The Vol 1 Suppl A 2017

Ecological ISSN 2515-1967 A peer-reviewed journal Citizen www.ecologicalcitizen.net

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

BECOMING ECOCENTRIC SUPPLEMENT Eleven authors share their personal stories

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EC Citizen ISSN 2515-1967

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“I believe that childlike feelings for the Earth and its marvels should be nourished and accepted as fundamental truths in their own right. They should not be watered down with tears for the sad music of humanity.” Stan Rowe

2 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Contents

The Ecological Citizen | Vol 1 Suppl A 2017

Editorial Sharing stories of deep connection 5 Haydn Washington Personal stories How I came to ecocentrism: A sense of wonder 7 Haydn Washington The importance of Earth jurisprudence, compassionate conservation and personal rewilding 10 Marc Bekoff Cover photo

Ecocentrism: A personal story 13 Flood-scoured Casuarina Helen Kopnina roots in the Blue Mountains Loving Earth: How I came to ecocentrism 17 National Park, NSW, John J Piccolo Australia (courtesy of Ecocentrism: Playing beyond boundaries 21 www.ianbrownphotography.com). Reingard Spannring Ian Brown On the road to ecocentrism 25 John A Vucetich Becoming ecocentric 30 Reed F Noss My path to ecocentrism 33 Ian Whyte All is one 36 Eileen Crist A journey to Earth-centredness 38 Joe Gray Eucalyptus-flavoured ecofeminism and other ecocentric adventures 42 A European beech in Austria Michelle Maloney Melanie Andrej

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 3 Editorial Board www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Editor-in-Chief María Valeria Berros Alessandro Pelizzon Patrick Curry Researcher in Rights of Nature Researcher in Earth-Centred Law Writer and Scholar Santa Fe, Argentina Lismore, NSW, Australia London, UK David Blackwell John J Piccolo Educator and Nature-lover Associate Professor in Associate Editors Halifax, NS, Canada Environmental and Life Sciences Joe Gray Susana Borràs Pentinat Karlstad, Sweden Naturalist and Researcher Lecturer in Public International Law Deborah Rose St Albans, UK Tarragona, Spain Adjunct Professor in Ian Whyte Tom Butler Environmental Humanities Field Naturalist Writer and Activist Sydney, NSW, Australia Ottawa, ON, Canada Huntington, VT, USA Coyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil Nigel Cooper Environmental and Social Activist Sub-editor Chaplain and Biologist Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage, Mexico Adam Dickerson Cambridge, UK Dyane Sherwood Senior Lecturer in International Studies Paul Cryer Jungian Psychoanalyst and International Development Conservationist Oberlin, OH, USA Canberra, ACT, Australia Hillcrest, South Africa Vandana Shiva Cormac Cullinan Scholar and Environmental Activist Environmental Attorney and Author Delhi, India Art Editor Cape Town, South Africa Steve Szeghi Stephanie Moran John Davis Professor of Economics Artist and Librarian Wildways Trekker Wilmington, OH, USA London, UK Westport, NY, USA Bron Taylor Alan Watson Featherstone Professor of Religion, Nature Art Advisor Founder and Visionary – Trees for Life and Environmental Ethics Salomón Bazbaz Lapidus Findhorn, UK Gainesville, FL, USA Director – Cumbre Tajín Festival Mumta Ito Andrew Walton Papantla de Olarte, Mexico Lawyer, Zoologist and Bioregionalist Founder – Nature’s Rights Birmingham, UK Poetry Editor Forres, UK Haydn Washington Victor Postnikov Marjolein Kok Environmental Scientist Poet, Essayist and Translator Environmental Activist and Researcher and Activist Kiev, Ukraine Utrecht, the Netherlands Sydney, NSW, Australia Helen Kopnina Rachel Waters Consulting Editors Environmental Anthropologist Academic and Advocacy Journalist Eileen Crist Leiden, the Netherlands Brooklyn, NY, USA Writer and Teacher Joseph Lambert Fiona Wilton Blacksburg, VA, USA Researcher in Earth Jurisprudence Programme Coordinator Sandy Irvine London, 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

4 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net EDITORIAL

Sharing stories of deep connection

t struck me while writing a paper on of the positive impact that Bob Behnke and Haydn ecocentrism for issue one of The Ecological Holmes Rolston had on his ecocentrism. Washington ICitizen that we tend – as academics – Ian Whyte reflects on the positive impact to overanalyse nature and our bond with of meeting both David Orton and Ted About the author her. After all, academics love to talk! So I Mosquin. Joe Gray remembers the positive Haydn is an suggested this supplement of essays on impact of meeting Patrick Curry. For me environmental scientist, “how I came to ecocentrism” to try to bring it was meeting my ‘spiritual sister’ Heidi writer and activist based forth the deep stories and feelings involved. while doing ecology at university. Being at the PANGEA Research Originally it was going to be six essays, but able to talk about nature, about our wonder Centre, UNSW, Sydney, it grew through peer-group discussion, and at her, about our responsibilities to her, is NSW, Australia. He is Guest Editor of this so now we have eleven fascinating essays. important. Similarly, having people look at special supplement. There is a mystery involved in talking about you as if you were mad can be a real turn- this (which Helen Kopnina and others touch off from expressing wonder or ecocentrism Citation on in their essays): given that all children or the sacredness of place. I have friends Washington H (2017) Sharing have a sense of wonder at nature, why who I soon found steered right away from stories of deep connection. are only some adults ecocentric? After all, such discussions. It seemed especially that The Ecological Citizen the natural world around us is incredibly they could not discuss eco-spirituality. I 1(Suppl A): 5–6. beautiful and full of wonder, so why do can understand how damaging to one’s Keywords many adults seem blind to this? The short bond with nature it would be if everyone did answer is education and culture, and the this. Those of us with mentors were thus Becoming ecocentric anthropocentric worldview and ethics of lucky we had them. Of course the greatest that culture. I would add also that going mentor is nature herself. Empathy, and the through puberty and finding a mate and a job ability to listen to place, is such a key part can easily bury our bond with nature. Like of becoming ecocentric – it comes out in all Reed Noss, I was lucky to ‘never grow up’, these stories. to stay a ‘big kid’ and keep alive my wonder Several authors here feel they were born at life. These essays give glimpses of insight ecocentric, although Reed Noss argues that on this debate. Non-human animals were some people are genetically more prone to key teachers about ecocentrism for several biophilia (loving life) than others. Eileen of us – the lyrebird for me, the moose and Crist argues: “Like every human being the toad for John Vucetich, the horse Freja is, I was born in love with the Earth.” Joe for Reingard Spannring, the dog Belisarius Gray tells an interesting story in which for Eileen Crist, and many animals for an ecocentric child became an adult who Marc Bekoff and John (Jack) Piccolo. Plants, did not see more-than-human nature or rather flowers in particular, were key as involving ethics, and then changed to teachers for Ian Whyte. ‘Place’ itself is also biocentrism and then ecocentrism, largely a key teacher. For me it was the Colo Gorge from what he calls a “rational leap”. Now, and later my land on Nullo Mountain; for like Eileen, I have always argued that every Helen Kopnina it was the wilds of Russia as child feels wonder at life and that they are a child; for Eileen Crist it was the wilds near innately ecocentric. For example, I once told her home and later in Greece. primary school kids in the Australian bush There is also the aspect of the positive about the extinction crisis, and (playing influence of a mentor. Jack Piccolo speaks devil’s advocate) asked them if it mattered.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 5 EDITORIAL www.ecologicalcitizen.net

They responded: “It is just wrong!” And of into nature with our friends and family, course they were correct: they understood slowing our busy minds, and relearning to the ethics of what society is doing very well. listen to the land. As Richard Louv notes in How brainwashed then has society become Last Child in the Woods, Western society has as adults to forget the wisdom of childhood? never been as divorced from wild nature as However, I feel the moral of Joe’s story is that it is today. All of us can be part of changing there is a way back to a buried ecocentrism. that, of speaking out for nature’s rights, of I have spent a lot of time taking people speaking of our responsibilities to the rest into the Australian wilds, and I have spent of life, and of celebrating life and place. It a lot of time thinking about how best has been a privilege to read these essays, to rejuvenate people’s sense of wonder where these authors stepped out from and to change society’s anthropocentric behind their ‘academic persona’ and spoke worldview, which in all senses is a dead from the heart. It is in sharing stories of Sunrise in Białowieża end. My conclusion is that we will not turn deep connection like this that we foster the Forest, Poland things around without rediscovering that wonder and caring that create change for Melanie Andrej sense of wonder. That means going out the better. n

6 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net PERSONAL STORY

How I came to ecocentrism: A sense of wonder

“I opened my eyes to stare into deep honey-combing and hidden grottos. Haydn black eyes a few metres away. Fascinated Tawny frogmouth (related to nightjars) eyes. Eyes of otherness. There was no pretended to be dead sticks on trees, or Washington fear, none at all. We watched in mutual sometimes looked at you with vast golden About the author astonishment at the incredibility of eyes. Some teachers called me ‘Nature Haydn is an our ‘being’. We existed at this moment Boy’, for I took delight in disappearing environmental scientist, and time, and the gulf between our into the maze of tracks and seeing what writer and activist based histories and separate evolution was each day presented. Small wonder that at the PANGEA Research gone. Behind us soared steep banks of my favourite phrase became: “If you Centre, UNSW, Sydney, sand and vertical orange sandstone listen you will learn.” I used to lie in the NSW, Australia. cliffs. It was just on dawn. There was sun or shade, close my eyes and listen, Citation no thought, nothing but the startling feel the land around me, sharing a sense Washington H (2017) How I desire to hang on to a connection that of belonging. It was due to that close came to ecocentrism: A sense we knew could not last – holding on to communion with nature that I went to of wonder. The Ecological our harmony for yet another unlikely university to study ecology. Citizen 1(Suppl A): 7–9. moment […] Someone else in the group Until age 13, I wanted to send rockets moved and turned over, and the Superb to the moon. Walking through my valley, Keywords Lyrebird ran off up the sand slope to however, I saw people (who presumably Becoming ecocentric vanish into the bush. The connection moved there to have a bush view) throw across different animal realms was rubbish over their back fence into the broken – though not quite gone. He bush. I changed my mind, seeking to save was a distant relative of dinosaurs, the this world, rather than fly spaceships to largest passerine bird in the world, and others. In 1974 (at age 18) I signed up for the greatest mimic of them all. I was a a bushwalk through the huge (and largely descendant of small furry mammals like unknown) Colo wilderness, north-west of shrews, that eventually stood up and Sydney. We walked for five days down a walked as primates – yet for a moment deep sandstone gorge, through the heart of we had been one.” the largest wilderness in New South Wales, (Washington, 2002: 7) and revelled in knee-deep quicksand, giant boulder piles, and tangled mazes of water-gum thickets. It was while camping came to ecocentrism out of empathy, bivouacked (rolled in a groundsheet), on a listening and a sense of wonder at sandbank where the Colo River rises, that I nature. As a child I used to ramble at first light I woke to find my lyrebird through the valley of Scotts Creek near (see https://is.gd/cJa8S8) standing, staring Willoughby in Sydney, Australia. My expectantly. Like Annie Dillard (1992: 12), school (a Steiner school) was near my who came face to face with a weasel, for a home, and students were then allowed moment we swapped identity. It made me to wander the bush – and wonder. I realize that here was the greatest mimic, used to sit happily by a red-bellied yet one without a human voice to speak for black snake basking in the sun, sharing his home. Soon I became the Secretary of a bond. My brother and I took delight the Colo Committee, which led the five-year in the sculptured landforms, caves with campaign to create the 502,000-hectare

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 7 How I came to ecocentrism: A sense of wonder www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Wollemi National Park (Washington, 2004: An Agnostic, a Christian, a Buddhist, a 52–67). I wrote later (2002: 8): Hindu, a Muslim… all of these can feel a sense of wonder, even if they call it by At that moment and in the following varying names (Washington, 2002: 10). idyllic sun-drenched days spent in that This is not something that should be sandstone gorge, I fell in love with the trivialized as a fairy tale. It is about the land. Absolutely and indelibly. My sense fundamental relationship of humanity of awe and wonder at the beauty of the with the land, which has nurtured us place stunned me. I kept smiling at the for millions of years, one of the deepest sheer wonder of its existence. […] And it and abiding loves of them all: the love of was that moment which started (or at the land. There are also ‘high points’ in least catalyzed) my future path. It was our sense of wonder (my lyrebird was that sense of wonder that seared through one). I have called them “transcendent to the innermost parts of my ‘self’, my moments” (Washington, 2002: 43), and, heart and soul. interestingly, Louv (2005: 74) speaks of “transcendent experiences”, while So I became an activist as well as a others have called them a “hierophany” scientist, and more than 40 years later or epiphany (Oelschlaeger, 1991). Such I still walk the path that this experience moments can change one’s life (mine catalysed. did). The sense of wonder is also about So, what is our sense of wonder at the empathy. One must let down one’s natural world? Many of us can remember guard, open oneself up and let all one’s this wonder from childhood. A yearning senses absorb the beauty of the natural for a ‘sense of place’ is a perennial world. Aboriginal Elder Miriam-Rose human longing. All peoples need a Ungunmerr (Tacey, 2000) explains that sense of ‘my country’, of belonging to a there is a word in the Ngangikurungkurr “I have given sustaining landscape they respond to in language, Dadirri, which is “something many talks about care and love (Rolston, 2012: 15). This can like what you (white people) call wonder and also be called a ‘re-enchantment’ of the ‘contemplation’.” She notes this is a key gift that the Aboriginal culture can share realized quickly land (Tacey, 2000). Part of this sense of wonder is a feeling of being ‘one’ with with other cultures. that most scientists the land, of belonging, of finding an I have given many talks about wonder felt distinctly ‘ecological identity’ (Thomashow, 1996: and realized quickly that most scientists uncomfortable 18). This issue fascinated me to the extent felt distinctly uncomfortable talking about talking about it. that I wrote the book A Sense of Wonder it. Yet many did indeed feel it, and some ” (Washington, 2002). So, is our sense of would come up afterwards, and literally wonder something we are born with, check that nobody could overhear us, or do we learn it? Is it something more and then say “Well, actually, when I was common in certain races or different x years old I had this amazing experience societies? Does the fact that only 20% or in nature, and that was why I became a so of people (in my Australian experience) scientist.” And yet they felt embarrassed, get interested in environmental issues almost ashamed, as if it was somehow mean that only that percentage can feel unscientific to feel wonder. What an the sense of wonder? Alternatively, does indictment of both academia and society the growing interest in the environment that our wonder at life has come to be seen in young people mean that our sense of as unacademic! Hence why academics wonder is growing? These are important need to speak out about the wonder they questions. feel and their enchantment with the The sense of wonder I am talking natural world. And – as the other essays about here is a connection with the land. in this supplement show – some are. As such it must be considered spiritual, I believe that all children feel a sense of even if one does not call it religious. wonder, but it can get buried at puberty.

