, Australia
Haydn Washington argues that we will not solve the environmental crisis unless we rejuvenate wonder at nature. This book focuses on humanity’s relation with nature and the sense of wonder and belonging common in indigenous peoples and children everywhere. Drawing on the author’s five decades working to protect wild places and the current literature, it examines what a sense of wonder is, what it has been called in different cultures and high points of wonder at nature. The book August 2018: 234x156: 218pp 3 illustrations concludes with an examination of why wonder has Hb: 978-1-138-59043-4 | £110.00 | $150.00 become buried in Western society and considers ways Pb: 978-1-138-59060-1 | £36.99 | $49.95 eBook: 978-0-429-49091-0 | £36.99 | $49.95 in which it can be revived. The final chapter presents how wonder at nature can be restored in Western Table of Contents: society.
Foreword Introduction – a sense of wonder About the Author: 1. Wonder over the Ages 2. Do we all wonder? Haydn Washington is an environmental scientist and 3. Illuminating moments writer of over 40 years’ experience. He is currently an Adjunct Lecturer at the Pangea Research Centre, 4. The great ethical divide - anthropocentrism vs ecocentrism School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences,
5. Harmony - not ‘theory’ University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of six books on environmental issues, including 6. Gaia and the sense of wonder Human Dependence on Nature (2013), and 7. The wonder of wilderness Demystifying Sustainability (2015). 8. Problems which bury wonder
9. The Ritual of Finding Wonder
10. Education for wonder
11. Wonder – helping humanity become whole
12. The road back to wonder
End poem: ‘Not for me’
For more information visit: www.routledge.com/9781138590601 www.ecologicalcitizen.net OPINION
Holistic versus individualistic non-anthropocentrism
applaud The Ecological Citizen for biocentrism. For example, I have contended Gregory M defending ecocentrism, a worldview that – depending on the answers, currently Mikkelson Ithe Earth needs urgently. Many of the unknown, to certain empirical questions Journal’s articles to date have targeted – individualistic theories commit their About the author anthropocentrism as their main opponent. adherents to endorsing one of two repugnant Greg is an associate However, holders of that patently extremes: utter human domination of the professor in the School defective view arguably now comprise a planet, or human extinction. Ecocentrism’s of Environment and minority, even of Americans (Leiserowitz intrinsic-valuation of biodiversity saves Department of Philosophy, et al., 2005). The real battle seems to it from this dilemma, and justifies the McGill University, Montréal, have shifted from theory to practice, obviously preferable middle ground: an QC, Canada. where anthropocentrism remains firmly Earth with thriving populations of all entrenched (McShane, 2016). Meanwhile, 10 million species, including humans. To Citation two other rivals of ecocentrism remain further vindicate ecocentrism, I have found Mikkelson GM (2019) Holistic largely unchallenged in these pages, on it necessary to get more specific about what versus individualistic non- either theoretical or practical grounds: it entails. The best-known exponents of the anthropocentrism. The Ecological Citizen 2: 137–8. sentientism and biocentrism. view – such as Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess Sentientists hold that all sentient and Val Plumwood – have offered much Keywords animals have intrinsic value. But they deny inspiration and food for thought. However, a further claim that biocentrists assert: I submit that the lesser-known theorist Agriculture; animal ethics; anthropocentrism; that non-animal organisms, such as plants Peter Miller synthesized such insights more ecological ethics; and fungi, also have moral significance for coherently and convincingly than any of worldviews their own sake (Var ner, 2001; Attfield, 2013). these more famous thinkers have. Miller What sentientism and biocentrism share defined intrinsic value as “richness”, which is a commitment to moral individualism. is in turn a function of variety, harmony According to both, the intrinsic value of a and achievement (Miller, 1982; 1983). One species or ecosystem reduces to the sum, advantage of such an axiology is that it average or some other function of its arguably explains the intrinsic goods individual constituent organisms’ well- involved in sentience, and in life, better being. What distinguishes ecocentrism than even sentientism or biocentrism can from these rival views is the idea that (Mik kelson, 2019). such an ecological whole is ‘more than the So far, I have stressed the need to champion sum of its parts’. That is, in addition to ecocentrism against sentientism and the well-being of its constituents, certain biocentrism. However, I will close by noting holistic properties count for their own one important value judgment on which sake as well, such as overall diversity and all three of these non-anthropocentric integrity within the species or ecosystem. theories converge: that at least at anywhere Proponents of holistic ecocentrism must near current levels, livestock farming is a show how and why their view is superior massive net disvalue. Ecocentrism counts not only to anthropocentrism, but also to not only the harms inflicted by this industry its non-anthropocentric but individualistic on individual domestic and wild organisms, alternatives. but also its devastation of biodiversity Arguments for ecocentrism in general can and ecosystem function (Machovina et make some headway against sentientism and al., 2015). Ecocentrists thus have even
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 137 Holistic versus individualistic non-anthropocentrism www.ecologicalcitizen.net
greater theoretical motivation than non- Machovina B, Feeley K and Ripple W (2015) Biodiversity anthropocentric individualists do, to fight conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption. the global scourge of animal agriculture. Science of the Total Environment 536: 419–31. However, in practice, sentientists like McShane K (2016) Anthropocentrism in climate ethics Peter Singer and Martha Nussbaum have and policy. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 40: 189–204. probably inspired more people to reduce Mikkelson GM (2018) Convergence and divergence between ecocentrism and sentientism concerning or eliminate their meat consumption than net value. Les Ateliers de l’Éthique/The Ethics Forum (in have ecocentric thinkers (but see Tudge press). [2018]). Thus, while ecocentrists should Mikkelson GM (2019) Sentience, life, richness. In: advance their worldview against all forms DesRoches C, Jankunis F and Williston B, eds. New of moral individualism, they should join Directions in Canadian Environmental Philosophy. their fellow non-anthropocentrists in McGill-Queen’s University, Montréal, QC, Canada: seeking to dramatically diminish the 96–114. livestock industry, and rewild the land that Miller P (1982) Value as richness: Toward a value theory this will free up (Mik kelson, 2018). n for an expanded naturalism in environmental ethics. Environmental Ethics 4: 101–14. References Miller P (1983) Axiology: A metaphysical theme in Attfield R (2013) Biocentrism. In: LaFollette H, ed. The ethics. Journal of Value Inquiry 17: 3–16. International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Wiley-Blackwell, Tudge T (2018) Lies, misconceptions and global New York, NY, USA: 526–34. agriculture. The Ecological Citizen 2: 77–85. Leiserowitz A, Kates R and Parris T (2005) Do global Varner G (2001) Sentientism. In: Jamieson D, ed. A attitudes and behaviors support sustainable Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Wiley- development? Environment 47: 23–38. Blackwell, New York, NY, USA: 192–203.
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Addressing the decline in wetland biodiversity
n this short piece, I highlight the alarming wetlands are more threatened than those C Max Finlayson extent of the loss of wetland biodiversity of temperate regions (W W F, 2012). Iglobally, and outline some steps for About the author addressing this destruction. Governments Halting the loss Max is an internationally have been unable – or unwilling – to halt this of wetland biodiversity renowned wetland ecologist. loss, even though 170 national governments Strong action is required to address the He is a professor at the are Contracting Parties to the Ramsar critical condition of wetlands and their Institute for Land, Water Convention on Wetlands, which since 1971 species worldwide, as follows (Finlayson and Society at Charles Sturt has endeavoured to support efforts to stem et al. 2018): University (Albury, NSW, the degradation of wetlands. 1 prioritizing the enactment of connected, Australia). The increasing threats to wetlands have well-funded and well-managed networks Citation been widely recognized, and action plans of protected areas for a significant Finlayson CM (2019) drawn to address them (Ramsar Convention proportion of the world’s wetland Addressing the decline in Secretariat, 2018). There have been some habitats; wetland biodiversity. The success stories, including the inventory by 2 maintaining and re-establishing wetlands Ecological Citizen 2: 139–40. the Ramsar Convention of over 2300 sites, and halting their conversion to other land covering nearly 250 million km2, as wetlands uses; Keywords of international importance, representing 3 restoring wetland plant communities at Biodiversity; 13–18% of the total area of the world’s large scales; conservation; water wetlands (Davidson and Finlayson, 2018). 4 rewilding wetlands with native species, However, wetlands now cover only a including apex predators, to restore fraction of their original range. Where ecological processes and dynamics; data exist, we know that 35% of wetlands 5 developing and adopting adequate policy have been lost since 1970, and up to 87% instruments to reverse the loss of wetland since 1700 ce (Davidson, 2014). The Wetland animals, especially from over-fishing Extent Trends Index confirms that the and poaching, and the exploitation and decline of wetlands continues at a rapid rate trade of threatened species; (Dixon et al., 2016). Unsurprisingly, many 6 reducing, through education and better populations of wetland-dependent species infrastructure, the wastage of wetland- are in long-term decline and threatened derived food; with extinction. According to the IUCN 7 promoting dietary shifts to reduce Red List (www.iucnredlist.org), 25% of the extent of overgrazing by cattle on the roughly 20,000 wetland-dependent wetlands; assessed species are endangered or 8 increasing outdoor wetland education critically endangered. Moreover, 34% of for children and adults, as well as the inland species dependent on rivers and involvement of wider society – especially streams are globally threatened, as are local and indigenous communities – in 20% of those of marshes and lakes. the management of wetlands; According to the Living Planet Index, 9 encouraging positive environmental 81% of populations of freshwater species change in wetlands by supporting have declined since 1970 – far greater than ecologically sound financial investments the decline of species depending on other and divesting from ecologically destructive ecosystems (W W F, 2016). Overall, tropical investments;
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 139 Addressing the decline in wetland biodiversity www.ecologicalcitizen.net
A giant otter (an endangered species) in the 10 devising and promoting green technologies References Pantanal wetland region and adopting renewable energy sources Davidson N (2014) How much wetland has the world of South America (Gerry that do not adversely impact wetlands; lost? Long-term and recent trends in global wetland Zambonini; CC BY-SA 2.0). area. Marine and Freshwater Research 65: 934–41. 11 shifting our economy to reduce wealth and inequality, and to ensure that prices, Davidson N and Finlayson CM (2018) Extent, regional distribution and changes in area of different classes taxation and incentive systems take into of wetland. Marine and Freshwater Research (in press). account the real costs which consumption Dixon M, Loh J, Davidson N and Walpole M (2016) Tracking patterns impose on wetlands. global change in ecosystem area: The Wetland Extent Trends Index. Biological Conservation 193: 27–35. Successfully implementing these actions, Finlayson CM, Davies GT, Moomaw WR et al. (2018) The or getting them underway, is needed to halt Second Warning to Humanity – providing a context the dramatic declines in wetland biodiversity for wetland management and policy. Wetlands (in that are occurring. In particular, the effort press).
needs to focus on stopping ongoing losses Ramsar Convention Secretariat (2018) Global Wetland and restoring degraded wetlands. To help Outlook: State of the world’s wetlands and their services to achieve this, wetland scientists need to to people. Ramsar Convention Secretariat, Gland, engage more effectively with civil society Switzerland. Available at https://is.gd/HNpVfS (accessed November 2018). and non-governmental organizations, and encourage policy makers to enact appropriate WWF (2012) Living Planet Report 2012: Biodiversity, biocapacity and better choices. WWF International, decisions. It is also crucially important to Gland, Switzerland. Available at https://is.gd/jsWTpx consider the knowledge, and seek the input (accessed November 2018). of, local and indigenous communities, who WWF (2016) Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and resilience generally have a closer association with in a new era. WWF International, Gland, Switzerland. wetlands than many other members of Available at https://is.gd/YIxghD (accessed November our societies. n 2018).
140 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net OPINION
Ecuador endangered: A call to action
he tropical Andes of Ecuador are at in water sources and water recharge areas, John Seed the top of the world list of biodiversity in the national system of protected areas, Thotspots in terms of vertebrate in special areas for conservation, and in About the author species, endemic vertebrates and endemic protected forests and fragile ecosystems John is Founder and plants. For example, Ecuador has more (for some recent coverage of this struggle Director of the Rainforest orchid and hummingbird species than see Hill [2018]). Fortunately, unlike Information Centre in Brazil, which has an area 32 times larger, the previous administration, the new Australia, and he has been and has more biodiversity than the entire US. government has signalled an openness involved in many direct In the last year, the Ecuadorian to hear indigenous and civil society’s actions that have resulted government has quietly granted mining concerns. in the protection of the concessions to over 1.7 million hectares But we will need a massive international Australian rainforests. (4.25 million acres) of forest reserves and effort to rescind the existing concessions – Citation indigenous territories. These concessions many billions of dollars of mining company Seed J (2019) Ecuador were awarded to transnational corporations profits are opposed to some of the most endangered: A call to action. in closed-door deals without public biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth The Ecological Citizen 2: 141–5. knowledge or consent. and the many local communities and This is in direct violation of Ecuadorian indigenous peoples who depend on them. Keywords law and international treaties, and it The lure of mining profits is a deadly Biodiversity; conservation; will decimate headwater ecosystems and mirage (Roy et al., 2018). The impacts of large- indigenous culture biodiversity hotspots of global significance. scale open-pit mining within rainforest However, Ecuadorian groups think there is watersheds include mass deforestation, little chance of stopping the concessions erosion, contamination of water sources using the law unless there is a groundswell by toxins such as lead and arsenic, and of opposition from Ecuadorian civil society desertification (Roche et al., 2017). Mining and strong expressions of international transforms a lush rainforest into an arid concern. The first country in the world wasteland incapable of sustaining either to inscribe the rights of nature into its diverse ecosystems or human beings. constitution (the celebrated Pachamama) is Without a huge outcry both within now ignoring that commitment. Ecuador and around the world, the The Rainforest Information Centre biological gems and pristine rivers and (www.rainforestinformationcentre.org) hired streams will be destroyed. Ecuadorean researchers and discovered It does not have to be this way. Civil that 41 bosques protectores (protected society needs to be in open conversation forests) have been secretly concessioned. For with the state. Ecuador’s society and example, nearly all of the 311,500-hectare government must explore how an economy Bosque Protector Kutuku-Shaimi, where based on the sustainable use of pristine 5000 indigenous Shuar families live, has water sources, the country’s incomparable been concessioned. For a detailed mapping forests and other natural treasures is of the full extent of the horror being superior to an economy based on short- planned, see Vandegrift et al. (2017). term extraction leaving behind despoiled In Ecuador, civil society is mobilizing and impoverished landscapes. For example, and has asked their recently elected studies by Earth Economics in the Intag government to prohibit industrial mining region of Ecuador (where some of the new
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 141 Ecuador endangered: A call to action www.ecologicalcitizen.net
mining concessions are located) show References that ecosystem services and sustainable Hill D (2018) ‘Our territory is our life’: One struggle against development would offer better approaches mining in Ecuador. The Guardian, 10 April. Available at https://is.gd/jGDemo (accessed April 2018). even when considered in purely economic terms – let alone ecological and social Kocian M, Batker D and Harrison-Cox J (2011) An Ecological Study of Ecuador’s Intag Region: The ones (Kocian et al., 2011). environmental impacts and potential rewards of mining. Earth Economics, Tacoma, WA, USA. Available at How you can help https://is.gd/SQ5eyC (accessed April 2018). Please join, follow and share the Rainforest Roche C, Thygesen K and Baker E, eds (2017) Mine Information Centre’s campaign to save Tailings Storage: Safety is no accident. United Nations Ecuador’s rainforests on social media Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya, and (https://is.gd/Ecuador). Please also sign GRID-Arendal, Arendal, Norway. Available at their petition (https://is.gd/ecupetition) https://is.gd/b5mwd2 (accessed April 2018). and support the crowdfunding campaign Roy BA, Zorrilla M, Endara L et al. (2018) New mining (https://is.gd/ecufund).1 n concessions could severely decrease biodiversity and ecosystem services in Ecuador. Tropical Conservation Notes Science 11: 10.1177/1940082918780427. 1 A longer version of this article can be found Vandegrift R, Thomas D, Roy B and Levy M (2017) The at https://is.gd/Pu2NqP. For more links to the Extent of Recent Mining Concessions in Ecuador. Rainforest history and causes of Ecuador’s mining crisis, Information Centre, Nimbin, NSW, Australia. Available visit http://ecuadorendangered.com. at https://is.gd/e0w7wy (accessed April 2018).
Insects of Ecuador Photographer: Andreas Kay
About the photos: These images have all been cropped from photos made available under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/). The species identifications have been taken directly from the photographers’ descriptions and have not been independently checked.
