Global Changes: Ethics, Politics And Environment In The Contemporary Technological World 3030294420, 9783030294427, 9783030294434

Table of contents :
Preface......Page 6
Contents......Page 10
Editors and Contributors......Page 12
List of Figures......Page 15
List of Tables......Page 16
1 Introduction......Page 17
References......Page 20
What’s New About Global Changes? Rethinking Technology, Environment, and Society. An Overview......Page 22
2.1 Three Points About the Concept of “Environment”......Page 23
2.2 Natural and Artificial Environments......Page 24
2.3 The Distinction Between and the Overlapping of Offline and Online Environments......Page 26
2.4 Ethics of Environment, Ethics in Environment, Ethics of Environmental Relations......Page 27
References......Page 30
3.1 What Do We Mean by Technological Silence?......Page 31
3.2 Practices of Uneasiness......Page 33
3.3 Releasement (Gelassenheit)......Page 36
3.4 Practices of Releasement......Page 38
3.5 Concluding Remarks......Page 39
References......Page 40
4 New Technologies. Rethinking Ethics and the Environment......Page 42
4.1 New Technologies and the Current Context......Page 43
4.2 What Makes Current Technologies “New.” Essential Distinctions......Page 45
4.3 A Means or the Environment?......Page 47
4.3.1 Tecnos–Logos–Ethos......Page 52
References......Page 55
5.1 Prolusion......Page 57
5.2 A New Politics for a More-than-Human World......Page 58
5.3 The Political Incorporation of the Nonhuman......Page 60
5.4 The Territorial Sovereignty of a New Politics......Page 63
References......Page 66
6.1 The Stakes: Trash, Unconscious, Disorder, Repression......Page 68
6.2 Trash and Metaphysical Evil......Page 70
6.2.1 Economic Value (Virtual) = Industrial Production (Net)—Waste (Material Tare)......Page 71
6.3 The Timescale of Trash......Page 72
References......Page 75
Contemporary Challenges. Why Do We Need “Interdisciplinary Ethics in Practice”?......Page 77
7.1 Introduction......Page 78
7.2 Range of Values......Page 79
7.3 Misleading Framings......Page 80
7.4 The Justificatory Question......Page 81
7.5 The Contextual Question......Page 83
7.6 Governance Principles......Page 84
7.7 Conclusion......Page 85
References......Page 86
8.1 Introduction......Page 88
8.2 The Appeal of the “Anthropocene”......Page 90
8.3 The Importance of Value Identification and Analysis......Page 93
8.4 Conclusion......Page 94
References......Page 95
9 Groundwater as a Common Pool Resource: Modelling, Management and the Complicity Ethic in a Non-collective World......Page 97
9.1 Introduction......Page 98
9.2 The Accomplices: Modelers, Managers, and Stakeholders......Page 100
9.3 Groundwater Modelling Ethics: Eight Guiding Principles......Page 103
9.4 Ethics in Practice: The Pragmatic Pathway—Science that Informs with Models that Engage......Page 108
9.5 Conclusion......Page 112
References......Page 114
10.1 From the Tragedy of the Commons to “The Commonality of Tragedy”......Page 118
10.2 Hegemonic Sustainability Agenda and Its Connection to Possessive Individualism......Page 121
10.3 Towards Sustainability of the Commons......Page 123
References......Page 126
11.1 Introduction......Page 127
11.2 Human Ecology in the Contemporary World......Page 131
11.3 Eco-Ethics and Technology......Page 132
11.4 Conclusion......Page 134
References......Page 135
12.1 Theology of Life and Evolution......Page 137
12.2 Natural Theology......Page 138
12.3 Biblical Hermeneutics......Page 139
12.4 Theological and Scientific Narratives of Life......Page 140
12.6 Anthropology......Page 141
12.7 Ecological Crisis and Theology......Page 142
References......Page 143
Human Praxis in the Anthropocene. Our Current Situation......Page 145
13 Dwelling in the Anthropocene......Page 146
13.1 Introduction......Page 147
13.2 The Anthropocene Debate......Page 149
13.3 Global Science......Page 150
13.4 From Responsibility to Responsivity......Page 152
References......Page 155
14 The “3Hs” (Habitats, Habits, Co-in-Habitants) of the Biocultural Ethic: A “Philosophical Lens” to Address Global Changes in the Anthropocene......Page 157
14.1 Biocultural Homogenization: An Overlooked Driver of Global Changes......Page 158
14.2 The “3Hs” of the Biocultural Ethic......Page 162
14.2.1 Habitats and Protected Areas......Page 163
14.2.2 Life Habits and Biocultural Diversity......Page 164
14.2.3 Co-inhabitants and Companions......Page 166
14.3 Concluding Remarks......Page 168
References......Page 170
15 Energetic Ethics. Georges Bataille in the Anthropocene......Page 175
15.1 The Anthropocene. Ethics, Energy, and Economy......Page 176
15.2 Bataille: Energy and Economy......Page 178
15.3 Bataille and the Anthropocene......Page 180
15.4 Energetic Ethics......Page 181
References......Page 183
16.1 Introduction......Page 185
16.2 The Challenge of the Anthropocene and the Inadequacy of the Dominant Answers......Page 187
16.3 Ecological Justice During the Anthropocene......Page 189
16.4 Conclusion......Page 192
References......Page 193
17 New Questions on Global Environmental Changes and Ethics in the Contemporary Technological World......Page 194
References......Page 196

Citation preview

Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46

Luca Valera Juan Carlos Castilla Editors

Global Changes Ethics, Politics and Environment in the Contemporary Technological World

Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment Volume 46

Series Editors Carl Friedrich Gethmann, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany Michael Quante, Philosophisches Seminar, Westfälische Wilhelms Universität, Münster, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany Bjoern Niehaves, Universitaet Siegen, Siegen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany Holger Schönherr, Department of Chemistry and Biology, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/4094

Luca Valera Juan Carlos Castilla •

Editors

Global Changes Ethics, Politics and Environment in the Contemporary Technological World

123

Editors Luca Valera Center for Bioethics and Department of Philosophy Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Santiago de Chile, Chile

Juan Carlos Castilla Department of Ecology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, and Center for Bioethics Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Santiago de Chile, Chile

ISSN 1860-4803 ISSN 1860-4811 (electronic) Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment ISBN 978-3-030-29442-7 ISBN 978-3-030-29443-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

We live in an age of global changes. Such changes affect and inform the different aspects of our lives, both at the micro- (our everyday life) and at the macro-level (environmental, technological, climatic, and geographic changes). The First Part of the present book analyzes some of these changes and tries to articulate new conceptual categories that could give us hermeneutic keys to understand the new context in which our actions take place. First, the analysis underlines that we live in an environment that has changed radically and rapidly in the past 100–200 years. As a consequence, we live today in new environments, with which we interact at different levels (Chap. 2). The artificial environment is fused with the natural, so much so that the two dimensions appear today almost indistinguishable. This is a fundamental change analyzed in this First Part. “Technology” appears not just as a tool at our disposal, something “at hand”, but more deeply as a constitutive part of the environment in which we live (Chap. 4). Due to this change, the biosphere becomes unified to the infosphere: the exchanges between human beings and their environments are not made only of exchanges of biophysical material but also of information and communication. The technological change of the environment generates a second important, ethical, modification: the “old” deontology (“ethics of the environment”) is no longer capable of accounting for the new relations between human beings and environment that are established at different levels. For this reason, it becomes necessary to move to a relational ethics (“ethics in the environment”) (Chap. 2). This ethical model faces an unprecedented situation for humanity, a situation in which one cannot accept the new technological scenario uncritically (Chap. 3) but submits it to philosophical scrutiny. Another scenario of complex changes in technological civilization in which we live concerns human action: the new technologies bring new “hybrid” forms of action. The human being does not simply act through a technological medium but interacts with technologies: these “function” independently from the human being and the action becomes in a certain sense interaction, that is, an “acting with” (Chap. 4). The outcome is a third radical scenario of changes: actions become “shared”. v

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Third, this new space of action that the new technologies generate produces a new political space: the awareness of a change in human action reveals the possibility for the existence of different actors in nature. Thus, the new ethics demands a change also in our way of understanding politics because the new community, which has become “more than human,” requires a new way of conceptualizing the presence and the role of the nonhuman in our decisions (Chap. 5). Fourth, the concept of the “natural” undergoes a revolutionary change: nature cannot be considered any longer as a source of unlimited resources. In fact, the new technologies have shown that human beings can actually exploit these resources up to their very extinction. What was considered unlimited and infinite is now revealed in its vulnerability, in need of care. A new creativity merges from this scenario: the awareness of the limit generates the awareness of the possibility of assuming this finitude, and what was considered simply a “waste” is transformed now into a resource for a new creation (Chap. 6). Therefore, the new is born out of the discarded: we see that this attitude characterizes deeply the new ethics of the epoch of the global changes. The epochal changes discussed in this part of the book coincide with the new epistemological categories that offer hermeneutical keys to illuminate new problems (Second Part) and new contexts (Anthropocene) generated by a transformation of the different levels of human praxis—environmental, social, political, and above all, ethical (Third Part). The contributions of the Second Part of the book deal with the problems generated by the emerging technologies from a more ethical and political point of view. The necessity for a new ethical and political reflection can be clearly seen in the field of geoengineering (Chap. 7). We witness substantial and rapid changes in resources, ecosystems, and species conservation management (Chaps. 8, 9, and 10). This scenario inevitably introduces new responsibilities and a new configuration and hierarchization of values. Developing new epistemological and ethical categories becomes, therefore, an urgent task for our time, as discussed in the First Part of the book. On the other hand, it is the deep socio-environmental change that the human beings generate that induces us to consider the importance of characterizing our era as “Anthropocene” (Chaps. 8, 9, and 10), which is discussed in the Third Part of the book. The new hierarchization of values also implies the search for practical and efficient interdisciplinary strategies in order to answer the pressing problems of our epoch, as we see in the case of some common-pool resources shared among different actors, such as communities, users, enterprises, state, etc. (Chaps. 8 and 9). In this way, the ethics in the Anthropocene is presented as a “complicity ethics”: our decisions are sustainable insofar as they are made by adopting an interdisciplinary and bottom-up point of view and insofar they are shared decisions of different actors (Chap. 9). The same concept of sustainability, as a necessary indicator for a praxis conducted in favor of the future generations, becomes a privileged object of reflection in the Anthropocene (Chap. 10).

Preface

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A new socio-ecological paradigm seems to emerge from this background. It is the paradigm of “human ecology” (Chap. 11), in which different human dimensions (for instance, the dimension of health) turn out to be tied to different ecological variables, creating more complex systems than before. The concrete solutions to these pressing problems, in the actual context, are neither simple nor immediate: the factors to be considered are many and distinct, and include a variety of aspects, social (e.g., urbanization, education, security, psychology, etc.), ecological, environmental (territory, climate, resources, species, etc.), and technological (communications, computation, etc.) (Chaps. 9 and 11). The socio-ecological reflection paves the way for an exploration of the possible theological implications of the new scenario (Chap. 12): in the complex age of the Anthropocene, it becomes necessary to rethink our relation with the divine and its new place in a context of global socio-ecological changes. The Third Part of this book, building on the categories developed in the First Part and the examples provided in the Second Part, tackles the central question of human praxis in the Anthropocene. The concept of Anthropocene, already sketched in the Second Part, constitutes a bridge (cf. Introduction) across the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences (Chap. 13), due to its capacity to bind environmental and ecological dynamics together with human behaviors and social relations. The question of life in the Anthropocene (Chap. 13) becomes central for an adequate philosophical reflection on the contemporary world, characterized by unprecedented challenges in human history, as discussed in the First Part. As explained in the Introduction, a new praxis calls for a new reflection on the behaviors and values at stake in the new context: the ethics of the Anthropocene has to take charge of the global changes that are occurring and search for new adequate solutions to the problems of the present and future socio-environmental contexts. One example is provided in Chap. 14: faced with a globalized world and the need to protect the biocultural diversity that represents the immense richness of our planet, it becomes necessary to coordinate our habits (i.e., our praxis) with the specificity of our habitats and co-habitants. The bottom-up perspective characterizing the book and so central to the contemporary reflection on ethics (cf. applied ethics) becomes crucial at this junction: the context of global changes of the Anthropocene challenges us to rescue models of sustainable life that are compatible with the concrete environment in which we live. “Biocultural ethics” (Chap. 14) does not exclude political decisions and ampler political perspectives but complement them: the two dynamics (the general and the particular) integrate each other for an adequate understanding of the Anthropocene. In this way, ethics can engage in a productive dialog with biology and economics, as proposed by the “energetic ethics” (Chap. 15), according to a genuine interdisciplinary paradigm, as already underlined in the Second Part of this book. It is in these interdisciplinary fields that the closures and borders of the different disciplines—or, as Ortega y Gasset used to say, the “barbarism of specialization”— are overcome. The different perspectives integrate each other with the goal of understanding better the context of life in which we participate. From this point of

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view, we can also appreciate how law is looking for a new conceptualization of the idea of justice (Chap. 16) in order to protect the rights of the human beings in this new age. In short, what the Anthropocene leaves to us with the task of updating our conceptual apparatus through a dialog that goes beyond the traditional borders of the disciplines in order to understand the complex phenomenon of human praxis in greater depth. Santiago de Chile, Chile

Luca Valera Juan Carlos Castilla

Contents

1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Luca Valera and Juan Carlos Castilla

Part I 2

1

What’s New About Global Changes? Rethinking Technology, Environment, and Society. An Overview

New Environments: Rethinking Ethics in an Era of Technological Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adriano Fabris

9

3

New Praxis. Releasement in a Technological World . . . . . . . . . . . . Alfredo Marcos

17

4

New Technologies. Rethinking Ethics and the Environment . . . . . . Luca Valera

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5

New Politics: Sovereignty, Representation, and the Nonhuman . . . . Alfonso Donoso

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6

New Wastes. Nature Is Not an Unlimited Station . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gianluca Cuozzo

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Part II

Contemporary Challenges. Why Do We Need “Interdisciplinary Ethics in Practice”?

7

Ethics and Geoengineering: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen M. Gardiner

8

Two Conceptions of Embracing Ecological Change in Ecosystem Management and Species Conservation: Accommodation and Intervention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ronald Sandler

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Contents

Groundwater as a Common Pool Resource: Modelling, Management and the Complicity Ethic in a Non-collective World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Juan Carlos Castilla-Rho, Cameron Holley and Juan Carlos Castilla

89

10 Sustainability and the Future of the Commons. An Epistemological Examination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Gonzalo Salazar and Nicolás Cerna 11 Global Social Change: Human Ecology from an Eco-Ethical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Ronaldo Gomes Alvim, Magda Matos de Oliveira and Hernan Gerardo Castellanos 12 Life and Evolution: Why Theology Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Lucio Florio Part III

Human Praxis in the Anthropocene. Our Current Situation

13 Dwelling in the Anthropocene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Cristián Simonetti 14 The “3Hs” (Habitats, Habits, Co-in-Habitants) of the Biocultural Ethic: A “Philosophical Lens” to Address Global Changes in the Anthropocene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Ricardo Rozzi, Francisca Massardo and Alexandria Poole 15 Energetic Ethics. Georges Bataille in the Anthropocene . . . . . . . . . 171 Jochem Zwier and Vincent Blok 16 Ecological Justice in the Anthropocene: A Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Vicente Bellver 17 New Questions on Global Environmental Changes and Ethics in the Contemporary Technological World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Luca Valera and Juan Carlos Castilla

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Luca Valera is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Director of the Center for Bioethics at the same University. He has received his Ph.D. in Bioethics from the Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Italy. His areas of interest include Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Technology, Bioethics, and Applied Ethics. Juan Carlos Castilla is an Emeritus Professor and Full Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He received his Ph.D. and D.Sc. in Marine Biology from the North Wales University (UK). He has received many awards, such as the Chile National Award on Applied Sciences and Technology (2010). He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. His areas of research cover Experimental Ecology, Socio-ecology, Management and Sustainability of Artisan Marine Resources, Marine Conservation, Common Use Resources, and Socio-Environmental Ethics.

Contributors Ronaldo Gomes Alvim Health and Universitário Tiradentes, Maceió, Brazil

Environment

Programme,

Centro

Vicente Bellver Department of Philosophy of Law, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain Vincent Blok Management Studies Chair Group and Philosophy Chair Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

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Editors and Contributors

Hernan Gerardo Castellanos Ecological Research Center, Universidad Nacional Experimental de Guayana, Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela Juan Carlos Castilla Department of Ecology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Center for Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change (CCG-UC), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile Juan Carlos Castilla-Rho School of Information, Systems and Modelling and PERSWADE Center, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia Nicolás Cerna Center for Local Development, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Villarrica, Chile Gianluca Cuozzo Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, Università di Torino, Turin, Italy Magda Matos de Oliveira Health and Environment Programme, Centro Universitário Tiradentes, Maceió, Brazil Alfonso Donoso Department of Political Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile Adriano Fabris Department of Civilization and Forms of Knowledge, Centre for Research on Communication (CiCo), Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy Lucio Florio Department of Philosophy and Literature, Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina Stephen M. Gardiner Department of Philosophy and Program on Ethics, University of Washington, Seattle, USA Cameron Holley Faculty of Law and Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Alfredo Marcos Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain Francisca Massardo University of Magallanes, Puerto Williams, Chile; Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Puerto Williams, Chile Alexandria Poole Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Puerto Williams, Chile; Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, USA Ricardo Rozzi Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Texas, Denton, USA; University of Magallanes, Puerto Williams, Chile; Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Puerto Williams, Chile Gonzalo Salazar Institute of Urban and Territorial Studies & Campus Villarrica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Editors and Contributors

Ronald Sandler Department University, Boston, USA

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of

Philosophy

and

Religion,

Northeastern

Cristián Simonetti Anthropology Program, Department of Social Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Luca Valera Centre for Bioethics and Department of Philosophy, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile Jochem Zwier Institute for Science in Society, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

List of Figures

Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 13.1

Fig. 13.2 Fig. 14.1

Fig. 15.1 Fig. 15.2 Fig. 15.3

The traditional staging of the complicity ethic in groundwater modelling and management decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eight guiding principles for ethical groundwater modelling practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Collaborative Pathway: a framework to overcome the complicity ethic in a non-collective world . . . . . . . . . . . . Multidisciplinary view of human ecology (Alvim 2017) . . . . Catalogue of the exhibition ‘Welcome to the Antropocene. The Earth in Our Hands’, 2015, André Judä and Karen Schmidt © Deutsches Museum, Munich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Apollo 17 photograph of the earth from outer space (AS17-148-22727). Courtesy of NASA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The biocultural ethic values communities of co-in-Habitants with their specific life Habits linked to specific Habitats (“3Hs”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Population growth—“the great acceleration” (image source: Steffen et al. 2015, 84) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa observatory (image source: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html) . . . . . . . Primary energy use—“the great acceleration” (image source: Steffen et al. 2015, 84) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of Tables

Table 9.1 Table 11.1

Pragmatist Learning Architecture (Karkkainen et al. 2000; Scheuerman 2004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison of biological and sociological views (Alvim 2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Introduction Luca Valera and Juan Carlos Castilla

Abstract Recent technological developments and new scientific tools regarding socio-ecological systems have created new global settings, which bring to the core new environmental problems, approaches, challenges, and conflicts. The very essence of this new global context invites to a re-evaluation of traditional ethical, political, and socio-ecological categories. The critical challenge is to understand and account for the interdisciplinary dynamics of nature and social changes, and the novel complex processes existing between and within these dynamics. Without this kind of approach, we will be unable to evaluate the best actions (if any) to take in the present for both current and future generations.