8 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net How I came to ecocentrism: A sense of wonder

So how can we rejuvenate our sense of wonder? Some steps are: n Be there with nature! Belong in the land. n Take your children and friends to wild places so they can see the natural world as it really is, and bond with it. n Take time to ponder… whether this is called meditation or empathy or prayer or contemplation or Dadirri or just sitting somewhere ‘at one with the world’. n Keep your imagination, creativity and artistic expression alive (poetry is my choice). In these you find the wellspring of your ‘being’, which renews your sense of wonder. n Cherish the imagination of your children and youth in general, especially so they can survive the turmoil of puberty. Young people need our spiritual help while they undertake their own spiritual journeys (Washington, 2002: 97–9).

Encourage your empathy on a sunny day. Find a beautiful spot,let your defences down and empathize with the natural world. Meditate or just watch and ponder. Perhaps you too will find, as Henry David Thoreau (1854: 68) did, that:

Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and something kindred to me… n

References Dillard A (1992) Teaching a Stone to Talk. Harper Perennial, London, UK.

Louv R (2005) Last Child in the Woods: Saving our The Colo River in Wollemi National Park, NSW, Australia – the author’s special children from nature-deficit disorder. Atlantic Books, place of wonder. London, UK.

Oelschlaeger M (1991) The Idea of Wilderness: From a reflective environmentalist. MIT Press, Cambridge, prehistory to the age of ecology. Yale University MA, USA. Press, New Haven, CT, USA. Thoreau HD (1854) Walden: Or life in the woods. Dover Rolston H III (2012) A New Environmental Ethics: The Publications, New York, NY, USA. next millennium of life on Earth. Routledge, London, Washington H (2002) A Sense of Wonder. Ecosolution UK. Consulting, Sydney, Australia. Tacey D (2000) Re-enchantment: The new Australian Washington H (2004) Wollemi and the Colo. In: spirituality. Harper Collins, Sydney, NSW, Australia. Colley A and Gold H, eds. Blue Mountains: World Thomashow M (1996) Voices of ecological identity. Heritage. Colong Foundation for Wilderness, In: Thomashow M, ed. Ecological Identity: Becoming Sydney, NSW, Australia.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 9 PERSONAL STORY www.ecologicalcitizen.net

The importance of Earth jurisprudence, compassionate conservation and personal rewilding

Marc Bekoff “That the universe is a communion of view of nature, calls for a change in people’s subjects rather than a collection of objects values if they favour humans over nature About the author is the central commitment of the Ecozoic. as a whole, including non-human animals Marc is Professor Emeritus Existence itself is derived from and and their homes. Earth jurisprudence can of Ecology and Evolutionary sustained by this intimacy of each being be viewed as “a philosophy of law and Biology at the University with every other being of the universe.” human governance that is based on the of Colorado, Boulder, CO, (Swimme and Berry, 1994: 243) idea that humans are only one part of a USA. His homepage is wider community of beings and that the http://marcbekoff.com. welfare of each member of that community Citation came to ecocentrism as a youngster. is dependent on the welfare of the Earth as Bekoff M (2017) The My focus was on other animals, but, a whole” (Wikipedia, 2017). Thus, societies importance of Earth Ias time went on, I also incorporated of humans are part of a wider community jurisprudence, compassionate humans and all of our homes into a broad that incorporates societies of other animals conservation and personal ecocentric perspective. I always attribute and where they choose to live or are forced rewilding. The Ecological my compassion for non-human animals to live. All community members are Citizen 1(Suppl A): 10–12. to my mother’s warm and compassionate dependent on one another. No individual is Keywords soul, and my positive thinking, as well as an island and we all depend on one another Becoming ecocentric my keeping dreams alive, to my incredibly to thrive and to survive. optimistic father. In retrospect, I know Embracing Earth jurisprudence is I was very lucky to be born into a home essential in the ‘Anthropocene’ – often where playfulness and laughter were highly called the ‘age of humanity’. Given how valued, as was hard work. I didn’t live with human animals are plundering our any animals except a goldfish. I used to talk magnificent planet and surrounds, I call the to him as I ate breakfast. It felt very natural epoch, instead, the ‘rage of inhumanity’, in to do this. I told my folks that it wasn’t nice which the interests of humans regularly to keep him cooped up alone. My parents trump the interests of non-human animals. told me that when I was around three years The idea that all of Earth’s residents are part old I started asking them what animals – of an interconnected community forms the especially the dogs, squirrels, birds and basis of my ideas about personal ‘rewilding’ ants with whom I had contact outside of that are outlined in my book Rewilding Our our apartment in Brooklyn – were thinking Hearts (Bekoff, 2014). The ideas are novel and feeling. They said I was constantly and call for personal (and some might say paying attention to animals; not only was individual) spiritual transformations that I attributing minds to them, but I also was serve to reconnect people to nature and to very concerned with how they were treated. embrace the magnificence of our planet. All I always said that we also needed to mind individuals are seen as stakeholders who and care for them, because they couldn’t do must work together. it for themselves. My concern for individual The growing international field of animals has continued on for decades as I compassionate conservation also mandates work in the rapidly developing field called that all individuals are stakeholders, and it compassionate conservation. is based on the following principles: Ecocentrism recognizes that an Earth- 1 First, do no harm. centred, rather than a human-centred, 2 All individuals matter.

10 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Compassionate conservation and personal rewilding

3 We must strive for peaceful coexistence We don’t need ‘more science’ to know among all of Earth’s residents. that we must change our ways, and we already have enough information to Currently, while many people talk mandate making positive changes. We about how all individuals matter, and must redefine our relationship with other how all individuals must work together, nature and we must rapidly do it and act in the end human interests regularly on the feelings that emerge. We also trump those of non-humans. This has need to reconsider our relationships with produced a world of daily chaos – a world other humans and do away with resolving that is falling apart. Personal rewilding conflicts using violent means. A rewilding and compassionate conservation can manifesto would clearly state that we will The Earth change how we go about ‘business as indeed need – and with deeply passionate “ usual’ and can come to the rescue and and motivated intention – to reconnect jurisprudence reverse these destructive trends. As such, with other humans, other non-humans, perspective mandates I’ve called for a ‘rewilding manifesto’ and their homes, and to do it with as that we need to based on compassion and biophilia – much positive energy as possible. harness our powerful our innate drive to connect with Mother One trait we share with many other Nature – that will help to foster hope for animals is a strong tendency to be and positive biophilic the future. compassionate and empathic, rather impulse and exploit Along these lines, what I call the than inherently violent, and we need it for all it’s worth, ‘ethology of rewilding’ entails focusing to tap into these predispositions as we and then some, as on what we know about who other animals move forward. The Earth jurisprudence truly are, and using this information perspective mandates that we need we move into the to come to a deeper appreciation of the to harness our powerful and positive future.” similarities and differences among non- biophilic impulse and exploit it for all human animals and between non-human it’s worth, and then some, as we move and human animals. I lean towards into the future. And let’s be sure that the side of offering practical solutions. youngsters know just what we are doing,

Marc and Bessie, a rescued dairy cow.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 11 Compassionate conservation and personal rewilding www.ecologicalcitizen.net

and then they, too, can continue to do they don’t care what their kids’ lives will the good work that is necessary for our be like in the future? magnificent planet, and for all beings What we’re doing now will result in a to thrive and to look forward to, and disastrous situation for future generations. joyously welcome in, many new days. Ecocide really is a suicide that crosses Along these lines, we need to rewild time and space. I see rewilding as a education and allow kids to be kids, to process that will result in much closer get down and dirty, and to enjoy the and deeper reciprocal connections with outdoors and engage in spontaneous wild other humans and other animals and play. They seem to give up when they’re their homes, and I believe that if enough not allowed to be the kids they are and people rewild themselves, rewilding will that they deserve and need to be. become a heartfelt and heartful meme, a Rewilding also calls for ‘undoing the behaviour that will spread from person to unwilding’ that comes not only from person and to future generations as a form sitting in classrooms, but also from of cultural evolution. There are the ‘10 Ps All individuals can media that misrepresents other animals, of rewilding’ – being proactive, positive, “ and from getting lost in busyness. It persistent, patient, peaceful, practical, do something to also means that youngsters must get out powerful, passionate, playful and present. realize the essential into nature and experience first-hand We must clearly speak out about our deep goals of ecocentrism, the community in which they live. It is and wild connection with nature. We must and everyone who essential to redefine our relationship rewild our sense of wonder. with other nature, and we must rapidly It’s inarguable that if we’re going to make can do something do it and act on the feelings that emerge. the world a better place now and for future must do what they In our forthcoming book The Animals’ generations, personal rewilding is central can right now.” Agenda (Bekoff and Pierce, 2017), Jessica to the process, and this will entail a major Pierce and I argue for a revolutionary paradigm shift in how we view and live paradigm shift to what we call ‘the in the world and how we behave. It’s not science of animal well-being’, in which that difficult to expand our compassion the interests and lives of all individuals footprint (Bekoff, 2010), and if each of us matter. When these ideas are employed, does something the movement will grow our decisions will not routinely or rapidly. All in all, ecocentrism surely has to conveniently favour humans over non- be the wave of the future, yet time is not on humans. our side. All individuals can do something to I feel that most people do care about realize the essential goals of ecocentrism, the planet, but because their daily lives and everyone who can do something must are so out of control (and over-filled with do what they can right now. n having to do this and that) that they lose their innate connections with nature. References This persistent alienation makes them Bekoff M (2010) The Animal Manifesto: Six reasons for forget how good it feels to interact with expanding our compassion footprint. New World Publishing, Novato, CA, USA. animals and other environs. Many people also ‘give up’ and don’t realize that our Bekoff M (2014) Rewilding Our Hearts: Building pathways of compassion and coexistence. New World Publishing, one and only planet is tired and surely Novato, CA, USA. not as resilient as some people claim it to be. I’m a total dreamer and optimist, but Bekoff M and Pierce J (2017) The Animals’ Agenda: Freedom, compassion, and coexistence in the human age. there simply is no way that the methods Beacon Press, Boston, MA, USA. by which we choose to live today can be Swimme B and Berry T (1994) The Universe Story: sustainable, even in the short-run. Giving From the primordial flaring forth to the Ecozoic era—a up means that our children (and theirs) celebration of the unfolding of the cosmos. HarperOne, will live in a world in which I’d rather not San Francisco, CA, USA.

live, so I wonder why so many people are Wikipedia (2017) Earth jurisprudence. Available at https:// so self-centred and selfish, acting as if is.gd/iXik5z (accessed July 2017).