Adult and nymph of the Ball-bearing treehopper Alchisme grossa treehopper (Bocydium globulare)
Adults and nymph of the shieldbug Edessa rufomarginata
142 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net PHOTOS
Snake-mimic Caterpillar of chrysalis of a moth in the the butterfly genus Naprepa Dynastor darius
Snake-mimic caterpillar of the Caterpillar of a saturniid moth moth Hemeroplanes triptolemus
Malachite The moth Idalus herois butterfly (Siproeta stelenes)
A metalmark
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 143 PHOTOS www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Lichen katydid (Markia hystrix)
A monkey hopper A pair of (Homeomastax sp.) grasshoppers (Megacheilacris bullifemur)
144 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net PHOTOS
A brentid beetle
Target tortoise beetle A beetle in The beetle (Ischnocodia annulus) the genus Stolas placida Omophoita
Pair of fungus beetles
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 145 Friends of the Journal www.ecologicalcitizen.net
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146 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net REFLECTION
Limited civilization based on beauty (a vision)
“Someone’ll come along someday the hungry people with “guts plastered to Victor Postnikov with imagination and patch it up. […] their spines” are left with nothing except Someone with a soul for pretty things festivals dedicated to the destruction of About the author […] Might give us back a kind of limited that Past. Books are burned, motorcars Victor is a poet, essayist sort of civilization, the kind we could smashed, paintings torn, etc. When the and translator based in Kiev, live in peace.” time comes to spit on Mona Lisa, a boy Ukraine. (Bradbury, 1952) who stood in the line of those eager to do so fell in love with her smile and saved Citation “At times, you shouldn’t speak at all a small piece of the painting from the Postnikov V (2019) Limited of the lofty and the beautiful, unless destruction. Ultimately, he managed to civilization based on beauty (a vision). The Ecological Citizen you have shown, as clearly as daylight, carry the piece with the painted smile – 2: 147–8. the ways and paths to it, for each and all that was left of the painting – home, everyone.” and then it continued to live on, quite Keywords (Gogol, 1937–52, 8: 298) independently. As Bradbury ends the Visions story: “He shut his eyes and the Smile was there in the darkness. And it was still ecently, Salvator Mundi, a masterpiece there, warm and gentle, when he went to by Leonardo da Vinci, was sold at sleep and the world was silent and the RSotheby’s for the unbelievable sum moon sailed up and then down the cold of US$450 million (Helmore, 2017). I do not sky towards morning.” have any clue as to the motive of the buyer, The story echoes my idea of ‘poetic and would like to believe (perhaps, naively) economy’ (Postnikov, 2011). Along with that he or she did so to save the painting conservation efforts directed at saving for future generations. Immediately, I the beauty of wildness and species from thought of another Leonardo masterpiece, extinction, we should start building, or Mona Lisa, which has tantalized humanity rather re-building, a limited civilization. for generations, and which has again Not destroying indiscriminately the sparked my imagination after reading ‘Past’, as in the Bradbury story, but Ray Bradbury’s short story ‘The Smile’ instead saving the beautiful things that (Bradbury, 1952). I was particularly inspire and elevate the soul. delighted to find there a line mentioning Next, or in parallel, we need to stop limited civilization, an idea which resonates doing unnecessary work, and the sooner with my vision of the future. the better. As Leo Tolstoy once remarked, First, the gist of the story. The scene most modern work is unnecessary, if unfolds in the post-apocalyptic future, not outright ruinous. Everyone needs with “cities all junk, roads like jigsaws from to invoke an inner artist to begin the bombs, and half-cornfields glowing with dismantling and transformation of the radio-activity at night.” But what amazes wasteful globalized economy and its most is the aptitude of the explanation infrastructure into his or her personal that one of the characters gives: “It has to work of art. Shift to manual craftwork. do with hate. Hate for everything in the Avoid and boycott complex machines. And Past. […] You hate whatever it was that got smile, while sending the pressed cars to you all knocked down and ruined.” Then, the dump.
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 147 Limited civilization based on beauty (a vision) www.ecologicalcitizen.net
That could signal the beginning of a Surely, the revival of these forgotten great limited civilization built on the skills would be a tremendous task. premise of beautiful simplicity. Many of us are so weakened morally Why simplicity? Because it is and physically by civilization that, as essentially a way to leave the world Robinson Jeffers suggests, we would alone. A way to curb the demons in rather “passively go […] to the grave / humans so that they cannot ruin the ask[ing] only a pinch of pleasure between Is this utopia world. In other words, it is a return to the darknesses” than agree to change our “ what, actually, humans are: one species, lifestyle (Jeffers, 2002). Yet, co-creation attainable? I do not with its peculiar characteristics (some with nature and friends – directly, not know. But would pleasant, some not), sharing equal rights via screens – should help us survive and I hate to see the with other species, on an equal footing. even bloom. alternative.” The paramount right of all species is to Is this utopia attainable? I do not know. enjoy life and beauty in its fullness. This But would I hate to see the alternative. n return is vital to the whole family of species, but humans need it most. But what is being offered to all those References
sophisticated people, vying for new Bradbury R (1952) The Smile. Fantastic, June (Summer) technologies? Cheerful and healthy issue. Available at https://is.gd/fGunIa (accessed simple life. In the open air. Simplicity August 2018). means not only a calm and modest life, Brown A (2013) Living with just enough. The Global it also means creativity par excellence. Oneness Project. Available at https://is.gd/n3RO6m But the nature of creativity will have to (accessed August 2018). change. Now, it will be channelled into Coates C (2001) Artistic visionaries. In: Coates C, ed. saving nature’s beauty and rectifying Utopia Britannica: British utopian experiments 1325– past human damage (cf. Tompkins, 2013). 1945. Diggers and Dreamers Publications, London, The time has come to rehabilitate and UK: 117–61. renew ourselves as a species, and to Dodge J (2015) Bioregional poetics/aesthetics: Some remember the skills of our ancestors. It tentative tenets. Letter quoted in P Nelson’s is crucial that we stick to our immediate introduction to: Nelson P, Stanley G, McKinnon cultural environment, defining our B and Maestas N, eds. Make It True: Poetry from preferences and methods (Dodge, 2015). Cascadia. Leaf Press, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. Available at https://is.gd/qoEgmc (accessed August Simplicity means renunciation of 2018). ‘specialists’ and ‘experts’ of all kinds, and a reversion to the creativity of our Gogol NV (1937–52) Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, 14 own hands and minds. It is the revival of vols. Akademii Nauk SSSR, Moscow, Russia. our ability to work manually. It is William Helmore E (2017). Leonardo da Vinci painting sells for Morris and John Ruskin, Tolstoy and $450m at auction, smashing records. The Guardian, Gandhi (Coates, 2001). It is artists and 17 November. Available at https://is.gd/0P7wFb craftspeople. It is a return to the beauty (accessed August 2018). that reigned before industrialization Jeffers R (2002) [1929] Subjected Earth. In: Hunt T, took over. It is renunciation of ed. The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Stanford machines, except those which are safe, University Press, Stanford, CA, USA. Available at https://is.gd/tpwU51 (accessed August 2018). elegant and easy to repair. (A scythe, a bicycle, a sewing machine: aren’t they Lubarsky S (2017) Life affirming beauty. Post- marvellous?) It is also the resurrection Carbon Institute. Available at https://is.gd/exuLsg of an artisan life: growing vegetables, (accessed August 2018). baking bread, making linen and cotton Postnikov V (2011) Economy of poetics: A sketch. Culture fabric, simple and comfortable furniture Change, 6 February. Available at https://is.gd/l2EVcU (Brown, 2013). From now on, every (accessed August 2018).
activity will be viewed as an artistic act Tompkins D (2013) The Next Economy. Available at (Lubarsky, 2017). https://is.gd/MGxvRT (accessed August 2018).
148 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net REFLECTION
Decoupling the global population problem from immigration issues
uch soul-searching has gone framework. This framework, I argue (Crist, Eileen Crist into why the environmental 2018), has three salient components. One, M movement, international policy empowering women and men everywhere About the author arenas, and university curricula sidelined with accessible and affordable state-of-the- Eileen has been teaching global population concerns in recent decades. art family-planning services to make their at Virginia Tech in the Research has revealed that a number of reproductive choices. Two, agitating for all Department of Science and factors converged to envelop the population women worldwide to achieve equal standing Technology in Society since question in silence (Campbell, 2007; Potts, with men, and focusing most immediately 1997. Her work focuses 2009; Crist et al., 2017). Paramount among on securing educational opportunities for on biodiversity loss and those factors have been the following: a girls and young women (at least through destruction of wild places, perception that the population problem is secondary education, after which a sizeable along with pathways to halt these trends, and she ‘solving itself’ given a globally declining fertility drop generally occurs). Three, has written and co-edited fertility rate; the spectre of climate change, providing what the United Nations calls numerous papers and caused by excessive consumption, virtually ‘comprehensive sexuality education’ (CSE), books. Her latest book is monopolizing attention; anxieties over the a pedagogical imperative for every human Abundant Earth: Toward possibility of coercive policies implemented being, through all years of schooling, an ecological civilization for ‘population control’; and a global surge of containing age-appropriate and age- (University of Chicago nationalisms and religious fundamentalisms pertinent material. (Research has shown Press, 2018). Eileen lives in opposed to family planning and indifferent that critical thinking about sexuality issues, Blacksburg, VA, USA. She is to global population growth. All these which CSE fosters, along with providing an Associate Editor of the factors, and especially their conjunction, other benefits helps reduce unintended Journal. played into muting the population pregnancies [Kaidbey and Engelman, 2017] – Citation question in environmental, social justice, a key ingredient in decelerating population educational, and international arenas. An growth.) This three-tiered human-rights Crist E (2019) Decoupling the global population problem additional pivotal contributor motivating framework that must be implemented from immigration issues. The silence about population has been the rise worldwide, with enthusiasm, and without Ecological Citizen 2: 149–51. of an environmental platform arguing for further delay would result in stabilizing and immigration restriction – into the US, the gradually reducing the global population Keywords UK, Australia and other rich countries – as with relative alacrity. Overpopulation a means of achieving national targets of On the ground, this framework requires population stabilization. international trust and cooperation to Environmentalist calls for robust move forward. When calls for immigration immigration caps sparked a backlash, restriction graft themselves onto the especially within environmental, non- mandate for population stabilization and governmental organization and social reduction, they vitiate this requirement of justice circles, that contributed substantially international solidarity. However earnestly to the avoidance or desertion of scientific immigration-restriction proponents insist research, activist campaigning, and policy that their intent is progressive – and not endeavours for addressing population xenophobic or ‘lifeboat ethics’ motivated growth. As a result, such calls played – their arguments are interpreted as into unsettling the needed international containing such subtexts (Huang, 2008; climate for facing a problem that is Gibbs, 2010). The fact that critics of the eminently solvable within a human-rights immigration-restriction position may be
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 149 Decoupling the global population problem from immigration issues www.ecologicalcitizen.net
misconstruing that position is moot – the academics, activists, and policy-makers damage to facing the population problem becoming more and more engaged in is done. Acute mistrust ensues, especially addressing it. Coupling immigration in social justice circles worldwide, and issues – that deal specifically with the the needed conversation about global movement and distribution of people – population is derailed. At the same time, with the global trouble of an enormous We can stabilize when proponents for tightened immigration population and continued growth can only “ quotas dismiss their detractors as distorting be detrimental at this delicate moment of a and slowly reduce the their motives, or as merely pandering to promising shift. Immigration-restriction human population ‘political correctness’, they are sticking their proponents have the right to argue their through global heads in the sand: the cultural, social and case, but they should keep it separate partnerships that political backlash at an international level from the global population problem, lest is tangible and enormously consequential. their divisive messaging contributes to work speedily Owing in large part to that backlash, two marginalizing that urgent problem yet to make family unfortunate consequences have followed. again. Population growth decelerates and planning a cultural First, many have sweepingly dismissed reverses by securing for every human norm everywhere, ‘overpopulation’ as a rich-world fabrication. being the shared fundamentals of family- planning services, gender equity, and achieve liberation Second, and even more important, many scientists, intellectuals, activists, and policy- education. Amazingly, these ingredients and equality for all makers, who do realize that stabilizing and invariably work to lower fertility rates women, and cultivate eventually reducing the human population across very different nations and critical thinking is a pressing matter, walk away from a scene cultures (Engelman, 2012; Weisman, about sexuality issues that has become too rancorous to linger in. 2013; Bongaarts, 2016). In brief, where If these consequences were the only the global population problem can be among all young drawback of calls for immigration control, solved in a unified fashion by procuring people in global it would be problematic enough, since needed rights to all people, immigration- curricula.” advocates for capping migration into restriction positions divide people and developed nations – by kindling widespread tend to incite bitter arguments. avoidance of the ‘vexed’ population problem The dismal consequences for Earth – have arguably been party to worsening the and for humanity of an oversized global very problem they are trying to solve. There population are indisputable. (Importantly, is more, however, that is dubious about the the human population size is well over environmentally motivated immigration- what an ecologically and ethically virtuous restriction argument. In my view, rich food system can support.) The political nations, because of the global and within- acrimony and equity grievances that calls their-borders ecological mayhem they have for immigration controls into rich countries unleashed, have rescinded any rightful incite dampen the energy for tackling it, claim to exclude entry to ‘foreigners’ on the and undermine the real potential for an grounds of protecting the ecosphere and international victory. We can stabilize their national environments. If Bhutan were and slowly reduce the human population to make an immigration-restriction case through global partnerships that work for the purposes of protecting its natural speedily to make family planning a cultural treasures – well, that would at least be norm everywhere, achieve liberation and coherent. But when that argument is made equality for all women, and cultivate critical on behalf of colonial and neocolonial powers thinking about sexuality issues among all like the US and the UK – powers that bear young people in global curricula. n incontestable responsibility for the current and coming global refugee crisis – the References incongruity is abrasively palpable. Bongaarts J (2016) Slow down population growth. Today, the silence surrounding the Nature 530: 409–12. global population juggernaut is finally Campbell M (2007) Why the silence on population? being broken, as we are seeing scientists, Population & Environment 28: 237–46.
150 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Decoupling the global population problem from immigration issues
Crist E (2018) Abundant Earth: Toward an ecological Gibbs S (2010) People on the move: Population, migration, civilization. Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago and the environment. In: Mazur L, ed. A Pivotal Moment: Press. Population, justice and the environmental challenge. Crist E, Mora C and Engelman R (2017). The interaction Washington, DC, USA: Island Press, 53–65. of human population, food production, and Kaidbey M and Engelman R (2017) Our bodies, our future: biodiversity protection. Science 356: 260–4. Expanding comprehensive sexuality education. In: Engelman R (2012) Trusting women to end population EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet growth. In: Cafaro P and Crist E, eds. Life on the Brink: (The Worldwatch Institute). Washington, DC, USA: Environmentalists confront overpopulation. Atlanta, GA, Island Press. USA: University of Georgia Press, 223–9. Potts M (2009) Where next? Philosophical Transactions of Huang P (2008) Anchor babies, over-breeders, and the Royal Society B 364: 3115–24. the population bomb: The reemergence of nativism Weisman A (2013) Countdown: Our last, best hope for a and population control in anti-immigration policies. future on Earth? New York, NY, USA: Little, Brown and Harvard Law & Policy Review 2: 385–406. Company.
Photos of Gatineau Park, Quebec, Canada
(continued on page 155)
by Tony Cassils
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152 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net SPECIAL FEATURE
Neptune’s Navy: A global initiative
arine conservationists have also installed an automatic identification Captain Paul most of the laws, treaties system to monitor all marine traffic Watson M and regulations needed to in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. This protect and defend oceanic ecosystems partnership has yielded numerous arrests About the author and aquatic biodiversity. The ongoing and boat seizures and, most importantly, Captain Paul Watson problem, however, has been a lack of both has served as a substantial deterrent to is a Canadian marine political will and economic motivation to poaching. conservation activist, uphold these laws. I established the Sea Using our partnership with Ecuador as who founded the Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977 as a model, Sea Shepherd today has official direct-action group Sea an anti-poaching, interventionist, non- partnerships with a number of nations Shepherd in 1977. He has government organization to act when and including, in Africa, São Tomé and been described as “the where governments refused to uphold their Príncipe, Gabon, Liberia and Tanzania – world’s most aggressive, responsibilities under these laws. as well as with Mexico and Peru. For the most determined, most Sea Shepherd has been effective in many past four years, for example, our Operation active and most effective ways over the years, especially in stopping Milagro campaign in the Mexican Sea of defender of wildlife.” illegal whaling operations. However, our Cortez has prevented the extinction of Citation effectiveness was often misrepresented as the highly endangered Vaquita porpoise vigilantism and we have frequently been with over 650 illegal poaching nets located Watson P (2019) Neptune’s Navy: A global initiative. The labelled ‘pirates’ (e.g., see Yuhas [2013]) and confiscated. It has been a dangerous Ecological Citizen 2: 153–4. despite the fact that we were opposing campaign. We have had three drones shot and shutting down illegal operations. In down and our crew have been fired upon Keywords response to the criticism, I embraced the despite having armed Mexican military Conservation; pirate image for the simple reason that onboard. We will be returning once again, direct action; water pirates get things done, unencumbered by for our fifth year of patrols in November bureaucratic red tape – that and the fact 2018. In Peru in 2018, Sea Shepherd will be that young people love the image. patrolling offshore to observe and report In 1999 Sea Shepherd began an initiative on the activities of the Chinese anchovy that had not been attempted before, an fleets. initiative that has evolved into something Over the last three years, Sea Shepherd highly effective. With Sea Shepherd we has had numerous victories on the high had the passion, the courage and the seas. With our ships Bob Barker and Steve imagination of volunteers from around Irwin, we shut down the Southern Ocean the world. What we lacked was authority. toothfish poaching fleet. This campaign This changed when we officially partnered saw the longest pursuit of a poaching with the Galapagos National Park and the vessel in maritime history with the 110- government of Ecuador with a program to day chase of the outlaw vessel Thunder patrol and defend the Galapagos Marine (Ross and Arnold, 2018). This chase ended Reserve. Over the last eighteen years, Sea with the captain of the Thunder scuttling
Shepherd has provided boats, volunteers, his own ship in an unsuccessful attempt Donate to Sea Shepherd lawyers and technology in a partnership to destroy the evidence of his illegal www.seashepherd.org/support-us with the park rangers. We have trained fishing operations – unsuccessful because and deployed a canine unit to detect a Sea Shepherd crew boarded the sinking Volunteer with Sea Shepherd shark fins and other wildlife species. We ship to collect that evidence. This brave www.seashepherd.org/get-involved
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act assisted the São Tomé and Príncipe Peru; the Santa Andrea in the Gulf of Maine; court in sentencing the captain of the the Emmanuel Bronner in the Baltic Sea; the Thunder to three years in prison and fining White Holly being prepared for Caribbean the company seventeen million euros. patrols; the Alchemy in the waters off This campaign also allowed us to pull, California; the Farley Mowat and Sharpie confiscate and destroy some 72 kilometres working with the Mexican government; the (70 tons) of illegal gill net. John Paul DeJoria patrolling the Caribbean; Other recent victories include the Sea and the Jules Verne in the Coral Sea. Shepherd ship Steve Irwin catching and But as important and as useful as our ships chasing a Chinese fleet using illegal drift are, the real strength of Sea Shepherd lies “I could not pay nets back to China, where the ships were in our global network of volunteers. At any professionals to do arrested and fined by Chinese authorities given moment there are some 200 people, (Heaver, 2016). And, in 2017, the Sea from over three dozen nations, crewing what these incredibly Shepherd ship Ocean Warrior assisted the the ships. In addition, there are many devoted volunteers do East Timor authorities in the arrest and hundreds of shore volunteers working to for no pay, with their detention of fifteen Chinese vessels caught help to finance and supply these ships. It only reward being in the act of illegally fishing (BBC, 2017). is the passion, the courage, the resolve, Sea Shepherd anti-poaching patrols have the resourcefulness and the imagination the satisfaction of also been working successfully to protect of these dedicated volunteers that drive saving aquatic lives sea-turtle nests in Barbuda, Costa Rica, our successful campaigns. The simple fact and protecting the Guatemala and the Indian Ocean island of is that I could not pay professionals to do integrity of threatened Mayotte. what these incredibly devoted volunteers do for no pay, with their only reward being ecosystems. Sea Shepherd is also partnered with ” Parley for the Oceans to address the the satisfaction of saving aquatic lives great threat of plastic pollution in the and protecting the integrity of threatened sea (http://www.parley.tv/#fortheoceans). ecosystems. n Every year Sea Shepherd chapters sponsor beach clean-ups worldwide to remove References thousands of tons of plastic debris from BBC (2017) Sea Shepherd intercepts ‘shark boats’ in East Timor. BBC News, 15 September. Available at the oceans. https://is.gd/CvCvof (accessed August 2018). Our partnership programmes have been Heaver S (2016) Sea Shepherd takes fight to Chinese enormously successful and Sea Shepherd fleets fishing illegally. South China Morning Post, 20 now hosts the largest non-governmental May. Available at https://is.gd/z2sM8o (accessed navy in the world. We have fourteen ships August 2018). deployed around the globe – with the Ross M and Arnold A (2018) Thunder versus Sea Ocean Warrior patrolling off East Africa; the Shepherd: The true story of the world’s longest ship chase. ABC News, 19 August. Available at https:// Bob Barker and the Sam Simon patrolling off is.gd/4rneVt (accessed August 2018). West Africa; the Steve Irwin off Australia’s Yuhas A (2013) Sea Shepherd conservation group Great Barrier Reef; the Martin Sheen doing declared ‘pirates’ in US court ruling. The Guardian, research in the waters of British Columbia; 28 February. Available at https://is.gd/WRo5FO the Brigitte Bardot patrolling offshore of (accessed August 2018).