Recent technological developments and new scientific tools regarding socioecological systems (Fisher et al. 2015) have created new global settings, which bring to the core new environmental problems, approaches, challenges, and conflicts (Sandler 2014). There is an interdisciplinary call for factual natural sciences (i.e. zoology, ecology, conservation) as well as social sciences (political, sociology, anthropology) and humanities (first of all, philosophy) to bridge and assume above challenges. Different and dynamic historical events are encouraging human beings to reconsider their relationship with the environment, and especially with other living beings, from the perspective of new ethical approaches (Singer 1981, 2011; Regan 1983; Kutz 2000; Wilson 2012; Gardiner and Thompson 2017). Among these events, it is worth mentioning fast modern technological developments, the radical and longlasting changes in nature, in human nature, in human overpopulation, and resource depletion (particularly regarding common-pool resources: Castilla 2016; CastillaRho et al. 2017), and global climate changes. These changes are conducting to state L. Valera (B) Centre for Bioethics and Department of Philosophy, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. L. Bernardo O’Higgins 340, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] J. C. Castilla Department of Ecology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Center for Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change (CCG-UC), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. L. Bernardo O’Higgins 340, Santiago de Chile, Chile © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_1

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L. Valera and J. C. Castilla

shifts and tipping points in Earth’s biosphere (Barnosky et al. 2012). Moreover, these radical environmental modifications of nature foresee, as one of the alternatives, its eventual destruction and the emergence of the Jonasian “metaphysical problem” (Jonas 1984) about the future of life on Earth. The “apocalyptic potential of technology” (Jonas 1984) may imply to seriously modify or even to destroy the conditions which permit our life on Earth and jeopardize the survival of human beings. As a consequence, new comprehensive philosophical and socio-ecological perspectives raise the question about how the very existence of life on Earth may be affected, and this is, first of all, an ethical issue. In this regard, we can see “how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked” (Francis 2015). Undoubtedly, these issues deal with the relationship between science, technology, ethics and the socio-environment, and invite us to rethink new environmental and humanity challenges in connection with open systems. This includes the existence of complex collections of interactive “agents,” non-linearity, feedback mechanisms and adaptations (Johnson 2012), and urges for radical changes in lifestyles. This is an urgent issue insofar as we are facing accelerate rates of change that humanity has never seen before (Sheffer 2009). Thus, the very essence of this new global context invites to a re-evaluation of traditional ethical, political, and socio-ecological categories (Valera 2015). The critical challenge is to understand and account for the interdisciplinary dynamics of nature and social changes, and the novel complex processes existing between and within these dynamics (Norton 2003). Without this kind of approach, we will be unable to evaluate the best actions (if any) to take in the present for both current and future generations (Valera 2016a, b). Therefore, this book addresses some of the most critical current practical and theoretical challenges arisen as a consequence of modern technologies and the accentuated subjective, consumerist and competitive society (Scruton 2012). It is our belief that all these challenges require new interdisciplinary approaches (Turner et al. 1990); above all highlighting the socio-ecological role of human beings in this new era, often called the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). Being this the current status quaestionis, the working methodology will inevitably be interdisciplinary, since it is necessary to address the problems and challengers of global changes (climate change, overexploitation of natural resource, loss of natural habitats, pollution, human population growth, technological, medical, cultural changes, etc.) from a non-reductionist and more comprehensive perspectives. This dialogue will open the gates to a more fruitful interchange among different disciplines, actors and society as a whole. In this regard, the approach will be enhanced not so much by the combination or superimposition of themes and skills, but focusing on questions and challenges from different and complementary disciplines and points of view (Brewer 1999). Natural and social scientists, as well philosophers, strongly need to approach these themes based on interdisciplinary efforts. In this enterprise it will be essential to develop and share common vocabulary, languages, and processes, which would help us to make further progress. The interdisciplinary exchanges contained in this book can be found at two different levels: both within the same chapters from different perspectives, and

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among the different chapters on the same topic. For instance, Chaps. 9–11, of the Second Part contain each an interdisciplinary discussion of different subjects (Groundwater as a Common Pool Resource; Sustainability; Human Ecology), while the Chapters of the Third Part deal with the challenges of the Anthropocene from different perspectives. Thus, this dialogue is like a “bridge” connecting different areas of research productively. The foundations for this work are laid in the First Part. The First Part contains both the conceptual instruments for the treatment of the problems discussed in the Second and Third Part, and the background from which these global changes emerge. Therefore, it is important to read the Second and Third Part in the light of the First Part. For instance, it is possible to understand the necessity of the new approaches of geoengineering (Chap. 7), and of the “ethics of complicity” (Chap. 9), of the “biocultural ethics” (Chap. 14), or the “energetic ethics” (Chap. 15), only if we understand that ethics has undergone a radical change of its structure due to the potentially new actions (Chap. 4). On the other hand, we understand the necessity of new forms of ecological justice (Chap. 16) only if we acknowledge the presence of new “political” subjects (Chap. 5); we can justify a new form of living in the Anthropocene (Chap. 13) only if we assume that our environment has been modified by anthropogenic factors (Chap. 2) and by our way of conceiving nature as an unlimited source of resources. Thus, the bridge is solid because the foundations are solid. In the First Part of the book, we present the theoretical background of this approach and of the problems highlighted, focusing on the concept of “novelty,” to illustrate the originality of this topic. It seems to us that is important to show how “global changes” are really happening, and which are the challenges arising from them. Therefore, in trying to obtain an answer to the question “What’s new?”, we show the existing dialectical movement between change and conservation in our world (or environment), mainly focusing on seven principal physical and theoretical aspects particularly affected by new technological developments: environment (Chap. 2), praxis (Chap. 3), technologies (Chap. 4), politics (Chap. 5) and resources and wastes (Chap. 6). It is equally important to show how all these concepts should shed light on many contemporary environmental problems. In the Second Part we include some applications to “contemporary challenges,” demonstrating the explanatory and interpretative power of this interdisciplinary approach: geoengineering and ecosystem management (Chaps. 7–9); sustainability and the building of management flight simulators using behavioral and computing science (Chap. 9); social changes (Chap. 11); religious thought (Chap. 12). Finally, in the Third Part, are highlighted some of the consequences of the new worldview that emerge due to the impacts of the astonishing modern technological developments, particularly focusing on the Anthropocene, from an anthropological perspective (Chap. 13), a philosophical view (Chap. 14), an ethical standpoint (Chap. 15) and an educational and legal outlook (Chap. 16). The chapters of the book contain different methodological approaches. In the five chapters of the First Part the methodological perspective consists in a mix of top-down and bottom-up critical analysis of the questions and problems emerging from the development of the emerging technologies. In this way the philosophical

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reflection is born out of the necessity to understand new phenomena with categories which have been previously neglected. In the Second Part, these new categories are tested through a methodology which becomes more interdisciplinary and applied and which follows substantially a bottom-up direction. The reflection in the Second Part develops from contingent problems and its goal is to find “ethically acceptable” solutions. Finally, in the Third Part, some of the topics dwelt with in the First and Second Part are discussed again, always with a mixed methodology (bottom-up and top-down), but this time in the light of a new concept: the concept of Anthropocene. This marks a shift in the context of the discussion compared to the first two parts: what is at stake in the Third Part is the possibility of understanding the possibilities in which the human being can inhabit the planet in this new age. The different but complementary methodological perspectives just described allow the reader to grasp the coherence between the methodologies and contents of the three Parts of the book. This book aims basically to redeem the pioneer idea developed by Potter (1971) to build a bridge between natural sciences and humanities (Valera 2016a, b). Moreover, the bridge in urgent need to be built, as suggested by Potter, now needs to be crossed using truly interdisciplinary scientific and philosophical approaches. We hope that in the future Potter’s bridge would not be seen just as an interesting theoretical construct but as a practical guide towards better socio-environmental solutions. As pointed out in Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis (2015), in the modern world there is no an environmental and a separate social crisis; indeed, there is a single socio-environmental crisis. Moreover, following Potter’s intuition, this path aims to be global, aiming to define some ethical, and ultimately, political and normative approaches, giving contemporary human societies some guiding principles to face present global changes (Potter 1988). For all these reasons, the thread that joins the different chapters of this book is the concept of “interdisciplinary ethics in practice.” Conclusively, through this book we do not seek to exclusively offer a theoretical contribution, but also practical solutions to the modern socio-ecological problems due to contemporary technologies and complex dynamics, incorporating elements of the modern and fast changing society. In fact, we are aiming to offer both a theoretical reflection on the relation between technology and life sciences, with a particular concern for socio-ecology and environmental sciences; and, above all, the book is a call for a new ethical paradigm of acting (a new praxis) in the Anthropocene.

References Barnosky AD, Hadly EA, Bascompte J, Berlow EL, Brown JH, Fortelius M et al (2012) Approaching a state shift in earth’s biosphere. Nature 486:52–58 Brewer GD (1999) The challenges of interdisciplinarity. Policy Sci 32(4):327–337 Castilla JC (2016) Viewpoints of an ecologist on practical environmental ethic: socio-ecology, common-poll resources and conservation. Cuadernos de Bioética 27:403–414 Castilla-Rho JC, Rojas R, Andersen MS, Holley C, Mariethoz G (2017) Social tipping points in global groundwater management. Nature Human Behav 1:640–649 Crutzen PJ, Stoermer EF (2000) The “anthropocene”. Global Change Newslett 41:17–18

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Fisher J, Gardner TA, Bennett EM, Balvanera P, Biggs R, Carpenter S et al (2015) Advancing sustainability through mainstreaming a social-ecological systems perspective. Curr Opin Environ Sustain 14:144–149 Francis (2015) Encyclical letter Laudato Si’ on care for our common home. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano Gardiner SM, Thompson A (2017) Introducing contemporary environmental ethics. In: Gardiner SM, Thompson A (eds) The Oxford handbook of environmental ethics. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 1–9 Johnson N (2012) Simply complexity: a clear guide to complexity theory. Oneworld, London Jonas H (1984) The imperative of responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London Kutz C (2000) Complicity: ethics and law for a collective age. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Norton Brian G (2003) Searching for sustainability: interdisciplinary essays in the philosophy of conservation biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Potter VR (1971) Bioethics: bridge to the future. Prentice Hall, Houghton Mifflin Potter VR (1988) Global bioethics: building on the Leopold legacy. Michigan State University Press, East Lansing Regan T (1983) The case for animal rights. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles Scruton R (2012) How to think seriously about the planet: the case for an environmental conservatism. Oxford University Press, New York Sandler R (ed.) (2014) Ethics and emerging technologies. Palgrave, New York Sheffer M (2009) Critical transitions in nature and society. Princeton University Press, Princeton Singer P (1981) The expanding circle: ethics, evolution, and moral progress. Princeton University Press, Princeton Singer P (2011) Practical ethics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Turner BL II, Clark WC, Kates RW, Richards JF, Mathews JT, Meyer WB (1990) The earth as transformed by human action: global and regional changes in the biosphere over the past 300 years. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Valera L (2015) Tecnologia ed ecologia: dall’etica alla metafisica, dalla negazione del limite alla negazione dell’uomo. Pensamiento. Revista de Investigación e Información Filosófica 71(269):1453–1462 Valera L (2016a) El futuro de la ecología: la sabiduría como centro especulativo de la ética ambiental. Cuadernos de Bioética 27(3):329–338 Valera L (2016b) La bioetica di Potter: la ricerca della saggezza all’origine della bioetica e dell’etica ambientale. Medicina e morale 65(6):719–732 Wilson EO (2012) The social conquest of earth. Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York

Part I

What’s New About Global Changes? Rethinking Technology, Environment, and Society. An Overview

Chapter 2

New Environments: Rethinking Ethics in an Era of Technological Changes Adriano Fabris

Abstract The paper analyses how the meaning of the word “environment” has grown in common language due to the birth of artificial environments resulting from technological developments. The analysis focuses on information and communication technologies (ICTs). The environments in which human beings live and with which they interact are many, including natural, cultural, and artificial environments. This implies the need to find an adequate relationship among them and often the necessity to privilege one over the others. The paper concludes that ethics, understood as the discipline that justifies the principles of good choices, is in need of a radical reconception today, as its goal is not only to provide the criteria for the good choice in one environment, but rather within the variety of environments in which we live. Keywords Environment · Information · Communication · Technologies · Ethics

2.1 Three Points About the Concept of “Environment” The aim of the present paper is to discuss three points relative to the concept of “environment” and to put forth a proposal about how the change of our environments can be managed from an ethical perspective. Nowadays the meaning of the word “environment” goes beyond the constellation of uses it had in the past. In the past, “environment” meant for the most part the natural environment and cultural environment. Today we live in artificial environments that, though built by us, obtain a certain degree of autonomy, also thanks to the presence of non-human actors. I will dwell upon the development of the information and communications technologies (ICTs) as a case in which it becomes clear that technology is able to produce, develop, and maintain the virtual environments in which we operate every day. The second point is that our environment today is actually made by a plurality of parallel and overlapping environments. While not fully new, this phenomenon occurs A. Fabris (B) Department of Civilization and Forms of Knowledge, Centre for Research on Communication (CiCo), Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_2

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today in new forms. Our environments today are both physical and virtual, this due for the most part to the pervasive ICTs. This complex scenario has important anthropological consequences. The main problem for human beings today is not simply living in the different technological environments to which we have access, but trying to understand how to live in these environments by putting them in the correct relation with each other. In other words, it is a problem of navigating these different worlds by constructing the right hierarchies and by privileging some worlds over the others. And this is the third point that I will discuss. The challenge in front of us is to learn how to live in these environments in a way that is both ethically good and respectful of the differences of each one of them: natural, cultural, and artificial environments; environments produced by the interaction of living beings; environments created by human beings or by machines are in fact marked by specific features. In many cases, we are forced to prioritize one environment over the others, and for this reason it is crucial that we learn how to make the right decisions. In this perspective, we need a new form of ethics: an ethics that would be really able to respond to the technological challenges of our time, above all the environmental transformations that concern us all.

2.2 Natural and Artificial Environments Let’s focus on how technological transformations turn preexistent environments into something new. I will limit myself to the case of ICTs. In this context, communication itself is radically transformed. Communication is for us today not just something we do, but more deeply a way of living. In fact, rather than being a simple activity among others, communication is an activity that contributes to constitute the world in which we move, live, and interact. This dynamic is new. Therefore, the meaning of the notion of “communication” is broader today than in the past: communication is no longer a mere activity because it has become an environment. The model of data transmission from a sender to a receiver (Shannon and Weaver 1949) falls short of seizing contemporary communication. The devices transmitting data, for instance computers, smartphones, etc., contribute to create specific worlds and give access to additional environments to the ones in which we commonly live. The concept of data transmission is key at this junction. In fact, the environments I am talking about are constituted in their structure by a global web of communication, capable of an indefinite growth. Communication here does not mean simply the infrastructures that make transmissions more immediate and extended every day. What I mean here is that communication, whose structure can of course be analyzed in terms of sender, receiver, code, channel, etc., carries within itself implications that go beyond its structure. It brings about something additional, something different. What the transmission of a message realizes is above all the opening, the maintenance, and the development, of a space of relations. The word “space” is used

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here in a metaphorical sense, just as other notions such as “field,” “environment,” “sphere.” “Space” indicates something that happens through communication and to which communications gives access. What is opened here is a space of relations, a more or less broad context that we share, which we inhabit, and with which we interact (Fabris 2018). In a certain sense, this phenomenon is not new in the history of mankind. Human beings have always interacted with the natural environment. They have transformed it to such an extent that they have often overlooked the consequences of their actions, as it is witnessed by the ecological emergencies we face today. In other words, the human species has always worked to make its world artificial by designing, creating, and using technological devices. Culture itself is the result of this process (Gehlen 1988). The weakening of the equilibrium between biosphere and cultural sphere is what is producing today irreversible consequences for our planet. In the field of communication, however, the creation of specific tools has enabled us to live the world we already knew more comfortably, to navigate it more conveniently, and to tell a different story about it—a story which is nothing else than another tool for transforming the world. More deeply, however, some devices have allowed us to create different worlds from the one in which we usually operate (Ong 2012). These worlds are able to bring together specific categories and groups of human beings. We can think of the ability of the novelist to create exciting fiction stories. Or we can think of the screenwriter and the director of a successful movie. Or we can still think of the designer and programmer of a videogame or a role game. As I already mentioned, this is due to a “plus” inscribed in the communicative action, which has to do with the different aspects of semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, and their effects in interpersonal relationships. But this “plus” is going in a radically new direction compared to the past. We witness not only the transformation of the communicative actions. Communication within a context of relations does not simply create and feed this context. Today the multiplication of artificial worlds is due to the systematic diffusion, more and more global and autonomous, of the transmission of data and information (Wahlsham 2001). It involves not only human subjects who are virtually connected from different places, but also non-human communicative actors. The notion that best expresses the specific transformation of communication into environment is “infosphere.” Infosphere is the complex of the informational entities in which we are immersed. The notion, used at the beginning of the 1970s to refer to the offline media, has been recently used by Luciano Floridi to indicate the environment of data and information, both offline and online, typical of our advanced societies. The notion is clearly conceived in analogy with biosphere, the field where the living beings operate (Floridi 2016). We should stress the fact that this communicative environment is not simply made of data and information, their connections, and their growing capacity for more information at higher speed. This environment is rather the result of the “plus” intrinsic to communicative action, the “plus” capable of creating an artificial environment. This is the environment that we inhabit and that all the subjects involved in a communicative action, either natural or artificial, humans or machines, contribute to develop.

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Infosphere is made of significative structures capable of involving our being, and they are in this precise sense more than procedures for transmitting information. It is for this that a communicate environment can attract us. Only for this reason we can go from one information context to another.

2.3 The Distinction Between and the Overlapping of Offline and Online Environments I have spoken of “communicative environment” and “infosphere.” These notions might make us think that the environment in which we live is only one. However, this is not fully true. In fact, another character of our time is that we live in a plurality of communicative environments. The offline and online contexts produced by ICTs generate an array of further spaces that various media contribute to develop, manipulate, and transform in different directions. The growing plurality of these environments is the true new element compared to the past. Today we can live in a multiplicity of overlapping, parallel, or sequential environments. Thus, the emerging need today is that of navigating these different environments with awareness and competence. This was not perceived as a problem in the past, at least not with the urgency we experience today. The fantastical worlds generated by a novel, for instance, remained for the most part tied to the book; they were accessible only to those who could read; they were constrained by the time necessary to read the book, and in any case they were separated from everyday life. Today it is not so easy to distinguish between offline and online situations. We can’t unplug easily from those devices that give us access to the new worlds. Their attractiveness is due to the fact that they are in great quantity and that they are constantly offered to our attention. Additionally, thanks to the growing performances and pervasive presence of ICTs, we have become used to perceive reality itself thanks to these devices. We speak more and more of “augmented” and “virtual reality.” In fact, ICTs integrate the natural and cultural environments in which we have always lived. Let’s consider this situation more closely. What does “virtual” mean? “Virtual” is a complex notion that only a complex definition can grasp. The meaning of “virtual” ranges from the simply possible, i.e., what is different from the reality we experience every day, to the potential, in the sense of not actualized. The philosophical reflection on the notions of “possibility,” “reality,” “potentiality,” and “actuality” that philosophy from Aristotle to Leibniz can be helpful here (Vitali-Rosati 2012). However, the categories of possibility and potentiality are not sufficient to seize the meaning of virtual. Nor is it sufficient to compare the idea of virtual to the concepts of real and actual (as Lévy does following Bergson and Deleuze: Lévy 1998). In fact, virtual implies, in addition, a positive attitude: it expresses an active power that allows things to become actual purely based on their own resources.