12 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net PERSONAL STORY

Ecocentrism: A personal story

t has been noted that (early childhood) guitar). Being there was like sitting in an Helen Kopnina experiences with nature enhance open temple, with pine branches forming Ienvironmental values (Wells and flying buttresses and with curious About the author Lekies, 2006). These findings suggest that spectators such as deer on the night watch Helen is an environmental nature activities in childhood and youth peering through the shadows. Our songs, anthropologist at Leiden are key pathways that lead people to take although not religious, seemed to reach University, Leiden, and The an interest in nature and later work for all the way up to heaven. My parents and Hague University of Applied Science, The Hague, the its protection. Yet, early exposure alone their adult friends talked about politics Netherlands. does not explain why some people who – something they did not dare do in the grow up next to forests do not try to stop city. The granite rocks and the northern Citation the logging, while others from the same pine forests kept their secrets. I wrote Kopnina H (2017) villages do. This question of why some about it a few years later, reflecting on Ecocentrism: A personal come to ecocentrism and some do not is the death of my father, Nikolai Kopnin story. The Ecological Citizen fascinating. Like others, I have no perfect (https://is.gd/8yDiW4; Kopnina, 2014a): 1(Suppl A): 13–16. answer. In the documentary film If a Tree Keywords Falls: A story of the Earth Liberation Front, I returned to those Karelian summer nights Becoming ecocentric environmental activist Daniel McGowan with my father and his physicist friends. On reflects that he grew up as a typical ‘city the shores of beautiful lakes, he played his boy’. He came to care about nature from guitar and helped friends to fix baidarkas watching a film about deforestation for the next long journey to where the when he was in his 20s (Kopnina, 2014b). Northern horizon meets the Aurora It appears difficult to discern why some Borealis, and to where science would meet individuals choose to stand up for nature the beauty of lived experience. and others do not; this commitment seems to vary individually, independent The second experience was when my of culture, as I describe in my articles mother and six-year-old sister left the and books. In reflecting what wilderness USSR in 1989 and moved to Arizona, means for me, I have three lived where our relatives lived. In Phoenix, I experiences to relate. left home after a fight with my mother. The first is about me growing up in I did not speak English too well but Moscow, USSR, with my parents being continued going to school. I met some ardent hikers. My parents were dissident other runaway teenagers. Most of them sympathizers, and on their trips to the were addicted, some stole, some begged wild areas of Russia – Karelia, the White on the street and some girls were Sea region, the Ural mountains – they involved in prostitution. As it was not used wilderness as places of freedom. We cold at night, I slept in my sleeping bag were climbing mountains, sailing lakes in the bushes near my school. I slept and rivers in baidarkas (Russian canoes), among the cacti and sweet-smelling dry walking animal paths in the woods with grass, writing letters to a young man huge backpacks, sitting around the fire, I met by the Mediterranean Sea, who cooking fish we caught and mushrooms would later (for a short time) become my and berries we gathered, and singing husband. After school, I worked for a call songs (my father and uncle played centre advertising holiday retreats (my

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funny English attracted clients), then at woods and forests, hills and meadows, Wendy’s, a fast food chain, and then for and the life of the mother earth declares a hospice for dying people. It was that through the leaves and branches, ‘I place of prickly pear, saguaro cactus and want to stay, I want to stay.’ The plant, superstition mallows that brought me speechless foster mother of life on peace at night. The coyotes sang in the earth, has drawn nourishment from the distance, and occasional hummingbirds heavens since time immemorial to feed fluttered over the fiery orange Arizona her progeny; has gathered the sap, the barrel cactus bloom, “as small as a vigour, the savour of life for the earth’s world and as large as alone” (Cummings, immortal store; and raised to the sky “Perhaps we all 1956). It was indifferent to my loneliness, the message of beleaguered life, ‘I want come to care about and, yet, always there, like family I had to stay’. Balai could hear that eternal lost. After more than a year sleeping in message of life in a special way in his nature from an the bush (and working strange jobs), I bloodstream. essential engagement received a college scholarship and moved with place, the to Massachusetts. Within a few days, my daughter fully lived experience of My third experience involves my three- recovered. Maybe, she felt that ‘call bonding with year-old daughter and her recovery from to life’ in her bloodstream as well. I respiratory disease in the Sundarbans, certainly did. the land. ” West Bengal, India. In 2007 I taught at First, wilderness meant being with my Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India, parents and friends, and experiencing as part of an Erasmus Mundus exchange freedom. Second, wilderness offered programme. While I was teaching, my me refuge. Third, wilderness offered partner and daughter were exploring healing. Other environmentalists have the city, and, exciting as it was, they had similar experiences. Ralph Waldo inhaled a lot of gassy fumes. After Emerson (1841) described in Self-Reliance taking antibiotic cures, we left for a long how society limits individual freedom. weekend to the Sundarbans, a mangrove Perhaps wilderness began where the area in West Bengal. At the time, much Garden of Eden ended and human of it was flooded. The places we saw were dominion began? Walden Pond offered magical, with small trembling finger- Henry David Thoreau (1854) his own like leaves of Sundari trees and the refuge. Perhaps we all come to care about luxurious branches of Golpata dipping nature from an essential engagement into muddy waters. These plants made with place, the lived experience of me think of Rabindranath Tagore’s story bonding with the land. about an Indian boy Balai, who could feel Having travelled around, I have also the beauty and the pain of this green come to believe that environmentalism universe (quoted in Kopnina [2013: 10]): is universal, not just Western, and sometimes individual – and not culture- This boy really belonged to the age, based. Some non-Western or indigenous millions of years ago, when the earth’s activists are internationally renowned, would-be forests cried at birth among like Wangari Muta Maathai, the Noble the marshlands newly sprung from the prize winner and the founder of the ocean’s depth […] The plant, vanguard of Green Belt Movement; others are less all living things on the road of time, had known. Some have sacrificed their lives raised its joint hands to the sun and said, to protect nature, like the Cambodian ‘I want to stay here, I want to live. I am anti-logging activist Chut Wutty, who an eternal traveler. Rain or sun, night or was killed in 2012; or like Jairo Mora day, I shall keep travelling through death Sandoval, a Costa Rican conservationist after death, towards the pilgrim’s goal who was murdered on the beach where he of endless life.’ That ancient chant of the was trying to protect leatherback turtles plants reverberates to this day, in the (these and other cases are described by

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Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina [2016]). wild nature, full of ‘free-willed’ lives, At least 185 land and environmental deserves to have that right to continued defenders, those who took peaceful action existence, without just being a ‘resource’ to protect the natural world, were killed for humanity (Crist, 2012). in 2015 (Visser, 2016). The Honduran For me, like for many others, wilderness indigenous leader Berta Cáceres was is a place of refuge, freedom and healing “For me, like killed in 2016 because of her campaign but also something else – something for many others, against an internationally financed independent of me, but also far greater wilderness is a place hydroelectric dam. Isidro Baldenegro than me, something that may be part of López, an indigenous Mexican activist me, or that I may be part of. of refuge, freedom campaigning against illegal logging, was And this is the last story I want to relate and healing but shot dead in 2017 (Lakhani, 2017). about myself. When I was eight years old, also something The environmental movement based I wrote a book, Bor’ba za sushestvovaniye else – something on engagement with places that are (“The Battle for Survival”), in a series independent of me, loved is a truly global phenomenon of Russian school notebooks. In many transcending national, racial and gender ways, my career as an environmental but also far greater boundaries (Kopnina, 2015). However, anthropologist is still building on that than me, something I have also realized that a lot of what I book, seeking a harmonious survival for that may be part of experienced (or that others did) was still both humanity and nature. Ecocentrism me, or that I may motivated by anthropocentrism. Maathai for me is also intertwined with animal was planting trees for the sake of her rights, as I want to protect both entire be part of.” people, Chut Wutty was concerned not ecosystems (of which humans are a part) just about deforestation but also about and their individual inhabitants. My his own people losing control over land, ecocentrism means I am still (and always and of course my own experiences can be will be) part of this ongoing battle. n understood as anthropocentric, as it was about my freedom, refuge and healing. References As a starting point, such a motivation Cafaro P and Primack R (2014) Species extinction is serves its purpose, but there is another a great moral wrong. Biological Conservation 170: stage – the one leading from shallow to 1–2. deep ecology. Crist E (2012) Abundant Earth and population. Like other contemporary environmental In: Cafaro P and Crist E, eds. Life on the Brink: writers (e.g. Noss and Cooperrider, 1994; Environmentalists confront overpopulation. University Crist, 2012; Cafaro and Primack, 2014), of Georgia Press, Atlanta, GA, USA: 141–53. I speak of nature or wilderness as an Cummings E (1956) Maggie and milly and molly and intrinsic good that is (or should be) may (poem). Available at https://is.gd/0M3ysb inviolate. Simultaneously to the human (accessed July 2017). sacrifices of environmentalists, millions Emerson RW (1841) Self-Reliance. Available at https:// of acres of habitat and millions of non- is.gd/ka8V2Q (accessed July 2017). human inhabitants have been eradicated in the past few decades. Did they not have Fox S (1981) John Muir and His Legacy: the American rights to life also? John Muir (quoted by conservation movement. Little Brown and Co, Boston, MA, USA. Fox [1981: 43]) wrote about a cluster of rare white orchids: “I felt as if I were in Kopnina H (2013) Requiem for the weeds: Reflections the presence of superior beings who loved in Amsterdam city park. Sustainable Cities and me and beckoned me to come. I sat down Society 9: 10–14. beside them and wept for joy.” He later Kopnina H (2014a) A personal reflection on science interpreted this transcendent moment and scientism. Anthropology News 12 March. as a sudden awareness that the orchids Kopnina H (2014b) If a tree falls: Business students’ had no relevance for human beings; reflections on environmentalism. International they would have lived and died whether Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development a human had seen them or not. And 8: 311–29.

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Kopnina H (2015) Revisiting the Lorax complex: Deep Shoreman-Ouimet E and Kopnina H (2016) Culture and ecology and biophilia in cross-cultural perspective. Conservation: Beyond anthropocentrism. Routledge, Environmental Sociology 43: 315-24. New York, NY, USA.

Lakhani N (2017) Second winner of environmental Thoreau HD (1854) Walden: Or life in the woods. Dover prize killed months after Berta Cáceres death. Publications, New York, NY, USA

The Guardian. Available at https://is.gd/6j8AL5 Visser N (2016) Record number of environmentalists (accessed July 2017). killed last year for defending the planet. Available at https://is.gd/cLculK (accessed July 2017). Noss RF and Cooperrider A (1994) Saving Nature’s Legacy: Protecting and restoring biodiversity. Island Wells N and Lekies K (2006) Nature and the life Press, Washington, DC, USA. course. Children, Youth and Environments 16: 1–24.

The author’s book, written at the age of eight, The Battle for Survival.

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16 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net PERSONAL STORY

Loving Earth: How I came to ecocentrism

erhaps we are born ecocentric. loving nature, but I don’t think I came John J Piccolo Children often sympathize with all the way back to ecocentrism until I P animals, for example, viewing them landed in the Old World, on the shores of About the author as they view other humans. They seem Sweden’s Lake Vänern. John is Associate to recognize instinctively that animals Professor in the pursue a good of their own – that they Becoming an ecologist Department of need food and shelter just like us. I trace My love of the outdoors led me to apply to Environmental and Life Sciences, Karlstad the stirrings of my own ecocentrism to the Fisheries and Wildlife Programme at University, Sweden. my childhood spent collecting fish, frogs, Colorado State University (CSU) in 1984. snakes and salamanders in the New Jersey These were heady times for conservation Citation woods, a stone’s throw from Manhattan. biology – the following year Michael Piccolo JJ (2017) Loving Earth: My friends and I quickly learned that Soulé (1985) would publish “What is How I came to ecocentrism. these animals would die if mistreated, conservation biology?” in BioScience, The Ecological Citizen and we did our best to care for them (it accompanied by Holmes Rolston’s (1985) 1(Suppl A): 17–20. didn’t occur to us to just leave them be “Duties to endangered species” and Keywords at that time). By keeping aquariums and EO Wilson’s (1985) piece titled “The Becoming ecocentric terrariums we learned some of the ways biological diversity crisis”. This growing of these creatures, and what they needed movement would later become a global to thrive. One of my college mentors, force in nature conservation. Today the Robert (Bob) Behnke, recounted a similar Society for Conservation Biology has experience in encountering his first trout over 10,000 members, with chapters – an experience he credited for helping worldwide. At the time though, I was make him one of the leading native trout just glad to be taking my first college advocates of the 20th century (Piccolo, courses that focused on fish, wildlife, 2015a). ecology and resource management. In my I recall needlessly killing a songbird free time I enjoyed the vast expanses of with an airgun when I was a boy – 40 years wild nature in the Rocky Mountains and later I could still pinpoint the exact spot. desert South-West, especially hiking and Similarly, Charles Darwin regretted till fishing. I had no doubt I had found my the end of his life the time, when a small true calling. child, he beat a puppy “simply from the At the university we studied both sense of enjoying power”; he too could ecology and ‘management’ – we learned remember the exact spot till the end of about organisms and their complex his days. He was thereafter renowned for interactions, and how we humans could his love of animals and his ability to steal sustain the flow of natural resources, the affection of others’ dogs. But for me both consumable (e.g. fish, wildlife it was a long road between my childhood and timber) and non-consumable (e.g. love of animals and my formal recognition recreation and photography). It was fish of the importance of ecocentrism for and fisheries that interested me most, conservation of the biosphere. This road and I had had the good fortune to land at took me from New Jersey, through the a department with leading ecologists and Rocky Mountains and the desert west, conservationists, foremost among them to the wilds of Alaska. I never stopped then being Bob Behnke. At a time when