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154 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019
PHOTO FEATURE www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Photo feature – The devastating scale of waste in the oceans
Caroline Power This feature presents a series of photos taken on and under the sea surrounding Roatán, an island in the Caribbean Sea off Honduras, as well as shots taken on the island itself. The About the photographer photos dramatically highlight the scale of the problem of waste in the oceans. This, Caroline Caroline has lived on Roatán, notes, is a universal problem for which every country on the planet has some responsibility. the largest of Honduras’s Bay Citation Islands, for over a decade. As Power S (2019) Photo feature – The devastating scale of waste in the oceans. The Ecological Citizen 2: 156–62. well as being a photographer, she is a long-time volunteer Keywords with the Roatán Marine Park. Sustainability; water
“The trash collects on tide and current lines. Typically, these lines are where mats of sargassum form. This is a type of open-ocean seaweed that provides a crucial habitat for juvenile fish and turtles…”
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“… Much of the trash is made up of small pieces of plastic and styrofoam that has been broken up by wind and waves…”
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 157 PHOTO FEATURE www.ecologicalcitizen.net
“… There is also a seemingly infinite amount of plastic cutlery, plates and drinks bottles. I’ve seen old soccer balls, countless shoes and even a TV…”
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“… Municipal dumps on Roatán are overflowing. There was an ordinance passed over a decade ago banning plastic bags and limiting the import of plastic bottles, but the current administration refuses to enforce it. Much of the trash we see comes out of the Motagua River and other rivers in Guatemala and Honduras; however, they are not the only source. Every country on the planet has responsibility for this global crisis…”
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“… Trash accumulates not just in the ocean but in creek beds and mangroves too…”
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“… This is so much more than just Plastic among squid eggs a human issue. For me, it’s about wanting to protect aquatic ecosystems for the benefit of all life.”
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Thoughts from Caroline on the role …And on what else can be done… of individuals’ choices in helping 1 Improved environmental education in schools, solve the crisis… community centres, businesses and places of worship. A key part of the solution to this global crisis is for 2 The passing of laws by governments that ban the sale individuals to make changes to reduce consumption and of single-use plastic and styrofoam products. waste production. There are lots of things that are simple 3 Improved waste-management infrastructure (many to do. I keep a fork and a reusable container in my bag countries and cities have experienced such massive if I think I might go out to eat. I drink from a reusable population growth, they cannot cope with their waste). water bottle and have cut out all drinks that come in 4 An increase in the ‘eco-friendliness’ of businesses and plastic bottles. I always tell bartenders, “No straw.” I corporations (this is something we can encourage in bring my own bags for shopping and avoid zip-locks bags choosing which businesses we support). and plastic wrap. Instead, I keep glass jars and use them 5 Increased financial support for local charities and non- for everything. I also love shopping at thrift stores. And governmental organizations that are working to solve before I buy something, I always stop and think whether the crisis. I really need it. …And on that note For the things I have to buy, I look for options which have Caroline kindly waived the fee for us to use her photos but the least packaging (e.g. shampoo in bar form) and are is always encouraging donations to Roatán Marine Park. from ethically responsible companies. Finally, I’m aware You can read about the work of this organization here: that recycling is far from a perfect solution. Instead, I https://www.roatanmarinepark.org/our-work. And you can refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle – in that order. donate here: https://www.roatanmarinepark.org/donate.
162 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE
Against enlightened inaction: Edification from Thoreau
This essay describes and critiques a phenomenon it terms ‘enlightened inaction’. Despite Luke Philip abundant information regarding the human causes and ultimate consequences of ecological devastation, many individuals act as if they were ignorant of these facts. This essay argues Plotica that knowledge puts individuals on notice of their ethical responsibilities and binds them About the author more closely to ecological obligations. To advance this claim, and to explore how individuals Luke is an Assistant might act upon these obligations in their own lives, the essay turns to the ethical and Professor in the Department ecological thought of Henry David Thoreau (1817–62). Thoreau’s practices of self-accounting, of Political Science, Virginia deliberate living and simplicity supply individual tactics that might complement, rather Polytechnic Institute and than undermine, institutional thinking and collective action on ecological issues. In light of State University, Blacksburg, Thoreau’s example, the essay also suggests that while all individuals have basic obligations VA, USA. in respect of their awareness of the ecological effects of their actions and ways of life, academics have special obligations in their capacity as public intellectuals. Citation Plotica LP (2019) Against “The actual alternative to deliberate acts know it is a problem and enough to know enlightened inaction: of individuals is not action by the public; it what are at least some of its human causes Edification from Thoreau. is routine, impulsive and other unreflected (even when there may also be non-human The Ecological Citizen 2: 163–7 1 . acts also performed by individuals.” causes), and yet despite this awareness, (Dewey, 1954: 18) we do not act in ways that our knowledge Keywords patently recommends. I will call this phenomenon enlightened inaction: we see Ecological ethics; here may have been a time, perhaps the problem, and our role in causing it, ecological living not that long ago, when most and yet we live as if we remained ignorant T individuals in developed countries of these connections, thereby evading or could plausibly claim ignorance about denying responsible ecological citizenship. most of the ecological effects of their ways A considerable portion of humanity is of life. If ever such was the case, it clearly implicated in this phenomenon, though is no longer. Rather, information about certainly not all who are implicated are the consequences of human activities equally so.1 Human beings are parts of upon the ecosphere is now so plentiful, so nature, even as we are separated from robust and so emphatic as to be, at times, one another by various human artefacts confounding and overwhelming. We – by and practices (e.g. languages, built which I especially mean residents of the environments and patterns of production global north – know what at times feels and consumption) and even as the collected like too much. Surely this contributes uses of our cognitive and practical capacities to many of the forms of scepticism and have ostensibly distinguished humans recalcitrance regarding our individual and from other parts of the natural world. To collective implication in various ecological live on Earth is to contribute every moment problems, and about the ethical as well as of one’s life to its condition, and thus to causal responsibilities thereby entailed. My bear an unsought and ineluctable share of aim in this essay is to sketch and critique responsibility – both causal and ethical – a phenomenon that arises under just such for the same. Enlightened inaction is thus circumstances: when we know a great deal one of our truly common problems, and about an ecological problem, enough to overcoming it is one of our truly common
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tasks. Yet I suggest that there is somewhat environment – possessed of knowledge, of a sliding scale of ethical responsibility yet acting as if ignorant. generated by ecological knowledge, It is important to distinguish such according to which, all else being equal, enlightened inaction from the related but those with more extensive and privileged distinct phenomenon of hypocrisy. The access to such knowledge bear greater latter is manifest when one professes that ecological obligation. Thus, for instance, a norm or principle should be followed and academics (as both researchers and yet does not follow it in one’s own action – educators) bear special obligations to serve for instance, if I maintain that one ought as exemplars.2 As those whose vocation it never to lie and yet I proceed to lie when I is to amass and disseminate knowledge find it convenient. No doubt the state of the about the ecosphere and how humans ecosphere today may be traced, in some belong to and affect it, we bear a higher part, to such behaviour, and even when burden of demonstrating practically the the worldly effects of ecological hypocrisy consequences of that knowledge. are comparatively mild, its ethical effects Our ecological To make my case, and to suggest general are significant. Over time we condition “ ways in which one might live up to such ourselves to live as exceptions to rules that ills are not rooted obligations, I shall look to Henry David we (profess to) recognize as valid, thereby merely or primarily Thoreau (1817–62). Long recognized as indulging in a kind of freeriding. in hypocrisy. one of the first truly ecological thinkers But our ecological ills are not rooted Perhaps the more (Hyman, 1962), he furnishes a valuable merely or primarily in hypocrisy. Perhaps image of ecological citizenship in action. the more common source is inaction common source is By way of his example, I shall make some and non-commitment in the face of inaction and non- tentative suggestions of how we might experiential, testimonial and scientific commitment in the turn towards ways of life that are more knowledge – and I suggest that this face of experiential, aware and responsible. phenomenon is more entrenched and more testimonial dangerous than hypocrisy. The hypocrite Enlightened inaction might be persuaded to live up to her and scientific Optimism about the efficacy of knowledge own principles; she at least recognizes knowledge.” as a spur to action has deep roots in an obligation, even if she does not fulfil Western thought. Whether or not the it. Whereas the sort of inaction I have in views were strictly his own, several of mind is partly a problem of knowledge, Plato’s dialogues, for instance, express and of the ethical consequences of what confidence that knowledge of the good is might appear to be dispassionate, neutral a sufficient condition of action in accord facts. Although social and political history with it, that once we attain knowledge, furnishes countless examples of people action takes care of itself (Plato, 1997: 37b, knowing better than they act,3 ecological 87c and 509e). Yet millennia of experience examples are especially present, urgent and refutes this optimism, and humanity troubling. Despite steadily accumulating today witnesses daily the environmental evidence and a strengthening scientific degradation wrought by anthropocentric consensus regarding the human causes of practices of commodification, exploitation ecological devastation and its import, most and consumption, and yet continues in individuals and societies do little to curtail these very same practices. Whenever these causes and much to contribute to opinion leaders and policymakers around them. For instance, few people today are the globe recognize the urgency of nature’s unaware that the extraction and use of plight, the common response is to promise fossil fuels directly and indirectly damages newer and more sophisticated modes of the ecosphere in a host of potentially technological intervention and exploitation irrevocable ways, emitting pollutants to solve the problem (Crist, 2017). We expect (including greenhouse gases), destroying to invent, extract, build, buy and consume natural habitats and decimating our way out of the consequences of a dying biodiversity. Yet, possessed of this
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knowledge, the vast majority of humanity high crisis of his place and time – chattel – especially, though not only, in the slavery and the violence used to maintain industrialized countries of the global north and expand it – he lamented that there were – systematically continues staggering “nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of consumption of fossil fuels, acting as if virtue to one virtuous [person]” (Thoreau, we did not know what we most certainly 1992: 230). All around him were those who do know. Despite the lack of attention this knew, but did not act on that knowledge phenomenon seems to receive, enlightened – not even hypocrites, for few of these inaction is thus one essential aspect of our patrons of virtue insisted that individuals global environmental crisis. should act beyond their nominal support for the cause of abolition. Thoreau was Thoreau as exemplar also acutely aware of the ecological effects Few individuals grappled as self- of industrialization and the materialist consciously and extensively with the culture in which it was embedded. Indeed, phenomenon I have just identified as did few topics exercised him so. He railed Henry David Thoreau. With regard to the against the logic of the market, which
Artwork
by Anna Sebastian
About the artwork: The four paintings that appear in this article have Walden Pond as their subject. Henry David Thoreau lived in a cabin on the shores of this pond for around two years as what could be considered an experiment in ecological citizenship. The paintings were created using gouache on paper.
Higher-resolution versions: https://is.gd/ecoartwork
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 165 Against enlightened inaction: Edification from Thoreau www.ecologicalcitizen.net
converted nature into a reserve of resources gap between knowing and doing (Thoreau to be exploited (e.g. stripping ice from 1992: 9). New England ponds to chill the drinks of In his most famous work, Thoreau industrialists and slave masters), and which recounts roughly two years that he spent treated human beings (both enslaved and “liv[ing] low and far[ing] hard” in the woods ‘free’) as mere machines meant to serve near Walden Pond (Thoreau, 1992: 143–4). the unquestioned goods of production and It was, as he describes it, an experiment in consumption. Though his understanding living – specifically, “to live deliberately, was well ahead of that of his neighbours, to front only the essential facts of life, the signs of ecological and ethical decline to and see if I could not learn what it had to which he pointed were anything but hidden. teach” (Thoreau, 1992: 61). Seeking these Describing the mass of society as caught in facts in nature, his experiment was one of a waking slumber, he styled his philosophy ecological citizenship, of accommodating as a practice of awakening oneself and his way of life to the rhythms, offerings others, of bringing one’s way of life in line and demands of his environs. Though with one’s knowledge and what it intimates. his activities and reflections were varied, This ethic of self-cultivation partakes of Thoreau’s experiment exemplifies three a classical tradition according to which practices that are needful given our current philosophy means “so to love wisdom as to ecological crisis: self-accounting, deliberate live according to its dictates,” closing the living and simplicity.