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In other words, a virtual thing not only has a certain capacity or virtus, but it has also a power to realize it. More precisely, the virtual thing is already realizing its capacity, even though in a different sphere from the one of everyday reality. It does not need anything else to accomplish its realization because it accomplishes it by itself. It becomes clear, then, why the virtual indicates an infinite capacity for selfrealization and a great power of involvement. It becomes clear why it is a concept that expresses fully the dynamic character of artificial environments. “Virtual” plays almost a synthetic function for the notions of “possible,” “potential,” and “power,” as they had been defined throughout Western philosophy. And “virtual” plays a similar function for notions that are usually thought to be opposites, such as “possibility” and “reality,” “potentiality” and “actuality.” These oppositions do not make much sense today insofar as in a virtual environment what is possible is already realized and what seems to me merely potential carries within itself the power to become real. This is why the expression “virtual reality,” which sounds like an oxymoron in everyday language, is actually very rigorous from a philosophical standpoint. Due to its self-affirming and self-articulating nature, virtual means also dissemination and multiplicity. This is why we speak of the virtual mostly in the plural, of “virtual worlds.” This plurality does not depend only on the characters I have just described. It depends also on the fact that today the access to virtual environments is guaranteed by a variety of technological devices. I have already mentioned some of these devices: computers, smartphones, devices linked together. They all give rise to virtual environments. In our everyday life we can move with ease from one of these environments to the other. Given the great familiarity we have with them, we are even induced to confuse them and to merge them with reality. This is the origin of the risk that online and offline become the same thing. We are faced with a series of problems. They all hinge upon the question of what is the correct relation among the different communicative environments in which we live. In short, these problems concern the need we have to coordinate our actions across the different environments. How to take responsibility for all the consequences of this scenario is a pressing issue today we can’t postpone any longer.

2.4 Ethics of Environment, Ethics in Environment, Ethics of Environmental Relations Ethics, and in our case ICTs ethics, has the duty to tackle these problems. The fundamental issue, I repeat, is how to distinguish the different environments that we inhabit, put them in relation, move from one to the other with awareness and competence, and lead a good life in them. More precisely, the problem concerns, on the one hand, how to face these environments and, on the other, how to navigate them.

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This twofold attitude applies to all the different ways in which we can experience an environment, be it natural or cultural. In general, we can speak of an ethics of environment and of an ethics in environment. The former studies the criteria and principles that guide those actions that make a certain structure or organization possible, which can be again both either natural or cultural. The latter offers indications concerning how we should behave when we move in a determinate structure, accepting or questioning the rules that are proper to that structure. In the present situation, so deeply determined by the presence of ICTs artificial environments, the distinction between ethics of environment and ethics in environment assumes an ever more specific character. In fact, on the one hand, ICTs ethics aims at studying the criteria and principles of the communicative worlds, with special attention to the ethical and juridical problems that might arise. Professional deontology responds to the needs that emerge in this case. On the other hand, ICTs ethics has to individuate also the best ways to interact with the activities produced by communicative technologies and to live adequately in the worlds that they create. The traditional perspectives of philosophical ethics include an appeal to the nature of the human being (or to the nature of the good that the human action can pursue), to the consequences of human action, or to the intention of the action and the duty that it follows (Singer 2006). Besides studying these traditional models, ethics today has a further mission. The ethical challenge today is not simply that of evaluating the different environments in their singularity, but also developing the capacity to navigate the complexity of a simultaneous multiplicity of environments. It has become necessary, in other words, to learn how to hierarchize the spaces in which we live, how to choose, in each case, which one needs to be prioritized. Ethics, in our time of dissemination of artificial environments, should teach the human being how to choose and organize these worlds. This new necessity applies not only to the various types of environments I have already mentioned –natural, cultural, artificial; online and offline; created by the conduct of human beings or by the procedures of a machine or a software. It also applies to the virtual environments brought about by ICTs. Unfortunately, the traditional ethical models are not sufficient today. First, the Aristotelian idea of human nature and the related virtue ethics seems to be inadequate because today the actors present in our worlds are not simply human beings. They include artificial actors. In this sense, speaking of “nature” is no longer sufficient. The actions of these entities, moreover, is never totally assimilable to that of the human actor—be it the programmer or the builder of the machine—given that the machines display more and more a certain degree of autonomy. Second, consequentialism also presents fatal shortcomings. In fact, the consequences of an action performed by a human or an artificial actor, cannot be foreseen, given the numerous side effects and the “heterogenesis of the ends” typical of relational contexts. Moreover, it is no longer clear whether the criterion of utility typical of consequentialism should be measured with respect to the human actor or the machine. Above all, consequentialism does not apply adequately to the case of artificial actors, specifically with respect to their capacity to anticipate the consequences

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of their actions. In fact, this anticipation, even if successful, would always require an a priori decision of what cases and alternatives should be anticipated. And such decision would be conducted on the basis of further principles, second-level principles, which the machine cannot establish by itself (even though those principles can be implemented in it by the programmer). In other words, the machine cannot decide autonomously for its own utility. Third, also a deontological approach is not fit for machine ethics. In this case, the problem is that unconditional duties are either immediately assumed by the actors, or are assumed by the same actors for the fear of the sanctions that would result in case of transgression. In the former case these duties can be endorsed only by a human being, as machines haven’t developed yet the necessary reflexivity that would enable such endorsement. In the latter case, it would be necessary to specify in what a sanction for an artificial actor would consist. In short, the application of the traditional models of ethics to artificial agents encounters serious difficulties. The naturalistic, the consequentialist, and the deontological approach are models conceived on the backdrop of a scenario where the only actor is the human being. The only way to apply them to the action of an artificial actor would be to make this action depend on a prior human action (of the designer, the programmer, the builder, the tester, the user of the machine). But this is precisely the problem that the new ethics is called to address: the fact that the action of the machine has a certain degree of autonomy, a growing autonomy, and therefore needs specific governing criteria. If we move to the problem of the hierarchization of the different worlds, we see again that the traditional models of ethics do not work. First, these models, as I have just mentioned, are too tightly linked to the sphere of human action. It is possible to extend their application, as some twentieth century authors have attempted (for example Jonas 1985), by retrieving a deontological approach, opportunely broadened, in order to delimit the manipulation of nature. And second, again, the traditional models are of little help if the problem is to choose among the various environments. Let’s dwell a little more on the limitations of the traditional models. First, how can the reference to “nature” be of any help in a context characterized by the hybridization of natural and artificial? Adopting nature as a criterion in this case would reveal a tacit assumption: the fact that the artificial is subordinated to the natural sphere. Second, consequentialism might be of some help in comparing different environments. However, the impossibility to anticipate all the possible scenarios constitutes a lethal shortcoming for consequentialism. And finally, the deontological approach cannot tell us the meaning of our actions in different contexts, nor is it capable to provide us with the reasons of why we should prefer a field to another: the unconditional nature of the duty excludes the possibility to ask such questions. What is the ethical model adequate for this situation? If it can’t be an ethics of nature, or utility, or duty—still too tied to a world in which the human actor is at the center of the scene—then maybe an ethics of structure is what is needed: an ethics based on the structure of the action itself, whether it is performed by a human or an artificial actor. Action is always relational. Relational, in fact, is the structure of every action, both those performed by human beings and by artificial agents. The ethics

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that can consider the different environments present today, navigate them, choose among them, is therefore an ethics of relation. The ethics of relation (Fabris 2016) thinks of action as an event instituting relations. It understands these relations as a network in the making, capable of being produced in various ways, at a global level, and according to a multiplicity of forms. The ethics of relations studies these forms and environments and the ways relational agency becomes concrete in them. The ethics in relations, in turn, is concerned with the problem of how to navigate these environments in a just and good way. Its responsibility is also to give indications regarding how to organize and choose among the different environments. It can do so because the dynamic, relational, and active structure of interconnected environments is always the same, whether is it organized around human or artificial actors, or both. Additionally, the ethics of relation advances a normative indication for navigating the multiplicity of our communicative worlds. The normative principle could be stated as follows: act in such a way to promote always new relations, to broaden and extend the relations instead of blocking them. Such principle is justified on the basis of the structure of relation itself, namely, the fact that a good relation is one that affirms itself by generating new relations. This requires to be put into practice. From this the need to express its normative dimension. That this principle should guide our decisions, not only within each environment, but more deeply across different environments, is now clear. It emerges from the structure of things, which is also the structure that connects human beings and artificial actors in complex networks. This new ethics is therefore rooted in the principle of relation: the animating principle of our environments which should also become the normative compass of our conduct across worlds.

References Fabris A (2016) RelAzione: Una filosofia performativa. Morcelliana, Brescia Fabris A (2018) Ethics of information and communication technologies. Springer, Berlin-New York Floridi L (2016) The fourth revolution: how the infosphere is reshaping human reality. Oxford University Press, Oxford Gehlen A (1988) The man: his nature and place in the world (trans: McMillan C, Pillemer K). Columbia University Press, New York Jonas H (1985) The imperative of responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age (trans: Jonas H, Carr D). Chicago University Press, Chicago Lévy P (1998) Becoming virtual (trans: Bononno R). Plenum Trade, New York Ong WJ (2012) Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the world. London-Routledge, New York Shannon CE, Weaver W (1949) The mathematical theory of communication. The University of Illinois Press, Urbana Singer P (ed) (2006) A companion to ethics. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden Vitali-Rosati M (2012) S’orienter dans le virtuel. Hermann, Paris Wahlsham Geoff (2001) Making a world of difference: IT in a global context. Wiley, Chichester

Chapter 3

New Praxis. Releasement in a Technological World Alfredo Marcos

Abstract As a result of the technological development we are witnessing some profound global changes that affect our lives in a very direct and ambivalent way. In fact, we have the feeling that technology is as useful as it is dangerous. And this double face produces in us some restlessness. This uneasiness is at the root of some practices that imply the total or partial renunciation of certain technological modes. These practices are not always endowed with a clear sense and foundation. They are rather fuzzy reactions guided by our sensations and intuitions. In the other pole, we have the work of some philosophers who have reflected on technology. Consequently, they have put forward valuable advices that remains, however, at an abstract level. Our hypothesis is that the notion of technological silence can function as a bridge between philosophical speculation and effective praxis, providing the first with concretion and the second with lucidity. To prove it, we will present, first, the very notion of technological silence (Sect. 3.1), and then some contemporary practices aimed at the reduction of technology (Sect. 3.2). Thirdly, we will present the recommendations of Heidegger and Kierkegaard for our use of technology (Sect. 3.3). We will see, next, in what sense technological silence can act here as a bridge between philosophy and praxis (Sect. 3.4). We will collect, finally, all the issues in a conclusive summary (Sect. 3.5). Keywords Technology · Releasement · Uneasiness · Heidegger · Technological fasting

3.1 What Do We Mean by Technological Silence? We shall call technological silence the deliberate and temporary interruption of the use of a given legitimate technology. With regard to illegitimate technologies, we are bound to refrain from them by a moral duty. For instance, refraining oneself from cloning humans or developing chemical weapons is not to be considered technological silence. In both cases we face technologies that violate all sensible moral A. Marcos (B) Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_3

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criteria. On the other hand, a paradigmatic example of technological silence would be to temporarily stop using mobile phones. It is a ubiquitous technology, which by itself does not raise particular moral problems, and, on the contrary, provides great practical advantages to human life. Now, in some cases it may be fitting or beneficial to temporarily refrain from its use. In fact, the concept of technological silence, or digital silence, derives from clinical psychology and is linked to the disconnection from social media and from digital tools, such as the cell phone or the tablet, which allow access to social media and which apparently may cause addiction pathologies (Huete 2017). Therefore, technological silence is recommended by clinical psychology as a kind of preventive or therapeutic measure. However, our approach is philosophical, and not psychological. It is previous and somehow independent from any clinical consideration. We want to explore the meaning of technological silence for human life. Furthermore, our approach attempts to be wider, since it refers to all legitimate technologies and not just to those related to digital communications. Thus, technological silence, by metaphorically interpreting the notion of silence, extends to all technological realms and uses. For instance, we can talk of technological silence with regard to the use of cars or elevators. A few other precisions regarding the concept of technological silence are in order. Refraining from using a certain technology, even momentarily, implies the use of another one or, at least, of some kind of technical device. If we refrain from mobile phones, probably it would be in order to use the traditional phone or the postal service. There is no level of human action completely free from technics. Abstaining totally from it would require avoiding the use of fire or cutting tools, something absolutely incompatible with human life, given our mere anatomic features. In other words, as humans, we can aspire towards some autonomy from a particular technology, but not from technics in general. Humanness already involves technics. However, Ortega’s observations (2013, 2) regarding the specificity of technics in modern times are perfectly fitting in this context: “Today, the progress of technics allows us to enjoy already made a large number of things that previously each one had to make or, at least, take part in its making.” Consequently—Ortega adds (2013, 2–3)—, “the placement of today’s man toward his own life is more unreal, more unconscious, than the one of the medieval man.” Ortega is right in placing the tipping point precisely in the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity. Such passage coincides with, and sometimes consists of, the passing over from one model of technics to another, that is, the passage from technics to technology. Technology is a specific and new model of technics, whose distinctive feature is its symbiosis with science. Science and technics are two different historical and conceptual realities. However, our modern civilization is marked by their mutual cooperation. From the onset of modernity, science and technics cooperate and foster each other, thus causing a significant global change. This new modality of technics, which is called technology, places us in a type of life that Ortega labels as “more unreal.” At the very least, it is a type of life far removed from the biological and historical foundations of humanity. It is for this reason that we speak of technological—and not just technical—silence.

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What deserves to be silenced from time to time is technology, or some of its uses and applications. Thus, we shall be able to recover for a moment a certain sense of reality, to connect with our biological and historical foundations, to know ourselves. Once achieved such lucidity, we may go back and use technology, using it in a way that would be freer, less blind and dependent. Putting into practice a technical silence, refraining ourselves, for instance, from the simplest techniques, like those used to cook food or to keep warm from the cold, would be less interesting. Yet, the reflection on voluntary practices of extreme survival is still fascinating in order to understand our human condition.1 Among other things, it shows how indispensable is technics for the human being—since, in the end, any difficulty is solved by resorting to survival techniques—and how inhuman their lives become as they do without the most basic techniques. Therefore, here we shall refer above all to a temporary refraining from advanced and legitimate technological devices. It is mainly this type of praxis that can be useful and meaningful in the daily lives of (post)modern humans, and we shall refer to it.

3.2 Practices of Uneasiness Nowadays, many people temporarily and voluntarily refrain from some technologies. They do it for a wide array of reasons, both after careful meditation and in the spur of the moment. We shall now present some significant models of this kind of behavior, with no pretension of thoroughness or systematicity, but rather as a way of example. All in all, we get the impression that technological fasting responds to some kind of uneasiness, to some kind of basic mistrust. It seems that we do not like to place ourselves completely into the hands of technology and are glad to do without them from time to time. We have already mentioned the disconnection from digital devices as the paradigmatic example of technological silence. Enjoying some time without accessing social media, without an internet connection, without the unceasing assault of phone calls and messages, without the glitter of screens, is for some people almost a hygienic measure. The regulated use of this type of technologies is also recommended for minors. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises to totally refrain from them during the first two years, followed by a supervised and regulated use throughout childhood.2 Therefore, the expression “digital detox” has been coined, which Wikipedia (AA.VV. 2018) defines as follows: “Digital detox refers to a period of time during which a person refrains from using electronic connecting devices such as smartphones and computers. It is regarded as an opportunity to reduce stress, focus more on social interaction and connection with nature in the physical world.”

1 See,

for example, Man versus Wild, a TV program by Edward Michael Grylls. the institution’s webpage (https://www.aap.org) there are some recommendations regarding limits in the use of media according to age.

2 In

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There are already institutions devoted to providing times and spaces for the socalled digital detox. The advertising of a leading center of digital detox is quite telling: “We provide individuals, families and companies the opportunity to put aside their digital arm, gain perspective, and reemerge with new found inspiration, balance and connection.”3 Whatever we may think of this type of companies, it is undeniable that they have found the key to a widely extended sentiment in our society. We have mentioned above the practices of extreme survival, where most technologies used in our daily lives are left aside. To such cases we might add many others. For instance, there are set dates to silence a given technology, such as World Car Free Day (September 22) and No Elevators Day (April 25). Furthermore, every day thousands of hikers or pilgrims all over the world choose not to use planes, cars and other modern means of transport and instead to cover a large distance on foot or by bike. Why? Moreover, bicycles have experienced in recent decades a true revival after a period of eclipse.4 Even more striking is that, in the age of cars, the number of people covering voluntarily large distances on foot is also increasing. Hiking has become a very common practice. It is noteworthy the boom of routes such as the Way of Saint James (Camino de Santiago). It is a network of European pedestrian pathways coming down from the Middle Ages. It is quite telling the fact that this kind of activity declined with the advent of modernity only to grow steadily in recent decades.5 There are many other practices, ever more common, pointing in the same direction: washing clothes and dishes by hand, cooking with fire, knitting or weaving, playing board games, doing home improvement projects, doing some revitalized craft or farming… Particularly significant—and troubling for some—is the fact that e-book sales have stagnated in recent years while traditional paper books stand their ground and even recover their market share.6 Even among educators, there are people who from time to time do without digital paraphernalia. What do we seek with this kind of post-PowerPoint pedagogy? Today, this way of proceeding is not just adopted by citizens or consumers, but also by companies and by society in general. For instance, in the so-called energy mix we can combine facilities provided with cutting-edge technology and modest waterfalls. Industries can also mix highly-technologized production lines with others far closer to traditional crafts. Therefore, products made by using a less technological production system become more valuable due to a number of variegated reasons, from esthetical to ethical motives and from didactic to ecological reasons, not to speak of the recognition of its distinctiveness, halfway between art and technology. Let us consider also the rhythms. There are people who do not obsessively go after the latest digital gadget, taking their time before changing hardware. There 3 Available

at http://digitaldetox.org/. available at http://www.worldometers.info/bicycles/. 5 Information available at https://www.editorialbuencamino.com/estadistica-peregrinos-delcamino-de-santiago/ and at https://oficinadelperegrino.com/estadisticas/. 6 Information available at https://universoabierto.org/2017/02/21/tendencias-del-libro-electronico2017/comment-page-1/. 4 Information

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are even some people who have developed a taste for “vintage” technology, not only for vintage decoration or fashion. None of these cases reveal an ultimate or total renouncement to technology, but rather a temporary interruption of its use or a preference for a slower pace. We deem appropriate to include in this list the so-called slow movement, with its taste for slowness and tranquility, since often technologies are used precisely to speed up some processes in life (AA.VV. 2017). The movement was born as an alternative to fast food, but quickly it spread to other realms of life. Whoever chooses slowness may indeed practice a form of technological silence. In this path of slowness we also find the many forms of meditation, whether traditional or new, that are so fashionable nowadays and that can be seen a as way to temporarily refrain from technology. Finally, we shall mention two versions of technological silence deriving from a clearly religious inspiration. First of all, we must refer to the so-called technological fasting, evidently linked to other fasting religious traditions such as Lent or Ramadan. It is also connected with the Shabat or Sunday observance, insofar as they are the traditional days to rest from work and to reduce technical activities. The praxis of technological fasting is also used nowadays with therapeutic purposes. In the second place, we shall consider the curious case of the Amish, who, for religious reasons, have chosen to do without some modern technologies, not all of them. The criterion does not seem to be consistent and therefore there is a large diversity among Amish groups. For instance, some Amish use washing machines or chainsaws, whereas others refuse to use them.7 The Amish case calls for some further clarification. Their refraining from some technologies, such as television and cars, is not temporary, but rather permanent. Consequently, strictly speaking, we cannot say that the Amish practice technological silence with regard to them. Furthermore, their renouncement derives from the fact that they see such technologies as illegitimate. Thus, the Amish somehow resemble the most radical forms of contemporary ecologism and, like them, depart from moderate or tolerant positions, which are far more common in our society. Finally, as a conclusion to this section and as an introduction to the next, we must say that the Amish foster in their lives an attitude called in their German dialect Gelassenheit. It may be understood as serenity, calm, detachment, acceptance, renouncement to revenge and to prominence. It is the very term we shall read in a key text by Heidegger, probably a not so casual coincidence. The term is etymologically related, for example, to the French verb laisser, to the Italian verb lasciare, to the Latin adjective laxus or to the Spanish noun relajación, all of them deriving from the Indo-European root sleg.