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‘trout management’ meant stocking as there was always a connection to the land. many hatchery fish as people wanted, I experienced the wildlands of the West, Bob taught both academia and the public but nothing prepared me for Alaska. about the importance of biodiversity and Anyone who believes the academic conservation. Never afraid to stand up drivel that ‘wilderness’ is a social for his principles, Bob described in no construct has not stood face to face uncertain terms the conservation plight with a wild bear. South-east Alaska Anyone who “ of native trout for scientific colleagues, has a higher density of bears than believes the US Government officials and fishing anywhere else on the planet, and these academic drivel that enthusiasts. Bob and his colleague bears depend on two things: salmon and ‘wilderness’ is a social Edwin (Phil) Pister (see Callicott [2017]) wilderness. The Native Americans and were graduate students under Aldo the great bears have lived side by side in construct has not Leopold’s son Starker at UC Berkeley in the Great North-West for millennia. Walk stood face to face the early 1960s – thus they inherited a footpath that has been cut deep into the with a wild bear.” the Land Ethic from one of the 20th rainforest floor by a hundred generations century’s legendary conservationists. I of bear paws; see how the soft footpads can therefore trace my own conservation have worn through a 2-metre diameter lineage back through Behnke and Starker downed spruce log, and you’ll be put in Leopold to Aldo himself. your place in this world. Bears live in a A little way across campus from our complex society: they have friends and fisheries building stood the philosophy foes and know well where each resides. department at CSU, and it was there, They care for their young for years, I suppose, that I was first truly, as teaching them to play and hunt, and to Holmes Rolston has written, “put in avoid the two-legged adversary with the my place” in this world. I enrolled in a awesome firepower. If you doubt that course in environmental ethics taught by a mother bear loves her cubs, simply Rolston. We read his new book Philosophy step between them sometime. But bears Gone Wild and we began to understand are just one among the approximately what it meant to be, as Leopold wrote, 10 million species with which we co- “a plain member and citizen” of the habitat this planet. Yes, bears seem Earth. I wish I could say I had become special to us because they are majestic, an ecocentrist on the first day of class, and perhaps because they can take a but that moment lay some years ahead. human life with a swipe of their paw. The I did refocus my Master’s thesis to real reason bears are special, though, is include a concentration on endangered that they need wilderness. Many species species, and I spent as many hours as I can thrive in patches of a few square could reading environmental ethics and kilometres. A functioning bear society attending Rolston’s lectures. But the wide needs thousands of hectares. If the world was calling, and I left CSU with a ‘wilderness is social construct’ people Master’s degree, determined to live and have their way, there will be few bear work in nature and not academia. societies left on Earth by the end of the I worked in conservation in and around century. the American West for ten years – my I didn’t go to Alaska for the bears, path lay through Wyoming, Montana, however: I went for the salmon. It Idaho, Nevada and finally to the wilds of was there I found some of the last Alaska. I spent a lot of time with ranchers, remaining intact salmon ecosystems miners, foresters and fisherman. A on Earth – dependent upon the same significant part was living and working wilderness as the bears in fact, the with Native Americans for a few years. pristine spawning and rearing streams. All of these people depended on nature I knew the first time I visited an old- for their livelihoods – we didn’t always growth salmon watershed that I would agree on what was best for the land, but resume my research career in Alaska,

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learning about how salmon ecosystems restoration in Sweden that I really came work. I took a PhD on salmon ecology back to ecocentrism – I began to search and found my way back into scientific to the answers to the question: “Why research, ending up in Karlstad, Sweden, should we conserve biodiversity?” at a small university with a big research * * * * * programme on freshwater ecology and restoration. Sweden has a long history of “It is the story of all life that is holy and loving salmon, but it also has over 3000 is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds dams that block migration routes and sharing in it with the four-leggeds and alter freshwater habitat. The government the wings of the air and all green things; has recently committed to restoring wild for these are children of one mother and salmon populations in as many rivers as their father is one spirit.” possible, so there is a lot of work to do. Oglala Lakota Black Elk It was when I began working on salmon as told through Neihardt (2014)

A wild land-locked Atlantic salmon smolt from the Clear River (Klarälven), Värmland, Sweden. Klarälven salmon were once threatened with extinction, but 50 years of concerted effort by dedicated conservationists have paid off – 2016 saw the largest run of wild salmon since at least the 1950s. Salmon have made their annual spawning run up Klarälven since the glaciers receded 15,000 years ago. Salmon like this have existed virtually unchanged for some 5 million years, ebbing and flowing with Earth’s climatic variations – long before we humans came out of Africa. It’s inconceivable, the author feels, that there was no intrinsic good in these ecosystems before humans arrived to appreciate them. Photo credit: Richard Gow.

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Becoming ecocentric Maybe we can convince ourselves that we It was while working on a salmon socially construct “wilderness” and have restoration project that I had an ‘ecocentric differing worldviews about “nature”. True, moment’. I was discussing the project with we have earth-views: a global village, a reporter from Swedish radio’s Nature Gaia, God’s creation. Still, looking at those Morning programme, when the topic came photographs from space, it seems incredible round to wolves. There is a lot of controversy that we socially construct the planet Earth. concerning Sweden’s wolf population, which Earth is the source of value, and therefore has recovered naturally from extirpation by value-able, able to produce value. This immigrating from Finland over the past generativity is the most fundamental couple of decades. What is it about wolves meaning of the word “nature”, “to give or salmon that drives us to spend money birth” […] We are searching for an ethics and effort to protect these species from adequate to respect life on this Earth, an “My vision for the extinction? It was then that I recalled the Earth ethics. new millennium is to “green fire” that Aldo Leopold saw in the eyes of a dying wolf, and I began to truly My vision for the new millennium is to help bring forward “think like a mountain.” I returned to help bring forward ecocentric respect for ecocentric respect for A Sand County Almanac (Leopold, 1949), and life on Earth. n life on Earth.” a short time later to Rolston’s (2012) A New Environmental Ethics and other ecocentric References literature. I’ve been writing and teaching Callicott JB (2017) What good is it anyway? In: Garson J, Plutynski A and Sarkar S, eds. The Routledge Handbook about ecocentrism ever since (Piccolo, 2012; of Philosophy of Biodiversity. Routledge, London, UK: 2015b; 2017). Of course, ecocentrism is a way 168–82. of life, not a textbook subject; being a ‘born Leopold A (1949) A Sand County Almanac: With other essays again’ ecocentric has meant for me more on conservation from Round River. Random House, New appreciation of nature in everyday life – York, NY, USA. and it’s made me a better ecologist too. Neihardt J (2014) Black Elk Speaks: The complete edition. On the first page of A New Environmental Bison Books, Lincoln, NE, USA. Ethics, Rolston (2012), with his uncanny Piccolo JJ (2012) Stoking the ‘Green Fire’: Bringing the Land Ethic to the water. Fisheries 37: 516-8. ability to relate nature to culture, writes: Piccolo JJ (2015a) Learning ‘about trout’: A student’s tribute to Robert J. Behnke. Fish and Fisheries 16: 181-2. We are now twelve years into a unique Piccolo JJ (2015b) The Land Ethic and conservation of century, the first in the 35 million centuries native salmonids. Ecology of Freshwater Fish 26: 160–4. (3.5 billion years) of life on Earth in which Piccolo JJ (2017) Intrinsic values in nature: Objective good one species can jeopardize the planet’s or simply half of an unhelpful dichotomy? Journal for future. Nature Conservation 37: 8–11. Rolston H III (1985) Duties to endangered species. Throughout the book he goes on to BioScience 35: 718–26. synthesize what the great thinkers of the Rolston H III (2012) A New Environmental Ethics: The next millennium for life on Earth. Routledge, New York, NY, past century have done to forward our USA. understanding of our ethical relationship Soulé M (1985) What is conservation biology? BioScience with nature, and, more importantly, our 35: 727–34. moral obligation to save the planet from Wilson EO (1985) The biological diversity crisis. BioScience ourselves. He concludes: 35: 700–6.

Discuss a range of Earth-centred issues: www.ecocentricalliance.org/#ju

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Ecocentrism: Playing beyond boundaries

“What pattern connects the crab to the lies in anthropocentrism. It is hidden in Reingard lobster and the orchid to the primrose what we perceive as “normal, natural and and all the four of them to me? And necessary” (Joy, 2011). Anthropocentrism, Spannring me to you? And all the six of us to the “which sees individual humans and the About the author amoeba in one direction and the back- human species as more valuable than Reingard is a sociologist ward schizophrenic in another?” all other organisms” (Washington et al., working at the Institute (Bateson, 2002: 7) 2017: 35), has many aspects which are for Educational Science, deeply embedded in our language and University of Innsbruck, social structures, as well as our cultural Austria. vividly remember sitting in the back practices. There are, first, the dualisms Citation seat of my dad’s car watching the between human and animal, culture landscape fly past pretending to be a and nature, and mind and body, which Spannring R (2017) I Ecocentrism: Playing beyond horse running alongside. I could feel the set the human distinctly apart from all boundaries. The Ecological cold wind in my nostrils, my pounding other life forms. The human has defined Citizen 1(Suppl A): 21–4. hoofs, the strength of my muscles, the himself throughout Western philosophy joy of the movement and the changing as against the animalistic, the natural Keywords surface under my feet. Sometimes, the and the embodied. Indeed, the notion Becoming ecocentric horse would dissolve and I merged with of humanity and ethics remains the land, green fields, rolling hills, soaring largely based on an understanding of mountains, forests, alpine pastures and independence from animals and nature roaring waterfalls. This merging was my (Oliver, 2009). Second, our categories for favourite play. Can you smell the high animals are formed according to their moor? See the delicate flowers and hear use for us humans: livestock, laboratory the insects humming in the high moor? animals, pets, wildlife and vermin. These Can you also feel what it is like to be a boundaries define how we can exploit high moor? Dark, timeless, rhythmically these individuals (e.g. horses as ‘sports pulsating, breathing, basking under the utility vehicles’ or deer for hunting). sun, absorbing the rain and melting snow, Crossing the boundaries (e.g. when farm sharing with thousands of other creatures. animals escape and are rescued in a This play was enchanted, connected, and sanctuary), however, makes the ethical made me feel at home in the endless dilemma visible – that we are dealing universe. But such a connection to nature with live beings, not with categories. also allowed me to feel pain, irritation and The strict boundary between body sadness, as when my neighbours rescued and mind, spirituality and rationality, a kitten and put it up with their cat to and empathy and objectivity made itself ‘calm down the kitten’, rather than taking felt in my life as well. As I progressed it back to its mother. Or when I saw horses through high school and university, my shut into little ‘loose’ boxes for hours, or original play disappeared from my life. cattle chained to their troughs for months The ‘rational mind’ developed, almost on end, or logged forests and meadows to the exclusion of other approaches to being eaten up by construction sites. the world, and I started to get engrossed The barrier to empathy and to in playing with patterns in sociological responsibility toward animals and nature survey data. When, decades later, I

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rediscovered this play in the form of of extensive sheep farming, the animal communication, it remained one- reintroduction of the wolf, and the Great half of my life – incompatible with the Pyrenees guard dogs, in what she calls other scientific part. The feeling of leading “naturecultures”. She argues (2017: 4; a life split in two halves was mirrored original emphasis): back to me when one day I told a research colleague about animal communication To become one is always to become with and he responded: “That discredits all many. […] The partners do not precede the your academic work.” It took me many meeting; species of all kinds, living or not, years to find a way to integrate the two are consequent on a subject- and object- spheres in my professional work, in what shaping dance of encounters. We ‘love’ horses “ I have come to call ‘mindfulness-based because we can learning’. Still, the denialism that meets Such a becoming with, or ‘becoming ride them and me in academia with respect to animals animal’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2013), can some people ‘love’ and nature is still breathtaking: serve as an entry point to environmental n “I don’t have anything to do with consciousness (e.g. Fawcett, 2009; Stewart, wilderness because it animals.” 2011). This was certainly the case in my life. touches a romantic n “Are you really suggesting that we can However, many post-humanist attempts spot in them. For learn from animals?” fail to question anthropocentrism, as love to be truly illustrated by Haraway (2007) in her These quotes not only highlight the celebration of ‘agility’, a dog sport she ecocentric, it needs dualisms, but also the consequential participates in with her border collie. to be coupled with lack of recognition that animals and It overlooks the fact that breeding, empathy, listening, nature have as co-constitutive partners training and competing with animals respect and a in our communities. They also point to are fundamentally anthropocentric willingness to discard another boundary that seems to enclose endeavours, with high risks for the us, as isolated individuals. Based on animals’ physical and emotional well- anthropocentric and subjectivism, the ‘other’ can only be being. Indeed, it is very hard to discern the egocentric blinkers.” perceived as an object to be used for one’s anthropocentrism deeply embedded in our own aims and desires. Hence, animals cultural practices, and the egocentrism and landscapes are for our entertainment hidden in what is commonly called ‘love’. in ecotourism and nature parks, and We ‘love’ horses because we can ride companion animals are just for animal- them and some people ‘love’ wilderness assisted therapy and pedagogy. In because it touches a romantic spot in education, this understanding implies them. For love to be truly ecocentric, that the human being is the only centre it needs to be coupled with empathy, of pedagogic effort, that education can listening, respect and a willingness to be planned and results reproduced, and discard anthropocentric and egocentric that knowledge can be appropriated and blinkers. Finally, it requires finding an owned (Spannring, 2015). The alternative appropriate expression in one’s behaviour. approach, which highlights relationship, Society does not provide us with many dialogue and responsibility, is hard to exemplars, and so we are called upon find in today’s education systems (e.g. to develop countercultural practices in Noddings, 2005). many spheres of life. In my own case, Some postmodern and post-humanist I repeatedly found myself caught up in discourses have set out to deconstruct the anthropocentric practices because I did human subject, stressing ‘relationality’ not see alternatives. Eventually, however, and ‘mutually dependent emergence’. my compassion for animals led me to an From such a perspective, Haraway (2007) engagement with critical animal studies describes the “mutual becoming” of and cognitive horse ethology (de Giorgio humans and companion species, one and de Giorgio-Schoorl, 2016), and their example being the interdependence respective communities of practice.

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The author’s friend Freja.