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Self-accounting time at Walden and his participation in Thoreau devotes the first and longest chapter the Underground Railroad to his lectures of Walden to economy, a theme that occupies and essays, he advocated and strove to him throughout many of his writings. exemplify a life of principled, self-aware “Exposing and Putting a critical twist on the common action. He wanted his deeds to rise to the lampooning the 19th-century understanding of the term, he level of what he knew and what, in light shortcomings of describes “that economy of living which is of his careful self-accounting, he valued. synonymous with philosophy” and which What he ate, what he wore, how he dwelt another is an easy requires careful self-accounting (Thoreau, and how he sought enjoyment all reflected a way to absolve 1992: 35).4 In very practical terms, he lays desire to live in accord with himself as part oneself of their out the exact – and, by the standards of his of a larger world – not to be what he did not ideals, and thus day, remarkably limited – outlay required respect, and not to do what he knew to be to support himself in his living experiment. unjust or harmful to both his human and to justify oneself Yet the point of his ongoing exercise of self- non-human neighbours. As one persistent in being what one accounting was ethical, in the classical and dismissive strain of literary criticism already was.” sense, as well as practical. Examining how demonstrates, it is easy to lose sight of the he lived, and what he did to himself and to nobility of Thoreau’s vision by poring over his human and non-human neighbours in the little ways in which he ostensibly fell order to get his living, was a constitutive short of his own principles (e.g. Lowell, 1954; study of his own character (ethos) from an Buranelli, 1957; Schulz, 2015). Exposing and importantly ecological standpoint. lampooning the shortcomings of another The point of self-accounting is not simply is an easy way to absolve oneself of their to calculate one’s balance of production and ideals, and thus to justify oneself in being consumption, though this is a necessary what one already was. Valuing, as he did, element of the practice. More deeply, it is more than his own comfort, Thoreau to soberly trace the effects of our actions espoused a more ennobling notion: “In and the ways of life they collectively the long run [individuals] hit only what compose. Throughout his works, Thoreau they aim at. Therefore, though they should asks himself, and presses us to ask fail immediately, they had better aim at ourselves: at what expense do I live? What something high” (Thoreau, 1992: 18). do I endorse, affirm and deny in how I In ecological contexts this notion entails, work and what I consume? What values am at the very least, having the courage to I enacting in my conscious choices and my honestly examine one’s own choices and unreflective habits? These questions, as way of life (i.e. to practise self-accounting) Thoreau knew, do not answer themselves, and to live according to what one knows and approaching them honestly is often about oneself and about the social and discomforting. At the time when many of ecological settings in which one dwells. his abolitionist contemporaries decried One need not suppose that knowing the the evils of slavery and yet enjoyed cotton good will cause one to perform it in order and sugar stained with the blood of the to maintain, as Thoreau did, that we enslaved, acting as if they did not know already know how to live better than we what they knew, Thoreau exemplified a actually do – how to live more in step with will to self-knowledge that he believed was what matters to us both subjectively and preparatory to an ethical relationship not objectively than we have thus far taken only with one’s fellow humans, but with the trouble to achieve. Self-accounting all of nature. Choosing how to be and live is little more than an academic exercise better begins with daring to know what if it is not combined with the resolve to one already is and has chosen. live the consequences of one’s knowledge. Long before modern climate science or Deliberate living longitudinal studies of the ecological and In word and deed, Thoreau embodies the human health effects of mass production obverse of enlightened inaction. From his and consumption, Thoreau saw how
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human beings were destroying the natural in order to feel tolerably good about those systems that sustained both human and desires. Just as the first step to escaping non-human life. Today, in factual terms, a hole that one has dug for oneself is to we know far better than he did, and yet we stop digging it deeper, the first step to aim far lower. The value of his example, awakening from somnambular patterns as one of good ecological citizenship, is of exploitation and consumption is to to remind us that we are no less robustly recognize our participation in them. This equipped to rise to the challenge of our means accepting what we already know and own knowledge and ideals than he was. owning that knowledge. The simplification We know something (indeed, many things) to follow could take countless forms, many higher at which to aim, and must only be of which would be less stringent or austere willing to do so. than Thoreau’s, but all must disabuse us of the Orwellian doublethink that the only Simplicity way to save the Earth is through more and As one historian put it, Thoreau “told us better consumption. Shiny new shovels what we needed to know in order to know will not get us out of our hole. what we do not need” (Diggins, 1972: 571). Thoreau was one of the earliest and most Knowing and doing prescient critics of the (then nascent) There is an easily anticipated criticism to modern mentality of endless economic this line of thought, one originating from growth driven by overproduction and within the environmental movement itself. overconsumption. The answer he supplied What I have suggested may seem to endorse to rapacious materialism was not a one- an individualized, neoliberal ethic that size-fits-all model of minimal living, but counsels us to act as individual consumers instead an open-textured ethic of simplicity in place of collective, public action (cf. Voting ‘the right “ built upon practices of self-accounting. Bookchin, 1989; Maniates, 2001). Do your way’, donating to He witnessed his contemporaries part from the comfort and isolation of your ‘the right cause’ or becoming “tools of their tools,” subjecting own living room; save the world while you joining ‘the right themselves to lives of toil, and nature to shop. There is indeed a danger of further organization’ easily relentless exploitation, so that they might depoliticizing issues of vital public concern. have fashionable clothes, a respectable However, Thoreau’s example is not one of become substitutes house, a pleasant vacation and the latest apolitical retreat, but one of engagement for the difficult work offerings of the market with which to on all registers of life – not only through of actually changing distract themselves from the toil it took to institutions, and not only in ways that we one’s way of life – acquire them (Thoreau, 1992: 25). What has find easy and comfortable (Plotica, 2016). changed for us today is that our wants have (See also Alexander and Burdon [2017: 50].) a way of outsourcing grown and the costs of our consumption In fact, “think[ing] institutionally” has responsibility to have become an existential threat to the its own ethical dangers: it can tempt us to our institutions entire ecosphere. absolve ourselves of individual effort and just as excessive Given that we know this, and given responsibility, and appear to justify daily that there is no plausible denial of the personal inaction by counselling that only individualization toll human beings, individually and systemic action really matters (Maniates, can outsource collectively, have inflicted upon the 2001: 33). Voting ‘the right way’, donating responsibility to Earth for the sake of an escalating cycle to ‘the right cause’ or joining ‘the right corporations.” of production and consumption that organization’ easily become substitutes never quite satisfies us, we are ripe for for the difficult work of actually changing the edification Thoreau offers. Whatever one’s way of life – a way of outsourcing answer there is to the ecological crisis we responsibility to our institutions just as have created, it lies precisely where the excessive individualization can outsource causes do: in us, in what we desire, in what responsibility to corporations. Whether we are willing to do to fulfil those desires we like it or not, as individuals we and in what we are willing to tell ourselves ‘vote’ every day in countless ways, and
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responsible ecological citizenship requires such accounts could be offered), for it is doing so knowingly and deliberately, adequate to appeal to an ordinary sense squaring our private lives with our broader in which we are accustomed to thinking responsibilities. Thoreau reminds us that about relationships between knowledge our common ecological fate does not and responsibility. Knowledge of causal depend merely “on how you vote at the responsibility for damaging phenomena polls – the worst [person] is as strong as is ordinarily and unproblematically taken the best at that game; it does not depend to ground at least some degree of ethical on what kind of paper you drop into the responsibility (or at least to remove excuses ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of or mitigations). For instance, knowing that [person] you drop from your chamber into running a red light with my car might the street every morning” (Thoreau, 2001: cause an accident meaningfully changes 343). Ordinary, individual action is not the my relationship to any accident that ensues whole of the matter, to be sure, but it is from my running the light. In particular, undoubtedly an important part of it. my knowledge of that causal implication While knowledge is not a sufficient makes any carelessness or inaction I might condition for right action, it puts us on notice exhibit more ethically problematic and of our causal responsibility for ecological worthy of condemnation – and the fact that harm, thereby binding us explicitly to other people running red lights also causes corresponding ethical responsibilities. One other accidents does not detract from need not invoke an elaborate philosophical either my causal or ethical responsibilities justification for this claim (though for the harms wrought by my own actions.5
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Such pragmatics of responsibility apply to be contributing. Both the facts and to actions with ecological repercussions the courses of action they intimate shall as well. always be contested matters at some The ethical responsibility involved here level, but this should not lead academics can be thought of as (what is termed to resign themselves to the role of in moral philosophy) an imperfect duty purportedly neutral messengers, above – that is, an obligation whose exact the messy fray of advocacy. This is neither requirements are not identical for all to say that academics – or anyone else – persons in all contexts, but are sensitive must go to the lengths that Thoreau did to the contingent situation and capacities to awaken his neighbours and furnish of each agent and admit of varying them with the example of a life well lived It is not our job “ degrees of fulfilment. Such duty rests (though perhaps we should), nor is this to merely to come unevenly upon humanity, insofar as some say that individual action should enervate to amass and individuals contribute more to patterns of or displace institutional action. Rather, we to disseminate ecological destruction and some (often the in the knowledge professions ought to do knowledge, but also very same) are more capable of changing a better job of living up to the ecological how they live in consequential ways. responsibilities that come with the power to exemplify what (For an especially thoughtful discussion that knowledge imparts. n can and should be of how such duties might be understood done in respect of and practically addressed, see Gray [2018: Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Stefanie Mäder, what we know, or at 125–6].) I am certainly not suggesting that every person is required to live a life of Eileen Crist and Andy Scerri for their insight and least to exemplify encouragement. unrelenting, supererogatory self-sacrifice the urgency of for a common ecological good. Rather, I Notes doing something claim only that we are not entitled to act 1 Children, and adults with certain disabilities, or in respect of the as if we simply do not know, and thereby in certain social and economic circumstances, make exceptions of ourselves. We are each might reasonably be exempted from some or harms to which we meaningfully (if not solely and entirely) all of such ethical responsibility even when they know ourselves to be responsible for the individual who enters bear meaningful causal responsibility. contributing. the world each morning and what he or 2 I would also add that corporate executives and ” industry researchers bear a similar heightened she contributes to a shared ecological obligation, though I am far less optimistic that condition. What is more, this obligation these persons could be relied upon to recognize is valid on both egoistic and altruistic and act upon it. grounds (if not identically so). When we 3 For instance, Thomas Jefferson explicitly are all in the only boat, everyone has an recognized the evils of slavery and yet continued ethical as well as an existential investment to hold and profit from slaves, and many in keeping it afloat, whether for one’s own individuals aware of the cruelty of the meat and dairy industries continue to consume their sake or for that of others. products. As an example of the agent- and context- 4 Such practices of self-accounting have deep sensitivity of the ethical responsibility and diverse roots, and not only in the West, and I have discussed, it is worth ending range from religious and philosophical self- with a brief remark on the situation of examination to contemporary psychology and academics as public intellectuals who, as self-help movements. noted above, bear special, more expansive 5 An overly narrow focus upon institutions falls ecological obligations. It is not our job – prey to such a mistake, treating (however and I explicitly include myself – merely unwittingly) the harms caused by others as mitigations of one’s responsibility for the harms to come to amass and to disseminate caused by one’s own actions. knowledge, but also to exemplify what can and should be done in respect of what References we know, or at least to exemplify the Alexander S and Burdon P (2017) Wild democracy: A urgency of doing something in respect of biodiversity of resistance and renewal. The Ecological the harms to which we know ourselves Citizen 1: 45–54.
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Bookchin M (1989) Death of a small planet. The Progressive. Lowell JR (1954) Thoreau. In: Harding W, ed. Thoreau: Available at https://is.gd/9GmJ91 (accessed February A century of criticism. Southern Methodist University 2018). Press, Dallas, TX, USA: 44–53. We in the Buranelli V (1957) The case against Thoreau. Ethics 67: Maniates MF (2001) Individualization: Plant a tree, buy “ 257–68. a bike, save the world? Global Environmental Politics knowledge professions 1: 31–52. Crist E (2017) The affliction of human supremacy. The ought to do a better Plato (1997) Complete Works (edited by Cooper JM). Ecological Citizen 1: 61–4. Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, IN, USA. job of living up Dewey J (1954) The Public and its Problems. Alan Swallow, Plotica LP (2016) Thoreau and the politics of ordinary to the ecological Denver, USA. actions. Political Theory 44: 470–95. responsibilities that Diggins JP (1972) Thoreau, Marx, and the ‘riddle’ of Schulz K (2015) Pond scum: Henry David Thoreau’s alienation. Social Research 39: 571–98. come with the power moral myopia. The New Yorker, 19 October. Available Gray J (2018) Green fidelity and the grand finesse: at: https://is.gd/msryCM (accessed February 2018). that knowledge Stepping stones to the ‘Pacocene’. The Ecological Thoreau HD (1992) Walden and Resistance to Civil imparts.” Citizen 1: 121–9. Government (edited by Rossi W). WW Norton, New Hyman SE (1962) Henry Thoreau in our time. In: Paul S, York, NY, USA. ed. Thoreau: A collection of critical essays. Prentice- Thoreau HD (2001) Collected Essays and Poems (edited by Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: 23–36. Witherell EH). Library of America, New York, NY, USA.
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 171 Advertisement satellite image of west Namibia www.futurepasts.net Ma in Environmental Humanities PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE, GEOGRAPHY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND MORE. Our innovative interdisciplinary Masters is led by world-class environmental humanities scholars. Graduates of any discipline welcome. Places still available for 2019-20. www.bathspa.ac.uk/courses/pg-environmental-humanities/ [email protected]
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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 LONG ARTICLE
Future rivers, dams and ecocentrism
In this article the authors look at the subject of ecocentrism and future rivers, focusing mainly John J Piccolo, on the effects of hydroelectric production. Although rivers also have been dammed for irrigation and flood control in addition to hydroelectricity, the production of ‘carbon-free’ energy has Richard D recently been touted as a major solution to climate change. The trade-off between clean Durtsche, Johan energy and the negative impacts of hydropower offers much food for thought for ecocentric Watz, Martin theory – how much biodiversity loss are we justified in allowing now, for example, to avert complete ecosystem collapse in the future if we continue to rely on fossil fuel? The authors Österling and intend this article to be a starting point for discussion of rivers and ecocentrism in general, and Olle Calles they conclude with some specific suggestions regarding rivers and hydropower. About the authors or as long as we have been human, both up- and downstream. The seeds of John is Associate Professor people have wondered about our future grasslands and forests are carried in the Department of Frelationship with the rest of the downstream and deposited on fertile river Environmental and natural world. In particular, freshwater bends, whilst vast schools of fish migrate Life Sciences, Karlstad rivers and streams have played a pivotal upstream to their spawning grounds to University, Sweden. He role in the evolution of human culture. begin a new generation. In this drama, and the other authors Indeed, our relationships with rivers can human relationships with rivers, therefore, are members of Karlstad University’s River Research be said to be older than humanity itself are ancient, complex and multifaceted. Ecology and Management – ancestral species of the genus Homo Moreover, our own history of co-evolution Group. certainly shared the banks of rivers with with rivers is merely a microcosm of the myriad species before we became sapiens. story of how life on Earth has been formed Citation In the early days of human culture, the by, and helped to form, the freshwaters Piccolo JJ, Durtsche RD, that flow across its landscapes. benevolent river gods brought nourishing Watz J et al. (2019) Future floods to the fertile valleys where human The ways in which we humans have rivers, dams and ecocentrism. culture first began to flourish; if angered, carried on our relationships with rivers The Ecological Citizen 2: 17 3–7. the gods could withhold their flows, are diverse and have changed dramatically causing drought and famine, or unleash during the course of our history. Early Keywords their wrath in terrible floods that could on, we occupied the riverbanks, using Biodiversity; conservation; wash entire villages into the sea. These complex tools (a hallmark of Homo sapiens) sustainability; water same forces, responsible for the ebbs and to capture fish and collect water for flows of rivers, have shaped both river sustenance. Later, simple boats were built landscapes and the diverse forms of life to float downstream or paddle upstream to that have evolved to be dependent upon reach new foraging grounds or transport them. The forests and lush vegetation goods and people. Then, we learned to of river corridors provide shelter and divide portions of the river and divert its sustenance for humans and non-humans waters to sustain our domesticated herds alike – great herds need not migrate to with graze and drink, and eventually to mountains to find the source of the life- irrigate and cultivate wheat and other giving water because the water flows to plants. It was along the riverbanks then, their downstream pastures. The rivers that settlements were founded. Humans themselves are corridors for thousands of eventually learned that water courses could migratory species that often carry great be altered to bring the water to certain quantities of nutrients from distant places places, not only where it was needed,
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but when it was needed. Aldo Leopold’s of which we are a part (Washington et al., timeless essay ‘Song of the Gavilan’ (1949) 2017a, 2017b). In the rest of this article describes his experience of deer hunting we begin to address the issue of rivers in an old desert riverbed where Native and ecocentrism, perhaps raising more Americans long ago built step dams to questions than we answer. We take a control the flow of the life-giving water. In broad-brush approach in outlining both the early days, water wheels harnessed the human and non-human relationships immense hydropower of rivers and turned with rivers, focusing on the issue of the grindstones to make the flour that hydropower dams. We use one simple for thousands of years supplied humanity example of a salmon–human system in with the energy necessary for ever larger Sweden because we currently conduct settlements. ecological research there. Our intention Since the scientific and industrial is to open a discussion about rivers and revolutions, however, our ability to control ecocentrism, with the hope that we and river flow and harness hydropower has others can use this as a platform for a grown exponentially, as has the demand meaningful path forward. for irrigation and the energy required by the expanding human population. Most Freshwater – essential for life of the world’s largest river systems have on Earth but limited and been drastically altered by hydroelectric growing scarcer development, irrigation withdrawals, Freshwater is vital for most life. Owing “Many river flood control and pollution (Nilsson et al., to the physical laws of nature, it moves systems have been 2005). River ecosystems have not escaped across the surface of the Earth in rivers, the “biological annihilation” that much streams, brooks and creeks. For the so degraded that non-human life has been subjected to majority of terrestrial organisms, access they no longer (Ceballos et al., 2017). Many river systems to freshwater limits their existence more sustain even a have been so degraded that they no longer than any other factor; without access to fraction of the life sustain even a fraction of the life that they freshwater, most terrestrial organisms once did. Indeed, freshwater biodiversity is quickly perish. Human culture, too, is that they once did. among the most threatened on the planet born of freshwater. Evidence for most Indeed, freshwater (Vörösmarty et al., 2010; Winemiller et al., early human civilizations is found along biodiversity is among 2016). Those free-flowing and unpolluted watercourses. The Tigris–Euphrates River the most threatened rivers that remain are under increasing Valley (now under threat of hydropower threat of development, and the human development) is known as the cradle of on the planet. ” relationship with rivers is becoming civilization, and great cities ancient and even more one-sided. Continued human modern – including Babylon, Cairo, Rome, population growth and increasingly Xi’an, London, Paris, New York and Seoul rampant consumerism, as well as further – are all founded on the banks of rivers. dam development for industrial irrigation Indeed, it might be said that rivers are and hydroelectric offsets to reduce carbon as vital for human culture as they are for emissions, all bode ill for the future terrestrial life; the agricultural revolution, health of river ecosystems. How shall we which primed us for the cultural and think and act in an ethical and sustaining scientific revolutions that followed, was manner towards future rivers? How made possible by domesticating grains should we reconcile the ever-increasing (Harari, 2014). This could only have human demand for freshwater and clean been accomplished through delivery of energy with the intrinsic health of river freshwater to stationary settlements. ecosystems? Yet, despite our utter dependence upon Ecocentrism can be broadly defined freshwater for both our past and our as a worldview that acknowledges the future, no other biota is more imperilled inherent values and rights of both human by human activity than that of the Earth’s and non-human life and the ecosystems freshwater habitats (Dudgeon et al., 2006).