7 See

the report at http://amishamerica.com/amish-technology-friendliness/.

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3.3 Releasement (Gelassenheit) Facing the uneasiness caused by the technological development, Heidegger has advised to adopt an attitude far removed both from technologism and from luddism. An attitude is a stable disposition to act in a given way before a set of variable circumstances. If a certain attitude predisposes us to do the right, we call it a virtue. The virtuous attitude we are to display toward technics is called releasement (Gelassenheit) by Heidegger (1966, 54): “I would call this comportment toward technology which expresses ‘yes’ and at the same time ‘no,’ by an old word, releasement toward things.” It is noteworthy the fact that the whole digital world is based on the disjunction “yes or no,” that is, “0 or 1,” while Heidegger precisely proposes the conjunction “yes and no” as the epitome of the fitting attitude toward technics. A similar formulation—that may be clarifying—is the one offered by Kierkegaard (1993, 208). According to him, the fitting attitude of detachment will be achieved “only when the human being, though he works and spins, is just like the lily, which does not work or spin, only when the human being, although he sows and reaps and gathers into barns, is just like the bird, which does not sow and reap and gather into barns.” Now, let us go back to Heidegger (1966, 54): “We can affirm the unavoidable use of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature.” We see how Heidegger uses a more philosophical formulation than Kierkegaard, although, in the end, both point in the same direction. We should be clear: there is no need to save human beings from technology. Heidegger (1966, 53) never demonizes it: “It would be foolish to attack technology blindly. It would be shortsighted to condemn it as the work of the devil. We depend on technical devices.” However, human beings must be saved from a wrong attitude toward technology, from a thoughtless, rushed, acritical, and hardly free attitude: “We can use technical devices, and yet with proper use also keep ourselves so free of them, that we may let go [loslassen] of them any time” (Heidegger 1966, 54). In the end, as Michael Sandel suggests, whereas nature conditions and constrains us, it is at the same time a prerequisite for the exercise of our freedom. Technology provides us with some autonomy toward nature, although it imposes new conditions and restrictions upon us. Therefore, our freedom, both with regard to nature and with regard to technology, is always characterized by negotiation. We cannot do without them—nature and technology—, but we must try to keep a certain distance from them. In Sandel’s (2007, 83) words, “part of freedom […] consists in a persisting negotiation with the given.” These are the recommendations of philosophers, based on a profound understanding of technology and of human nature itself. We may miss in them a greater specificity, a closer proximity to daily praxis. We are told to use technological devices without attaching ourselves to them, always preserving our human essence. Now, how do we do that? What particular actions do substantiate such an attitude? We must remember that, on the other extreme of this dialectical game, we have a set of very concrete practices which tend to respond to feelings and intuitions rather

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than to philosophical meditations. They are sometimes carried out with the best of intentions, but provide little insight with regard to the criteria or meaning behind them. Is it possible to bring them closer, to establish some kind of contact between both extremes for their mutual benefit? An initial step in that direction will be taken by offering an interpretation of Heidegger’s words: “Yes and no” to technology. How shall we understand them? Maybe Heidegger is inviting us to consider our human essence as the defining criterion. We have to say “yes” to the technology that respects our essence and “no” to the technology that devastates our humanness. This is a fruitful interpretation. It serves us to rebut all applications that destroy human beings, as it is the case with much of the anthropotechnics proposed nowadays by transhumanism (Marcos 2016b; Diéguez 2017). It is also useful to oppose all technologies harming the environment, the home of humanity, and therefore human life. At the same time, we can still say “yes” to technology in general and to some particular uses insofar as they favor a truly human life. Let us offer some examples in order to see how this criterion can be both precise and useful. In the field of biotechnology, if we follow this principle, we should emphatically say “yes” to the reprogramming of somatic cells (iPS) and to RNA editing with CRISPR-Cas13, while we should say “no” to other biotechnologies involving the destruction of human embryos, identity conflicts or the modification of humanity’s genetic heritage, as it is the case, for instance, with some forms of genetic editing or human cloning (Cox et al. 2017; Yamanaka 2012; Marcos 2016a). By way of a preliminary hermeneutical move, we have brought closer the advice of philosophers and the praxis of laboratories. We know that iPS can be obtained from many somatic tissues. Therefore, this type of technology does not imply the destruction of human embryos. On the other hand, genetic editing with CRISPRCas13 refers to RNA, not to DNA, thus leaving untouched our genetic heritage. Both technologies are welcomed from a technological and an ethical viewpoint, whereas other illegitimate technologies must be turned down. However, Heidegger’s statement can be interpreted in still another way. We can understand that both, yes and no, refer to the same technological application. Of course, it should be one of the applications that have stood the earlier test, that is, a legitimate application of technology. Accordingly, we cannot say “yes” and “no” to human cloning, since it requires a “no.” On the other hand, the examples we are considering help us to see how we cannot simply say “no” to some technologies. Once we have them, its use in some circumstances is a must. If, by using CRISPRCas13, we could heal some illnesses, it seems obvious that we should not do without it. Obviously, it would not be acceptable that a hospital decided that twice a month it will not use anesthetic when doing surgery. On the other hand, it is acceptable for a person to choose how frequently he or she is going to use or stop using a computer, a car, an elevator or a GPS device. Therefore, there are some technological applications we must say “no,” there are some others we must say “yes,” and there is a wide range of technological devices we may say “yes” and “no.” This is the meaning of our second interpretation of Heidegger’s text. And this is the area that has to do with technological silence.

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3.4 Practices of Releasement Let us suppose, then, that technological silence is a way to practice the attitude of releasement toward technology recommended by Heidegger, an attitude that says yes and no at the same time. Now we can ask ourselves what we get with such an attitude. Heidegger (1966, 46) reminds us that “there are, then, two kinds of thinking, each justified and needed in its own way: calculative thinking and meditative thinking.” The temporary refrainment from a given technology involves the passage from calculative thinking—which tells us that we will arrive earlier by using the car than by walking—to meditative, reflective thinking. Technological silence provides us with some distance from technological devices, a distance that allows us to think meditatively about them. It does not prevent us from using them, but it helps us avoid using them in a thoughtless, automatic, and, in sum, hardly human manner. If we dispensed with meditation, maybe technology “could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking […] Then man would have denied and thrown away his own special nature—that he is a meditative being. Therefore, the issue is the saving of man’s essential nature. Therefore, the issue is keeping meditative thinking alive” (Heidegger 1966, 56). By virtue of the meditative distance it provides us with, technological silence gives us a clearer understanding of the true value and meaning of technology. We appreciate better what a car gives us after walking some kilometers and what a calculator offers us after doing some operations by hand. Technological silence provides us with lucidity in order to understand the proper goals of technology and its anthropological roots. It teaches us that we need technology, since, when we dispense with one model, we always adopt another one, but it also teaches us why we need it. Even the most transitory technological fasting will contribute to establish the right order regarding human goals and technical devices, regarding what is important and what is secondary; it will provide us with greater freedom from technology, not to do away with it, but rather to put it at the service of the flourishing of human life. It will help to guide technology toward becoming ourselves, which is its deepest meaning. In the end, technology is meant to produce and help blossoming a truly human life, that is, a life according to our common human nature and to each person’s identity. This is what is essential; yet, do we get something else from technological silence? Yes. Specifically, it fosters the knowledge of our human nature and of each individual person. Since, when we silence some technologies, we need to adopt others—probably simpler ones—, for a moment we are positioned closer to the roots of our own humanness. When we silence a fast means of transport or a system of digital communication, our placement in time and space changes. We go back to a position similar to the one which conditioned our biological evolution. Provisionally we revert to the type of space-time relations that existed during most of our biological and cultural evolution, we get closer to our body and our history, as well as closer to the natural world. We know by experience that, just by turning off our mobile phone, our coordinates in time and space are modified. Whoever was close, at the touch of the screen,

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is now far away, whereas the person seating next to us, who we had not even looked at, becomes the nearest human being. We should not renounce the new coordinates derived from technology, but we should not forget either the traditional coordinates based on our biological and social conditions, those conditions which have defined our foundations for centuries. Technology uproots us from our ancestral ground. It modifies space-time relations and changes our biological bases regarding nutrition and sleep. It alters the rhythm of our sensorial experiences, exposing us to new radiations and even removing us from our usual gravitational field. For good or bad, it disrupts social relations, family settings and reproductive models. However, we still need a foundation, maybe no longer our ancestral ground, but a ground that, after all, must be welcoming to human beings. Heidegger (1966, 55) thinks that we can find a new ground on which we can blossom. According to him, it is precisely releasement what promises “a new ground and foundation upon which we can stand and endure in the world of technology without being imperiled by it.” Furthermore, the technological silence used with regard to legitimate technologies contributes to the personal development of virtues such as fortitude, courage, generosity and temperance, which are necessary to stand up to illegitimate technological applications whenever we are forced to do it. Moreover, the technological devices we silence may occasionally malfunction, and therefore the technical levels we (re)activate when practicing this type of technological silence may be useful as a safety net. For instance, we can sail using a GPS device or a compass; however, if the GPS device fails, it would be a good idea to have some notion about how to use a compass. Finally, we must point out that the advice to have moments of technological silence, however specific it may be, cannot become a meticulous recipe book. There is no need to offer thorough guidelines regarding different technologies and recommended periods of refrainment. It is important to stress that technological silence must always be practiced under the guidance of prudence. This, however, does not condemn us to irrationality or subjectivism in our practical decisions, since prudence is true rational knowledge aiming at objective truth. It is a type of knowledge built in the subject as a habit, as a second nature. The subject is able to attain it through action, by practicing it and under the initial guidance—or paideia—of those individuals who already are prudent (Aubenque 1993; Marcos 2011).

3.5 Concluding Remarks “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind,” Kant wrote (Kant 1998, 193–194 [A51]).8 Our goal here has been to provide philosophical thoughts about technology with some content, as well as to provide the intuitions 8 Here

Kant is talking about the relationship between rationalism and empirism and about the need to go beyond them by linking concepts and intuitions.

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behind certain practices with clear concepts. In order to do so, we have expounded the idea of technological silence as the embodiment of Heidegger’s recommendations, and we have connected it with some present practices related to technology, for it may become their guide and criterion. We have interpreted in a twofold way Heidegger’s advice to say “yes” and “no” to technology. First, it suggests that we cannot offer a monolithic response to technology, neither by resorting to technologism nor to luddism. On the contrary, some technological applications deserve a “no” and others a “yes.” At a second level, we assume that it is advisable to temporarily do without many legitimate technological devices, always under the guidance of prudence. And it is advisable because this practice provides us with some autonomy, some freedom from technology, thus fostering our human growth and our fulfillment as persons. This use of technology gives it its true meaning. Technological silence helps us avoid becoming slaves of technology, putting it at the service of the human being. In sum, as we have seen, Heidegger’s releasement finds partial expression in what we have called technological silence, and the specific practices we have referred to become meaningful as they reconcile meditative and calculative thinking; however, they are meaningless if they are born out of some kind of thoughtless nostalgia, laziness or fear to innovation. Acknowdgements I want to thank José Chillón, Mariano Asla, Luca Valera, and Marta Bertolaso for their valuable comments on previous versions of this text.

References AA.VV. (2017) Slow movement (culture). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Available via: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slow_movement_(culture)&oldid=815109352. Accessed 31 Jan 2018 AA.VV. (2018) Digital detox. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Available via: https://en.wikipedia. org/w/index.php?title=Digital_detox&oldid=822497349. Accessed 31 Jan 2018 Aubenque P (1993) La prudence chez Aristote. PUF, Paris Cox DB, Gootenberg JS, Abudayyeh OO, Franklin B, Kellner MJ, Joung Julia et al (2017) RNA editing with CRISPR-Cas13. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0180 Diéguez A (2017) Transhumanismo. La búsqueda tecnológica del mejoramiento humano. Herder, Barcelona Huete EG (2017) Hay que buscar momentos de silencio tecnológico. La Vanguardia. Available via: http://www.catalunyavanguardista.com/catvan/el-amor-en-tiempos-digitales/. Accessed 31 Jan 2018 Heidegger M (1966) Discourse on thinking: a translation of Gelassenheit (trans. Anderson JM, Freund EH). Harper & Row, New York Kant I (1998) Critique of pure reason (trans. Guyer P, Wood AW). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Kierkegaard S (1993) Upbuilding discourses in various spirits (trans. Hong HV, Hong EH). Princeton University Press, Princeton Marcos A (2011) Prudencia, verdad práctica y razón postmoderna. In: Ransanz ARP, Velasco A (eds) Racionalidad en ciencia y tecnología. Nuevas perspectivas iberoamericanas. UNAM, México, pp 119–134

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Marcos Alfredo (2016a) La bioética ante las nuevas antropotecnias. Bioethics UPdate 2:102–114 Marcos Alfredo (2016b) Los retos éticos actuales de las profesiones sanitarias: Del campo de batalla al obrador. Conversar 1:9–23 Ortega JG (2013) Meditación de la técnica. Available via: https://francescllorens.files.wordpress. com/2013/02/ortega_meditacion_tecnica.pdf. Accessed 31 Jan 2017 Sandel Michael J (2007) The case against perfection: ethics in the age of genetic engineering. Harvard University Press, Cambrige Yamanaka Shinya (2012) Induced pluripotent stem cells: past present and future. Cell Stem Cell 10(6):678–684

Chapter 4

New Technologies. Rethinking Ethics and the Environment Luca Valera

Abstract Our lives are saturated with technology, to such an extent that we consider technological devices to be “essential” to live. In order to understand this existential situation, we have to return to the notion of technology (tecnos–logos). A broad definition led us to recognize all objects that are not “natural” as technological, changing the domain of the artificial to the technological one. Another common misunderstanding is the confusion between technique and technology, as if the two terms identified the same sphere of reality. In this sense, we can summarize the status of contemporary technology by means of three main sentences: (1) Technology overlaps with the artificial; (2) Technology fundamentally coincides with its function of facilitating our work; (3) Technology is just a means, an instrument. Within this framework, the “logos of the tecnos” is thus entirely lost, meaning technology as a simple instrument or means in the context of a given action. The question is whether the logos refers to the tecnos or to the being that uses the tecnos. The independence (logos) of technology from human action as a unique characteristic of technological behavior obligates us to rethink ethics in the “technological age:” technological devices are not only used, but also interact with us. In this regard, we can say that technology has become an Environment for us, and we can no longer “stop interacting” with it. Since this relation no longer depends on us, we have to rethink at technology from both an epistemological and ethical perspective. Keywords Technological devices · Technological environment · Ethics of technology · Epistemology of technology · Responsibility

L. Valera (B) Center for Bioethics and Department of Philosophy, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_4

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4.1 New Technologies and the Current Context Could we live without technology? This is one of the questions that comes up with greatest frequency in contemporary human beings, many times exasperated by the overpowering invasion of technology in their life. Clearly, in an empirical or historical sense, this is no longer possible (Ihde 1990, 11), given that our lives are effectively linked to technologies. It would most likely be an interesting mental experiment to envision a potential world without technology and technological devices, as if going back in time to a primitive era. Or would this be completely unfitting for us in the current age of global changes? To accurately respond to this question, it is necessary to delve deeper into the concept of technology itself, with the aim of understanding what it is about and also what its relationship is with us, or, the other way around, what our relationship is with it. Based on a phenomenological view of the current situation, we can clearly assert that our lives are surrounded by and saturated with technology, to such an extent that we consider technological devices to be “essential” to be able to live well, or even to survive. As affirmed by Sandler (2014, 1): “Technology shapes every aspect of human experience. It is the primary driver of social and ecological change. It is a source of power, vulnerability, and inequality. It influences our perspectives and mediates our relationships. Given this, it is surprising that we spend so little time studying, analyzing, and evaluating new technologies.” The inseparability of our technological devices from ourselves has caused “us to lose”1 some characteristics that the devices are replacing in our nature: cultural evolution in human beings is most certainly substituting biological evolution (Dobzhansky 1963). This thought leads us to a further reflection: if the evolution of an entity always depends on the environment in which it lives, by observing the typology of its evolution, we can also understand its environment. And if human evolution is concurrently biological and cultural, guided by new technologies, this means that these technologies not only constitutes an addition to human nature, but they are also becoming something that is really crucial for human life. Technology in our lives has become almost inseparable from our everyday lives, our preferred sphere of activity. In this regard, it could no longer simply be asserted that “technology has drastically changed the human environment” (Verbeek 2005, 20); rather, even further, technology has become the human environment. Thus, a “natural” environment separate from technology does not exist: our environment overlaps with the technological environment, in which “natural” and “artificial” elements co-exist. Within this context of reflection, an entirely new concept emerges that is different from the technology we are used to, meaning the fact that technology is not just a means: “Some contemporary technologies cannot simply be ‘used’ anymore, but start to merge with our physical environment and with our own bodies” (Verbeek 1 In

reality, the “disappearance” of some characteristics would simply consist of “setting aside” these characteristics to favor others that are overlapped (Dobzhansky 1963).

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2014, 83). This change in perspective, which is neither morally nor philosophically neutral, is worthy of a more detailed analysis. Here we will thus analyze proposals that are frequently associated with new technologies and their impact on our lifeworld, and then draw some tentative conclusions. The first problem that arises in the current context of reflection on this topic is the indetermination of the concept itself, and, therefore, the difficulty to identify “technological objects.” In fact, an extremely broad definition of the concept of technology would lead us to recognize all objects that are not “natural” as technological, thereby changing the domain of the artificial to the domain of the technological. Likewise, when Pitt (2011, 74) posits: “Technology is humanity at work,” not limiting the domain of technology to “tools or mechanical machines,” including “social systems” (Pitt 2011, 74) in the domain of this definition, he does nothing more than befuddling ideas. There are two fundamental misunderstandings at the root of this confusion: • The technological is identified with the artificial as if everything that is artificial were also technological.2 • A certain dimension of technology is identified with its essence, meaning its function (the fact of permitting or facilitating work) with its nature (the fact of being the facilitation of work); In fact, regarding the first point, and following a definition that has been accepted for a long time in the scientific community, we discover that “the term ‘artificial’ always implies the work of man. His ‘art’ in the broadest sense and the result cannot, therefore, but show traces of its origin: not nature but technology, even here, in the broadest sense of the word” (Negrotti 2012, 11). The distinction between artificial and technological is lost, and with this, the reason for being of the technological, on the one hand, and the reason for being of the artificial, on the other, which is essentially identified with “all-that-is-not-natural.” With a schematic formula: Technological = Artificial = Not Natural The specific element of the artificial, and, thus, of the other two terms from the previous formula, would be human intervention, meaning the fact of being “manmade” (Negrotti 2012, 11) and not “nature-made.” Each human intervention in nature would ultimately be responsible for the creation of an extra-natural, or rather, artificial, world. From there, everything that is exceedingly artificial becomes the technological, namely everything that is extremely transformational of nature. The fundamental difference between the artificial and the technological, thus, would consist of a difference in degree (or intensity) in the human intervention, or, said in another way, of the distance from nature (in terms of form and model).