They proved an essential frame and the denial of those who consume animal resource to develop my empathy into a products. Animal advocates, on the critical understanding of anthropocentric other hand, focus on individual animals’ practices, and to change my behaviour in sentience, the continuity between the a way that would benefit the animals, and human and animal condition, and their be consistent with my compassion. As I ethical implications. They thereby often started playing with these challenges, I overlook the environmental context of moved from vegetarianism to veganism, animal existence, and their integration in and I stopped training my horse in other-than-human-made habitat (Noske, favour of cultivating affiliative–cognitive 2004). I personally experience a ‘policing moments – in which we can both learn. of the borders’ now that I have started One last boundary I would like to to integrate environmental aspects in mention is the one that is sometimes my research. Some animal advocacy constructed between different groups and colleagues repeatedly try to bring me back perspectives. On the one hand, Paul Waldau to what supposedly ‘matters most’. Here I (among others) observes resistance to see the path as one that others also speak the consideration of individual animals of (Waldau, 2013; Kopnina and Cherniak, within the conservation movement. He 2015) – an invitation to play with and believes environmental education is full beyond boundaries, to expand our hearts of “human-centeredness anchored in a and our minds in an interdisciplinary formidable coalition of business, political and intersectional approach that fosters and religious rationalizations” (Waldau, ecocentrism. 2013: 30). He attributes this resistance to As I end this essay, my thoughts wander the fear of loss of human privilege, and to my last experience with my horse, Freja,

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 23 Ecocentrism: Playing beyond boundaries www.ecologicalcitizen.net

and her equine friends. Rather than References walking straight towards Freja, putting Bateson G (2002) Mind and nature: A necessary unity. a halter on, grooming and saddling her Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ, USA. to ride off in one linear movement, I Deleuze G and Guattari F (2013) A Thousand simply spend time with them. I stand at Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Bloomsbury the gate for a while. The horses briefly Academic, London, UK.

look up from their hay. Freja nickers as Fawcett L (2009) Feral sociality and (un)natural she recognizes me and then continues histories: On nomadic ethics and embodied to delicately pick up single straws of hay learning. In: McKenzie M, Hart P, Bai H and with her sensitive lips. I walk into the Jickling B, eds. Fields of Green: Restorying culture, environment, and education. Hampton Press, paddock, but do not approach the horses. Cresskill, NJ, USA: 227-36. I leave the decision as to whether or not to make contact to them. Freja turns Giorgio de F and Giorgio-Schoorl de J (2016) Equus Lost? How we misunderstand the nature of the toward me without leaving her position. horse–human relationship. Trafalgar Square, North Another horse turns and walks past Pomfret, VT, USA. Freja to the other side of the paddock. Then Freja makes a couple of steps Haraway D (2007) When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, USA. toward me, stops and stretches her neck so that she can touch my arm and hand. Joy M (2011) Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear She steps up to stand with me, relaxed, Cows: An introduction to carnism. Red Wheel Weiser, Newburyport, MA, USA. her hind leg cocked. After a while, The invitation to “ another horse joins us. He explores my Kopnina H and Cherniak B (2015) Cultivating a value play, transgressing anorak, and Freja watches him playing for non-human interests through the convergence boundaries and with the zip. A third, very young horse of animal welfare, animal rights, and deep ecology in environmental education. Education Sciences 5: approaches and starts nibbling at Freja. opening up new 3 63–79 . I step back and Freja uses this space to opportunities, is walk forward and away from the young Noddings N (2005) The Challenge to Care in Schools: An alternative approach to education (2nd edition). out there.” horse. Our little group breaks up. As I Teachers College Press, New York, NY, USA. stand alone, Freja comes back to rest with me again. I feel incredibly enriched Noske B (2004) Two movements and human– by being involved in this group dynamic, animal continuity: Positions, assumptions, contradictions. Animal Liberation Philosophy and in this play. Policy Journal 2: 1–12. Later, I let the horses into a vast Alpine pasture. They immediately Oliver K (2009) Animal Lessons: How they teach us to be human. Columbia University Press, New York, start grazing the short grass and the NY, USA. herbs of the meadow. My own focus on the horses shifts to a broader view Stewart A (2011) Becoming-speckled warbler: of the pasture, with its rocks, spruce Re/creating Australian natural history pedagogy. Australian Journal of Environmental Education 27: trees, dwarf alpenroses and a brook. 68–80. Jackdaws are playing and screeching. A buzzard flies high above my head, and Spannring R (2015) I and animal thou: Perspectives for educational theory. Society and Animals 23: I feel the cold air descending from the 613–29. still snow-covered mountain peak. The categories of domesticated and wild Waldau P (2013) Venturing beyond the tyranny blur, the land is alive and interwoven of small differences: The animal protection movement, conservation, and environmental with all living and non-living beings. education. In: Bekoff M, ed. Ignoring Nature No I start wondering about how we might More: The case for compassionate conservation. step back – as I did in the horse group University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA: – and allow for new dynamics on an 27–43.

ecocentric level. The invitation to play, Washington H, Taylor B, Kopnina H et al. (2017) Why transgressing boundaries and opening ecocentrism is the key pathway to sustainability. up new opportunities, is out there. n The Ecological Citizen 1: 35–41.

24 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net PERSONAL STORY

On the road to ecocentrism

very spring, often just as the ice is or three days we have usually seen most John A floating out of the harbours, my of the different moose that frequent any Vucetich E wife and I arrive to Isle Royale – an particular mud lick. Time at a mud lick island wilderness in Lake Superior. One is mostly quiet waiting and listening for About the author springtime interest is to find moose and the grunt of an old bull, for the shuffling John is Professor of document patterns of hair-loss left by a of hooves through the leaves, or for the Conservation at Michigan peculiar kind of tick that afflicts these splash of a young cow crossing the creek up Technological University, moose. The effort invariably includes around the bend. Houghton, MI, USA. passing time at mud licks – sites where the We share the mornings with a shivering groundwater, rich in sodium, seeps to the boredom that requires some management. Citation surface. Moose are attracted to these sites. Readjust to chase off pins and needles that Vucetich JA (2017) On the Since I was a little boy I’d wanted to tingle a calf muscle. Think of reasons to road to ecocentrism. The Ecological Citizen 1(Suppl A): become a wildlife biologist, the meaning find a new position along the edge of the 25–7. of which was re-affirmed every Sunday mud lick. Watch pirouetting water striders. evening of my youth fawning over If I move over there the sun will warm my Keywords Technicolor re-runs of Wild Kingdom with face and chest. Yes, that’s a good reason. Becoming ecocentric Marlin Perkins: “Jim and I are here in a Make the move. A hoot and a yodel, and remote jungle and we’re going to wrestle a loon rockets across the sky. More pins this anaconda.” I now know those antics and needles. Nibble trail mix, one peanut had as much to do with understanding or raisin at a time, at a controlled rate to nature as the World Wrestling Federation meter the time. A red squirrel vaults across has to do with sport. But then I wasn’t really the branches overhead. If I move over there interested in understanding nature. I was I’ll get better pictures because the sun will just bored with what seemed the rote script be at my back. of suburban life. I just craved adventure. At some unscripted moment boredom is In early adulthood, I attended university. shattered – a moose. Must be very quiet. Fortuitously, studying the wolves and Wolves know these mud licks and their moose of Isle Royale became a fixture of my gravitational pull on moose. And moose entire adult life. I also grew to become part know that wolves know. Moose approach of a community of conservation ecologists with vigilance. It’s okay to let a moose see – all in for protecting populations and you as it approaches. They recognize the ecosystems. difference between me and a wolf. But a We roll out of the tent by 5.00 am, raise moose should see you before they hear you. eyebrows at the ice that formed overnight They are not quick to discern the source of on the pot of cooking water, and stumble a crackled leaf or snapped twig. Absolute over the hill to the edge of the mud lick. quiet until the moose sees you. Then some Except for the time it takes to eat a bowl of talking in a deep gentle voice is useful. oatmeal in the morning and a dehydrated Most moose here understand that humans dinner in the evening, we keep watch are harmless and that they speak English, from the edge of the mud lick until about whereas they’ve never heard a wolf speak 10.00 pm. To maximize the effort, Leah and one word of English. I typically find different vantage points With four firmly planted hooves, a moose from which to view the mud lick. After two can reach its mouth across a 4-foot arc. Not

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 25 On the road to ecocentrism www.ecologicalcitizen.net

impressed? Try it yourself. A large sweep from the wilderness. I straightened up, is useful during the winter, when another feigning to myself about having been alert. step means pushing aside knee-deep snow Was I already that bored with standing? and each bite offers just a gram of nutrition. Whatever. I shifted my weight and returned A moose’s mouth does not, however, reach to a hazier state of mind. the mud quite so naturally. Some moose Last summer’s swamp sedges, dead and reach the mud by spreading their front legs desiccated, still stood tall and rustled in a like a stilt-legged clown trying to touch the light breeze. Green shoots were still only ground. Others reach the ground by resting an accent to the beige hues of early spring. on their ankles after turning their toes I stood right at the edge, where the soil “Some moose reach and feet backward. Five or ten minutes of was soft with moisture, but not saturated. the mud by spreading more-or-less non-stop slurping is typical. Nothing particularly advantageous about We sit behind the camera’s shutter waiting this position, except being just dry enough their front legs like for each moose to offer a complete profile to keep water from percolating through the a stilt-legged clown of its left side and then its right side. Some tiny hole in the sole of my foam footwear. trying to touch the moose slurp on and off for an hour or more. Again that same funny sensation on ground. Others reach Sometimes three or four moose are in the bottom of my foot. I shifted weight attendance at once. But much of the time is again. With a third push, I compared the the ground by resting just waiting for moose. observation against hypotheses pertaining on their ankles after By early afternoon, the morning chill to the state of my faculties. turning their toes had dissolved into light delirium induced I was hungry – not really hunger, just and feet backward.” by a swirling tincture of swamp quietude bored-hungry. The six-year-old in me was and solar brilliance. I was tired of sitting. tired of standing. The grown-up in me I repositioned and took a turn at standing, wasn’t going to reposition, not so soon after less standing and more draped over the last repositioning. Then another push. the tripod and camera. Then a peculiar Exasperated, I abandoned my post in a huff, sensation, a little push from beneath took a step aside, got down on my knees, the sole of my Croc™ footwear, worn thin and pushed the grass aside to meet the

A moose.

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pointed nose of a baseball-sized toad. She hierarchy of life without prejudice for or had been pushing her head against my Croc against any rung in the hierarchy. And, the with all the force she could muster by doing basis for this intrinsic value? Curiously, the toad push-ups. She was trying to stretch basis for intrinsic value may be different out after a long winter’s nap. Her black for the different rungs. For organisms, eyes were not half-mast, but wide open. intrinsic value rises from their interests Eye contact was unavoidable. I really do not to flourish. Conjoin that circumstance know the cognitive capabilities of a toad, with what some know as the Golden Rule and I might have projected the thought, but and a bit of logical consistency – the she seemed to be wondering whether I was result is an obligation to treat organisms insensitive – or just plain dumb. fairly and with concern for their interests A year before at the same mud lick, in and welfare. What reasoning gives rise the same delirious state of mind, a thought to the intrinsic value of populations and occurred to me. I hadn’t been looking for ecosystems? Aldo Leopold said that we thoughts. Nevertheless, one scrolled across organisms, populations and ecosystems the teleprompter of my mind. I was sitting are members of the same community of life in the wilderness counting what was left – community membership is what imbues of the day’s allotment of M&M’s®. And us all with intrinsic value. Arne Naess said then: How many other moose does a moose it comes from a metaphysical belief that know? Then the words: Is it boring to chew we organisms are so interconnected with cud for eight hours of every day? I wondered: populations and ecosystems that we all What is it like to be a moose? Overwhelmed inherit intrinsic value from, essentially, with warm sentiment? No, the questions being one-in-the-same. struck me, cold and horrifying. If you were Having been thoroughly trained Suggested to select a hundred people, all at random, and enwrapped in the phenomena of further reading from all parts of the world and all walks of populations and ecosystems, I came rather Vucetich JA (2010) Wolves, life. Make that a hundred million people. late in life to realize how organisms possess ravens, and a new purpose Line them up in order, most to least intrinsic value. With this realization, I for science. In: Moore K knowledgeable about moose – especially am haunted by a different understanding and Nelson MP, eds. Moral moose populations and moose as a species of ecocentrism, by which concern for Ground: Ethical action for – I would be pretty close to the front of that ecosystems and populations generally a planet in peril. Trinity line. But I had no idea how to answer those trumps concern of individual organisms. University Press, San Antonio, TX, USA: 337-42. questions. I fear that understanding leads to killing Vucetich JA (2016) Introducing Soon afterwards, I realized that moose wolves to save an endangered population of the wolf: “Should humans are not merely alive, but that each moose caribou in southern Alberta, when humans intervene when climate has a life. A moose has memories of not wolves are culpable for the harm to change threatens an island’s yesterday, hopes for tomorrow, joys and those caribou. And trophy hunting lions ecology?”. Natural History fears, and a story to be told. If a moose has because we’re not wise enough to envision 124: 20–3. a life – so I reasoned (with the awesome another way to conserve wild populations Vucetich JA, Bruskotter JT and powers of deduction I had acquired from all of lions. When I was younger, I would not Nelson MP (2015) Evaluating whether nature’s intrinsic those years in school) – then I’d bet that have questioned such a view. Then on an value is an axiom of or a wolf has a life too. If moose and wolves outrageously beautiful spring day, I met anathema to conservation. have ‘lives’, then the toad and chickadee a moose at a mud lick. Now, I doubt the Conservation Biology 29: and squirrel that live in town (just outside wisdom of such judgements. 321–32. our house) in all likelihood have lives too. I have no doubt about the shortcomings Vucetich JA and Nelson MP Being less familiar with the details of their of anthropocentrism. But I’m still on my (2007) What are 60 warblers lives in no way diminishes the fact: they Damascene road to ecocentrism. Where worth? Killing in the name of conservation. Oikos 116: each have their own life. that road will take me I cannot say. But 1267–7 8 . As I understand it, ecocentrism is to I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t start Vucetich JA and Nelson MP acknowledge and honour the intrinsic down that road until sometime after I first (2010) Sustainability: value of ecosystems, populations and wondered whether the thoughts of a moose Virtuous or vulgar? individual organisms – the entire are beyond my imagination. n BioScience 60: 539–44.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 27 The feet of an orangutan in a sanctuary in Borneo Joe Gray PERSONAL STORY www.ecologicalcitizen.net