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Ecocentrism and salmon streams from the river mouth – a locally important I (JP) am standing waist-deep in the hydroelectric dam. That the fish have rushing water of a river in middle Sweden, continued to survive is a testimony to looking down at several landlocked their resilience, combined with the hard salmon or trout fingerlings engaged work of two generations of local biologists. in their characteristic ‘drift-feeding’ From an ecocentric perspective these fish behaviour. They hold themselves in place have a right to their future existence; it “The road to river in the river by swimming at the same would appear most of the local biologists, restoration in Sweden speed as the current, and they capture managers and citizens agree – salmon will be long and small invertebrates that drift past. The fishing has been prohibited here for a winding, and we feel best feeding positions, where fish can long time, and restoration efforts have obtain the most energy and grow fastest, continued to expand. Across the country, a great sense of loss are highly contested. The ancestors of a growing number of people aim to protect for river ecosystems. these landlocked salmon and trout have and enhance their local migratory fish Much of what has populations through fish passage and even been foraging in these same places since been lost is unknown the glaciers receded from Sweden some dam removal. At the same time, however, and may never be 10,000 years ago, but salmon very much human demand for hydroelectric power as we know them today have been shaped and freshwater continues to rise. regained.” by (and have shaped) rivers for at least the Sweden enjoys one of the world’s highest past 20 million years (Behnke, 2002). Most standards of living, gender equality, of the 100 or so extant species of salmonids democracy and social care. It also gets worldwide spend significant parts of their approximately half of its electricity from lives in rivers; their relationship with hydropower, with the result that it now flowing water is many million of years has just a handful of free-flowing rivers older than is ours – yet in the past few remaining. Although progress has been hundred years we have driven countless made in understanding the effects of populations of salmon to extinction, and hydropower on salmon, the effects on most those that remain are often at less than other riverine species are almost unknown 10% of their historic abundance. Biologists (Calles and Greenberg, 2009). We are proud in Sweden, in fact, were among the first to to live in a country that is among the first publish studies on drift-feeding ecology to declare its intention to become fossil (Nilsson, 1957; Kalleberg, 1958); they were fuel-free within one generation. But the also among the first to understand the road to river restoration in Sweden will be eco-evolutionary processes that have long and winding, and we feel a great sense resulted in river-specific, locally adapted of loss for river ecosystems. Much of what salmon species. Thus, they preserved has been lost is unknown and may never be many unique, river-specific populations regained. The lessons learned in Sweden when Sweden underwent intensive will be valuable for people elsewhere who hydroelectric power development in the are grappling to restore rivers, and more 20th century. Although far from ideal, this so for those that are planning further preservation at least means that there are hydroelectric development. many remnant salmon populations which can be reintroduced to rivers as they are Difficult decisions for restored. managing freshwater Today there are very few undammed Ecocentrics, while recognizing intrinsic rivers remaining in Sweden. The parents of non-human value, also recognize the the fish I am watching were wild salmon or pivotal role human action will play in the trout who returned to the river six or seven future of the ecosphere. In the coming years after they were hatched. For the past century, humanity has to meet at least 50–100 years, many of their kind have met three daunting challenges: we will need with an impassable concrete migration to (1) significantly reduce our ecological barrier, typically only a few kilometres footprint, through drastic reduction
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 175 Future rivers, dams and ecocentrism www.ecologicalcitizen.net
of consumption (particularly in the distributed solar and wind (e.g. Lopes et Global North); (2) openly address and al., 2007). find equitable solutions to the problem 3 Least desirably, where new hydropower of human overpopulation; and (3) end facilities are inevitable, we should work our reliance on fossil fuels. These three to the best of our ability to provide the challenges are interconnected in a myriad management guidance and technical of ways. If in a century we are able to make assistance that will result in the most real progress in setting humanity on a ecologically sensitive dam projects sustainable trajectory, the hope is that possible. some significant portion of biodiversity will remain and ecosystems will not The current case of Balkan rivers collapse. If it takes much more than a (Wiesner, 2018) provides a very important century, the ecosphere as we know it faces and timely example. As freshwater a grim future. scientists and conservationists, we “If in a century we Given that it is likely to take many decades would first and foremost do all we can to are able to make to turn the ship around, and that ending support keeping Balkan rivers wild and real progress in the fossil fuel era must be a global goal, free-flowing. We realize, however, that setting humanity existing and future hydropower facilities the people of the region want livelihoods will continue to serve as significant and that hydropower contributes to a on a sustainable carbon-free energy sources. In order to clean-energy future for all. Can Balkan trajectory, the achieve global sustainability, therefore, energy demands, compatible with a hope is that some river ecologists will need to reconcile their living Earth, be met by alternative significant portion goal of protecting aquatic biodiversity with sustainable energy sources while sparing humanity’s long-term goals. Our advice for the region from damming these rivers? of biodiversity achieving such a reconciliation is simple It seems technically possible, but is the will remain and and straightforward, although unlikely to international community prepared to step ecosystems will not be popular: up support for alternative sustainable collapse.” 1 In those parts of the world that have future options without hydropower? already been extensively developed for This will require active cooperation in hydropower, work towards a dam-free areas of social and ecological expertise future by accepting that hydropower is far outside the knowledge of freshwater only an interim solution to society’s long- scientists, along with the political will term sustainability. Start by identifying to make it happen. We sincerely hope those dams that are no longer effective this can be realized, but in the worst and prioritize these for removal. In places case (and these words are difficult to where dams cannot yet be removed, write) – that of a decision to develop continue to develop management a new hydropower dam – freshwater solutions such as environmental flows, scientists must be prepared to offer fish passage solutions, habitat restoration technical expertise to maintain as much and genetic rescue that can maintain biodiversity and ecosystem function as and protect as much biodiversity and possible while awaiting future removal of ecosystem function as possible. such projects. As Weisner (2018) writes, it 2 In places with plans for future seems absurd that millions of euros are hydropower development, we should being spent on river restoration in the work for international collaboration at rest of Europe while thousands of dams multiple scales in society (e.g. political are being planned in the Balkans. and scientific) that could lead to other, Ecocentrism is multi-scalar in both time less-damaging carbon-neutral forms of and space. Freshwater ecologists will need energy being developed. There are now to think both locally and globally, both many real alternatives to developing short- and long-term, in assessing their centralized hydroelectric grids – with approach to future rivers. Ensuring a fossil perhaps the most promising including fuel-free future will go a long way towards
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the long-term flourishing of the ecosphere; Kalleberg H (1958) Observations in a stream tank of without global solutions to climate territoriality and competition in juvenile salmon and change, short-term and local gains will be trout (Salmo salar L. and S. trutta L.). Institute of Freshwater Research, Drottningholm, Sweden. meaningless in the long run. Conversely, Leopold A (1949) A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches increased hydropower development will Here and There. Oxford University Press, New York, “Ecocentric river continue the degradation of freshwater NY, USA. ecologists will need ecosystems, already among the most Lopes J, Hatziargyriou N, Mutale J et al. (2007). imperilled on the planet. Ecocentric Integrating distributed generation into electric to persevere in river ecologists will need to persevere in power systems: A review of drivers, challenges and thinking globally and thinking globally and acting locally, and opportunities. Electric Power Systems Research 77: 1189–203 . acting locally, and work tirelessly and creatively to balance Nilsson C, Reidy C, Dynesius M and Revenga C (2005) present and future concerns for Earth. n work tirelessly and Fragmentation and flow regulation of the world’s creatively to balance large river systems. Science 308: 405–8. References Nilsson N-A (1957) On the feeding habits of trout in a present and future Behnke R (2002) Trout and Salmon of North America. The stream in northern Sweden. Institute of Freshwater Free Press, New York, NY, USA. concerns for Earth. Research, Drottningholm, Sweden. ” Calles O and Greenberg L (2009) Connectivity is a two- Vörösmarty C, McIntyre P, Gessner M et al. (2010) way street – the need for a holistic approach to fish Global threats to human water security and river passage problems in regulated rivers. River Research biodiversity. Nature 467: 555–61. and Applications 25: 1268–86. Winemiller K, McIntyre P, Castello L et al. (2016) Ceballos G, Ehrlich P and Dirzob R (2017) Biological Balancing hydropower and biodiversity in the annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction Amazon, Congo, and Mekong. Science 351: 128–9. signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Washington H, Taylor B, Kopnina H et al. (2017a) Why Sciences 114: E6089–96. ecocentrism is the key pathway to sustainability. The Dudgeon D, Arthington A, Gessner M et al. (2006) Ecological Citizen 1: 35–41. Freshwater biodiversity: importance, threats, status Washington H, Taylor B, Kopnina H et al. (2017b) and conservation challenges. Biological Reviews 81: Statement of Commitment to Ecocentrism. Available 163–82. at https://is.gd/ecocentrism (accessed October 2018). Harari Y (2014) Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. Wiesner C (2018) Fighting the disappearance of Balkan HarperCollins, New York, NY, USA. rivers. The Ecological Citizen 2: 131–5.
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 2–4 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.
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About the artwork: Series Oil and acrylic on canvas. These paintings are both watery abstractions and documents of encounters Higher-resolution versions: by Clare Price between pigments, water and oil. https://is.gd/ecoartwork
Ecocentric reworking of Deep Ecology eight-point platform www.ecologicalcitizen.net
An ecocentric reworking of the Deep Ecology eight-point platform Stan Rowe
1 The well-being and flourishing of the living Earth and its many organic/inorganic parts have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.
2 Richness and diversity of Earth’s ecosystems, as well as the organic forms that they nurture and support, contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
3 Humans have no right to reduce the diversity of Earth’s ecosystems and their vital constituents, organic and inorganic.
4 The flourishing of human life and culture is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The creative flourishing of Earth and its multitudinous non-human parts, organic and inorganic, requires such a decrease.
5 Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
6 Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
7 The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
8 Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.
For more on this visit https://is.gd/eco8points
182 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE
Rights of rivers enter the mainstream
By offering a solution to the environmental challenges of our day, Earth law may be the next Grant Wilson great rights-based movement. The belief that non-human nature – including the species and ecosystems that comprise our world – has inherent rights has galvanized an international and Darlene movement. Building on the breakthrough of three rivers securing rights recognition, Earth May Lee Law Center works on the front line by partnering with local communities to secure rights for rivers and wider ecosystems. Empowering nature also empowers communities because when About the authors advocates see themselves as rights defenders, the stakes are raised, and the relationships Grant is the Directing between people and the environment are transformed. Based on this background, this article Attorney, and Darlene an explores the origins of Earth law, the importance of rivers, how Earth law can strengthen river Executive Director, protections and current river initiatives, and it also details how to get involved. of Earth Law Center (for more information see www.earthlawcenter.org). he famed eco-theologian Thomas reason is that our overarching legal system Berry proposed the idea that a deep treats rivers as property under the law – Citation understanding of the functioning of something that can be bought and sold for T Wilson G and Lee DM (2019) the evolving, interdependent universe as profit. Instead, we need to acknowledge Rights of rivers enter the a whole could inspire and guide our own waterways as complex living entities – mainstream. The Ecological effective functioning as individuals. His subjects rather than objects – that possess Citizen 2: 18 3–7. writings exhorted readers to embrace the rights. The legal movement for the rights idea that “the universe is a communion of of rivers may be our best hope of restoring Keywords subjects rather than a collection of objects” and protecting Earth’s precious river Earth jurisprudence; rights (Swimme and Berry, 1992: 243). And ecosystems. of nature; water therefore, Berry (2015: 13) writes: At least three rivers worldwide now enjoy recognition of their fundamental rights, Our relationship with the earth involves putting into practice an innovative legal something more than pragmatic use, approach to change our relationship with academic understanding, or aesthetic waterways. These are the Vilcabamba River appreciation. A truly human intimacy with in Ecuador, the Whanganui River in New the earth and with the entire natural world Zealand and the Atrato River in Colombia. is needed. Our children should be properly Legal rights now possessed by these rivers introduced to the world in which they live. include the rights to flow, to perform essential functions within their ecosystems, There is no better time than now to to be free from pollution, to feed and be fed embrace a worldview that sees humans as by sustainable aquifers, to retain their native integral parts of the living network, instead biodiversity and to undergo restoration. of separate from and ‘above’ it. These are only a few examples of putting One embodiment of this worldview is an rights-based theory into practice in emerging grassroots legal movement for the protection and restoration of rivers. the rights of rivers. Rivers across the world Advocates for this approach hope that, one suffer from pollution, habitat destruction, day, governments will recognize the legal over fish i ng, e xcessive diversions a nd a flur r y rights of all rivers, just as human rights law of dam building. Current environmental has evolved to recognize the rights of all laws, while important, are unable to reverse people. If these hopes are fulfilled, rivers this relentless trend of degradation. The key will not only survive but flourish.
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 183 Rights of rivers enter the mainstream www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Rivers at risk concrete in Mexico City, London, New York, Rivers are the lifeblood of Earth. They feed Paris and Moscow. us, nourish us and refresh our spirits. They In sum, rivers across the world suffer support not only countless ecosystems but from an onslaught of harms. This not only also almost all terrestrial life on this planet threatens the rivers and their ecosystems, as a vital component of the water cycle. but also humans, who rely upon clean, Rivers are born wild. They follow gravity, bountiful fresh water to survive. Fortunately, flowing towards the oceans. They flood, we are not too late. Earth’s watersheds are “We have diverted, nourishing floodplain habitat – critical sick but not dead. When given the chance, polluted and tamed feeding and spawning grounds for fish. But rivers restore themselves to health, just as our rivers. Those we have diverted, polluted and tamed our all of nature does. We must choose a new rivers. Those who knew the planet’s waters a destiny and consider the needs of all other who knew the few generations ago would be hard-pressed species who call Earth home, not to mention planet’s waters a to recognize them today. future generations. few generations One major threat to rivers is dams, which Earth jurisprudence as a solution ago would be hard- disrupt flooding cycles, reduce flows and drain wetlands. There are over 57,000 large Laws safeguarding rivers and other pressed to recognize dams worldwide and thousands more are ecosystems have not kept pace with rapidly them today.” planned. Considering dams and other forms expanding human activity. Not only are the of hydro-modification, only one-third of challenges greater today than when many the world’s largest 177 rivers are still free- landmark environmental laws were passed, flowing (International Rivers, 2018). Dams but our understanding of the complexity of transform a river from a free-flowing ecosystems has evolved as well. The good river ecosystem to an artificial slack-water news is that a solution has appeared, in the reservoir habitat. Changes in temperature, form of a legal and ethical framework which chemical composition, dissolved oxygen recognizes that nature has inherent rights to levels and the physical properties of a exist, thrive and evolve. This framework has reservoir are often toxic to the aquatic plants been variously termed ‘Earth jurisprudence’, and animals that evolved with a given river ‘wild law’ and ‘Earth law’. system. Reservoirs also tend to host non- One of the earliest landmarks of Earth native and invasive species (e.g. snails, algae jurisprudence is Christopher Stone’s famous and predatory fish) that further undermine essay ‘Should trees have standing?’ (Stone, the river’s natural ecosystems. 1972), which was perhaps the first work to Some rivers are so over-diverted and systematically lay out the precedent and physically altered that they no longer legal argument for rights of nature. South reach the ocean. For example, the massive African environmental attorney Cormac Colorado River in the US once fed a Cullinan published Wild Law in 2002 (with a 2-million-acre delta but now typically second edition in 2011), building on Stone’s peters out long before reaching the sea. arguments to offer practical applications Furthermore, many rivers are on life and reach a broader audience. In 2009 support from excessive pollution. Half the the UN established the Harmony with world’s major rivers are being seriously Nature programme to help define a non- polluted or depleted (Nature Conservancy, anthropocentric relationship with nature 2015). For example, more than half of and track global developments of the rights streams and rivers in the US are so polluted of nature (www.harmonywithnatureun.org). that they may not support aquatic life An accessible and detailed survey of the (Environmental Protection Agency, 2009). current state of Earth jurisprudence is David Some rivers have been built over entirely, Boyd’s (2017) Rights of Nature. with the pressures of incessant human Establishing legal rights for nature has growth being prioritized over the ancient many benefits. It enables ecosystems lives of rivers. Such so-called ‘invisible to defend their rights in court via rivers’ still flow under layers of urban representation by designated guardians
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(similar to the way that legal entities such as n In March 2017, New Zealand’s Parliament corporations are represented). It also gives formally enacted a treaty that recognized nature a ‘seat at the table’ so to speak – the Whanganui River as a legal person ensuring that laws and policies are written with fundamental rights, including in the interest of all life. Finally, under this the right to sue, making it the first new paradigm, the burden of proof can stand-alone river in the world to gain shift to those proposing activities that are recognized legal rights. The Whanganui potentially harmful to nature, rather than Act also allocated NZ$80 million towards the other way around. river restoration, helping ensure that its The rights of nature movement is already rights would be enforced (Roy, 2017). well underway. Globally, Ecuador became n Just days after the Whanganui River the first nation to amend its constitution to victory, the Uttarakhand High Court include rights of nature in 2008 (Romero, in India recognized two rivers – 2008). In 2012, Bolivia passed its first of the Ganga and Yamuna – as ‘living two national rights of nature laws (Vidal, entities’ with fundamental rights, 2011). In the US, dozens of communities also allowing designated humans to “The last several have passed local laws recognizing nature’s represent the rivers in court (Safi, years have seen a rights, including an ordinance in Santa 2017). Later, unfortunately, the Supreme number of important Monica, California, in 2013 and a resolution Court of India overturned this decision developments for the in Crestone, Colorado, in 2018 (Saguache (Vaidyanathan, 2017). News, 2018). n In May 2017, Colombia’s Constitutional rights of rivers.” Of course, the rights of nature approach Court granted rights to the Atrato River to strengthening river protection and and ordered the government to clean up restoration is not without its challenges. For its waters (Ebus, 2017). This case was instance, multiple human stakeholders with brought on behalf of Afro-Colombian conflicting interests can make appointing and Indigenous communities affected guardians difficult. Property and commercial by the degradation of the river from interests can complicate the enforcement of gold mining and other pollution sources. river rights, particularly since few judges and The Court found that the Atrato River is lawmakers have in-depth knowledge about “subject to the rights that implicate its Earth jurisprudence. The consideration of protection, conservation, maintenance local community rights also needs to be and in this specific case, restoration.” factored into any decision for river health, so n In April 2018, Colombia’s Supreme Court the complexity of balancing different rights recognized the entire Colombian Amazon increases when rivers gain legal rights. (including the Amazon’s waterways and all related ecosystems) as an ‘entity Rights of rivers subject of rights’. The legal victory The last several years have seen a number was initiated by a group of Colombian of important developments for the rights youth, who challenged the government’s of rivers. These include the following inaction on climate change, particularly examples: as arising from the deforestation of the n Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution recognizes Amazon (Moloney, 2018). the inherent rights of nature, including nature’s right to be restored. These Globalizing the rights were put to the test in a 2011 case rights of rivers movement regarding the Vilcabamba River, which These handful of legal victories are only had been impaired from a road-widening the beginning of an emerging movement project. The river, defending its own rights to give rights to all rivers. Through Earth as the plaintiff, won a judgment from Law Center, we work with organizations the Provincial Court of Justice of Loja, worldwide to make this global goal a which ordered the river to be restored reality. Other groups have launched their (Pecharroman, 2018). own campaigns as well.