2 An

excellent dissertation on the difference between the natural and the artificial can be found in Negrotti (1999, 2003).

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Ultimately, technology would be the most evolved form (and most independent, at the design level) of artifice,3 according to the following scheme4 :

Natural ---- (Naturoid) ---- Technology Artificial In this sense, the differences between the different domains of the artificial and the technological are lost, and the diversity is reduced to a mere distinction of degrees. What remains from the reflection undertaken up until now is a difficulty in separating the spheres of technology from that of artifice, with the accompanying risk of simply considering everything that is artificial as technological. On the one hand, if it is true that everything that is technological is artificial (in its most evident sense: artifice, meaning a product of human art—techne), it cannot be said that everything that is artificial is also technological because the latter is shaped as “something more” than what is simply artificial. With a more effective representation:

Artificial

Technological

It is this “something more,” then, that in the concrete case coincides with the “logos” of the “tecnos,” which can help us to understand the singularity of technology. This is why it will be necessary to focus on another essential distinction for our reflection, meaning the difference between technique (or technical device) and technology (or technological device).

4.2 What Makes Current Technologies “New.” Essential Distinctions One of the most common misunderstandings of our technological era is unquestionably the semantic confusion between technique and technology, as if the two terms identified the same sphere of reality. One well-defined tradition—the Heideggerian one, precisely (Dreyfus and Spinosa 2003)—has been responsible for identifying technology, or modern technique, with the techne tout court, taking all the reflection to the famous conference of 1953 (Heidegger 1977). The point to debate is whether 3 Concerning this topic, and also with reference to the topic of artifact, see Crane and Sandler (2017). 4 Naturoid:

Concerning this issue, please see Negrotti (2012, 11).

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the Heideggerian thought considers the useful conceptual tools to promptly interpret the specific dynamics of new current technological devices, which are gradually drifting apart from the devices of the middle of the 20th century, and which simply do not constitute the means to transform the objects into resources (Blok 2014). In this regard, great conceptual confusion has been caused in this attempt to provide hermeneutics of technology based on Heideggerian conceptual instruments: “The German word that Heidegger uses is Technik. This word is used for both technique and technology although specialists have generally reserved ‘technique’ for the old issues related to the use of instruments and ‘technology’ for the more scientific applications. Not surprisingly, the English versions of the Heideggerian lessons on technique have been translated by the word technology” (Chillón 2017, 120). The question at stake is not simply linguistic but rather semantic. It does not revolve around choosing the best translation of a term or the word that can be adapted best to different languages; rather, it deals with understanding whether the concepts designate spheres (or objects) that are different from the reality, or whether, the other way around, they do not do it. The aim is to understand whether the object-based domains represented by the two words simply overlap or whether each of the two identifies a different sphere of reality. With both words sharing the same root (techne, tecnos), we could lean towards the hypothesis of substantial overlap between the two… however, it is worth asking oneself: what is the meaning of this “logos” that is added to “tecnos” in the word “technology,” and which is not present in the simple word technique? A possible response that is surely worthy of a critical analysis is Agazzi’s proposal (2004, 57): “The term téchne is usually translated as ‘art’, but today it is imprecise, since for us art concerns essentially the beautiful, and aesthetic expression. […] Epistéme focuses attention simply on the truth of what is known; with téchne, the focus is on efficiency. The first concerns pure knowledge; the second, knowledge of doing or making. If we agree that the domain of pure and simple knowledge of doing or making […] can be called the domain of technique, we ought to find another term to designate that further dimension wherein efficient operation is conscious of the reasons for its efficacy and is based upon them, that is, where operation is nourished by its grounding in theoretical knowledge. This new term is technology. In this sense we can say that the idea of technology is clearly prefigured in the Greek notion of téchne.” Ultimately, technology would be technique endowed with rationality, or better said, technique with an “addition of logos.” The addition of this logos does not really have to do with what technology does, but with the origin and the use of the technology itself. The fact that the technological means has been created through specific knowledge (a know-why), and that it needs another form of knowledge (a know-how) to be able to be used, differentiates it fundamentally from the sphere of technique within this theoretical framework. Therefore, technology remains within the domain of “means.” Means that need a more rational approach (or simply intelligent), but always means. The logos of the tecnos ultimately overlaps:

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– with the logos of the “user,” or whoever develops these technologies: to a great extent, technology, as it were, essentially ends up being an applied science (Agazzi 2004, 95); – with the logos of the “maker”: technology constitutes the form (and historic development) of technique that is structurally based on the existence of science (Agazzi 2004, 95). If the central point in this view concurs with the fact that the logos of the tecnos is the logos of human beings (which build or use certain means), it is not really understood what the radical difference may be between the “old techniques” and the “new technologies,” or whether this difference is great enough to delineate a border between the “old” and the “new.” It seems more than evident that the new technologies are the result of a qualitative change in the way of doing science—of a certain knowhow—in the modern era. However, the impression is that this explanation of the technological phenomenon does not indicate what really distinguishes it.

4.3 A Means or the Environment? Resuming what has been said up until now, we could summarize the observations that are usually made in reference to technology via the two aforementioned propositions, while also adding a third one: • Technology overlaps with the artificial, meaning with everything that cannot be considered natural; • Technology fundamentally coincides with its function of facilitating our work, meaning our possibility of reaching some goals; • Technology is just a means, an instrument. The three sentences largely share a fundamental issue, which seems to contradict the very etymology of the word “technology”: all technological devices are always dependent and indispensably embedded in the human context of action, and, therefore, cannot have their “own logic,” separate from this context. Ultimately, the “logos of the tecnos” is entirely lost within the theoretical framework of a purely instrumental notion of technology, meaning technology as a simple instrument or means in the context of a given action, as we have also seen with Agazzi’s definition. It is not only an antiquated vision but also a narrow and erroneous vision of the current technological phenomenon, which entails some equally erroneous ethical and anthropological consequences. Furthermore, if we were to take the three proposals seriously, we could also say that a chair or a wheel must be considered technological, as well as a spear or a knife. Everything that facilitates our work (or our actions) concerning a human product and means would be technological. Not only our contemporary era but also our history as humanity would be covered in technologies, from the simplest to the most complex, from the arrow to robots, in one group without differentiation. This “group without

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differentiation” adheres to the idea for which “Heidegger noted that technology can be correctly defined as ‘a means and a human activity,’ and so it is as old as civilization” (Dreyfus and Spinosa 2003, 340). Once everything has been defined as technological, clearly nothing is technological. Furthermore, the difference between what we can simply call “means” and what “technology” is would not be understood, and, thus, what the artificial is, as we have already underscored. If technology only acquires meaning within the sphere of a human action, its essence would always be indispensably linked to the purpose-for-which-it-is-ameans, and it will depend on this. Outside of this context, the means, losing its “usefulness” (which always makes sense in the context), its “readiness-to-hand” (Zuhandeheit) (Heidegger 2001, 98), loses its reason for being. If the “world” of things is ultimately presented as meaningful because it shows its character of “usefulness,” meaning the way in which we can integrate it into our existence and relate it to our purposes, once it loses this “usefulness,” these very things lose their meaning as means. The dimension of the “readiness-to-hand” ultimately reflects the specific characteristic of being a “means,” meaning of being “everything that functions in and for our lives.” The unique structure of the means, then, is “to be concerned with something other than itself” (Fabris 2018, 72), it is a “being ‘something for…’,” and in this regard, it reflects the essential characteristic of the technical instrument. Thus, the most appropriate question concerning the technical instrument will not really be “what is it?” but rather “what is it good for?” or “what is it concerned with?”; an example: only in the act of hammering does the hammer act as such (Fabris 2018, 72). It is precisely in light of this dimension of “usefulness” or of “readiness-to-hand” that an appropriate interpretation has been able to be provided of the technical instrument as something that brings the purposes together with the world of human activity. Thus, the dimension of “usefulness” encapsulates the three aforementioned proposals referring to technology, summarizing the fundamental dynamics of being a means “for something…”. That the technical instrument (or means, or equipment) is defined in light of its “usefulness,” along with everything this concept entails, may be taken for granted; our question is whether the same concept can also refer to current technology, many years after the reflections of Being and Time: can the new technologies be interpreted correctly in light of the Heideggerian speculations, or would it be completely inappropriate given the radically different and new context and apparatuses? To answer to this question, and, what is more, for our response to not be arbitrary, we should find out if the new technological means respond to the logic of usefulness or to another completely different logic. In other words: whether the logos refers to the tecnos or to the being that uses the tecnos. For example, let us reflect on the tag system that is used on our highways and its function in charging tolls: can we affirm that they constitute simple means for our purposes? Or that they are exclusively instruments we use to fulfill certain purposes? Clearly, a certain dimension of “instrumentality” (or of “being able to be used”) continues to be inherent in technology in terms of means, but we can no longer confirm that this dimension reflects the essential property of “the technological” as

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such. The thing (the tag system in our example, or the individual devices) never ceases to function, and we cannot say that it depends on a certain human use. During periods with less traffic, or in regions that are almost deserted, the devices continue operating and interacting amongst each other and with the other system apparatuses, regardless of whether there is human intervention. It is precisely this independence from human action, not so much in relation to the origin of the device but to its “acting” hic et nunc, which leads us to conclude that the new technological devices are subtracted from the means-purpose logic in the context of a given period of action. As a result, the logic inherent in modern technique can be summarized in the following manner:

Technical Means

Purpose

Human Action

By contrast, the logic of new technologies is defined as structurally open and transcendent of the context of immediate human action:

Technological Device

Human Action

Purpose

In this regard, if it is true that technological devices continue being means or instruments to carry out our purposes, on the one hand, on the other hand they have acquired independence from our actions, so much so that they exceed the space of the action of man, having created a domain outside the domain of human activity. With this claim, we can no longer simply sustain that each means functions in (and re-sends to) a certain environment, as is affirmed in the phenomenological tradition; rather, technological devices are something more, which go beyond the environment circumscribing human action, thereby creating a new, potentially undefined environment. It does not occur here, as indicated by Ellul (2018, 46), that “the technological environment thus presumes to replace all of the natural environment,” but rather a new environment is created. It is a properly technological environment, which functions through its own logic and dynamics. One must only think of virtual worlds in which the “natural” is recreated based on the requirements of the technological, and

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not the other way around. The “artificial” no longer adapts to the “natural” within a given means, but rather the same medium is created again, seeking to find a space for the “natural.” Thus, it would be incorrect to affirm that the technological environment has replaced the natural environment: it is the other way around; the technological environment on the one hand has complemented the existing environments as if it were a new environment (virtual worlds may be thought of as an example); on the other, it has entirely penetrated the existing environments, radically transforming them. In this last regard, technology is no longer a means; rather, it is the environment in which we live. This also implies that our relationship is no longer being developed (1) with the device in terms of the means, but rather (2) with technology in terms of the environment: (1) Human Being

Technological means

(2) Human Being

Technological Means

Although the second representation is the most realistic or plausible where concerning our relationship with new technologies, it is, however, an incomplete and inconsistent representation with what has been discussed up until now. The human being/new technologies relationship is not in fact unidirectional, but, as we have said, is instead bidirectional, defined by a feedback effect. Given that the relationship does not end at the moment when a human being takes the hammer and hammers but rather man is immersed in a technological environment that “acts” independently of human use, it is not correct to assert that the direction of the intervention is always from the human being towards the devices. In fact, to understand the relationship typology at hand, it would be necessary to think about the living being-environment relationship (Valera 2018, 146), more dynamic and complex than the man-instrument relationship, and which remains once the living being has finished “doing something.” Indeed, characterizing the new technologies as an environment allows us to understand our relationship with them a little bit better, meaning it can be a key interesting interpretation for the current

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technological phenomenon. Using the same previous representation, reviewed in light of what has been said until now:

(3)

Human Being

Technological Means

By means of representation (3), we can understand some characteristics of our relationship with the new technologies: – we live in a technological environment in which the “natural” and artificial elements are mutually integrated; – this environment has its own activity and it is not “static” or dependent on a human action; – the relationship between human beings and the environment is not unidirectional; rather, it is a dynamic interaction that is defined by the feedback effect. Thus, to fully understand these three characteristics, it is necessary to examine the meaning of the “logos” which the word “technology” entails. What does this logos refer to that distinguishes technology and differentiates it from technique? “The logos […] refers to the rationality and the complexity of this system of tools pertaining to technical action” (Fabris 2012, 13). For this very reason, “technology can no longer be spoken of without underlining the fact that, as the word itself states, there is a type of ‘logic’ in its processes. It is a logic that, precisely because of the independence that these processes claim and initiate, does not seem to be completely controllable by human beings: neither by technicians nor by scientists” (Fabris 2012, 24). The logic we are talking about here is entirely different than what is emphasized by Agazzi: there is clearly an essential logic for creating new technologies; a logic is observed in the use of them; however, there is also a specific logic of the new technologies, meaning a way of functioning that allows a certain logicity to be envisaged in its “acting.” The dimensions that reveal the logic of technologies most thoroughly (and not simply in or for technologies) are: independence and automation (the clock is a clear example of these); the coordination with other devices and the functioning in system (the “factory” represents these characteristics well), and self-regulation and interaction with the environment (the robot, endowed with sensors, is an example of these). If we interpret the three as phases of a historical and theoretical process, we can affirm that the ability to interact with the environment most likely constitutes the most interesting element of the new technologies because it implies an independence

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achieved from human beings.5 In this last regard, we could attest that, on the one hand, the new technologies are the Environment of human beings; meanwhile, on the other hand, human beings are the Environment of new technologies. This vision of the new technologies, and, as such, the relationship between human beings and technology, entails some ethical considerations that are able to provide a new perspective on the ethics of the old technique. Ultimately, the independence of technology from the sphere of human action and interaction as a unique characteristic of technological behavior obligates us to rethink our way of understanding ethics in the “technological age” (Jonas 1984).

4.3.1 Tecnos–Logos–Ethos Technique is morally neutral. Technology is ethically neutral (Murray 1995, 160). As they are simple instruments, both depend on the use and the purpose for which they are the means. Ultimately, whether they are good or bad always depends on who uses them and how they are used. Outside of their use, however, there is no “ethnicity,” given that the means is always inert, meaning it needs someone to move it (and then, for it to be moved in a good or bad way: this is where the ethical evaluation arises). All of these thoughts make sense—and also historically have had its importance— if we are discussing technical instruments such as hammers, plows, or wheels. Despite this, in light of the technological devices we have described, with the characteristics highlighted, this discourse completely loses its meaning. The philosophical reflection carried out by Jonas in the Imperative of Responsibility, contextualized in this new historical era, would perhaps have its reason for being. As he emphasized, a change in the way of acting entails a new way of facing the ethical question (Jonas 1984, 4–8), but something more is added here with reference to Jonasian speculation. It does not pertain to, as it does for Jonas, the fact that the new objects that have begun to form part of human action have substantively expanded the sphere of the cases to which valid rules of behavior must be applied, and nor that the qualitatively novel nature of some of our actions has opened up an entirely new dimension of ethical relevance (Jonas 1984, 1). The novelty arises due to the technological devices themselves, which, for the very first time, are not only used, but they also interact with us. The matter at hand is no longer actions on instruments, but interactions with the instruments. The patio of the means, at least, becomes an inter-actio. This last affirmation invites us to rethink the ethical dimension of new technologies and of our relationship with them. If everything we have affirmed until now is true, we must also sustain that we are faced with a true qualitative change in the world of the ethics of technologies.

5 With

reference to this topic, Floridi’s (2014, 28–30) Third-Order-Technologies proposal is quite interesting.

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This qualitative leap first of all brings us to begin to consider technologies themselves as “moral objects:” “Maturity in our thinking about technology requires that we no longer exclude technologies from the realm of ethics” (Verbeek 2014, 87). In this context of reflection, the claim that “technology is ethically neutral” would not make any sense, given that it is not the use of technology that ascribes it “a supplement to the spirit,” but rather its “activities” themselves. This is why we have defined technologies as an environment and no longer as a means, because within this environment, there are activities, interactions, and movements, among other things. This interaction causes the ethical evaluation to be more complex and unpredictable, and, along with this, for radically new questions to be evoked: “Is the morally positive or negative impact of technology due to the way humans use technology or to the way technology (actively) conditions human life? Are humans to be praised or blamed for the impact of technology on their efforts to bring about the good life, is it technology itself, or is it the interaction between human users and technological artefacts? Is technology itself a curse or a blessing when it comes to living a good life?” (Kroes and Verbeek 2014, 3). The questions clearly aim at an understanding of the technological phenomenon within the context of our everyday lives, once the devices have already been installed and integrated into them. It is definitely no longer about developing conceptual tools to stop the imminent danger of new forms of destruction of human beings and the environment, but rather of rethinking relationships, and here is precisely where the ethical question emerges. In this context, the “heuristics of fear” (Jonas 1984, 28–30), as well as all the catastrophic or apocalyptic proclamations, are presented as entirely inadequate for hermeneutics of the new technologies. The age of the question of the atomic bomb as a “technological object par excellence” and the ethical considerations that this entailed (Jaspers 1963) has ended: presently, technology is presented largely as a “friendly” and daily means, close to our experiences. As can easily be understood, the complexity of the ethical questions to a large extent depends on the representation itself of technology as an environment. If technology has become an environment for us, we can no longer “stop interacting” with it, precisely because we live and carry out our lives within it. Having said this, the relationship no longer depends on us because it is always occurring given that we live in this environment. The effort of thinking etsi tecnologia non daretur, thus, would likely be hermeneutically interesting but entirely inappropriate for the era in which we live. Eliminating all of our interactions with technology (with the environment) would actually mean eliminating a significant part of our daily experiences, thereby committing the tragic error of “hypostasing” human beings. If the technological devices are our environment, thinking of human beings (and their relationships) outside of this environment would at the very least be an outdated philosophical operation. The massive man/technological devices interaction thus implies another necessary consideration: “Technologies are intrinsically involved in moral decision-making. This does not imply, to be sure, that they are moral agents themselves. But it does imply that moral agency needs to be understood as a fundamentally hybrid affair”

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(Verbeek 2014, 77). This affirmation is justified at three different levels that deserve a more detailed critical analysis. – Epistemological: The new technologies reveal and open up a new world for man that used to be considered non-existent, or at the very least, unexplored. The “nano,” “micro,” and “macro,” infinitely small, as well as infinitely big, are now “ready-tohand,” so much so that “to understand the role of technology in human existence, one must think not only backward to its conditions of possibility, but also forward to what technological artifacts themselves make possible, and what this means for human existence” (Verbeek 2005, 30). A world that did not “exist” (because it was not known) now “exists” (because it is known through the devices), and, therewith, possibilities and “powers” are unlocked. In this regard, “knowing” becomes a morally connoted activity, so much so that the knowledge can eventually become “dangerous” (Potter 1971). This condition of the possibility of accessibility to this new world is, therefore, the very presence of technology and its devices. As a result, knowledge, and, as such, the possibilities for action that are uncovered, are a hybrid issue in the age of technological civilization, meaning mediated by the apparatuses and devices: “There is an essential, technologically embodied difference between our perceptions and those of any of the ancients. Our perceptions are not naked, but mediated. We see by means of first optical and then radio, spectrographic, and other technologically embodied visions” (Ihde 1990, 44). – Ethical: The epistemological opening of a new world, as we have said, entails new powers. Now it is possible to do what beforehand could absolutely not be done. The question surrounding the need for, impossibility, or permissibility of our actions—totally new in their form—has in this era become one of the fundamental questions about technology. The very fact of being able to do something, whether modifying the human genome, communicating live with the other side of the planet, printing human organs in 3D, immediately causes the question to arise regarding the morality of our actions. This implies that these technologies are value-laden, due to the simple fact of ethically opening up spaces for action: “The moral significance of technology is in the technological mediation of morality. By organizing relations between humans and world, technologies play an active, though not a final, role in morality. Technologies are morally charged, so to speak” (Verbeek 2014, 78). Therefore, the novelty unveiled by technologies is the opening of this world, or space of action, that is always co-existing with human beings, and which has relevance and moral weight regardless of the human action hic et nunc. This presence of technology is revealed in its mediating possibility: “Human beings and technological artifacts have become so closely connected in our everyday lives, that even our moral perceptions and decisions have become technologically mediated. Only by recognizing this interweaving of humans and technologies can we take responsibility for the ways in which technologies have an impact on society and on human existence—in practices of technology design, implementation, and use. My claim is that the resistance against the idea that technologies are morally significant is in fact a resistance against the need to give up the modernist idea that actions and decisions can only be moral when they are the sole product of

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individual human choice without external influences” (Verbeek 2014, 76). Because of all of these reasons, “a philosophy of technology begins by emphasizing that technology is not neutral, noting that technologies do much more than simply achieve the goals for which they were instituted” (Verbeek 2005, 43). Thus, we return to the issue of non-dependence (or independence) of the new technologies of human action: here it can be affirmed that, at the ethical level, moral agency in the era of technological civilization is an essentially hybrid issue, which implies (only) a certain degree of responsibility. – Responsibility: That moral agency is an essentially hybrid issue also means that responsibility exceeds the simple sphere of human action, meaning it goes beyond the time (and space) of the action itself. This is not only due to the fact that our actions have a much broader and unpredictable scope, but also because the technological devices themselves have attained a certain independence. Once they have been created and put into motion, the devices (at least the most developed and refined ones) are capable of processing initial information and continuing “to act,” to a certain degree. In this case, it is clearly not being affirmed that the technological devices are responsible for what they do, in fact a necessary condition for responsibility is freedom, a power the machines do not possess, but rather that responsibility does not entirely depend on who uses the device because many times it is beyond their control. A good example of this dimension is the famous Google Car: human responsibility lies in the building and programming of this machine, and not in its capacity to interpret and process all of the signals that come from the environment. The epistemological and ethical openings, therefore, also entail the idea of responsibility, if not “hybrid” (or “distributed”—Floridi 2015, 8), at the very least “limited,” meaning not entirely in human hands (and actions). It is this latest aspect that represents the true novelty of the new technologies, i.e., our environment. Acknowledgements This manuscript was supported by Research Project VRI Interdisciplina UC No. II160035.