Becoming ecocentric

Reed F Noss ow does one become ecocentric beings must have souls – or else none of us within a human society that is do. It seemed to me irrational and unfair About the author Hoverpoweringly anthropocentric? to believe that humans were inherently Reed is former Professor How does one break through the perceptual superior to any other species. It made of Conservation Biology at barrier of human exceptionalism, which me furious to hear people claim that the University of Central blinds us to our evolutionary heritage and Man was created in God’s image. If there Florida and current our ecological connections with the rest were a God, why would he or she give President of the Florida of life? Are there certain life-changing preference to humans, who in my view Institute for Conservation Science, Chuluota, FL, USA. events, experiences or epiphanies which were fundamentally no better than any show us the light? Or is it a more gradual other species? As I witnessed more and Citation process of realizing that the individual self more stupidity and cruelty on the part of Noss RF (2017) Becoming is just a part of a larger Self, reinforced by humans, I became more misanthropic. As a ecocentric. The Ecological the biological knowledge that life on Earth college student I was inclined to believe that Citizen 1(Suppl A): 30–2. almost certainly arose just once, and that all humans are severely flawed in comparison living things are kin derived from a common with other species. We ostensibly have the Keywords ancestor? intelligence to act responsibly on Earth, yet Becoming ecocentric In my case, the gradualism model seems we do not. Now, tempered with age, I take most accurate. I share EO Wilson’s (1984) a more egalitarian view: humans are not suspicion that biophilia – the feeling of fundamentally superior to other species, but affinity and love for other living things – is we are also no worse. Still, I know objectively innate, and furthermore that some people that the sooner Homo sapiens goes extinct, are genetically more prone to biophilia the greater the number of other species than others. People with irrepressible that will remain on Earth. Looking at my juvenile biophilia grow up to become wonderful kids and grandkids, I find this biologists, naturalists, environmental thought uncomfortable and depressing. ethicists, birdwatchers, conservationists or If biocentrism arises naturally from some combination of these. Biophilia and biophilia, how does one proceed from biocentrism are natural partners. It would biocentrism to ecocentrism – the system be schizophrenic to have one without the of values that encompasses the non-living other. I can’t recall it ever occurring to me as well as living components of ecosystems, that animals, at least, are fundamentally along with ecological and evolutionary inferior to humans. From my earliest processes? For me, it was a mixture of direct memories, I had a strong intuitive feeling experience of wild nature and an education that all animals have intrinsic value. As I in biology that prepared me for ecocentrism. grew older, I began to sense value not just I was fortunate to grow up during a time (the in individuals but in species, and not just in 1950s and 1960s) when unsupervised outdoor animals, but in plants and other organisms. play by children was the norm. We kids Old trees, especially, took on spirits of their were always outside doing something. Our own for me, and I regularly conversed with parents did not constantly watch over us. As them. long as we returned home soon after dark, By the time I was in high school, I argued everything was fine. I did not particularly vigorously with my religious acquaintances like sports, so my outdoor play was exploring that if humans have souls, then all living wild areas relatively close to home, at first

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just a few blocks away and later, as I roamed competent naturalist. I felt at home in farther, within a few miles from home. large part because I knew the names and These places were not wilderness, not by a something about the habits of the creatures long-shot, but they were semi-natural areas around me. They were, it seemed to me, both that possessed perhaps as much wildness as my best friends and my family. I still feel Henry David Thoreau (1854) found at Walden that way. Pond, just 1.4 miles from his home in the Soon after I entered college, I began to bustling town of Concord, Massachusetts, have true wilderness experiences during and which influenced him so profoundly. I breaks between semesters, backpacking in was often, with a friend or two, exploring southern and western US national parks and these wild areas, especially in my early wilderness areas and canoeing in the wilds years, but from adolescence onward I was of northern Ontario, Canada, where I worked increasingly by myself – but not at all alone several summers as a camp counsellor. These because I had nature with me. Most of my experiences reinforced my evolving view friends ‘grew up’ and no longer enjoyed that large, wild natural areas, replete with By spending so exploring the woods and streams with me, large carnivore and herbivore populations, “ climbing trees, swinging on vines, fishing and natural disturbance regimes such much time outdoors for bluegill and bullheads, or capturing as fire, have the greatest integrity of all observing wild darters (often brilliantly coloured small landscapes. They are autonomous, self- plants and animals, stream fish in the family Percidae), snakes, managing ecosystems that function just fine I was becoming and snapping turtles. in the absence of humans. Over more than an increasingly As is typical of biologists, I was fortunate three decades I received large and frequent to never ‘grow up’. I remember clearly the doses of rugged wilderness experience that competent naturalist. semi-religious feeling of oneness with quite literally wore my body out. Today, I felt at home in nature during those childhood jaunts, a remote wilderness is something that I am large part because feeling that has never abandoned me. I thrilled still exists, but I can’t spend much I knew the names realized deep inside that wild nature was time in it. I must console myself with regular my true ancestral home. And by spending so (near daily) doses of wildness close to home. and something about much time outdoors observing wild plants I could never live in a big city or anywhere the habits of the and animals, I was becoming an increasingly far from wild areas. creatures around me. They were, it seemed to me, both my best friends and my family. I still feel that way.”

Mills Creek, the author’s current personal Walden. Like Thoreau’s Walden Pond, this sacred place is just 1.4 miles from Reed’s home.

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A scientific education can help inspire nourished my budding ecocentrism as ecocentrism, too. There is nothing quite much as the biological richness and beauty. so gratifying as when rational knowledge Loving nature as I always have, the sight of and intuition not only do not conflict, but destruction filled me with a potent mix of in fact tell you the same thing. Ecology sorrow, pain and rage. It still does. Seeing and evolutionary biology were wondrous a bulldozer rip into a forest is agonizing. I subjects for me; I took all the available can never forgive anyone who knowingly courses in these subjects at each of the and willingly destroys a natural area, unless several universities I attended, in addition they literally have no other way to survive to the ‘ologies’ (herpetology, ornithology, and feed their family. Even in those cases, “The ‘elite’ mammalogy etc.) and plant taxonomy if imperilled species are pitted against an courses. Reading a good ecology textbook expanding population of humans, there is sentiments of was like reading an engaging novel. The no doubt where my loyalties lie. biophilia, biocentrism ecological concept that each species is I do not want to end on a depressing note. and ecocentrism ‘master of its own niche’ reinforced my One of the best things about nature for should be cherished, ideology that all species are ultimately us humans is the happiness it can bring. equal in value. As I learned more about Recognizing intrinsic value in other species and we should how nature works, and how living things and in entire ecosystems helps us appreciate provide more people evolved over millions of years, the the beauty of nature in a much deeper way. the opportunity to dominant worldview of anthropocentrism I’m increasingly convinced that the practice join this enlightened – and virtually everything in the of natural history may be the key to the segment of society. Abrahamic religions – became increasingly salvation of the fractured conservation– ” nonsensical and repugnant to me. How environmental movement, which no could anyone not accept biological evolution longer seems to share a set of core values. and not see the fundamental kinship and Most environmentalists don’t get outside interconnectedness of all life? nearly often enough and don’t know much Looking back now, I realize I was of anything about the Earth they say they privileged to have opportunities that many are defending. Hence, their emotional ties others lacked. I should not be so judgemental to nature are not strong. Virtually all good about the dearth of ecocentrism among field naturalists I’ve known throughout the less fortunate, for example those who my life are strongly ecocentric. There’s a spend their entire lives in the inner city. I reason for this. Naturalists spend their lives am a member of an educated elite: both of observing wild creatures in wild places, they my parents and two of my grandparents develop affection and feelings of kinship had college educations, and several of with these creatures, and they want to see my relatives had PhDs. I think, however, them protected from harm. The practice of this elite status is something to be proud, natural history may be the key to restoring not ashamed, of. I’m sickened by the joy to conservation (Noss, 2013), and for growing populist sentiment, epitomized helping people recognize intrinsic value in by the followers of Donald Trump, that the nature. n possession of higher education is somehow dishonourable. I have never heard a Trump References supporter express a love of nature. The ‘elite’ Leopold A (1949) A Sand County Almanac: With other essays on conservation from Round River. Random House, New sentiments of biophilia, biocentrism and York, NY, USA. ecocentrism should be cherished, and we should provide more people the opportunity Noss RF (2013) Forgotten Grasslands of the South: Natural to join this enlightened segment of society. history and conservation. Island Press, Washington, DC, USA. And then there are the wounds. Aldo Leopold wrote: “One of the penalties of Thoreau HD (1854) Walden: Or life in the woods. Dover an ecological education is that one lives Publications, New York, NY, USA

alone in a world of wounds” (Leopold, Wilson EO (1984) Biophilia: The human bond with other 1949). The wounds I saw in nature probably species. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.

32 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net PERSONAL STORY

My path to ecocentrism

learned when I was a child, with dawned, my realization of being part Ian Whyte some prodding from my father, to of the Earth became more internal; I I appreciate and empathize with the was changed, and much that had been About the author wild. This further developed during my previously obscure became casually Ian is a field naturalist who teenage years, a process made easier by real. On the personal, emotional level, lives in Ottawa, ON, Canada. the close proximity of both the family I started to feel a strong empathy, cottage and by frequent visits to the of oneness, with the Earth and her Citation nearby Gatineau Park. As I grew older, creatures. In many ways their joy is my Whyte I (2017) My path to ecocentrism. The Ecological trips to Algonquin Park and other wild joy; their loss is my loss. Their needs Citizen 1(Suppl A): 33–5. places (but which I now realize had are, in some way, my needs. In some

already been much lessened from their indefinable and indescribable way, I Keywords original state) facilitated an increasing sometimes feel, strongly at times, that Becoming ecocentric love for the wild. This process was we are (at least partially) an integrated hastened by the stark contrast between whole. It became important to follow my the quiet beauty of the wild and the heart and express my love and feelings harsh reality of the barrenness, the for the Earth and her creatures. noise, and the pavement and concrete Simultaneously, it slowly became on returning to the city. I started to ask obvious that the places of value I loved, myself how one could be so right and and the Earth herself, with which I was the other so crass, ugly and empty of discovering a co-identity, were being value. Often I was astonished that I had smashed by the juggernauts of the voluntarily returned at all. human population explosion and rising Years ago, I started to flower watch, consumption. Incrementally, facilitated more or less akin to bird watching. I by a moving baseline, the new norm of came to love these elegant ephemeral development, pavement and concrete lives and through them to appreciate the was crawling across the landscape. beauty of the Earth. Then, startlingly, It seemed that everywhere life and the Earth started occasionally to speak diversity was being overwhelmed to me (as she would, I suppose, to any by dead things and monoculture who listened). There was Iris Pond, Crow domesticates. Lake’s blue flags, Gatineau’s firefly My many thoughts and feelings were night, the Alvar’s low bindweed day, disorganized and often at cross purposes. the Tim River’s lady slipper hill and Early on I wrote letters to politicians Ragged’s shimmering light show. And about the seal slaughter, among other the comets! I was repeatedly jolted by things. Politically my family had been these messages, these brief flashes of Progressive Conservatives, but much intuition, and it slowly became obvious that they represented I could not that, rather than being an observer, I support, although I have retained a bit was a participant, a part of all this. The of right-wing thinking. In fact I was not wonder of it was that it took so long, able to support any party as, at best, what that I had to be repeatedly knocked on I was feeling was only very partially the head, for me to notice, to integrate represented by the mainstream parties. it into myself. After understanding had Additionally, the parties all supported

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some policies which I abhorred. Later, Sometime in the late 1980s, I met I joined groups like the Canadian Parks David Orton, a committed Marxist, and Wilderness Society and the Green and he introduced me to Deep Ecology. Party, which all supported working Suddenly, all my disparate thoughts within the system. It was not for another snapped into place, with hardly a loose ten or fifteen years that I came to fully end anywhere. I instantly became a realize the futility of working within the follower of the Deep Ecology philosophy. system, which was (and is) dedicated to It made such good sense and cleared up consuming the whole Earth, until death so much that had been obscure before. reigns everywhere. This wonderfully coherent philosophy

Painted trillium.