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 185 Rights of rivers enter the mainstream www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Legal changes that recognize the inherent is believed the be the deepest inland rights of species and ecosystems will create waterway in Africa. If this campaign is more effective and durable mechanisms for successful, the River Ethiope could be the protecting the natural world. Beginning with first river in Africa to gain legal rights one town or region and extending locally recognition (Dafe, 2013). creates both community commitment to the n Earth Law Center, Earth Thrive and environment and governmental protections International Rivers are seeking legal that span jurisdictions and support a cleaner rights for rivers in Serbia. Serbia is and healthier environment. Victories at the home to many of Europe’s last free- local level also build interest and a sense flowing rivers, especially in the Balkans. of momentum about Earth law. As time But these waterways are under threat goes by, and more governments grant from over 800 planned dams in Serbia As time goes “ rights to riparian ecosystems, the idea will alone. Establishing legal rights for by, and more gain in political credibility and develop a rivers would give local communities and governments grant groundswell of support. Local work does environmentalists the ability to enforce rights to riparian not happen in isolation: victories for the the right of these rivers to flow (Earth rights of nature anywhere in the world Law Center, 2018). ecosystems, the help to build international legal norms, and n Several communities in the US are idea will gain in the political will for collective solutions to working to establish legal rights for political credibility global problems. local rivers and their watersheds. For and develop a As a practical tool for groups wishing example, the organization Boulder groundswell of to pursue this approach to the protection Rights of Nature (of which Earth Law of rivers, Earth Law Center and partners Center is a member) seeks legal rights support. ” developed a Universal Declaration of for the entire Boulder Creek Watershed. the Rights of Rivers (Earth Law Center, By focusing on the watershed level, 2017). This Declaration also aims to build the campaign seeks to align the law international consensus on the fundamental with the functions of ecosystems (see rights to which all rivers are entitled. It is www.boulderrightsofnature.org). based on international legal precedent as well as ecological principles of river health. These are only a few examples of many, Already, the Declaration is a primary basis with Colombia, Canada, Pakistan and for rights of rivers campaigns around the France being amongst the other places world. Below are a few examples: where Earth Law Center and partners are n A coalition of leading water experts are working to establish rights for rivers. With seeking legal rights for several rivers in growing global support, we are excited to Mexico. One is the Magdalena River – the be part of the new victories that will be won last free-flowing river in Mexico City from over the years to come. an original complement of 45 (Inzunza, 2016). Another is the heavily polluted Looking ahead Atoyac River in Puebla, where the 2018 Christopher Stone observed decades ago, Living Rivers Forum brought together “Throughout legal history, each successive rights of rivers experts from across the extension of rights to some new entity world with the goal of restoring this has been, theretofore, a bit unthinkable” troubled waterway to health. The third is (Stone, 1972: 453). From just a few voices the San Pedro Mezquital, a near pristine musing about the mere possibility of river ecosystem threated by a large dam rights of nature, this idea is now entering project. the mainstream of legal thought. As the n Earth Law Center and the River Ethiope developments outlined above show, in a Trust Foundation have launched an short amount of time we have moved from initiative to establish legal rights for the the unthinkable to the doable. River Ethiope in Nigeria. This waterway As more and more legal precedent is sacred to local communities and emerges, the idea of giving rights to
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nature is becoming increasingly common. Earth Law Center (2018) Groups to seek fundamental Legislators, lawyers, judges, educators and legal rights for Serbia’s wild rivers and ecosystems. business people are all realizing that we can Available at https://is.gd/ZOJ4ct (accessed October 2018). thrive in harmony with the planet under this new paradigm. Each catastrophic flood, Ebus B (2017) Colombia’s constitutional court grants rights to the Atrato River and orders the government heat wave, and reported extinction serves to clean up its waters. Mongabay, 22 May. Available to remind us of the pressing ecological at https://is.gd/mphcwa (accessed October 2018). challenges of our day. Concurrently, each Environmental Protection Agency (2009) National rights of nature victory reminds us that we Rivers and Streams Assessment 2008–2009 Results. “The effectiveness have an inspiring grass-roots solution that Environmental Protection Agency (USA). Available at of legal changes will is taking hold. https://is.gd/Wlh3mb (accessed October 2018). ultimately depend According to a study published in June International Rivers (2018) Questions and Answers 2018 by researchers at the University of about Large Dams. Available at https://is.gd/WZbe5V on a broader cultural Pennsylvania, roughly 25% of people need (accessed October 2018). shift, without which to take a stand before large-scale social Inzunza A (2016) Mexico City’s invisible rivers. CityLab, the enforcement of change occurs (Centola et al., 2018). So, 9 June. Available at https://is.gd/aKdATx (accessed Earth law cannot the effectiveness of legal changes will October 2018). happen. ultimately depend on a broader cultural Moloney A (2018) Colombia’s top court orders ” shift, without which the enforcement of government to protect Amazon forest in landmark Earth law cannot happen. With respect to case. Reuters, 7 April. Available at https://is.gd/rXUtwt (accessed October 2018). rivers, each of us has many things we can do today to contribute to such a shift: Nature Conservancy (2015) Annual report. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA, USA. Available at n Consider joining a local river clean-up https://is.gd/REZqq8 (accessed October 2018). campaign. Pecharroman L (2018) Rights of nature: Rivers that n Sign the Universal Declaration of the can stand in court. Resources 7(1). Available at Rights of Rivers (https://is.gd/ELCrr). https://is.gd/STJfQY (accessed October 2018). n Start your own river rights group (for Romero S (2008) President wins support for charter in advice on how to do so, contact Earth Law Ecuador. New York Times, 28 September. Available at Center, via [email protected]). https://is.gd/1rikVI (accessed October 2018). n Sign up for the Earth Law Center’s Roy EA (2017) New Zealand river granted same legal monthly newsletter (https://is.gd/ELCnl), rights as human being. The Guardian, 16 March. volunteer (https://is.gd/ELCvol) or donate Available at https://is.gd/AmiG0W (accessed October (https://is.gd/ELCdon). 2018).
n Write to your local city council or board of Safi M (2017) Ganges and Yamuna rivers granted same trustees to ask for consideration of river legal rights as human beings. The Guardian, 21 March. rights. n Available at https://is.gd/w2iuJm (accessed October 2018). References Saguache News (2018) Nature’s rights recognized in Berry T (2015) The Dream of the Earth. Counterpoint, Crestone. Saguache Today, 26 July. Available at Berkeley, CA, USA. https://is.gd/aGQnp6 (accessed October 2018). Stone C (1972) Should trees have standing? Towards Boyd D (2017) The Rights of Nature: A legal revolution that rights for natural objects. Southern California Law could save the world. ECW Press, Toronto, ON, Canada. Review 45: 450–501. Centola D, Becker J, Brackbill D and Baronchelli A (2018) Swimme B and Berry T (1992) The Universe Story. Experimental evidence for tipping points in social HarperCollins, San Francisco, CA, USA. convention. Science 360: 1116–9. Vaidyanathan A (2017) No, Ganga and Yamuna are Cullinan C (2011) Wild Law: A manifesto for Earth justice not living entities, says Supreme Court. NDTV News, (2nd edition). Chelsea Green, Hartford, VT, USA. 7 July. Available at https://is.gd/lfMaxr (accessed Dafe I (2013) River Ethiope. International Rivers. Available October 2018). at https://is.gd/fZUUZn (accessed October 2018). Vidal J (2011) Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights Earth Law Center (2017) Universal declaration of river with equal status for Mother Earth. The Guardian, rights. Available at https://is.gd/ELCrr (accessed 11 April. Available at https://is.gd/dZFdSo (accessed October 2018). October 2018).
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 187 An owl-fly Cézac, France
Joe Gray
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https://deepgreen.earth www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE
Dandelions are divine
Begun as a guest homily at a local Unitarian Universalist Church, this essay discusses the Bill Vitek significance of Henry David Thoreau’s 1851 proclamation, “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” It outlines the efforts that have been made, in the nearly 170 years since, to About the author embody that Wildness – efforts across literature, philosophy, theology, science, medicine Bill Vitek is Professor of and agriculture. This new perspective represents a better way of understanding our origins Philosophy and Chair of the and the very nature of the unfolding, creative, emergent universe. It demands that we Department of Humanities rethink our basic assumptions about the relations between human beings and the other- and Social Sciences at than-human world. Thoreau’s proclamation and modern evidence for its correctness also Clarkson University, offer a path of reconciliation to ancient wisdom, and opportunities to heal a wounded Earth Potsdam, NY, USA. He is and our wounded selves. also a project team member with the Land Institute’s Ecosphere Studies Program, e are in the midst of an exciting livestock, towns and villages. Thoreau’s Salina, KS, USA. new story being told – and by talk that evening must have sounded like W ‘new’ I mean about 170 years lunacy and blasphemy, not just against Citation old (cf. Mowe, 2016). It is a story about the his audience’s fundamental religious Vitek B (2019) Dandelions are way things are and how they came to be; beliefs, but against their fundamentalist divine. The Ecological Citizen a story in which our much-touted human beliefs in human superiority and the 2: 189–93. ingenuity plays a big part and divinities power of human technology to remake have only supporting roles. Wildness is at the world. Keywords the centre of this new story. A perennial Surely we have made some progress Agriculture; imagination: creative, improvisational, since Thoreau spoke those words? But anthropocentrism; partially lawless, alive and full of surprises. the evidence is mixed and in some cases human supremacy A wildness with desire, agency and a will points to matters being far worse now to act – present not just in those agents we than in previous centuries. It leads to the call ‘self-conscious’, but in all things from dismal conclusion that even at our most quasars to quarks, cells to ecosystems.1 ecologically aware and educated best we are little better and maybe worse than Wildness Thoreau’s perplexed listeners. In the spring of 1851 Henry David Thoreau first said, “In Wildness is the preservation Weeds of the world” (Thoreau, 1862). He said it I recently attended a gathering of to what must have been a very confused environmental studies faculty and audience at Concord’s Lyceum. For those students at a small liberal arts campus in in attendance, wildness was the very New York State’s Capital Region. We were opposite of their world. Wildness was outside on a lovely greenspace eating where demons lived: a dark, forbidding healthy, local food and talking about the and dangerous place. At that time it was sorts of things that environmental studies not enough to avoid such places; it was students and faculty talk about. In this every good New Englander’s sacred duty group there was a young boy, four or five and secular right to subdue the wild years old, who was running around with wherever it was found, to drive it out of its the familiar fluffy white globe containing dark corners, to transform and improve the seeds of future dandelions (Taraxacum it into a pastoral landscape of crops and officinale).
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 189 Dandelions are divine www.ecologicalcitizen.net
As someone who is both an admirer of almost any other fruit or vegetable. The Thoreau and who grew up surrounded by blossoms can be made into wine; the the American fondness for lawns, I found roots, roasted and ground, used as a myself conflicted. Here was this bit of wild coffee substitute (Zachos, 2017). Beautiful nature, impatient for the wind to scatter in its own way, all parts of the plant have its seeds, hitching a ride on a child’s been used for medicinal purposes (Ferree, urge to play. The common dandelion is no date). What a perfect plant! What a the very definition of wildness. It is a wonderful example of wild nature’s willful perennial plant with tap roots that can power to preserve itself and to contribute grow to a depth of ten feet (3 metres), to its surroundings! which, if broken, will send up new shoots But there was another side to the (Hourdajian, 2006). Its flower head looks argument, one better known and with like one blossom, but in fact its hundreds stronger sentiments in its favour. I was of yellow petals are each complete flowers. on a college campus mostly free of such Bees and birds love dandelions, but their dandelions; a campus that surely spends pollination work is unnecessary since time and money keeping its lawns looking dandelions reproduce asexually (Bradbury, the way they have for generations, even 2015). They can survive in almost any though much of the US is not hospitable climate and at elevations ranging from to turf grasses, none of which are native sea level to 12,000 feet (3500 metres). species. But certainly no one in this Introduced to North America from Eurasia company would alert the parents and for their nutritional and medicinal value, urge them to better control their son’s dandelions contain more vitamin A than behavior. Should I? More drastically should
“The common dandelion is the very definition of wildness.”
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I distract the boy, reprimand or restrain nearly eliminated by the slow development him somehow, this devil child behind the of annual-disturbance grain agriculture innocence – costing the college money, 10,000–12,000 years ago. With its powerful spreading a vicious weed and this only dualisms pitting crop against weed and weeks before graduation ceremonies when livestock against predator, it established Ancient and the grounds have to look their best? attitudes that nature was to be subdued “ The facts were on the side of intervention. or ignored. And it warned in no uncertain indigenous Annually, lawn care is a $40 billion industry terms that any plant, animal or person understandings of in the US, where 90 million pounds interfering with agriculture’s need to a wild, creative and (40 million kilos) of fertilizer and 78 million expand would be evicted, enslaved or sacred Earth were pounds (35 million kilos) of pesticides are exterminated. Because expand it must. used annually just to keep lawns thriving, The thinking goes something like this: interrupted, driven bright green and free of insect pests and surplus food feeds more people and more underground and weeds. Lawns also consume massive people need more surplus food. This is nearly eliminated by amounts of water – more than US farmers called ‘growth’ – and it exhausts the soil the slow development use to grow wheat, corn or any other and makes it unproductive. agricultural crop (Staff, 2011). The boy may The people who harvested the of annual-disturbance as well have been spray-painting graffiti unprecedented energy bounty from grain agriculture on one of the college buildings. He too was extracting soil carbon to grow annual 10,000–12,000 grain crops created large, complex, wildness itself and acting in the spirit of years ago. Thoreau. But he was on the wrong side of energy-intensive cultures beginning ” cultural values that run deep, even among around 5000 years ago. We study their the ecologically aware students and faculty contributions to philosophy, literature, the in attendance that evening.2 arts and sciences, and theology. We point to their works as hallmarks of human The 10,000-year problem civilization, and their influence can be Half of all the plant species now growing seen in many national and global cultural, in North America can be classified as educational and political institutions, weeds, and agriculture is a leading including the justification and acceptance cause of species extinction worldwide of dominion over the human and other- (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, than-human world. When our thinking 2005). How did things come to be this is binary – either/or – it is an echo of way? Here is a very compressed answer. the attitudes that began with agriculture. Ancient and indigenous understandings And it is so entrenched in our intellectual, of a wild, creative and sacred Earth were cultural and spiritual DNA that it is mostly interrupted, driven underground and invisible to us.
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This is a good time to re-state Sir Albert Howard, J Russell Smith, Eugene Thoreau’s dictum that in Wildness is and Howard Odum, J Stan Rowe, and James the preservation of the world. Why? Lovelock to name a few. Twentieth century Wildness is the universe’s metabolism of advances in ecology, evolutionary biology continuous process and productivity. It and agro-ecology make possible an produces atmospheres, elements, energy- alternative agriculture that mimics nature, conversion systems like photosynthesis, rather than attempting to subdue it. cells, organs, organisms, ecosystems, Fast forward to 1976. Wes Jackson, a plant social systems, consciousness and self- geneticist and one of the early founders consciousness from the simplest of of the modern environmental movement, ingredients. Over and over again. It is an returns to his native Kansas to start The unprecedented good not just for humans, Land Institute (https://landinstitute.org/). but for all beings across the galaxies, big Jackson and his small team of scientists or small – be they atom, cell, molecule, have sought to solve what Jackson calls the plant, animal, ecosystem or ecosphere. 10,000-year-old problem of agriculture: the mining of soil-carbon with annual Worldview evolution disturbance, monocultures and annuals; Thoreau and the Transcendentalists – and and with permanent erosion and loss of the Romantics before them – were onto ecological integrities as a necessary result. this. They read ancient scriptures from Soil, Jackson suggests, is more important “Jackson envisions a around the world and this allowed them than oil. His solution is to replace annual future when all grain to see and experience the natural world grain crops (that currently take up 70–80% crops are grown in with fresh eyes and new perspectives. of all the acres in agriculture worldwide) From there we can chart the course of an with perennial varieties, and to grow them agro-ecosystems, ongoing movement toward embodying in mixtures or polycultures that mimic in mixtures, wildness, not just in poetry or mythology prairie and savanna grassland ecosystems perennially. It is on but across the sciences, policy, medicine, without annual disturbance of soils. After the horizon. Imagine: manufacturing and agriculture. It can be 40 years of slow and steady work, The our agricultural described as a Copernican revolution, and Land Institute has developed a perennial like Copernicus’s insight to put the Sun, intermediate wheat grass they call landscapes not not the Earth, in the centre of the solar ‘Kernza’. It is still a few years away from scraped bare every system, it turns our perspective inside out. being made available to farmers, but it is spring and treated With it comes a new age of discovery. already being grown in test plots around with fertilizers and Charles Darwin published On the Origin the world and used in food and beverage of Species in 1859, a radical reconfiguration products in the US. Perennial varieties of herbicides. ” of the origins and processes behind sorghum, wheat and sunflower are also life. The US’s 19th century wilderness being developed at The Land Institute; and movement helps create national parks in around the world, partner institutions are the American West, and back east New working on perennial varieties of upland York State constitutionally declares a rice and other food crops. part of itself “forever wild.” Evolutionary Jackson envisions a future when all grain biology and quantum physics in the crops are grown in agro-ecosystems, in first half of the 20th century point to mixtures, perennially. It is on the horizon. a world of process, probability, chance Imagine: our agricultural landscapes not and creativity; and philosophers and scraped bare every spring and treated with theologians seek to explain this world fertilizers and herbicides. More prairie than with new systems of thought. Alfred North plough, it is a truly alternative agriculture Whitehead’s philosophy of organism is in which nature’s wild wisdom is mixed one such system, and it spawns new fields with human cleverness and humane in process philosophy and theology. New understanding; where conservation is a voices and ideas emerge in agriculture and consequence of agricultural production, not ecology: Aldo Leopold, Liberty Hyde Bailey, something that has to be sacrificed to it.