References Agazzi E (2004) Right, wrong and science: the ethical dimensions of the techno-scientific enterprise (trans: Dilworth C). Rodopi, New York Blok V (2014) Reconnecting with nature in the age of technology. The Heidegger and radical environmentalism debate revisited. Environ Philos 11(2):307–332 Chillón JM (2017) Ready-to-hand in Heidegger. Philosophy as an everyday understanding of the world and the question concerning technology. In: Bertolaso M, Di Stefano N (eds) The hand. Perception, cognition, action. Springer, New York, pp 115–126 Crane JK, Sandler R (2017) Natural, artifactual, and moral goodness. J Ethics 21(3):291–307 Dobzhansky T (1963) Cultural direction of human evolution—a summation. Hum Biol 35(3):311–316

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Dreyfus HL, Spinosa C (2003) Further reflections on Heidegger, technology, and the everyday. Bull Sci Technol Soc 23(5):339–349 Ellul J (2018) The technological system (trans: Neugroschel J). Wipf and Stock, Eugene Fabris A (2012) Etica delle nuove tecnologie. La Scuola, Brescia Fabris A (2018) Essere e tempo di Heidegger. Introduzione alla lettura. Carocci, Roma Floridi L (2014) The 4th revolution. How the infosphere is reshaping human reality. Oxford University Press, Oxford Floridi L (ed) (2015) The onlife manifesto. Being human in a hyperconnected era. Springer Open, Oxford Heidegger M (1977) The question concerning technology. In: The question concerning technology and other essays (trans: Lovitt W). Garland Publishing, New York, pp 3–35 Heidegger M (2001) Being and time, 17th edn (trans: Macquarrie J, Robinson E). Blackwell, Oxford Ihde D (1990) Technology and the lifeworld: from garden to earth. Indiana University Press, Bloomington Jaspers K (1963) The atom bomb and the future of man (trans: Ashton EB). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago Jonas H (1984) The imperative of responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago Kroes P, Verbeek P-P (2014) Introduction: the moral status of technical artefacts. In: Kroes P, Verbeek P-P (eds) The moral status of technical artefacts. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 1–9 Murray DE (1995) Knowledge machines: language and information in a technological society. Routledge, London Negrotti M (1999) The theory of the artificial. Intellect Books, Exeter Negrotti M (2003) Naturoids. On the nature of the artificial. World Scientific Publishing, Singapore Negrotti M (2012) The reality of the artificial. Nature, technology and naturoids. Springer, Berlin Pitt JC (2011) Doing philosophy of technology. Essays in a pragmatist spirit. Springer, Dordrecht Potter VR (1971) Bioethics. Bridge to the future. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs Sandler R (2014) Introduction: technology and ethics. In: Sandler R (ed) Ethics and emerging technologies. Palgrave, London, pp 1–23 Valera L (2018) From spontaneous experience to the cosmos: Arne Naess’s phenomenology. Problemos 93:142–153 Verbeek P-P (2005) What things do. Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design (trans: Crease RP). The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park Verbeek P-P (2014) Some misunderstandings about the moral significance of technology. In: Kroes P, Verbeek P-P (eds) The moral status of technical artefacts. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 75–88

Chapter 5

New Politics: Sovereignty, Representation, and the Nonhuman Alfonso Donoso

Abstract As an alternative to an instrumentalist view of the natural world in political practices and institutions—a view that conceives of nature as an aggregated of resources to merely serve human interests and needs—this article advances an account of a new politics for a more-than-human world. It proposes a different understanding of the nonhuman within the sphere of the political which both impacts upon the extension of the political community—who should be included in the demos—as well as upon the use and application of traditional political concepts— e.g., sovereignty, representation, legitimacy and authority. It is argued that these theoretical developments characterize a new politics and are, in the light of current environmental challenges, a necessary first step towards a genuine transformation of state policies and practices for our more-than-human political communities. Keywords Non-anthropocentrism · Environmental ethics · Animal ethics · Ecological justice · Territorial rights · Sovereignty

5.1 Prolusion In the third part of Theory of Justice, whilst investigating the basis of equality, John Rawls asks on what grounds we “distinguish between mankind and other living things and regard the constraints of justice as holding only in our relations to human persons” (Rawls 1971, 504). Rawls’ reflection touches upon a series of deep questions that prefigure the focus of this article: a new politics for a more-than-human world. Since at least the early 70s, where theorists were searching for a new ethics that incorporates the moral standing of the nonhuman in our normative analysis, the question of the application of political concepts beyond the human world has been in 1 The locus classicus of the question about a new ethics is (Routley 1973). For a more recent take on this issue, see Rolston III (2012).

A. Donoso (B) Department of Political Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_5

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the air. This article captures some of the discussions that pertain to this vision of a new politics and advances some recent ideas about the way in which the nonhuman can be incorporated in political principles and institutions. Before starting, let us fix a couple of ideas. A new politics for a more-than-human world is concerned with the relationship there should exist between humans and nonhumans, and with the political principles and institutions required for such relationship to be legitimate and sustainable. As any form of politics, this new politics asks how we should live together, yet it extends to (parts of) the nonhuman the set of entities that should be taking into account when thinking of a life together. This new politics is thus a specifically political reformulation of the moral extensionism characteristic of environmental ethics. However, unlike the latter, the new politics is specifically concerned with the extension of the political community through political arguments and concepts. Condensing it to a maximum, this new politics focuses on the complex environmental problems that threaten human and nonhuman life worldwide and, in the face of these challenges, it makes us confront two general and difficult questions: are there political grounds to incorporate the nonhuman as political members of our political communities? If yes, what should be the rules, practices and institutions that regulate our more-than-human political communities? This article elaborates on these questions by, first, reflecting on the idea of a new politics for a more-than-human world and, second, presenting some plausible strategies that incorporate the nonhuman into the new politics. A last preliminary clarification is required. In this article, I do not problematize the notion of the nonhuman, and by this term I simply mean any recognizable entity that is neither human nor created by humans. Under this very general use of the nonhuman may fall both sentient and non-sentient organisms, living entities and non-living natural objects, individual realities or collective systems. Although a more precise account of the nonhuman would certainly be required for a detailed and definite account of the new politics, for the general purposes of this article, dedicated to a general exposition of some aspects of the idea of a new politics for a more-thanhuman world, this level of generality is enough to present the general structure of the ideas that motivate this work.

5.2 A New Politics for a More-than-Human World The new politics for a more-than-human world is a relatively recent development in political theory and philosophy which challenges traditional forms and understandings of the political. Specifically, this new politics results from the recognition that conventional politics is not well situated to provide an inclusive and, ultimately, rightful account of the political community, the correct version of which should recognize the political status and political importance of the nonhuman. Consider, for example, John Dryzek’s contention, who in the terrain of democratic theory has noted that “democracy, however contested a concept, and in however many varieties it has

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appeared in the last two and a half thousand years is, if nothing else, anthropocentric” (Dryzek 2000, 147). Indeed, an important reason for this incapacity of conventional politics to incorporate or recognize the nonhuman as part of the political community is its too simplistic view of the natural world, heavily influenced by economics, that sees the nonhuman natural world merely as an aggregated of resources to serve human interests and needs. This reductive understanding of the nonhuman informs the conventional view on politics and, thus, makes it “fail to consider the possibility that humans may have different kinds of moral duties toward fish, forest, and cattle; that forest and fish behave very differently in response to human actions; or that these non-human entities may be actors in their own right” (Smith 2016, 109). In contrast to this view, and influenced by non-anthropocentric forms of environmental ethics, the new politics incorporates a different understanding of the nonhuman world that both impacts upon the extension of the political community and the use and application of traditional political concepts.2 These theoretical developments are seen as the required first step towards a genuine transformation of environmental policies and practices by the state. To be sure, it would be inaccurate to maintain that conventional politics has completely ignored the nonhuman world. The ideas of sustainability and sustainable development are perhaps the leading concepts used for this purpose and, for example, the Brundtland Report (1987)—resulting from the political efforts of the U.N.—is certainly an influential document concerning the protection and enhancement of the environment through the strategy of a sustainable development. Furthermore, the first principle of the Rio Declaration (1992), a document born as a consequence of the influence of the Brundtland Report, states that “Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.” What this shows is that at the basis of these efforts to include our more-than-human world in public policies and practices there is always an anthropocentric premise. Generally, this premise states that concern for the nonhuman natural world should be taken into account when determining public policy or general state action, and this holds true (and legitimate) only when such consideration derives from human interests and preferences. In other words, when such interests and preferences do not have as their practical conclusion the protection of the environment or, more generally, the respect for the nonhuman, then nothing follows regarding how the political community should treat or relate with that nonhuman world. In the end, this form of concern means that caring for the nonhuman natural world becomes a contingent matter, derivative of how persuasive or popular the case for the nonhuman is within the polity in a specific period of time. In contrast, the new politics brings to the fore questions about the non-contingent representation of the nonhuman, deriving political obligations from the mere presence of the nonhuman within a territory, independently of the value that humans,

2 The

specific and most fundamental grounds for valuing the nonhuman will depend on the favored moral theory from which the new politics derives its normative basis. The specification of those grounds goes well beyond the scope of this article.

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contingently, may attach to them. Furthermore, the new politics questions the relationships that should govern our human political practices and institutions with the nonhuman, scrutinizing our conceptions of sovereignty, citizenship and rights, and demanding a new institutional design that may be true to these new and inclusive political understandings. A key methodological issue in this enterprise is that the new politics should be grounded in political principles and arguments, rather than in some non-political theory. In different terms, the justifications for the inclusion of the nonhuman should be offered through political, rather than purely moral or metaphysical, arguments. In the following section I illustrate this point by presenting a couple of ideas that satisfy this methodological requirement and, thus, represent an example of the new politics under consideration in this article. Before moving on, it is important to clarify that the extensionism gestured in this new politics is not unknown in political theorizing. An example of such an expansion is cosmopolitanism, which challenges the territorial restriction in political theory through a re-articulation of our obligations of justice from the national to the global sphere. Another example is the overcoming of the temporal restriction through the enlargement of the set of individuals who deserve political representation, irrespective of whether they belong to current or future generations. These are important and influential developments in political theory and political philosophy which have started to permeate current institutions and policies around the globe. Yet the expansion that characterizes the new politics challenges a different type of restriction and poses a different kind of problem for political theorizing. Rather than focusing on a territorial or temporal restriction for the understanding of the political community and the application of political concepts, this new politics challenges a species restriction, advocating for the political recognition of at least part of the nonhuman world. Central questions in this new political theorizing do not focus any longer on, for example, what kind of humans should be represented in our political institutions or what we owe to other members of the human community. Rather, the concern is what kind of entities different from humans, and on what grounds, should be part of the political sphere and, thus, should be considered recipient of justice, subject of political rights, members of the citizenry and, ultimately, political subjects.

5.3 The Political Incorporation of the Nonhuman The question of who should be included in the demos, the self-governing collective at the core of the idea of democracy, is perhaps one of the most debated issues in current political theorizing and, more specifically, in democratic theory. If d¯emokratía is rule by the people, the question is then who are the people. This is what has come to be known as the boundary problem (Whelan 1983). A first traditional answer to this problem in democratic theory is that the territorial borders of the state work as the criterion that defines who is part of the demos.3 This is the territorial answer 3 For

a recent defence of this answer to the boundary problem, see Song (2012).

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to the boundary problem. A second, more recent, response has been offered by appealing to the so-called all-affected-principle (Held 1996, 324; Heyward 2008; Shapiro 2003). According to this second alternative, the arbitrarily and (most of the time) unjustly defined borders of the state should not be consequential neither to answer the question about who constitute the demos nor to determine who should be those defining the rules and norms of the political community. Instead, what matters is who is affected by those decisions made by the polity, not who happens to be within certain geopolitically defined borders, as it is proposed by the territorial answer. The idea is that anyone who is affected by a decision made by the political community should be represented or taken into account in the political process that leads to that course of action (see Shapiro 1999; Goodin 2007, int. al.). By appealing to this principle, and in contrast to the territorial response to the boundary problem, those who are within the geopolitical borders of a state P but are not affected by a specific decision in P, should not be part of the set of individuals determining that decision. Conversely, those who are beyond the limits of P but are affected by the decision in P should be part of the demos that defines that particular course of action. Following this line of argument, Robert Goodin has defended a version of the all-affected-principle to incorporate the interests of nonhumans within democratic decision-making. He argues that if the new politics attach value to the nonhuman, “and in so far as those values are akin to ‘interests’, it follows from standard democratic theory that those values should be politically represented, along with others” (Goodin 1996, 836). To the extent that democracy enshrines some form of equality, a value aptly expressed in a principle of equal consideration of interests (Dahl 1979; Beitz 1989), then to take seriously democracy and its basic principles necessarily requires not to disregard the interests affected by the decisions of the polity. Relevant for the purposes of this article, this means that democracy requires to not disregard an interest for the mere fact that it is not a human interest. More recently, Garner (2017) has also proposed the all-effected-principle to include animals’ interests within democratic theory. He advances this principle as a “convincing alternative account which obligates democrats to take the interests of animals into account irrespective of human volition” (Garner 2017, 460). Such is the case, he argues, because this principle is widely considered to be the most adequate mechanism to delineate and determine the boundaries of a democratic polity. Consequently, not to include animals within the boundaries of the polity would be tantamount to not taking seriously a widely accepted democratic principle (Garner 2017, 464). Be this as it may, the question of the representation of animals in the democratic process is surely controversial. Garner makes the case for it on pragmatic grounds, arguing that animals’ interests “are more likely to be taken into account if there is a formal institutional arena where these interests can be made to count” (Garner 2017, 469). An important reason for this move is that, in practice, the mere recognition of the moral status of animals has not hindered their exploitation and domination by humans. Sadly, “animals are arguably exploited more severely, and in greater numbers, than ever before, despite a recognition that they matter morally” (Garner 2017, 469). In the face of such injustices, the institutionalization of the

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political representation of animals, through “others elected to the task of speaking on their behalf”, is a reasonable call (Garner 2017, 468). A virtue of these proposals is that they address politically—as opposed to morally—the question of the expansion of the political community. In political theorizing, the all-affected-principle is a well-established and generally uncontroversial criterion for determining who should be part of the demos and appealing to it to include the nonhuman within the political is a strategy that fits well with genuine political arguments. This is something to be welcomed; political arguments avoid contentious ethical concepts used in more traditional animal ethics, making the former a more effective alternative to persuade others in the public arena. The hope is that if the interests of animals are incorporated in the democratic process, as Garner has argued for via the all-affected-principle and proxy representation, then the laws and public policies of a democratic polity would be less likely to disregard or directly transgress their interests. However, notwithstanding this and other valuable aspects of these proposals, there is one obvious but important limit to the argument. The all-affected-principle is a political principle that has as a necessary condition the existence of relevant interests. Since the ascription of interests is generally limited to sentient organisms, this restriction in the application of the principle means that only a very reduced subset of the nonhuman can be included in the community of justice, rights, and so on.4 Indeed, were we to stop our inquiry here, limited by the existence of interests, the new politics being here investigated would be tantamount merely to a version of the political turn in animal ethics and, then, it would fall short of the more comprehensive and environmental ideals set at the outset of this article. Yet, perhaps, this objection could be rebutted if it is shown that the extension of the political considerability of the nonhuman can be realized through the all-affectedprinciple. Indeed, Goodin himself makes such an attempt when argues for a degree of identification between objective value and interests (see, for example, Goodin 1996, 836). If we accept this identification, and if a minimal notion of democracy requires an “equal consideration of interests”, and if a minimal proposition of any green theorists is that “naturally-occurring objects have objective value of some sort or another”, then “ordinary democratic theory commits us to equal consideration of nature’s interests” (Goodin 1996, 840). Although commendable, I think this effort fails to capture a genuinely political argument capable of serving as a basis for a new politics that does not collapse into a mere political turn in animal ethics. Goodin’s move depends on a substantive ethical claim about the objective value of natural entities—e.g. sentient nonhuman beings but also non-sentient organisms and nonliving natural entities. This means that to defend the idea that a part of the natural world should be incorporated in the political community would require an agreement about its objective value. It is only after that substantive ethical agreement that the political machinery could start to work.

4 For

an account challenging this standard view see Varner (2002) and Donoso (2017).