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clearly stated that all creatures have her history to discern what she wanted, inherent value, in and of themselves, that and one would then be able to figure out humans were taking too much, and that a right course of action. things must change. Wow! I continued There were many books which helped the conversation with David until his me on my way. Early on Thoreau’s Walden, death in 2011. He was adamantly against Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, Rowe’s As I age, it seems both compromise and mainline groups Home Place and Livingston’s Fallacy Of “ that smaller things or politics. I gradually came to accept Wildlife Conservation led the way. Slightly the realization stated immediately later came Catton’s Overshoot, Naess’s can elicit amazing above, of the futility of working within Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, Bahro’s responses. Time the system. Realization is one thing, Avoiding Social and Ecological Disaster, stops as I gaze at acting on it completely another. It is Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous, and, after the exquisite and hard to negate a lifetime of values, and that, Livingston’s Rogue Primate. In a to then strike out in a completely new similar vein, both Earth First! Journal and delicate beauty direction. How will one survive in the Wild Earth influenced me. Of course there of the ephemeral once familiar but now inimical territory? were many others, but these are the ones Hepatica. The muggy I have not yet resolved this conundrum. I particularly remember. heat of a summer’s David, chiefly, but aided by me My arrival at an ecocentric viewpoint and several others, developed and was enabled by many things. First there day on a swampy propounded a version of Deep Ecology was the slowly developing realization pond captivates me which included a strong commitment to that I loved the wild, which was in a sunny magical facilitated by many years of relatively social justice and which became known wonderland. as Left Biocentrism. It is through this easy access to it. Secondly, this led to, and ” lens that I see the world, or at least was accompanied by, flower watching – through which I try to see it. Over time each fed the other. The flowers opened I’ve come to adopt the term ‘social a multi-faceted beautiful world which ecocentrism’ to mean the same thing. We had always been there but is unseen by started a listserv to discuss ecocentric most. Thirdly, the Earth herself helped issues which, now called the Ecocentric immensely with the brief glimpses of Alliance, continues on today. her alternative reality, granted me once During this time, I was fortunate also I became receptive. Fourthly, I met two to come into a lifelong friendship with very different but wonderful teachers, Ted Mosquin (co-author of A Manifesto for both of whom remained lifelong friends. Earth [www.ecocentricalliance.org/#mfe]). And, finally, an important thread was His immense knowledge of natural provided by knowledge garnered from history and, resulting both from this books, some classic and some not. and his friendship with Stan Rowe, his As I age, it seems that smaller things firm Deep Ecological convictions, gave can elicit amazing responses. Time stops guidance to my own development. He as I gaze at the exquisite and delicate looked at things from a different, but beauty of the ephemeral Hepatica. The similar, position to David’s; the meld muggy heat of a summer’s day on a of the two was very helpful to me. swampy pond captivates me in a sunny In particular, Ted helped me realize magical wonderland. The real world that there was an important place for always beckons – and sometimes allows collective responsibility, alongside but a meeting. different from individual responsibility: One thing has been consistent in fact, that in many areas, collective throughout this lifelong change. Nothing is the only responsibility that counts ever occurred in groups, in the built and that can make any difference to a environment, or while in conversation. problem. Also, Ted was influential in my Revelations mostly happened when I realization that there was an Earth ethic; was alone, or while in the company of one merely had to look at the Earth and my wife of over 40 years. n

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All is one

Eileen Crist ike every human being is, I was born in three, blessed summers my extended family love with the Earth. From before I can would swim daily and fish regularly. I saw all About the author Lremember I loved animals and wanted kinds of creatures when I snorkelled, even Eileen has been teaching to become them. As a toddler I crawled on a tiny, light orange seahorse. My being was at Virginia Tech in the the floor with a box turtle, trying to walk filled with awe and gratitude, although I did Department of Science like him. A few years later, at a museum in not notice those feelings because they just and Technology in Society Chicago, I let a black snake curl around me, felt normal. One day I spied a 2-foot octopus since 1997. She lives in fascinated by the smoothness and dryness of swimming in the open water, and then she Blacksburg, VA, USA. her skin. Between the ages of 8 and 10 I kept spotted me too and changed what might have Citation a diary of observations about birds and other been twenty colours. Perhaps it was a normal Crist E (2017) All is one. woodsy creatures. I wanted to be like Jane octopus response upon seeing an eleven- The Ecological Citizen Goodall when I grew up (I was not optimistic year-old girl with flippers and a mask. The 1(Suppl A): 36–7. about that, because I thought many people alive with beautiful beings sea seemed like would want to be like her and there would it would always be there. Then, somewhere Keywords be much competition). At the time we lived around 1973, it died. Just like that. Everything Becoming ecocentric in Livingston, New Jersey. There were went grey and murky and there were only scattered woods, a stream and a pond near cucumber-shaped slugs at the bottom of the my house where I spent many happy hours. sea, and a random fish here and there. There One day I caught a frog and brought him must have been a wave of industrial pollution home. Secretly, I put him in the basement or a sewage-dumping tipping point or both inside a tub of water. I woke up early the next around the seas of Athens; in retrospect, not morning and all excited ran downstairs to surprising. What was surprising, and stayed see him. When I saw that he was dead my with me like a strange riddle, was that no mouth parched with regret and shame. That one talked about it. All the joyful swimming, was life’s first lesson never to confuse love snorkelling, and (in hindsight regrettable) with possessiveness. fishing gone – and no one said a word. When I was ten years old we moved A few summers later I fell in love with a to Greece and my naturalist expeditions dog. The feeling was mutual. We used to continued. There were some hills near our run together through wheat fields laughing, seaside cottage, some 20 miles outside of or just hung out looking every so often into Athens, where grown-ups did not venture. one another’s eyes. When we had to go back There, I discovered the reptile fauna of to Athens in September, I was not allowed to Greece: tortoises, lizards and poisonous bring him. We left him behind. Whether he snakes. I had read about these creatures and found another home or died of starvation, knew when it was easiest to find them: when I do not know. What I do know is that his the sun shines again after the loveliness of heart was broken and so was mine. And a summer rain. I also knew that the snakes here’s the thing about a broken heart: it were poisonous because of their crisply never quite mends. But “you got to take your triangular heads and the unmistakable you- broken heart and make it into art” (Meryl don’t-want-to-mess-with-me glint in their Streep: https://youtu.be/EV8tsnRFUZw). A dog eyes. (Decades later I would understand that I named Belisarius taught me that betrayal was seeing the last baseline of these animals is a great crime and that the one covenant taking refuge in the hills.) For two, maybe with all beings is goodness. He showed me

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that goodness is not an ethical choice – it I wish for every human the blessing of is an ontological condition stitched into the falling in love with a dog. I wish it especially make-up of the universe. Sooner or later for those who despise them as dirty or eat we discover that it’s the only choice. In that them. To see yourself reflected in the eyes of sense, neither the ecological crisis nor its a dog is to feel the grace that lives in you. To solution is overcomplicated. Human beings gaze into the trusting eyes of a dog is to know (sooner or later) will recognize that killing our ancient covenant with wolves. Keeping the living world cannot produce wealth, any Earth and all Earth’s beings near our hearts more than killing the king for the kingdom with unfaltering loyalty is the portal to our could actually make Macbeth king. very being. n

A special place for the author.

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A journey to Earth-centredness

Joe Gray “For every thing that has life as naturally we might have caused these graceful endeavours to preserve it, and feels pain creatures, he said: “That was probably About the author as severely as we, the great self-conceited the most unethical thing I’ve ever done.” Joe is a naturalist based lords of the universe.” My reply: “I don’t think ethics extends to in St Albans, UK, who is Anonymous (1755), from animals,” in a tone more condescending currently studying for a A Voyage to the World in the Centre of the Earth than sympathetic. PhD on the conservation The cerveza became ron and our of insects and arachnids “It is only when you suffer that you really conversation more radical. A girl from in temperate and boreal forests. He is a Knowledge understand.” Iowa State University took the prize: if Network Expert for the Jules Verne (1864), from she was driving a car and there was a United Nations’ Harmony Journey to the Centre of the Earth human ahead, she would not swerve if it with Nature programme. meant hitting a jaguar instead. The minds of these American students were broader Citation t was a humid night in the summer than those back at Cambridge University. Gray J (2017) A journey of 2002, and I was drinking beer A supposed hotbed of big ideas, it had to Earth-centredness. The Ecological Citizen Iin Tortuguero, a village on Costa enclosed me in a materialist-dominated 1(Suppl A): 38–41. Rica’s north Caribbean coast. I was an circle, broken only by a few spirited undergraduate on a month-long field socialists and a solitary green-minded Keywords course. From our base – a field station set in soul (who I ended up marrying). I refuted Becoming ecocentric 1000 hectares of rainforest, seven-tenths all that was thrown at me that night, but primary – we spent our time observing I could not prevent a seed being planted. wildlife in various ways: swimming in Or maybe it was a previously sown grain caiman-inhabited lakes; night-trekking that was starting to germinate. along slender jungle paths; and looking, From an early age, I felt a great sadness most carefully of all, for the animal that about deforestation and the plight of had made a home underneath the deck endangered species, particularly primates. of our wooden cabin – a bushmaster, the I wrote poems – “Kindness needs to be longest venomous snake in the Americas. around / Especially to stop the trees fall to The overnight excursion to Tortuguero the ground” – and stories. One tale, from was our only trip out of the station. when I was 9 or 10, saw a scientist named Over an Imperial, the local lager, our John team up with the jungle animals to group reflected on the egg-laying sea tackle illegal logging. Pippa the parrot turtles we’d just observed, aided by a was the coordinator, and her grand plan conservation guide and the light of his red hinged on monkey-wrenching: “John can torch. It was on the same beach where the go and do something to the machinery to conservation imperative had crystallized make them go away.” for David Ehrenfeld, on a night in the I was also deeply interested in the mid-1960s (he witnessed a turtle trailing natural world at this time. I kept counts a line of eggs on the unprotected sand, of the birds I saw in my garden, and, with her undershell having been taken by the help of my uncle, learned some of the poachers [Ehrenfeld, 1993]). Another wild flowers and trees in the surrounding round. Andrew, a bear-like primatologist, region: the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley, looked upset. Contemplating the stress on the English–Welsh border. We took

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long walks, collecting nuts and leaves With my interest in the subject gone, that I could arrange on display tables at I minimized my activities. A 2.1 was school. out of the question, I thought, but I I turned eleven and headed to secondary was prepared to leave and start again school and a more focused curriculum. at another university. I made a nervous There was no place for natural history call home, but my parents were fully here, and conservation was little more supportive. That year, I spent most of than a footnote in the syllabus. Although my ‘academic time’ reading books of my I still cared about the state of the Earth, choosing (the way I knew to learn), on my attention turned away from natural biology, especially evolution, and nature. history towards maths and atheism, and Most of all, I loved coffee-table volumes later rationalism, humanism and the celebrating the Earth’s wildlife, which I scientific method. The school’s maths bought second hand in the institution department was having a turbulent time, that was Galloway & Porter. Miraculously, and I developed a preference for teaching when exam time came, a couple of the myself. A chemistry report criticized me papers offered questions that I could for getting “sidetracked into irrelevant tackle by applying what I’d learned at subject areas” (a relief to re-read today). school, and I got the 2.1. I differed from the norm, lacking an So I studied primatology and then went interest in learning to drive and resisting on to read zoology to complete my degree. the mobile phone. But I was no Luddite. However, I opted not to take the module I devoured each new issue of Scientific on conservation. To explain why, I need to American, inspired and reassured by the return to the beach in Tortuguero. My visit “Despite the very promise of techno-fixes to all the Earth’s had been during the holiday immediately limited nature of our problems. I also sharpened my rationalist prior to my final year. I learned there how funds, my two friends edge with a subscription to Skeptical conservationists were considering putting and I made it as far Inquirer. a jaguar-proof fence along the beach to There were times when my interest in prevent them predating the turtles. “But as the French Alps. natural history was temporarily awakened what about the jaguars?” I thought. It Climbing the forested from its stasis. Perhaps the most wasn’t their fault that turtle populations slopes there – seeing had plummeted. The more I learned about memorable was when I travelled around life on a scale far Western Europe for a month, shortly after conservation, the more it seemed to me grander than I’d turning 17. Despite the very limited nature like god-like meddling (today, though, I of our funds, my two friends and I made would agree that the fence is a lesser of known before – it as far as the French Alps. Climbing the two evils). I felt a new sensation: forested slopes there – seeing life on a By the time I got my bachelor’s degree, exhilaration at scale far grander than I’d known before I was done with academia. The grant- being alive. – I felt a new sensation: exhilaration at chasing environment, and the culture of ” being alive. backstabbing that I had heard went with Next came Cambridge. After two weeks it, was not for me. Instead I took a job in of copying chalked equations off titanic medical publishing, and then another, and blackboards, I decided that I was done with another. I did some of the things expected maths. I needed something that would of a ‘young professional’, getting married allow me to engage more intimately with and buying a house (in east England). My the world around me. Looking through wife and I led a reasonably green life and the list of other options, I set my heart on had already decided not to have children. studying primatology (a module within All the while I maintained a faith in the biological anthropology course). Such science and progress. was the narrow outlook of the university, My interest in natural history slowly though, that my permission to change rekindled, first on trips abroad. Whenever was contingent on completing the year of we spent time in forested regions, that maths and getting a 2.1. feeling of elation I’d experienced as a

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seventeen-year-old in the Alps returned. that in overdeveloped Western Europe, Then, about five years after leaving achieving this state of mind required a university, we took three weeks off work buffer of trees. With a rekindling interest to travel round south-west USA, visiting in natural history came a returning sense a dozen national parks and many other of injustice about Earth’s destruction. I state parks. Here, I learned that the was now old enough to take action, but I exhilaration was not brought about by the struggled for motivation to do something forest itself but by immersion in nature, to help others, knowing that most people both biological and geological. It was just around me didn’t care.

“With a rekindling interest in natural history came a returning sense of injustice about Earth’s destruction.”

Loch Garten and the surrounding Caledonian pine forest, in the Scottish Highlands. Seeing ospreys nesting here was one of the most memorable experiences of the author’s childhood. Joe made his first return to the loch in his early 30s and shortly after began a mental transition (back) to ecocentrism.

