There is a dissonance between the international and national legal frameworks on the protection of the environment and the practices of political and economic groups that endorse the abuse of nature. The latter result in the devastation of huge areas through logging, mining, industrial chemical production and industrial agriculture, leading to the severe environmental problems that plague the world.
Current policies cannot keep pace with the environmental degradation we face. The challenges are conceptual and political rather than technical. The solutions are known: institutional capacity, judicial neutrality, informational transparency, social spaces for civic engagement. These are the main tools we have to deal with the dynamics that sustain lock-ins and barriers to change.
Instead of focusing on the end results, let communication, advocacy, public policies, research and teaching programs look into the underlying causes. We need to grasp the overall phenomenon and focus on the necessary transformation of the dominant paradigms of development, growth, wealth, power and freedom embedded at the political, economic, educational and cultural levels.
The Earth’s and humanity’s regeneration, as faces of the same coin, should be addressed simultaneously, in a mutually supportive way. In the socio-cultural learning niches, both in the educational system and in the society at large, heuristic-hermeneutic processes could generate awareness, interpretation and understanding beyond established stereotypes. The angles are multiple: thematic (“what” is at stake), epistemic (“how” to understand and define things) and strategic (who, when, where).
Spaces for knowledge exchange, deliberative governance processes, shared creativity and community-led initiatives should be enhanced, in view of effective points of influence to transform the current models of – and hegemonic discourses around – growth, development and wealth. We need new and tailored boundaries, structures, techno-economic paradigms, support groups and rules of legitimization.
This is because the system is embedded and entrenched in the intertwined structures of power and politics. Think tanks and lobbies for vested interests are rulling and ruining the world; 80% of the damage is being done by 57 companies, operating in only 34 nations (O’Mahony, T. (2022). Villagran, H. L. (2022) reminds us that “all major responsibilities to, supposedly, solve those challenging disruptions, are given to the private sector as a saviour to solve the myriad of problems created by itself, being ready to convey science-based “fairy-tails”, wishful thinking futures, technology-based magic thinking, and explicit and implicit denialism”.
The harmful narratives in this respect also include the power and threatening behaviour of dominant political and economic actors, the deterioration of collective responsibility and the decay of welfare functions of the state. To address all this, international binding treaties should hold transnational corporations to account for environmental violations throughout their operations worldwide.
Goals and new paths to reach them should contemplate a set of values, norms and policies that prioritize socio-ecological objectives, human well-being, natural and built environments, the aesthetic, ethical and cultural meaning of life. After all, “environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation” (Speth, J. G., 2013).
Relational networks between nature and humans could create a new understanding of “the normal” that integrates scientific, ethical and socioeconomic aspects. A reductionist and fragmented approach cannot be truly “objective” because different forms of understanding and knowledge, which are inherently full of subjectivity, determine these problems.
Relevant questions: How are we shaping the dynamics we are trying to understand? What assumptions are we carrying? What is this system revealing in return? The recommendations should allow for many drivers of change, encompassing the current “world-system” with its boundaries, structures, techno-economic paradigms, support groups, rules of legitimization:
- Ecosystems: Conditions of ecosystems before significant human disruption, and how can this knowledge be used to improve current and future management.
- Commodities: Effects on areas that are intensively managed for production of commodities (such as food, timber, or biofuels) in view of conservation at the landscape scale.
- Compliance: Individual and state compliance with local, national, and international conservation regimes.
- Public Involvement: Including of marginalized groups, in conservation decision-making and the effectiveness of conservation interventions.
This includes policies on climate change and environmental degradation, effective conditions for the implementation of international agreements, business interests associated with technological changes, distinct and privileged segments for communications, increasing scarcity and imbalance of global demand for resources. Equally important are shifts in power in the global economy and the geopolitical landscape; different values, lifestyles and approaches to governance; displacement of indigenous peoples and demographic factors; communication, advocacy, public policies, research and teaching programs: media coverage and opinion and public participation.
For a breakthrough in addressing the root causes of today’s challenges in concept and practice we need an ecosystem science – policy interface approach, which would:
1) define the problems in the core of the “boiling pot”, instead of reducing them to the bubbles on the surface (fragmented issues, reduced academic formats, segmented policies, effects);
2) consider the roles of the various actors, in all their dimensions, assessing their deficits and assets, as they combine to elicit, maintain or transform the events;
3) promote the singularity of (identity, proper characteristics) and the reciprocity (mutual support) between all dimensions, in view of their complementarity and dynamic equilibrium;
4) be committed to a critical analysis of present paradigms of growth, power, wealth, work and freedom embedded into the political, technological, economic, educational and cultural institutions.
References:
1. EARTH System Governance (2018): An introduction to Earth System Governance by Editor-in-Chief, Professor Frank Biermann:https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/earth-system-governance/about/news/introduction-to-earth-system-governance
2. O’MAHONY, T. (2022). Towards Sustainable Wellbeing: Advances in Contemporary Concepts. Frontiers in Sustainability. 3: 807984: https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2022.807984
3. PILON, A. F. (2023). Reframing Relationships between Humans and the Earth: The “Anthropocene”, a New Ideology to Justify the Status Quo? MPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/119041/1/MPRA_paper_119041.pdf
4. PILON, A. F. (2024). “The Party of the Dead”: a Tale that Repeats Itself, MPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive:https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/121869/1/MPRA_paper_121869.pdf
5. PILON, A. F. (2024). The Bubbles or the Boiling Water? A Course on Environmental Capacity Building [ppt presentation] Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381996602_The_Bubbles_or_the_
Boiling_Water_A_Course_on_Environmental_Capacity_Building
6. SPETH, J. G. (2013). Shared Planet: Religion and Nature, BBC Radio 4 (1 Oct. 2013)
7. VILLAGRAN i, H. L. (2022) On the Private Sector Driven Outer Space Agenda, Open Letter to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs: https://www.academia.edu/92732048/UN_Office_for_Outer_Space_Affairs_
On_the_Private_Sector_Driven_Outer_Space_Agenda_Pending_Critical_Questions_and_Actions_WSF2022_