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5.4 The Territorial Sovereignty of a New Politics5 If the application of the all-affected-principle as a way of incorporating the nonhuman in the political fails to offer a genuine new politics for a more-than-human world, what is the alternative? In this section I offer an account of political sovereignty that, I think, has the potential to both overcome the difficulties present in the all-affectedprinciple approach and to offer a genuinely political argument for the incorporation of the nonhuman world in the political sphere. Summarily, my proposal advances an account of state territorial rights according to which the state has a right to administer in trust the natural world existing in the territory, as opposed to having full jurisdiction or having property rights over it. This is an account of state territorial rights that aligns itself with the demands of a new politics and that moves away from other standard theories of territorial rights connecting these rights with property rights. In contrast to property relationships between the state and nature, my version of territorial rights denies that the state has exclusive and discretionary entitlements over the nonhuman natural world within its territory. This view recognizes the sovereignty rights of the state both over a specific geographic space and the nonhuman natural entities that inhabit it but does not reduce these entities to mere resources for exploitation or the satisfaction of human preferences. In doing so, this account explicitly recognizes limits on the legitimate authority of the state over the natural world and, thereby, imposes obligations on the state that constrain the ways in which it relates to the nonhuman within its territory. Thus, the state has only conditional authority over the nonhuman existing within its territory, since a genuine attempt to satisfy certain obligations towards the nonhuman is a requirement of state legitimate territorial sovereignty.6 This represents an amendment of the right of states over the natural resources within its territory and, thus, it is ultimately an intervention on the extension of the sovereignty of the state.7 As we will see shortly, these constraints imposed upon state sovereignty are articulated in terms of standard political principles concerning the idea of sovereignty, which satisfy the requirements of a proposal that fits well with the new politics. Once the very general contours of this account have been sketched, the question that follows is how this re-articulation of territorial sovereignty may help us progress towards a more inclusive account of the political regarding the nonhuman. To answer this question, let us dwell a bit longer on some of the principles governing 5 This

section borrows largely from Donoso (2019). not focused on the same kind of questions, Lea Ypi’s recent theory of territorial rights advances a conditional view of rights over territory with a normative structure of the sort I am suggesting here. Putting aside the most technical aspects of her Kantian account, what matters for my account of territorial sovereignty is that, in addition to other obligations it may have to satisfy in order to uphold its full sovereign status, the state has to respect the nonhuman natural world that exist in its territory. See Ypi (2014). 7 A limitation on state sovereignty should not be seen as a particularly surprising proposal. The concept of absolute sovereignty is not recognized in international law, and the ways in which the idea of a limited sovereignty is defined evolve in time. What I am proposing here can be aptly seen as another step in the evolution of the constraints imposed on state sovereignty. 6 Although

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territorial rights and sovereignty. A principle of territorial sovereignty gives the state the authority to act over its territory—over humans, nonhumans, and geographical borders limiting the territory. Yet this principle of authority is not limitless because there are constraints that restrict legitimate state action within the territory. This is what I call the internal constraints of territorial sovereignty, an example of which is the sphere of protected freedoms that individual rights grant to the citizens of the community. In addition to the internal dimension, there is an external dimension of territorial sovereignty defined by a principle of noninterference. This principle is conceived of as a legitimate claim of a state against others that they do not interfere with its internal affairs, that is, with the exercise of the rights that constitute the internal dimension of its sovereignty. As with the internal dimension, this right to independence from others, although quite extensive, is not absolute. In my account, the sphere of legitimate action of the state is defined by the exercise of a version of the harm principle,8 which means that under certain circumstances—those defined by the harm principle— it is permissible to infringe the right to noninterference entailed in the territorial sovereignty of the state. In other words, this is a pro tanto right of noninterference according to which no state has the right to interfere with the internal sovereign affairs of another state, unless the latter, as a result of its own actions, harm others beyond its borders.9 When such is the case, the state fails to satisfy a condition of full territorial sovereignty, undermines its own right to noninterference and weakens its territorial sovereignty. This view on territorial sovereignty fits well with the idea of a new politics: it comprises a systemic view of the natural world that allows for a virtuous combination of environmental values within the polity. Thus, the internal dimension of state territorial sovereignty is limited by an obligation to recognize and respect certain basic obligations derived from nonhuman interests, for example, as specified by the all-affected principle above. This would mean that the state is entitled to control nonhuman animals within its territory to the extent that it does not act in ways that with no justification contravene or transgress nonhuman animals’ interests or wellbeing. At the very least, the regulations imposed upon state action should be concerned with the protection and assistance of nonhuman animals’ basic needs, including physical

8 An early expression of this principle applied to environmental issues is found in Oppenheim (1912).

See also Principle 21 of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration on Human Environment: “States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction” (my emphasis). 9 This is not to deny (nor affirm) that a state is protected from interference from others when it violates the rights of those within its territory. Although I recognise the force of international law doctrine in this matter, in this paper I leave this question open. However, as I will argue below, the idea of ecological territorial sovereignty allows for an extensive articulation of the idea of harm which, perhaps, solves the question of interference for violations of rights within the territory of the state.

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and psychological protection and assistance, access to a shelter and an appropriate habitat.10 Furthermore, since ecosystems are a complex of transboundary interactions and relations between members of the biotic community and also between them and other abiotic components, the territorial sovereignty of the state is conditional on the fact that state practices and policies do not harm the ecosystems of other regions of the planet.11 This principle, which marks a significant departure from the mere application of the all-affected-principle considered in the previous section, requires specific state actions and policies of respect towards the ecological community existing both within and beyond the limits of the territorial state. This is the case because ecosystems are not politically defined: they trespass political boundaries and extend through and over geographical areas irrespective of state limits. Consequently, if the state is to avoid harming the nonhuman world existing in other states—and thus, if the state is to maintain its full territorial sovereignty—it will necessarily have to exercise its territorial rights in ways that do not have a negative impact on the sustainability of the ecosystems that, although may be part of its own territory, extend well beyond it. A good illustration of this complex interaction is the impact that animal farming has on the ecosystems of the planet. It is by now common knowledge that industrial animal farming is not only a wrong committed against the individual animals that suffer the consequences of humans’ addiction to meat and dairy food, but also a wrong against the environment and its ecosystems. According to FAO’s report Livestock’s Long Shadow, livestock production is the largest anthropogenic user of land in the planet, occupying 70% of all agricultural land and 30% of the land surface of the earth. This explains why the animal industry is responsible for approximately 18% of greenhouse emissions, counting for 37% of anthropogenic emissions of methane, and for almost two-thirds of anthropogenic emissions of ammonia, which contributes substantively to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems (FAO 2006: xxi). From the point of view of the territorial sovereignty of the new politics, state policies regarding animal farming are not just detrimental of its internal authority—because of the wrongs inherent to this industry—but also, due to the impacts it has on ecosystems beyond its territorial limits through the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the acidification of ecosystems, and so on, it is also consequential on the external dimension of its own sovereignty. What this shows is that the proposed account of territorial sovereignty expands the constraints imposed on the traditional ideal of sovereignty—influential accounts of which focus on the demands of justice or the respect of human rights—to include the recognition of certain obligations regarding the natural world and the respect that this recognition gives rise to. Thus, as a complement to the conviction that, for example, the exercise of political power is morally justified “only if it meets a minimal standard of justice, understood as the protection of basic human rights” (Buchanan 2003: 234),

10 Although I cannot develop this further, note that I am suggesting that negative obligations towards

the non-human natural world entail some positive elements. 11 For the classical definition and analysis of ecosystems see Tansley (1935), Odum (1953).

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the idea of territorial sovereignty of the new politics adds consequential consideration of the natural world as a condition of legitimate exercise of state powers.

5.5 Conclusion Developing a new politics for a more-than-human world is a necessary and urgent enterprise. Current “biological annihilation” (Ceballos et al. 2017) must be addressed not only scientifically and ethically, but also politically. Using and adapting existing political principles and institutions is necessary to progress towards a form of relationship with the nonhuman world that efficiently protects it and honors its value. In that spirit, I have delineated here the contours of that new politics and considered the virtues and weaknesses of some political principles that move in the direction of a more environmentally apt form of politics. I have proposed an account of territorial sovereignty that requires that state actions and policies within its territory may be consistent, or at least, tend towards the stability and sustainability of transnational ecosystems. This is a conception of territorial sovereignty that places the state in a particular—systemic—relationship with ecosystems and biotic communities. Given current and worldwide environmental challenges, this is an urgent and necessary demand: a legitimate state must be an ecological state. Acknowledgements This research was supported by Fondecyt Project nº11160170.

References Beitz CR (1989) Political equality: an essay in democratic theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton Buchanan A (2003) Justice, legitimacy, and self-determination: moral foundations for international law. Oxford University Press, Oxford Ceballos G, Ehrlich PR, Dirzo R (2017) Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proc Natl Acad Sci. https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.1704949114 Dahl RA (1979) Procedural democracy. In: Fishkin JS, Laslett P (eds) Philosophy, politics and society, vol 5. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 97–133 Donoso A (2017) Representing non-human interests. Environ Values 26(5):607–628 Donoso A (2019) A territorial mediation in a triangular affair. Towards an ecological territorial sovereignty. In: Rivera-López E, Hevia M (eds) Controversies in Latin American bioethics. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 219–235 Dryzek JS (2000) Deliberative democracy and beyond: liberals, critics, contestations. Oxford University Press, Oxford FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) (2006) Livestock’s long shadow: environmental issues and options. Rome. Available via: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/ a0701e00.HTM. Accessed 10 Oct 2018 Garner R (2017) Animals and democratic theory: beyond an anthropocentric account. Contemp Polit Theory 16(4):459–477

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Goodin RE (1996) Enfranchising the earth, and its alternatives. Polit Stud 44(5):835–849 Goodin RE (2007) Enfranchising all affected interests, and its alternatives. Philos Public Aff 35(1):40–68 Held D (1996) Models of democracy, 2nd edn. Stanford University Press, Stanford Heyward C (2008) Can the all-affected principle include future persons? Green deliberative democracy and the non-identity Problem. Environ Polit 17(4):625–643 Odum EP (1953) Fundamentals of ecology. W. B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia Oppenheim LF (1912) International law: a treatise, vol 1, 2nd ed. Longman, Green and Co., New York Rawls J (1971) A theory of justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Rolston III H (2012) A new environmental ethics: the next millennium for life on earth. Routledge, New York Routley R (1973) Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic? In: Proceedings of the XVth world congress of philosophy, vol 1. Sofia Press, Sofia, pp 205–210 Shapiro I (1999) Democratic justice. Yale University Press, New Haven Shapiro I (2003) The state of democratic theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton Song S (2012) The boundary problem in democratic theory: why the demos should be bounded by the state. Int Theory 4:39–68 Smith KS (2016) Environmental political theory, environmental ethics, and political science: bridging the gap. In: Gabrielson T, Hall C, Meyer JM, Schlosberg D (eds) The Oxford handbook of environmental political theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 105–115 Tansley AG (1935) The use and abuse of vegetational concepts and terms. Ecology 16(3):284–307 UN (United Nations) (1972) Report of the United Nations conference on the human environment. Stockholm. Available via: http://www.un-documents.net/aconf48-14r1.pdf. Accessed 1 Oct 2018 Varner G (2002) In nature’s interests? Interests, animal rights, and environmental ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development) (1987) Report of the World Commission on environment and development: our common future. Oxford University Press, Oxford Whelan FG (1983) Democratic theory and the boundary problem. In: Pennock R, Chapman JW (eds) Liberal democracy: Nomos XXV. New York University Press, New York Ypi L (2014) A permissive theory of territorial rights. Eur J Philos 22(2):288–312

Chapter 6

New Wastes. Nature Is Not an Unlimited Station Gianluca Cuozzo

Abstract Living in today’s disfigured environment, where nature is but a fragment of an ancient beauty and richness, means living in a global allegory, where humans are forced to dwell in a lunar landscape—a locus of rotting trash, made up of all our discarded technological gadgets, where everything is swiftly reduced to “kipple” and “gubble.” Because of a strange consumerist schizophrenia, the material universe of waste appears akin to metaphysical evil in the Platonic model: completely disengaged from the immaterial benefits brought by technology (connection speed, ergonomics of smart devices, etc.). To put an end to this strabismus, we need to fully investigate the new 4.0 e-wastes and expose their ontological and circumstantial structure, which deeply affects our concept of space (in terms of geopolitics) and of time (as for the durability of our sensations of wellness). Keywords Fragment · Allegory · Utopia · Ecology · Technology

6.1 The Stakes: Trash, Unconscious, Disorder, Repression In the time of the “techno-economic unification of the planet” (Morin 2011, 16) it is easy to see the close union between consumer society, erosion of the natural conditions for life and exponential growth of trash—the unwanted legacy of our problematic civilization project. Among the concepts mentioned, the less obvious, at the philosophical level, is undoubtedly that of the slag of the production process: trash. First of all, trash can be understood both as the waste deriving from gross production (industrial waste, which is the inevitable “tare” of the production of the new-net-product), and as the garbage resulting from consumer practices (rubbish or leftovers, packaging, gadgets become obsolete or simply the disposable victims of changing fashions, scrap due to wear and tear, etc.). The Latin notion of purgamentum is wide enough to express both variants of the concept: waste and slag (purgamenta urbis), rubbish and leftovers (purgamenta G. Cuozzo (B) Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, Università di Torino, Turin, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_6

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cenae), junk (purgamenta servorum), residues and impurity (purgamen) are all part of the semantic area of the word. However, by metaphorical extension, we could also include the “waste-basket of corruption and decay” (Giobergia 2015, 231) of our life-style, somewhere in between irrationality and systematic foulness. In any case, I would say that we can acknowledge the distinction between production waste and consumer garbage. Slag, waste and residue are placed on the production side. For example, a single can of carbonated beverage weighing 15 g produces 800 g of waste, requiring a few liters of water and an amount of electricity equivalent to about a third of a liter of petrol, with the effect of adding 24 g of CO2 to the air; a few grams of raw mineral are also discarded to extract bauxite from pure aluminum. Garbage and rubbish, instead, are what we do not consume (e.g. packaging) and what we get rid of after use, when it is no longer possible—for whatever reason, subjective or objective—to make use of the properties for which the object was conceived and realized (e.g. an outfit become outmoded or, much more concretely, worn out and no longer repairable, or a LED TV whose motherboard is irreparably damaged). From an experiential standpoint, the waste/garbage concept appears obvious. Suffice it to say that all civilizations, since the dawn of history, have always come with a peculiar type of trash. Many of the archaeological sites of antiquity are nothing but deposits of rubbish (crocks, broken spearheads, heaps of remains of hunted animals, rudimentary tools abandoned because worn): this simple observation should make us realize that the history of human civilization is a history of residues. Take this example: Monte Testaccio, in Rome’s homonymous neighborhood, is also called Monte dei Cocci (Crock Hill). It is about fifty-four meters high and one kilometer in circumference, consisting mainly of testae (crocks) of pottery or amphorae destined for the fluvial trade of goods, fragments that have accumulated incessantly between the Augustan age and the 3rd century A.D. This is a perfect case of hybridization between a civilization project (storage of goods in warehouses, formerly called horrea, near the port area of ancient Rome), release of trash in the environment, and anthropization of natural landscape. In this example, the economic transformation of the environment has been able to absorb the side effects of the cause of alteration (i.e. the waste of commercial activity): the garbage promontory has turned into landscape, significantly affecting the city’s topography. This case of perfect resilience, in which pollution, ecological trace, landscape and urban mercantile development find an intrinsic principle of harmonization, is rather rare in the history of civilization. Today we know that “waste prevention and material recovery [are] the most important objectives in waste management, followed by recycling, incineration with energy recovery and landfilling as the least preferred choice” (Antonioli et al. 2017, 1–2). But what’s the meaning of a philosophical reflection on waste, garbage and residues? Is it not entirely natural to remove and bury any trace of disorder, making it disappear from the perceptual horizon and from consciousness? So why bring to light—even in the horizon of discourse and reflection—something that should remain buried, invisible, away from our shop-windowed cities and our continuous economic growth? (Codeluppi 2007). Wouldn’t this be a particular form of return of

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the repressed? It would indeed be the sudden eruption of the hidden, putting an end to the long period of cultural latency we call consumer civilization, a land crossed by the new media Lethe of a social spectacularization that has lost the vernacular contact with the foundations of the Earth. This programmatic oblivion is such that it gives our “plenitudo culture” the pleonastic image a new Canaan, “where, in place of milk and honey, streams of neon flow down over ketchup and plastic” (Baudrillard 1998, 26). This period of latency of our civilization—as a reactive formation due to the effect of psychological repression—becomes a powerful compulsion to repeat the waste and dilapidation of a patrimony of resources that are largely non-renewable. This has a fatal effect on the necessary maintenance of the “relatively constant conditions by active control” that make life possible (Lovelock 1979, 10). The compulsory principle of civilization turns out to be a suicidal precept, which imposes itself in the injunction to consume and die: as noted by American writer Don DeLillo (2011, 288), “this is the dictate of our culture. And it all ends up in trash. We make stupendous amounts of garbage, then we react to it, not only technologically, but in our hearts and the minds. We let it shape us. We let it control our thinking”. It is significant that Baudrillard (1978, 12) defined Freudian psychoanalysis a “theorization of residues” underlying a psychic economy based on the surplus (Freudian slips, remains of oneiric representations, distant unconscious childhood desires, etc.). The very notion of uncanny (Unheimliche), today, could be mainly attributed to the landscape of waste, as noted once again by DeLillo (2011, 363): trash brings “rats and paranoia” into the dreams of humankind; at a closer look, garbage “has a life of its own, a kind of seething vegetable menace that pushes up out of the cans and boxes, it’s noisy and restless”.

6.2 Trash and Metaphysical Evil If he were here today, Plotinus would tell us that philosophers, even at the level of theorein, must stay away from the waste-matter, from the dark region of chaos to which we condemn the remains of our irresponsible consumption. Trash, after all, takes the place of the old hyle, the pure and simple indeterminate, the unstable as such, an element which in itself is despicable and contagious. As a “negation of thought and form”, it is pushes away the soul that comes close to it, which “does not endure to linger about Non-Being” Plotinus (1917, II 4, 10), i.e. the real principle of any metaphysical and moral evil. In other words, rubbish becomes a malum per contactum: whoever gets close to it becomes a thing of the underground, an inferior and potentially dangerous creature. The scavenger is not someone needy or desperate, but someone who compromises the orderly organization of civilization, for the sole fact that he brings to light a scabrous secret concerning the general modus vivendi. So, Trash equals Non-being. This makes sense from the perspective of our strategies to organize and rationally control the world (understood as an administered world, structured according to a geometrical model functional to the establishment

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of the society of politesse, of nomos and of virtual monetary transactions: bitcoin, stock market, stock exchange, etc., where nothing material seems to be at stake) (Ferraris and Searle 2018). This principle of prophylaxis from matter would seem to apply also at the level of theory of knowledge, where rise the “beautiful and apparently flawless edifices” of pure aseptic thought, prey to a strange phobia of any contact with the impurities of the world (Scanlan 2005, 65). But from the point of view of ethical and philosophical reflection, can one really maintain this rigid dichotomy between the world immunized to matter and the “ogre of chaos”? (Bauman 2003, 39). Is this not an excessive simplification, functional to constructing the great apology of the status quo, oblivious to the fact that it is nothing but controlled, rationally administered chaos? In this feeling of rejection, in fact, hides today’s attempt to dematerialise the positivity of value, against which the hardware part of the junk-world stands out as the principle of every evil (solid and repellent, to be eradicated with any instrument and method). The visible world, positive because of its intrinsic value, is actually the result of a subtraction that—as in a magic trick—makes the heavy material tare of our production process disappear from the calculation of the profit obtained in terms of value-form.