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In the year I hit 30, I decided to reduce my from my crisis biocentric. My next thought, working week to 25 hours so that I could start naturally, was to wonder how many people a part-time MSc in Forestry. This increased saw life the same way. An internet search my interest in the woodland around my led me to the Deep Ecology platform. The home and completed the restoration of my existence of this was reassuring, but I still passion for local natural history. However, had unanswered questions. Not knowing what I was learning on my local walks, where to turn next, I sent a group email such as the degradation caused by modern to local members of a population charity It took a period agriculture, and on the course – the deep that I belonged to and had a response from “ flaws in carbon offsetting, for instance – one of its advisors, Patrick Curry. A few of mental suffering turned my sense of environmental injustice get-togethers with Patrick were enough to to jar me from into full-blown despair. help me understand what David Ehrenfeld humanism to a more (1993) meant when he argued passionately My response was to come back fighting, inclusive ethic. Is this but I had a single weapon, rationality. I that books alone are not sufficient for an early rumbling, I recalled how I was taught to observe the transmission of knowledge; that the world as a zoologist: impartially as an process also demands a skilled instructor. wonder, of a Gaia- outsider. Through the ‘zoologist’s lens’, Through these meetings I graduated from like ‘self-correcting how could I judge humans differently from biocentrism to ecocentrism – for me, mechanism’, in other animals? Destroying the Earth was another purely rational leap. which the Earth’s just human’s natural evolutionary destiny, But I did not yet have a completely stable like it was a dolphin’s to swim in a pod footing. What was I to do about science and destruction triggers or a chimpanzee’s to tease termites out reason? Here I sought help from Stan Rowe a mass ecocentric of their nests using grass-blades. Seeing and Edward Abbey. Rowe (1987) reassured awakening while myself as being outside the system calmed me that science: “with the goal of fitting the worst outcomes my mental suffering for a few weeks, but civilizations to ecological models” was the veneer was chipped away by every still fine. And according to Abbey (1984: of the sixth mass mouthful of food I consumed from the 228–9), reason was okay too. It just needed extinction can still be Earth’s soil and every sip of water from its to be redefined as “intelligence informed averted?” river catchments. The bleak basis of this by sympathy.” Or as “fidelity to what alone coping mechanism was revealed. And the we really know and really must love—this anguish returned. Until I had this critical one life, this one earth on which we live.” thought: Can I not be inside the system and Summing up: while, in my case, early still value all life-forms in the same way, contact with the more-than-human world as an equal player in nature? presumably laid the groundwork, it took a Once the valuation barrier between period of mental suffering to jar me from humans and the rest of life had been humanism to a more inclusive ethic. Is this broken, there were only two paths that an early rumbling, I wonder, of a Gaia-like rationally made sense to me. One was to ‘self-correcting mechanism’, in which nihilism; the other to measuring all life’s the Earth’s destruction triggers a mass meaning with the same stick. There was ecocentric awakening while the worst no defensible breakpoint in the middle. outcomes of the sixth mass extinction can I chose the latter and, at the age of 32, still be averted? This possibility gives me suddenly, and finally, had the motivation much hope – for sea turtles, for jaguars, to fight for the Earth, for all those life- for all our futures. n forms without a voice. I reflected on that night in Tortuguero a References dozen years earlier, the conversations that Abbey E (1984) The Best of Edward Abbey. Sierra Club, New York, NY, USA. challenged the anthropocentric valuation system by considering a human and a big Ehrenfeld D (1993) Beginning Again: People and nature cat side by side in a moral judgement and by in the new millennium. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. applying ethics to reptiles. I did not know the word for it then, but I had emerged Rowe S (1987) Ecosphere Thinking. Unpublished essay.

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Eucalyptus-flavoured ecofeminism and other ecocentric adventures

Michelle ne hot, sticky, mosquito-filled day in while white cockatoos and corellas called my early 20s, I visited a gathering of out in the shady trees overhead; and my Maloney O marvellous environmental activists extreme love of rain comes from growing crowded into an old timber house just up in a place that hardly ever saw the stuff. About the author outside Cairns, in Far North Queensland, to Our town’s primary water supply came from Michelle is the Co-Founder discuss strategies to stop a development on deep within the earth – ancient ground and National Convenor of the Australian Earth Hinchinbrook Passage that would destroy water, from the Great Artesian Basin. Mobs Laws Alliance and is the areas of seagrass which provided rich of eastern grey and red kangaroos were an Australian representative grazing for Australia’s precious dugong ever-present sight; so too were non-flying on the Executive population. While chatting with a small flocks of giant shaggy grey emus. Sunsets Committee of the Global group of older women long connected to were big, red and splashed across an open Alliance for the Rights of Nature. She holds a the campaign, the topic of where I grew horizon that stretched out endlessly, PhD in Law from Griffith up was raised. When I told them “Central sometimes monotonously, for a young University. Western Queensland”, each member of the woman with grand aspirations to travel group literally gaped at me and one woman, the world. Citation wearing a perky purple beret, blurted out My mother and father were simply Maloney M (2017) Eucalyptus- “You grew up out there? Who nurtured you?” fantastic parents, and both are responsible flavoured ecofeminism and I begin with this little vignette to for my core values, which centre on other ecocentric adventures. The Ecological Citizen emphasize that for me, while loving the ecocentrism and social justice. My mother 1(Suppl A): 42–4. natural world is imprinted into my DNA, it was – and I’m pleased to say still is – a was also the people who nurtured me, and formidable woman: her environmentalism Keywords in turn nurtured my love of the natural and radical feminism was born not from Becoming ecocentric world, that have played a huge role in my theories or university education, but from ecocentric adventures. something deep in her own being and wisdom. And what was more impressive Mum, Dad and Uncle David was that her values ran pretty much against I grew up in a small, hot country town the grain of ‘normal life’ out where we grew on the edge of the outback, quite a while up. I have vivid memories of watching her before the internet existed and gave challenge anyone who wanted to cut down people the virtual interconnectedness we trees, or kill a snake, in a time and place take for granted today. We lived 800 km when doing both wasn’t just acceptable, it inland from the coast and the nearest was encouraged. She spoke her mind and small city, an hour’s drive in any direction had an unwavering belief that all plant and to another tiny town and several light animal life, regardless of its value to us, years away from the world of middle class should be protected. My father was equally environmentalism and perky purple berets. wonderful and was (and still is) what I now The geography, landscape and biodiversity call “a rampant plant-botherer.” He could of this semi-arid upbringing created the spend hours picking through the bush, foundations, the roots, of my Earth-centred walking about looking at plants, seeds and life. The smell of my childhood was pungent blossoms. And he was forever trying to gidgee trees and the more pleasant aroma of propagate strange new seeds that he barely eucalypts; the setting for family picnics was understood. He drove a lot for his work, the dry sandy river bed of the Alice River and would often arrive home at the end of

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A group of emus. the day, or the end of the week, with an truth, we hungrily sought out news and echidna, a lizard, a frog or even a harmless adventures from other places. I grew up python that he had stopped to catch, then with one, non-commercial TV channel safely tucked into a towel, so he that (ABC) that shut down before midnight, could show his family the wondrous little and a radio station that closed down at creature and then take it back to its home. 7.00 pm. Once a week, pretty much every His love of nature, combined with his week I can remember, there’d be a David strong Irish Catholic upbringing, meant Attenborough documentary on TV and that ecocentrism was forged together with the whole family would sit together and empathy for ‘the underdog’ (whether that watch it. Sir David’s shows enabled a little ‘underdog’ was animal or human) and so kid from the Aussie bush to experience the he emanated an uncomplicated strain of endless parade of biodiversity and witness compassion that I’ll always be grateful for. the wonder of the planet’s ecosystems, The third and final member of the second hand, from a timber Queenslander family that had a deep and important on the edge of a small country town. And effect on my life was Uncle David. But I’ll be eternally grateful to him for that. he wasn’t an uncle at all – I’m referring to the fabulous David Attenborough of University and the Ghungalu course. It’s actually difficult to explain First Nations peoples to younger people today, what life was Despite growing up with a profound and like before the extreme media flood joyful love of all plants and animals, we now experience on a daily basis. there was one element of my current Rather than have to sift through copious ecocentric life that was absent throughout amounts of information for any grain of my childhood and teen years – and that

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was any sort of understanding about important to my personal life, my work and the culture of First Nations peoples in the way I think about the world. Australia, or the history and devastating impact of British colonization on them. In Thomas Berry and my town, indigenous and non-indigenous Earth jurisprudence people grew up as friends and neighbours. The final important influence over my “My eucalyptus- But my school education, relatives and ecocentric life is the work of Thomas flavoured contemporary TV shows said nothing Berry (1988; 1999). Though I wasn’t lucky ecofeminism and about Aboriginal Australia. It wasn’t until enough to meet him while he was alive, I started university, and enrolled in a his work has more than ‘nurtured’ my gidgee-scented Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Australian own ecocentrism: it has inspired, enriched ecocentrism are now history) and Law degree, that I finally and shaped my personal and professional both deeper and began to read, learn and be taught about life. After working for ten years with more pragmatic, all, that devastating impact. the amazing people in the Ghungalu Several years later, when in my late 20s, community, my husband and I were at the same time, I was introduced to an amazing group of delighted to fall pregnant, and I realized thanks to what I women who were to have a huge impact on that I didn’t want to spend as much time learned from my my life, and my views about ecocentrism. I travelling around the countryside as I used Aboriginal friends met Marie, Margaret, Patsy, Hazel and other to – I wanted to work from home, raise my and colleagues. terrific folks from the Ghungalu Aboriginal baby girl and rethink my professional life. ” community in Central Queensland. We met A year after bub was born I was enrolled through mutual friends, and when they in a part-time PhD in law and I attended a discovered I had a law degree, they invited special event that helped set the path for me to help them with the complex and the second half of my working life. ultimately flawed processes of the (then) In 2009 I was fortunate enough to attend recently introduced Native Title Legislation, Australia’s first Wild Law conference, created in response to the critically organised by Peter Burdon and Friends important Mabo decision. I quickly came to of the Earth, in the Adelaide Hills, in admire their work and the creativity they South Australia. It was at that conference demonstrated in order to survive the daily that I met and fell in love with Earth atrocities of white Australian bureaucracy, jurisprudence, Wild Law (Cullinan, as they worked to speak up for and protect 2003) and the aforementioned work of their country. For ten years I was part of Thomas Berry. I also met a wonderful their lives, communities and work projects, group of people (mostly lawyers – yes! and during that time I learnt an incredible – wonderful lawyers) who I continue to amount – including how to fully face work with today. By reading The Universe the impact of my European ancestors’ Story (Swimme and Berry, 1992) and then devastating destruction of their way of life. The Great Work (Berry, 1999) I felt as if the I also learnt first-hand about the incredible patchwork quilt of my life experience and resilience of Aboriginal people, about their formal education was finally meshing profound connection to country and how together in a coherent way. The Great Work their laws and cultural practices continue seemed to offer to me a dark, poetic guide despite what colonialism has tried (and to the kind of work that a lawyer and self- often succeeded) in doing. My views about professed ‘governance nerd’ should focus ecocentrism are different today from what on. After the 2009 conference, a group of they were when I was young. My eucalyptus- us worked together to host several other flavoured ecofeminism and gidgee-scented Wild Law conferences and by the time the ecocentrism are now both deeper and more 2011 conference began, we had announced pragmatic, all, at the same time, thanks to our intention to create a permanent space what I learned from my Aboriginal friends dedicated to increasing the understanding and colleagues. My friendship and work with and practical implementation of Earth- the Ghungalu women has been profoundly centred law, governance and ethics in

44 The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Eucalyptus-flavoured ecofeminism and other ecocentric adventures

Australia. The Australian Earth Laws Aboriginal culture, law and the ongoing Alliance (AELA; www.earthlaws.org.au) impacts of colonization. was legally formed in early 2012 and As I finish writing this piece, I’m kept since that time, I have, along with other company by one of the Earth community’s volunteers, worked tirelessly to build the most wondrous beings: a domesticated organization’s networks and projects. dog. He is a medium-sized dog, a husky– Co-founding AELA feels like the ultimate shepherd cross with a short thick coat of professional expression of my ecocentric golden fur, deep dark eyes that seem to worldview. It encapsulates a wide range hold the whole universe within them, and of programmes that cover issues that are the cutest paws any animal could ever Co-founding hugely important to me and many others: have. He’s lying across my bare feet and I “ AELA feels like the n advocating for Earth-centred law and can feel the rise and fall of his chest as he the rights of nature; breathes and his thick soft fur on my toes. ultimate professional n promoting cultural change from Every time I glance down at him, he looks expression of anthropocentrism to ecocentrism back up at me. I can think of no better way my ecocentric through education, the arts and eco- to finish writing about ecocentrism than to worldview. spirituality say that the connection I feel, when I look at ” n creating Earth-centred ‘alternatives’ him, and any animal or plant, fills my heart to the current flawed, human-centred and soul with a deep happiness. And so my governance systems, through the ecocentric adventures continue… n Australian Centre for the Rights of Nature, the People’s Tribunal for the References Rights of Nature and the New Economy Berry T (1988) The Dream of the Earth. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA, USA. Network Australia. Berry T (1999) The Great Work: Our way into the future. Bell Tower, New York, NY, USA. AELA’s work also prioritizes working in Cullinan C (2003) Wild Law: A manifesto for Earth justice. true partnership with First Nations peoples, Green Books, Totnes, UK. to support their claims of sovereignty Swimme B and Berry T (1994) The Universe Story: From the and land rights, support their self- primordial flaring forth to the Ecozoic era – a celebration of determination and economic initiatives the unfolding of the cosmos. HarperOne, San Francisco, and increase people’s understanding of CA, USA.

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The Ecological Citizen Vol 1 Supplement A 2017 45 The sun setting over Crater Lake in Oregon, USA Jim Maloney (www.contextimages.net) Published in association with the Ecocentric Alliance www.ecocentricalliance.org