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This approach has found other scientific fields, and ecological economics applications. Janine Benyus introduced the is working on new concepts and systems world to the concept of ‘biomimicry’ and that have the potential to understand the highlighted its use in energy production, value of a bee’s or a worm’s work to the manufacturing, medicine and computing ecosphere; and to create human prosperity (Benyus, 2011). The Microbiome Project at without consuming and poisoning the the Mayo Clinic (https://is.gd/9IdE8y) is planet. Technical terms like ‘emergence’, just one example of medical researchers ‘ascendency’, ‘self-organizing criticality’, studying human microbiomes in order to ‘preadaptations’ and ‘downward causation’ understand their influence on a host of are used to make scientific sense of it illnesses including gluten insensitivity all. One of the leading thinkers in this and rheumatoid arthritis. It is part of the movement, Stuart Kauffman, has dared larger reconceptualization of humans not to bridge the gap between science and as individuals but as ecosystems. If that religion by giving the relentless creativity sounds far-fetched keep in mind that each of the universe a simple name: God of us is composed of about 30 trillion cells (Kauffman, 2008). Wes Jackson thinks we and we are host to, according to the most need an entirely new term for the study recent study, roughly the same number of this creativity – ‘Ecosphere Studies’ – of bacteria – not to mention numerous and a new curriculum to go with it (see fungal, viral and archaean communities https://is.gd/PgWmBU). in, on, and around our bodies (Sender Ecospheric thinking even shows up et al., 2016). We compete and cooperate in Pope Francis’s Encyclical Letter with these microbiomes and they with Laudato Si’: On care for our common home us. That is an ecosystem! This echoes (https://is.gd/6CBHH8) – a document that Paula Gunn Allen’s beautiful statement to my old Catholic eyes seems often on that “snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, the edge of doctrinal heresy. But nearly raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic 170 years after Thoreau it is a way of entities all come in communities. The thinking that has a lot of support and singular in reality cannot exist” (Allen, evidence. It is a perspective, in other “This re-centring 1992: 107). Philosopher James Feibleman words, with the power to shift paradigms, of the Ecosphere puts it this way: “The smallest human to overturn the status quo and present us has the potential to isolate is a culture, not an individual” with better choices for the future. heal the ecological (Feibleman, 1951: 416). The test for this, he suggested, was long-term or generational The perennial imagination and social wounds survival. An individual cannot reproduce, After a 10,000-year extractive interlude we begun by agriculture but a culture, a community, a system can once again place the wild, perennial and that continue can. They can endure. And so our notion work of the ecosphere back in its proper unabated in modern of community expands well beyond the place as the sole source of creativity in global capitalism. human. all things. There is still much to do, and ” Every day there are reports of new we wish we could speed things along. But discoveries of plant intelligence (Mancuso, when such a transition arrives in its full 2010), or of the ability of plants and trees expression, changes will come quickly, to communicate utilizing fungi (Stamets, like a wooden floor giving way after years 2008). Underwater microscopes show coral of hidden decay and rot. This re-centring dancing, fighting and feeding one another of the Ecosphere has the potential to heal (Antonio, 2016). Bacteria communicate the ecological and social wounds begun by with one another (Bassler, 2009). New agriculture and that continue unabated in scientific evidence demonstrates the modern global capitalism; the potential mental capacities of birds (Jackson, to make us less dependent on destructive 2016) and the ability of plants to ‘count’ extraction; to help us establish standards (Frank and Gorman, 2016). Quantum of morality and justice that protect human biology and astrobiology are emerging dignity and our fellow, other-than-human
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Earthlings; and to inspire us to find grace, References beauty, love and even divinity in a living, Allen P (1992) Grandmothers of the Light: A medicine unpredictable – and yes, wild – universe. woman’s sourcebook. Beacon Press, Boston, MA, USA. A dandelion in the hand of a young child. Antonio M (2016) Underwater microscope films tiny corals kiss, fight, dance on seafloor. Nature World Thoreau was right: In Wildness is the News, 13 July. Available at https://is.gd/rmDsb8 preservation of the world. (accessed March 2018). I will give the last words to Daniel Bassler B (2009) How bacteria “talk”. TED, Long Beach, Martin of Martin’s Family Farmstand CA, USA. Available at https://is.gd/MUUsx3 (accessed (https://martinsfarmstand.com/), outside March 2018). Potsdam, NY, USA, describing his technique Benyus, J (2011) Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature. for growing strawberries. He wrote in a Harper Collins, New York, NY, USA. Bradbury K (2015) Let dandelions grow. Bees, beetles 2016 post on his webpage: and birds need them. The Guardian, 12 May. Available at https://is.gd/7hEpkC (accessed March 2018). I grow these berries without any chemicals. Feibleman J (1951) Culture as applied ontology. The One of the things that I do to minimize Philosophical Quarterly 1: 416–22. insect problems is to not mow the adjacent Ferree RJ (no date) Dandelions: Facts for families. Available areas more than I need to while the berries at https://is.gd/kDjE0P (accessed March 2018). are forming and sizing. Wild plants grow Frank D and Gorman J (2016) Plants can count? New York Times, 1 February. Available at in these areas and they give habitat for a https://is.gd/0LjrpJ (accessed March 2018). diverse community of beneficials and also Hourdajian D (2006) Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). work as trap crops. Even if it is not nicely Introduced Species Summary Project, Columbia manicured I think this wildness is lovely in University, NY, USA. Available at https://is.gd/g1HW2b its own way and produces good berries. (accessed March 2018). Jackson M (2016) Ravens might possess a theory of It is hard to argue with that. n mind, say scientists. The Christian Science Monitor, 2 February. Available at https://is.gd/jlgew3 (accessed March 2018). Notes Kauffman S (2008) Reinventing the Sacred: A new view of 1 This essay began as a guest homily at the science, reason, and religion. Basic Books, New York, USA. Unitarian Universalist Church in Canton, NY, Mancuso S (2010) The Roots of Plant Intelligence. TEDGlobal, USA. I have largely kept the tone of an oral Oxford, UK. Available at https://is.gd/Ofl27v (accessed presentation throughout. March 2018). 2 No children were harmed (or even scolded) in the Mowe S (2016) The Unfolding Story of the Universe: A making of this essay. conversation with Mary Evelyn Tucker and Julianne Warren. Garrison Institute, NY, USA. Available at https://is.gd/RgORLi (accessed March 2018). Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC. Available at https://is.gd/DirmIu (accessed March 2018). Sender R, Fuchs S and Milo R (2016) Revised estimates for the number of human and bacteria cells in the body. PLoS Biology 14: e1002533. Staff (2011) Blades of glory: America’s love affair with lawns. The Week, 24 June. Available at https://is.gd/BT5UYF (accessed March 2018). Stamets P (2008) 6 ways mushrooms can save the world. TED, Long Beach, CA, USA. Available at https://is.gd/VUrCBW (accessed March 2018). Thoreau HD (1862) Walking. The Atlantic Monthly, May. Available at https://is.gd/TWJO4u (accessed March 2018). Zachos E (2017) All about dandelions (Taraxacum officinale): This weed is an edible superstar with multiple uses. The Spruce Eats, 25 April. Available at https://is.gd/iXzt9S (accessed March 2018).
194 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net ARTWORK
From the artist: Having grown up as a These are speculative reworkings of a woodcut of Poster and Quaker, I’ve been involved in various forms the 1607 Bristol Channel flood. On the billboard, of activism since a young age. Consequently, St Mary’s Church, the image’s original focal digital image my work addresses the interconnected nature point, was replaced by Hinkley Point C, the yet- of prevailing social, political, economic and to-be-completed nuclear power station that sits by Chris Alton environmental conditions. on the southern bank of the channel. When it is finally completed, Hinkley Point C will be the Poster (below): I had this idea (2018). most expensive power station in the world. It will Higher-resolution versions: Digital image (overleaf): More Ftrange Newes perch on the edge of a precipice, vulnerable to https://is.gd/ecoartwork (2018). The image is a companion piece for a the increasingly prevalent instances of extreme billboard commission at Spit & Sawdust in Cardiff. weather that are being experienced globally.
BOOK REVIEW www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Damaging thinking: A review of Timothy Morton’s Being Ecological
Adam Dickerson hy is everything we think Or this: “Karl Marx thinks of capitalism we know about ecology proper emerging from the collective whirr About the author “W wrong?” the back cover of enough machines. When enough of Adam is a philosopher who of this book announces portentously. them are connected and whirring away, has taught at universities It is, we are told, written by no less a pop! Out comes industrial capitalism” in the UK and Australia. personage than the “philosopher prophet (p 93). To get his profundity on the cheap, He is the author of Kant on of the Anthropocene.” Turning to the Morton is also fond of insisting that Representation and Objectivity front cover we see that the designers have straightforwardly comprehensible claims (Cambridge University thought fit to emboss there a vacuous are in fact ‘mysterious’ or ‘uncanny’ or Press, 2004) and various testimonial from the Icelandic popstar ‘paradoxical’ – for example: “Evolution papers in philosophy, Björk, who tells us “I have been reading presents us with a continuum: humans and aesthetics, and cultural Tim’s books for a while and I like them fish are related, so that if you go back far history. He is an Associate a lot.” enough, you’ll find that one of your very, Editor of the Journal. ‘Tim’ is Timothy Morton, a professor very distant grandmothers was a fish. Yet Citation of English at Rice University in Houston, you are not a fish. Wherever we slice the Dickerson A (2019) Damaging Texas, USA, and author of a number of continuum, we will find paradoxes sic [ ] thinking: A review of Timothy books in ‘eco’ inflected aesthetics and like that” (pp 182–3). Morton’s Being Ecological. The critique (including Morton [2010] and The book, in other words, does not Ecological Citizen 2: 198–9. Morton [2016]). Once upon a time, ‘Tim’ position its readers as rational beings, and
Keywords was a fine analyst of romantic poetry, seek to persuade them via argument and but then something happened – ‘Tim’ evidence. Instead, the reader is positioned Anthropocentrism; became a celebrity academic. This book as a witness to a performance – the ecological ethics is both an expression and a result of that performance of Tim Morton being Tim unfortunate metamorphosis. Morton. What we have here is something About the book I will begin with the most obvious feature all too familiar in the age of Instagram, Author: Morton T of this book: it does not really contain any ‘personal branding’ and the selfie stick: Year: 2018 arguments or reasoning at all; instead, it for all its greenwashed surface, this is the Publisher: Pelican Books consists of “a series of riffs.”1 These riffs authoring of celebrity. (Penguin Random House) combine name-dropping of high theory This explains the insistent reflexivity Paperback ISBN: and philosophical terms of art, mixed in of the prose. While the book claims to be 978-0241274231 a jocular way with preposterous verbal about the ‘uncanny paradoxical mystery’ sophistries, pop-cultural references (etc., etc.) of the other-than-human, it is and contemporary idioms. It is hard to in fact about Morton – so much so that it communicate the full flavour of Morton’s should really have been titled Being Tim style in a short space, but the book is full of Morton. Talking constantly about himself sentences like this: “time is an irreducible (often – disconcertingly, and rather like property of things, part of the liquid that Kanye West – in the third person), we jets out of a thing, undulating” (p 170). hear about Morton’s struggles with jet Or this: “Things are connected but in a lag as he flies to speak at prestigious kinda sorta subjunctive way. There’s room universities across the world; about his for stuff to happen” (p 54). Or this: “the friendships with Yoko Ono and musicians full-on, twelve-inch remix of Husserl is with only one name; about the expensive full-on object-oriented ontology” (p 83). art that hangs on the walls of his rich
198 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Damaging thinking: A review of Timothy Morton’s Being Ecological
friends’ expensive houses; about his model for a genuinely ecological ethics “ginger reddish” facial hair, and so on and politics. and so forth. This is a tale told from the So far we have a sketch of an outline of a comfortable, cosmopolitan life of the shadow of a skeleton of a possible position celebrity theorist – a tale told with that – but this is as far as the book goes. All expectation (constitutive of celebrity) of the important questions raised by this that the reader will be fascinated by view are ignored. Most crucially, the such details. book has nothing to say about what ethics Can anything of interest be extracted and politics might follow from this non- “Morton is from this commodified simulacrum anthropocentric awareness. Morton is systematically of philosophy? If we attempt to read systematically evasive when it comes to evasive when it through the clouds of dust raised by saying something about ethical principles comes to saying Morton’s barrage of mock-profundities, or resolving ethical problems – let alone something about then the following would, I think, be a addressing questions about political fair summary of this book’s main thesis. strategy, concrete actions, policies, ethical principles Why is everything we think we know organizational structures and so forth. or resolving ethical about ecology wrong? It is because our Put another way: this book has nothing problems.” very ways of talking and thinking about to say to us in our current predicament, ecology are mired in anthropocentrism. other than to preach a pretentiously We do not, Morton claims, need knowledge greenwashed version of the doctrine of more facts, and we do not need more of the inward light. Its publication in sermons demanding we change our the Pelican imprint (which, in the past, lives. Instead, Morton suggests, what we has published significant works by such need to learn is “how to live ecological figures as Freud, Virginia Woolf, George knowledge” (p 11). We will learn this via Bernard Shaw, Erving Goffman and a non-anthropocentric awareness of Lewis Mumford) is a morbid symptom of the profound ways we are enmeshed in the commodified state of our intellectual ecosystems – of our interrelations with life in 21st century capitalism – the the other-than-human. This awareness capitalism that is destroying the Earth, cannot take the form of knowledge, and which is deeply inscribed in the very because that necessarily entails fitting form of this work. n other-than-human things within human conceptual frameworks – it is, for Morton, Notes a kind of Procrustean coercion of the 1 The phrase is Nathan Brown’s, from his devastating review (2013: 64) of Morton’s work other-than-human. For a genuinely non- in the context of the broader metaphysical anthropocentric awareness of the other- framework of ‘object oriented ontology’. An than-human, what is needed is thus a assessment of the latter is beyond the scope of non-conceptual awareness. Morton finds this review, but for a systematic (and genuinely a model for this awareness in Immanuel witty) demolition of its pretensions, see Kant’s aesthetics, and its account of our Wolfendale (2014). experience of beauty – a judgment that References (according to Kant) is both ‘disinterested’ Brown N (2013) The nadir of OOO: From Graham (non-instrumental) and non-conceptual. Harman’s Tool-Being to Timothy Morton’s Realist Hence, Morton writes, “when I experience Magic: Objects, ontology, causality (Open Humanities beauty, I am coexisting with at least one Press, 2013). Parrhesia 17 : 62–7 1 . thing that isn’t me, and doesn’t have to Morton T (2010) The Ecological Thought. Harvard be conscious or alive, in a non-coercive University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. way […] We coexist; we are in solidarity” Morton T (2016) Dark Ecology: For a logic of future (p 131). For Morton, then, our experience of coexistence. Columbia University Press, New York, NY, art is a glimpse of a non-anthropocentric USA. awareness of, or openness to, the other- Wolfendale P (2014) Object-Oriented Philosophy: The than-human, and thereby provides a noumenon’s new clothes. Urbanomic, Falmouth, UK.
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 199 A view from near Gitwinksihlkw in the Nass River valley, BC, Canada Melanie Andrej BOOK REVIEW www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Looking beyond the past to give African wildlife a future: A critical review of The Big Conservation Lie
Tarik Bodasing t has been said that Africa is only for into effective action, and the absence the brave. Much of the continent is of collaboration are all valid concerns. About the author Ioverwhelmed by conflict and political However, the book ignores the intricacies Tarik is a landscape instability. Systemic problems such as of the African conservation landscape, ecologist and naturalist overpopulation, mass unemployment, and tends to focus on criticism rather than who has spent most of his corrupt governance and low investment solutions. The discussion of traditional adult life working in African in healthcare and education are ever values is badly lacking in context; so wildlife conservation. present. It is a demanding and frustrating too the section on the economic value of environment to work in. The conservation wildlife, which begins well, but fades into Citation sector faces significant challenges from a racial rant. There appears to be a bias Bodasing T (2019) Looking population growth, development, wildlife towards the needs and rights of people, beyond the past to give crime and climate change – not to rather than those of ecosystems. One African wildlife a future: A critical review of The Big mention problems internal to the sector, realizes that the argument is not people Conservation Lie. The Ecological including gross mismanagement, egoism and wildlife, but people over wildlife. Citizen 2: 202–5. and unethical practice. Their denunciation of the protectionist The Big Conservation Lie is a critical ‘Western’ approach is not backed by Keywords examination of the state of Kenyan any tangible evidence of why this model Anthropocentrism; conservation from the viewpoints of two is inappropriate from a conservation biodiversity; conservation; nationals embedded in the system (a perspective. The book as a whole thus conservation movement journalist and an ecologist). They attempt has a distinctly anthropocentric feel, and to tackle several complex issues, and tend fails to adequately support the plethora to base their arguments around racial of incendiary remarks made about About the book lines – ironic, given the ethnicity of many racism and colonialism in the context of Authors: Mbaria J officia l s a nd e xe cut ives who a re over seei ng conservation. and Ogada M conservation crises in Africa. The authors In what follows, I will discuss a few Year: 2016 condemn several large organizations and of the fundamental problems with Publisher: Lens & prominent figures, and lambast the Kenyan African conservation from an ecocentric Pens Publishing government, using examples of ‘bad white perspective. My views are based on my Paperback ISBN: people’ to justify their argument. Their experiences as an ecologist, within 978-0692787212 slating of religion, environmentalists, the protectionist and the communal hunters and pharmaceutical companies, conservancy frameworks. I believe that though at times justified, is only loosely these fundamental problems are largely connected to the main theme of the book an outcome of a rigid, anthropocentric and is disappointingly littered with racial approach to managing dynamic ecological overtones. Equally concerning is that the systems. This approach inevitably authors appear to be dismissive of the leads to poor decision-making and the fact that Africa is in the midst of a major squandering of funds on inappropriate biodiversity crisis. strategies. Surprisingly, a number of To their credit, the authors highlight state departments and NGOs play an key issues with many foreign conservation active role in this, but I will highlight non-governmental organizations (NGOs) several instances where collaboration based in Africa. The exploitative nature of and adaptation have benefited both fund-raising, the failure to translate funds people and wildlife.
202 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net A critical review of The Big Conservation Lie
White versus black ecocentric. There is some truth to this, The authors of The Big Conservation but the authors’ discussion lacks adequate Lie regularly play the race card, but nuance and context. There is no doubt fail to pay attention to two significant that many African traditions are indeed developments in African history that based on a ‘nature first’ philosophy, as have profoundly altered traditional ways the authors briefly discuss. These values of life independently of colonization and should be preserved; through them may white supremacy. Firstly, population has lie a key to rediscovering our connection increased dramatically, exerting immense with nature. Unfortunately, there are other pressure on the landscape and ecosystems. traditional values that are not harmonious Secondly, a concurrent change from a more with wildlife conservation. For example, sustainable existence to a high-resource- many African beliefs centre on the use of Numerous African consumption lifestyle has occurred. These animal parts as ceremonial wear, or as a “ communities have factors are currently not considered in means to endow one with magical powers. conservation planning. This has led to an intensive commercialized participated in Many African communities now reside trade (vulture heads and leopard skins are commercial trade in burgeoning sedentary settlements, keep well-known examples) that has caused in bush-meat large herds and subsist on a predominantly local extinctions of certain species (Ogada and livestock for meat-based diet. Trade and monetary et al., 2016). These values should definitely profit have become more important than not be preserved; after all, we no longer centuries.” subsistence. This has led to demand allow women to be burned at the stake for on resources outstripping supply, with suspected witchcraft (a similarly barbaric devastating consequences for wildlife and but ‘traditional’ practice). The authors’ broader ecosystems. failure to discuss harmful traditional The authors’ claims that large-scale practices (as evidenced by the illegal trade hunting was unknown before the arrival in animal parts) is startling to say the of ‘the white man’ are not supported by least. It also somewhat invalidates their the evidence – consider the history of suggestion that Africans treat wildlife King Shaka Zulu’s hunting pits, or the as possessing intrinsic value, and that mass slaughter of game (and people) therefore conservation is better supported that accompanied the Bantu expansion as part of a traditional belief structure. (Manyanga and Paneti, 2017). What is more, numerous African communities Problems with the ‘Western’ have participated in commercial trade in model of conservation? bush-meat and livestock for centuries. In In the strongest parts of the book, the other words, the devastation of Africa’s authors highlight fundamental flaws with wildlife from hunting has little to do with the managerial approach of certain NGOs. colonization, but is the inevitable result The unfortunate truth is that some NGOs are when populations grow beyond the ability managed by egoism and fame, rather than of the land to sustain them. Indeed, there being focused on tangible results. This is are several examples of former colonies exacerbated by the use of outdated concepts where wildlife is thriving – South Africa and a failure to set realistic or measurable and Namibia for example. The approaches targets. These organizations suffer from taken by these countries shows evidence of a lack of dynamism, high staff turnover, the success of adaptive management, and and, inevitably, a lack of trust from project despite ongoing challenges, they should partners. It is an anthropocentric approach serve as beacons for the continent. and is not uncommon in the single-species conservation arena. Conserving traditional values Single-species NGOs are the norm in The Big Conservation Lie argues that, many developing countries, and securing unlike the anthropocentrism of ‘Western’ donor funding is definitely more likely values, African traditional values are more when charismatic species are involved. Few
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fails to look at successful approaches to conservation. The key here is to understand how funding is used to influence conservation efforts, and whether there is effective collaboration with local organizations and communities. Unfortunately, it is true that many NGOs are unable to provide clear answers to questions about these matters. However, outcomes-based conservation is a simple solution to this problem, allowing potential donors to follow projects in real-time and base their decisions on real achievement. There are also alternatives to single-species models; for instance, the creation of holistic landscape-scale projects where funds are shared with community members who are involved in the initiative. Good examples include the Lion Custodian programme in Kenya, and several well- managed communal conservancies in Namibia and Botswana. Despite the problems, many NGOs have achieved incredible successes. Single species can act as surrogates for increasing awareness and action around broader issues (Caro, 2010). For example, the Virunga Mountains landscape in Central Africa has been officially protected and promoted, thanks to NGO action to protect the mountain gorilla (African Wildlife Foundation, 2018). The Desert Rhino (http://www.savetherhinotrust.org/) and Desert Lion (https://www.desertlion.info/) organizations in Namibia have achieved positive results in directing funding streams to solving human–wildlife conflict and conserving these species. Panthera has successfully pioneered a project – ‘Furs for Life’ – to replace real leopard skins with synthetic alternatives for use in traditional ceremonies (https://www.panthera.org/furs-for-life) to help combat illegal killing of leopards. A lappet-faced vulture, are willing to open their wallets for “Save These are examples of projects that are at one of several endangered ecosystem and landscape connectivity” the cutting edge of using donor funds to vulture species in Africa, which has been decimated but many will do so for “Save the Tiger” produce measurable conservation efforts. by poisoning. The picture or “Space for Giants”. The authors’ That we are currently in the midst of was taken at Mkhuze castigation of the failings of such NGOs is an ecological crisis cannot be disputed. Game Reserve in Zululand, understandable, given the large proportion Available evidence on population trends, South Africa, by A Botha. of donor funds that they absorb. However, illegal wildlife trade and loss of habitat the discussion is too one-sided, and indicates a global collapse in biodiversity
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(e.g. Barlow et al., 2018). Furthermore, particular, points to a problem in the all projected human population growth fabric of society. It is driven by corporate curves in Africa point to rapid increases and state greed, but is also linked to the (Bish, 2016). At the end of the day, it is very real problems faced by developing irrelevant if flowery language is used to economies. Until income parity is illicit sympathy, or if single species are reached, African governments will used to garner support for a cause. What continue to court foreign investors and matters is that the conservation sector tourists with big dollars. Ideally, African is in dire need of revenue and action in governments should be subsidizing local a world increasingly focused on human companies and enforcing legislation requirements. to protect the landscape. It is up to the governments of Africa to put people and “If we can accept The value of wildlife in Africa nature before greed, and, unfortunately, the past for what The authors’ statements concerning the this is something that African leaders it was, and develop value that African communities place seem incapable of. and implement on wildlife come across as virtuous, Ultimately, there is no silver bullet for until one examines the evidence (the solving Africa’s conservation challenges. real solutions for IUCN Red List, State of Biodiversity Each situation is unique, and our approach the future, there is reports, TRAFFIC bulletins, scientific needs to be adaptable. Africa does, however, huge potential to literature etc.). Wildlife is consumed need a mind shift from anthropocentric to conserve the cultural as food, killed as a threat or traded as ecocentric solutions. What Africa does not a resource (see ‘Conserving traditional need is more people blaming its colonial and natural diversity values’ above). It is a perspective that history; this indicates an inability to of this incredible invariably treats wildlife as a commodity accept responsibility for solving the continent.” rather than as possessing value in problem. If – as in The Big Conservation itself. The authors refer to successful Lie – attitudes remain focused on ‘the examples of people and wildlife co- sins of the past’ the continent will remain existing in conservancies, but neglect to a broken husk. However, if we can accept mention that this is almost exclusively the past for what it was, and develop and in regions of very low population density implement real solutions for the future, (Botswana, according to World Bank Data there is huge potential to conserve the –https://data.worldbank.org – has 4 people cultural and natural diversity of this per km2; Namibia has 3 people per km2). incredible continent. n Even in these systems, human–wildlife conflict, poaching and land degradation References are still substantial challenges. By African Wildlife Foundation (2018) Virunga. Available at https://www.awf.org/landscape/virunga (accessed comparison, South Africa (with 47 people November 2018). per km2) has problems with people Barlow J, França G, Gardner TA et al. (2018) The future encroaching on protected areas leading of hyperdiverse tropical ecosystems. Nature 559: to large-scale poaching and, in some 517–526. cases, the ceding of formerly protected Bish JJ (2016) Population growth in Africa: grasping land to communities. The authors’ home the scale of the challenge. The Guardian, 11 January. country, Kenya, supports 87 people per Available at https://is.gd/LnkwVl (accessed November km2, so I find the lack of consideration 2018). of human population density in The Big Caro T (2010) Conservation by Proxy: Indicator, umbrella, Conservation Lie somewhat bemusing. keystone, flagship, and other surrogate species. Island Press, Washington, DC, USA. Conservation and capitalism Manyanga M and Pangeti G (2017) Pre-colonial hunting in southern Africa: a changing paradigm. Available at The impacts of foreign conglomerates on https://is.gd/CHRMnl (accessed November 2018). Africa’s landscape represent a significant Ogada D, Shaw P, Beyers R et al. (2016) Another challenge. The despoiling of sites of continental vulture crisis: Africa’s vultures collapsing cultural and ecological significance, in toward extinction. Conservation Letters 9: 89–97.
The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 205 Digital image
by Maggie Roberts Digital image by Maggie Roberts Digital image by Maggie Roberts 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 long before us, who live with us, and probably will live without 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 still quite poor in that respect. Or maybe we have forgotten the language that existed when, in the words of Tagore, “our forefathers lived their lives in an inconceivably glorious universe departing with a sense of wonder in the eyes and devotion still intact – when every touch of universe having struck a chord in their heart-lute producing chanting melodies that were always anew”? 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 include work in the traditions of classic ecopoets such as Jeffers, DH Lawrence and Emily Dickinson, 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 The Country of Marriage Part VI
Wendell Berry The poems of Wendell Berry are deceivingly simple, but What I am learning to give you is my death deeply philosophical (Earth- to set you free of me, and me from myself and-human-centred). into the dark and the new light. Like the water Devoid of decoration, every of a dark stream, love is always too much. We thought is precious. did not make it. Though we drink till we burst we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions of the dark. It does not hold us, except we keep returning to its rich waters thirsty. We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.
Reproduced with kind permission of Wendell Berry.
Marsh Priestling
Aleksander Blok The poems of Aleksander Blok are impregnated with On a spring-thawed patch, eschatological expectations Little Priestling of Marsh and dedicated to the Eternal Is staying Feminine. His verses are And saying his prayer. also muffled by the voices of Earth. The selected His ragged black frock poem is a curious example Like a barely seen rock of his dedication to earthly religion. Over tussock And in tranquility of the reddish light
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Little devils are out of sight; And the evening grace Has entwined him with delicate lace… And the charms of the twilight, And the rustling of space…
Quietly he prays, And he smiles as he stays, Bowing his head to the bog. And with medicinal herbs He would heal every hurt, Every sickened and dying frog.
Then he would bless it and say, “Now you’re free on your way, You can go to your native log; My heart is pleased With every beast And every creeper that exists.”
He resumes his quiet praying, For the reed That is swaying, For a sickened beast’s hope, For the Roman Pope…
Have no fear to be drowned in a bog – You’ll be saved by his blackened frock.
Source: Translation by Victor Postnikov
CONTEMPORARY POETRY Known by Water
Julia Travers is a writer and Julia Travers artist in Virginia, USA. Her work appears with OnBeing, I know you, Earth Island Journal, Heron water says Tree Poetry Journal, The to everyone, Mindfulness Bell and NPR, holding us when we enter. among other publications. Drink, says water, when we’re thirsty. I grow you, I flow through, I love you, water says, though we throw trash in its mouth and smudge out its round voice, though we turn away. But water persists,
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in our sky, land and cells, weaving our spit and tears into the breath of the world, insisting: I know you.
Oceans
Rebecca R Burrill Rebecca R Burrill is a regular contributor of 1. South West Wind Ocean artworks to the journal and her latest piece, titled Undulus Ocean from Grandfather’s Heavy Cliff, accompanies her Shore waves poems here. Minimalist breakwater Like lacy afterthoughts Quiet Ponderous birthings Of continually coming shore waves
2. NW Wind 35 Mph Moderate Gale
Ocean Lurching Rising up Innumerable directions Cacophony of directions Bigger waves swallow Smaller waves Sharp crests Precarious crest Don’t know which way to fall crests Disappearing re-emerging elsewhere crests
Double waves breaking Spreading out on shore Elaborate expression And overlapping and ruffles foaming Antagonisms and clashes Splashes
Resting for a bit Foaming Receding under, clashing with The on-coming wave Playfully ferocious breakers
Seals are constant—surfacing along the shore In various choreographies Unconcerned
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3. NE Wind 28 Mph Strong Breeze
Ocean Heavy wavering crests
Violence is in the ponderous fall To beach And totally given over splash Loose and disembodied Repeating the fall
Tons of water pushing water Spreading on shore pulling Pulling Away the sand Cutting Into the beach
Swells too heavy to crest Hover
Managing a tiny under crest Inelegantly flopping to shore
Gargantuan volumes of water Careening Slushing, re-cresting before re-forming as undertow Layers Of coming and going waves
The gulls maneuvering in the breakwater With deft split second timing To easefully ride or lift Just above The breaking cruel crests
4. Wind Has Died
Murky Ocean Beach is smooth and shifted—dropped off edge Seals still bobbing
The whole angle of the Sea has shifted from the NE to the NW And aside from a few white caps The flat ponderous Undulating and understated breakers have returned
These poems are from a two-week stay in an Outer Cape Cod rustic dune shack in October 2010.
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Phloem, xylem
Susan Wardell is a social Susan Wardell anthropologist, mother and poet from New Zealand. The inside of a tree is God’s temple
Phloem give substance to light, a drawing down of dawn. Claim it, amniotic sweet, deep greening through flesh. Newborn.
Xylem raise water to life, your hydrogen hallelujah defies. A slow ascent through walls thick with the souls of old cells. Arise.
I am a devotee, wear the heart of a tree on a black string, swinging around my neck – oil it with the prayers of anxious fingers.
Mother Kauri pray for me, Manuka, Kōwhai, Rātā, filter my penitent exhalations through the water, light, of your holy place, through your phloem, xylem, the balance of grace.
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mare oceanum
Erica Stretton Erica Stretton lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and pounding, hammering writes poetry and fiction a thousand grains of midnight that is heavily influenced by she beats you the natural world.
trapped in depths waving actiniaria, clinging limpet gifts you can’t keep
buoyed by saline cosseted, whispered away she lets you fall
tantalising coruscate raise your cupped hands and drink deep she makes you thirst
living, a home kelp fingers, skittering herring she will murder you easy
as a lover your mother said beware
Boats Marinating
Pete Mullineaux Pete Mullineaux lives in Galway, Ireland, and works After a long winter lay-off in development education. the hulls are sunk into the ocean He’s published four poetry absorbing its essence. collections, most recently Here is the paradox: the boards How to Bake a Planet (Salmon cannot be too dry; to survive in water Poetry 2016). you meet your nemesis half way become part of what you oppose – each vessel a buoyant top note in a deeper accord.
Show your support for ecocentrism by signing the Statement of Commitment to Ecocentrism: http://is.gd/ecocentrism
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Faye Creek
Elizabeth Carothers Herron Elizabeth Carothers Herron writes poetry and articles on art and ecology. Under the overhang of green, where the creek ripples with weightless water-skates, a broidery of light on stones and water raddled with reflections, a place endlessly receiving itself in the conversation of root, leaf and stone, lichen and bark, catkin and alder cone, twig and stream violet, the perfect prints of doe and fawn follow the bank, the doe’s track larger, with a slight splay, the fawn’s delicate points where the tips meet. Crouched over their tracks, beside the lit slip of stream, I think of the fawn I found on the road still warm, her limp neck no bigger than my forearm. I think of Wolfgang Laib gathering pollen, sifting it through linen into heaps of gold – bees and honey, the months the fawn grew, a condensation of light in a watery world of breath and heartbeat. Steelhead fry flick past, half-disguised by bay leaves quivering above the water or soggy and dark on the gravel bottom. What silence, what tender listening receives us? What reverence caught the fawn on the road with its last breath – gently as pollen collected from a blossom. www.ecologicalcitizen.net ARTWORK
About the artwork: Stills from a 40-minute video is entirely mechanical (that of the underwater Mal de mer made in 2017. Over the course of one year, the camera). The initial impetus of the work was a artist threw a GoPro camera under the Sturdies meditation on the fragility of the world’s oceans by Bay dock on Galiano Island, BC, Canada. The in light of anthropogenic change. Without camera captures a shifting underwater Salish references to how this area looked in the past, seascape – life forms changing in symbiosis with the waters appear marvelously abundant in life, Marina Roy the seasonal weather, currents, and fluctuations although humans’ presence is heavy. The original in life cycle of marine organisms. Enhanced by soundscape was dominated by the sound of ferries Higher-resolution versions: the accompanying soundscape (composed by coming and going, creating much underwater https://is.gd/ecoartwork Graham Meisner), the camera’s point of view turbulence and noise. What is captured on video is takes on something akin to a creature swimming sealife having adapted to human industry – a kind through this habitat, even though the perspective of eco-romantic ruin. ARTWORK www.ecologicalcitizen.net
Photographs by John Cussans
Higher-resolution versions: https://is.gd/ecoartwork
222 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 2 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Last Word
Last Word
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
Rachel Carson
From The Sea Around Us (Oxford University Press, 1951)
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