6.2.1 Economic Value (Virtual) = Industrial Production (Net)—Waste (Material Tare) But the tacit subtraction is twofold, because the material basis of the creation of the artefactum-value—i.e. nature—is also made to disappear. Not surprisingly, in the economic discourse, nature is either interpreted as an economic resource or reduced to a mere receptacle of material waste. What used to be the source of all being and value (nature qua physis, natura naturans, the imperishable creator of any givenness) has become a passive storage of resources to loot and a place to dump waste. Heraclitus’ saying “nature loves to hide” (ϕσις ´ κρπτεσθαι ´ ϕιλε‹) has now taken on a very different meaning: disfigured and outraged, also reduced to the slag of its ancient beauty, nature can only become the hidden sepulcher of filthy matter (the outrageous secret of the welfare civilization). Paraphrasing Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History on the topic of the theological dwarf, nature “today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight” (Benjamin 1999, 253)— a residual nature, in short, which disturbs the human subconscious in the form of terror of waste (which very often turns into the refusal to see the ugly side of our productive activities that mortally violate all forms of life and natural beauty). From all this, it can be deduced that for the society of production every increase in well-being is always believed to come at no cost: value is just a lucky find due to human imagination and projects (the old sugar-coated notion of surplus labour), which do not seem to fall into any ontological debt with the world: neither upstream (depletion of resources), nor downstream (emissions of heavy waste that alter the

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ecosystem). Hence the illusion of an ever-available-world, compared to “an economy in which production and consumption are carried on at the same rate day after day by some invariable […] economic units” (Georgescu-Roegen 1977, 266). However, as Georgescu-Roegen (1975, 361) notes, “to maintain further that ‘the world can, in effect, get along without natural resources’ is to ignore the difference between the actual world and the Garden of Eden.”

6.3 The Timescale of Trash Today’s digital society is the source of a new form of trash, which is just as advanced as its sparkling and highly performing products: technological waste. The latter, apart from some specific chemical characteristics (such as the presence of lead, chlorofluorocarbons, CFC, mercury, etc.), have another important feature, which has to do with time: namely their rapid and incessant accumulation, at a pace that would have been inconceivable until very recently. This aspect profoundly affects our experience, and as such is worthy of philosophical attention. The life-cycle of many technological gadgets, in fact, is very short; paraphrasing Benjamin (1999, 255) again, their duration “flashes up at the instant”. On the one hand, this circumstance has to do with the hardware component of technological devices, subject to a concrete structural evolution that is both technical and social (Baudrillard 1998) (namely the technema: a concentration of applied science, such as to enable performances that were previously unthinkable and are always susceptible of further development). On the other hand, the duration of objects refers to what could be called their “media surface.” This second aspect is closely linked to: simple appeal issues affecting the symbolic level; the perennial technology announcement according to which—with a cyclical and compulsive trend—“the new model has come out;” the advertisements and commercials that invite people to dispose of products suddenly marked, from one day to the next, by the stigma of obsolescence. Most times, our devices are not antiquated in a technological sense (i.e. in terms of the objective intrinsic value of simple technical elements that underlie progress) but only in terms of image (subjective and projective factors). As Anders (1980, 41) put it, “every advertisement is an appeal to destruction.” This only accelerates the rate of accumulation of waste according to emotional connotations, aesthetic factors, minimal and marginal differences established by fashion, which have nothing to do with the functionality or ergonomics of the product (although they may occasionally be associated with it). This irrational-emotional factor gives our civilization the appearance of a “gigantic ‘happening,’ […] through which society affords itself in the ritual destruction of materials and life the proof of its excessive affluence” (Baudrillard 1998, 47). Technology—think of a typewriter—once was only discarded after a rather long cycle of use. The point of no return of the tool’s life coincided with some objective factors, which put an end to the full efficiency of the technema. The most important

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of these incontrovertible factors fall into two groups, which can be defined intrinsic and contextual: A. Endogenous characteristics 1. wear of essential parts that can no longer be replaced; 2. impossibility of making repairs (even ingenious) in the absence of pieces to be reintegrated in the device. B. Circumstantial characteristics 1. effective availability of a device that allows one to perform a given job in significantly shorter times, with more precision and less effort (above all physical); 2. low cost of the new device (which must cost as much as or less than a possible ingenious repair, such as to resort to high-level craft skills = case A.1). Only when these four conditions occur can the technema actually be said to be obsolete. This set of circumstances profoundly affects our perception of reality. Nobody, looking at an Underwood Standard or a brand new Hermes Rocket in the 1960s, would have seen the marks of premature aging, the premonitory signs of an intrinsic crisis in the functional structure or efficiency of the product that would transform it, shortly thereafter, in a piece of junk. Unless, of course, one were Philip K. Dick (who, incidentally, had a predilection for the second typewriter mentioned, like Don DeLillo). The same cannot be said of today’s laptops or smartphones, which are conceived for a very different and much shorter use. What Dick wrote in his futuristic novels, in his anti-prophetic obsession with the concepts of kipple and gubble (neologisms that refer to a state of putrescent decay in which every human artifact is discarded in a very short time), is true much more for today’s products—whose programmed obsolescence is a distinctive trait—than for the mechanical (and rather long lasting) gadgets of his time (Dick 1969, 2011). He was therefore able to grasp ahead of time the secret of today’s industrial production, the premise of which was already present in the great US utopian-consumerist dream of the 1950s: what is lasting and sacred is not offered so much by individual products, but rather lies in the eternity and pervasiveness of the consumer cycle (Caronia and Gallo 2006, 173–174)—a cycle that seems to predetermine the very time of familiarization with, and use of, the new gadgets ceaselessly placed on the market. In other words, in today’s consumer system, money, passing from hand to hand, increases wealth value every time a discarded product is taken to the landfill (Bauman 2009, 29). The increase in material well-being is therefore a simple corollary of a destructive compulsion, in which the entropy of products is maximized as a function of an accelerated substitution: a sort of “némesis of decay” (Zoja 2003, 176) resulting from the delirious dream of unlimited and exponential growth. All this, in the end, means that the time of deterioration of the products is no longer due to the objective alteration dependent on endogenous factors (A.1 and A.2), but to simple contextual circumstances (B.1 and B.2), which are also distorted and subjected

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to the doping effect of the productive acceleration. This yields the result that industrial products bear the stigma of prêt-à-jeter, functional to a continuous renewal—on a merely psychological, symbolic and emotional basis—of our fashionable gadgets. All in the perspective of an “ostentatious consumerism” (Latouche 2012, 70), that is to say, something unnecessary, to which we are drawn by our consumerist gospel (the pleasure-loving religion behind which hides the great collateral production of waste and trash). The code name of the new technological waste, characterized by fast accumulation, difficult disposal and maximum size, is offered by the acronym WEEE—i.e. Waste of Electric and Electronic Equipment—or by the simple term E-Waste. The latter, paradoxically, is the receptacle of some precious metals (such as gold, silver, copper, cerium, yttrium and xenomite), some of which are so-called rare metals, including strategic ones such as lanthanum, promethium, holmium and lutetium. What’s funny is that none of these minerals used in the manufacture of advanced technologies is actually recycled. And yet there is more gold in a ton of iPhones (about 8101 mobile phones) than there is in a ton of raw material from the Escondida active mines in Chile: “0.85 g of pure gold compared to 275 g in the ‘melaphones’” (Cosimi 2013). This precious waste is the dark side of our advanced scientific age called Industry 4.0, a sort of “by-product of the creation of order” of which we only perceive the immaterial side: big data, acceleration of satellite communications (5G), large digital archives, data mining, lightness and ductility of smart devices (Douglas 2001, 160). This digital euphoria spreads to the rhythm of a globalization that has already decided who will use the services offered by technological devices and who will watch over their wretched debris: those who enjoy it can rightfully see them as the bearers of virtual-objective benefits (connection speed, speed of data processing, etc.); those who have to receive the slag get instead the disused technema, in its heavy, defunctionalized materiality. Once again, the concrete substance (made of matter and form, the tangible medium of the device and its mediatic-projective function) is disguised, condemning the hardware aspect (in disuse) to invisibility, to its irresponsible repression. And this is done by distributing environmental benefits and costs in well-defined areas of the planet, without the possibility of impure contamination: the world of “speeding up” (or continuous growth), and the third world/trash can (the receptacle of waste). This process of geopolitical scotomization brings us back to the allegorical mechanism: the material content is a mere fragment, a rune, the ruin of an (ideological) truth that is on a completely different level—this gap is as big as that between shop window and landfill, world of advanced technology and underdeveloped countries (the whitewashed sepulcher of our modus vivendi). In this sense, trash, to be such (i.e. removable from the horizon of meaning and order), implies a division of the world into two spheres, functional to a systemic double step inherent in today’s understanding of progress: production-consumption (the solar face of our society) versus the secret place of storage-repression of the reiecta membra of gadgets now dissociated from the festive representations of the social happening (the perpetually eclipsed side of pleasure-loving consumption, in which “you shall find all that has been abandoned”) (Alberti 1988, 77–80). That is

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where nature, to put it with Benjamin (2009, 160), reveals itself in its hippocratic facies of a “petrified, primordial landscape:” an agonizing world, which has no future, nailed to its own mournful destiny. This also corresponds to the allegorical system of our civilization: meaning is always found somewhere other than in the material data.

6.4 Concluding Remarks Wall-E, the Pixar robot that piles up waste onto the dizzying trash skyscrapers of an uninhabited world, is the symbol of our entropic times. After removing/vertically compacting waste, Wall-E gathers curious objects in its hangar: its collection of obsolescences includes an sunglasses case, a rubber ball, unusable spray cans, a piggy bank (that is, Hamm from the Toy Story movie), and so on. They are all testimonies of the ancient human civilization that has now abandoned earth—a land now made inhospitable by its irremediably polluted atmosphere. These objects are allegories that still speak of hope in progress and technology, a hope now vanished in the presence of a world in ruins and submerged by waste. It is no coincidence that Wall-E looks at them with melancholy, with eyes full of regret for what used to be (or rather, for what has never been: the forever broken promise of a longawaited happiness). In fact, those residual objects tell the story of failed human hopes. The robot’s metallic gaze, in the face of these dismembered allegories of human aspirations, becomes suddenly human and compassionate, as if it wanted to redeem or reconstruct those fragments and historical wrecks that are the last witness of the civilization that once was. Wall-E, ultimately, is the post-modern and technological version of Benjamin’s angel of history. Perhaps its secret dream is that “the consumer waste and the monstrous production of trash may turn into a virtuous circular economy” (Latouche 2012, 105). Perhaps it hopes in the salvific chance that “the interaction between environmental policy and technology [may be] non-trivial, and under certain circumstances can lead to desirable results” (Antonioli et al. 2017, 5).

References Alberti LB (1988) Le intercenali. ESI, Napoli Anders G (1980) Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Band II: Über die Zerstörung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution. Beck, München Antonioli D, Caratù F, Niccoli F (2017) Waste performance, waste technology and policy effects. J Environ Plann Manag. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2017.1336431 Baudrillard J (1978) Quand on enlève tout, il ne reste rien. Traverses 11:12–15 Baudrillard J (1998) The consumer society. Sage, London Bauman Z (2003) Wasted lives. Modernity and its outcasts. Polity Press, Cambridge Bauman Z (2009) Vite di corsa. Come salvarsi dalla tirannia dell’effimero. Il Mulino, Bologna

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Benjamin W (1999) Illuminations. Pimlico, London Benjamin W (2009) The origin of German tragic drama. Verso, London Caronia A, Gallo D (2006) La macchina della paranoia. Agenzia X, Milano Codeluppi V (2007) La vetrinizzazione sociale. Il processo di spettacolarizzazione degli individui e della società. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino Cosimi S (2013) La nuova corso all’oro passa dagli smartphone usati. La Repubblica Online, April 24. Available via http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2013/04/24/news/smartphone_corsa_all_ oro-57243167/. Accessed 20 Sept DeLillo D (2011) Underworld. Picador, London Dick PK (1969) Ubik. Mariner Books, New York Dick PK (2011) The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Mariner Books, New York Douglas M (2001) Purity and danger. An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo. Routledge, London, New York Ferraris M, Searle J (2018) Il denaro e i suoi inganni. Einaudi, Torino Georgescu-Roegen N (1975) Energy and economic myths. South Econ J 41:347–381 Georgescu-Roegen N (1977) The steady state and ecological salvation: a thermodynamic analysis. Bioscience 27:266–270 Giobergia C (2015) A path through landscapes of waste. RiCognizioni Rivista di lingue, letterature e culture moderne 3:225–237 Latouche S (2012) Bon pour la casse. Les déraisons de l’obsolescence programmée. Les liens qui libèrent, Paris Lovelock J (1979) Gaia. A new look at life on earth. Oxford University Press, Oxford Morin E (2011) La Voie: Pour l’avenir de l’humanité. Éditions Fayard, Paris Plotinus (1917) Enneads. P.L. Warner, London Scanlan J (2005) On garbage. Reaktion Books, London Zoja L (2003) Storia dell’arroganza. Psicologia e limiti dello sviluppo. Moretti & Vitali, Bergamo

Part II

Contemporary Challenges. Why Do We Need “Interdisciplinary Ethics in Practice”?

Chapter 7

Ethics and Geoengineering: An Overview Stephen M. Gardiner

Abstract There is widespread agreement that ethical concerns are central to decision-making about, and governance of, geoengineering. This is especially true of the most prominent and paradigm example of climate engineering, the spraying of sulfate particles into the stratosphere in order to block incoming sunlight and so limit global warming (hereafter, ‘stratospheric sulfate injection’ (SSI)). Geoengineering ethics, like geoengineering science, is still in its early, exploratory days. This chapter offers an introductory overview of the emerging discussion and some of the challenges moving forward, taking SSI as its key example. It identifies a range of values relevant to geoengineering, exposes some misleading early framings, argues that questions of justification and context are both important, and summarizes the Tollgate principles for geoengineering governance. One theme is that despite the initial agreement on the centrality of ethics, in practice there are profound risks that ethical considerations will be marginalized, both in the short-term as research is developed, and in the longer-run, in any deployment. Keywords Solar radiation management · Climate justice · Environmental justice · Perfect moral storm · Geoengineering governance · Tollgate principles

7.1 Introduction There is widespread agreement that ethical concerns are central to decision-making about, and governance of, geoengineering (e.g., Shepherd et al. 2009; National Research Council 2015). This is especially true of the most prominent and paradigm example of climate engineering, the spraying of sulfate particles into the stratosphere in order to block incoming sunlight and so limit global warming [hereafter, Earlier versions were presented to the National Research Council’s Committee on Geoengineering (September 2013) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (February 2015). Some material appears in a longer form in Gardiner 2016. For research support, I am grateful to the National Science Foundation (Grant 1549983). The reviews expressed remain mine alone. S. M. Gardiner (B) Department of Philosophy and Program on Ethics, University of Washington, Seattle, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_7

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‘stratospheric sulfate injection’ (SSI)]. Geoengineering ethics, like geoengineering science, is still in its early, exploratory days. In this short chapter, I offer an introductory overview of how I see the emerging discussion and some of the challenges moving forward, taking SSI as my example. One theme is that despite the initial agreement on the centrality of ethics, in practice there are profound risks that ethical considerations will be marginalized, both in the short-term as research is developed, and in the longer-run, in any deployment.

7.2 Range of Values The early literature in geoengineering ethics suggests at least twelve relevant valuesbased concerns:1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Welfare Justice Rights Relationship with nature Intention Responsibility Precaution Virtue and vice Political legitimacy Control and domination Care Sustainability

These concerns cover a wide range of issues, running from the potential benefits and harms to humans and nonhumans, through questions of procedural, distributive and recognitional justice played out internationally and across generations, to issues of rights to self-defense, the value of nature, liability, compensation, existential risk, hubris, social license, and many more. Here, I will not attempt to summarize the concerns, but refer the reader to the wider literature.2 However, I want to make three general points.

1 Moreover,

there is no reason to believe that the current list is exhaustive. early sources raise many of these concerns (e.g., Jamieson 1996; Gardiner 2010, 2011a, b; Preston 2012a; Hamilton 2013; Svoboda 2017). For additional starting points on specific issues, see: for welfare, Horton and Keith 2016; for justice (Preston 2012b; Hourdequin 2019 ; Buck et al. 2013; Whyte 2019; for rights, Gardiner 2013a; Whyte 2012; for humanity’s relationship with nature, Sandler 2012; for intention, Morrow 2014a; Preston 2017; for precaution, Elliot 2010; HartzellNichols 2012; Blomfield 2015; for virtue and vice, Gardiner 2012, 2013b; Hamilton 2013; Lenferna et al. (2017); for political legitimacy, Morrow et al. 2013; Wong 2015; Callies 2019 ; for control and domination Smith 2012, 2019 ; for care, Preston 2019; for sustainability, Gardiner 2011a, Burns 2013).

2 Several

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The first point is that the early list is already long, and it includes many values and concerns that are fundamental to social life (e.g., welfare, justice, rights); hence, there are good reasons for the wide agreement that ethical concerns are central to decision-making and governance. The second point is that the list pushes us substantially beyond simple economic assessments of geoengineering of the sort that are dominant in other areas of public policy. For one thing, the list includes many important values other than human welfare, some of which (e.g., justice, rights) are often thought to be equally or even more important, especially on particular approaches to ethics. For another thing, the idea that conventional economic analysis provides the best, most useful, or even a defensible proxy for human welfare is itself controversial, especially in a complex global and intergenerational setting such as climate change. For instance, many question the ways in which conventional cost-benefit analysis values the future (e.g., in deploying positive discount rates). The third point is that the core concerns are, by and large, ones that are already familiar from other settings. Many of the values listed above are the subject of extensive literatures across a variety of disciplines, but especially in philosophy, political theory and law. Although, as we shall see, I believe that there are substantial theoretical challenges involved in thinking about the ethics of geoengineering and indeed of climate change more generally, this does not imply that we start from nothing.

7.3 Misleading Framings Despite widespread agreement on the centrality of ethics, there remains a serious risk that in practice ethical concerns will be not be taken seriously as geoengineering policy develops. One reason for this is that early policy framings tend to marginalize ethical issues and so avoid important questions about justification and political context. Such framings include that we need “every tool in the toolkit,” that climate stability is a “global public good” that benefits everyone, and that geoengineering may be necessary to avoid a climate emergency (Gardiner 2010, 2013c, 2014b; Morrow 2014b). Take for example the claim that we need “every tool in the toolkit,” and therefore should adopt a portfolio approach to climate policy which includes SSI as one of the tools. This argument is contentious, as it appears to be question-begging. In practice, many other “tools” for addressing climate change that could be highly effective are currently not even being considered as part of the policy portfolio. These include constraints on energy use, consumption, and population growth, to name just a few. One issue is that if some of these were part of the portfolio, pursuing SSI might well not be necessary now, or perhaps ever. A second issue is that some of those other “tools” are not being considered for ethical reasons. For example, many people are unwilling to think about restrictions on population growth because of worries about interfering with reproductive freedom.

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Still, since some people also have ethical objections to SSI, it begs an important question to include SSI as part of the portfolio (but exclude population restrictions) without even discussing the objections to SSI. For instance, a better “portfolio” argument would initially include all of the above (i.e., constraints on energy use, consumption, population growth, and SSI) in the portfolio (and much else besides) and then ask whether any should be subject to ethical regulation or perhaps excluded. Without such an assessment, it is unclear why SSI would be in and the others out.

7.4 The Justificatory Question To properly assess whether SSI deserves a place in the climate policy portfolio, and what kind of place that should be, we must turn to the question of what would justify its inclusion. Discussion in the scientific literature tends to focus on the idea that geoengineering would promote global welfare. Indeed, some even claim that SSI in particular would be universally beneficial. For example, Ken Caldeira asserts that: “For most reasonable climate change metrics, if any party acted in their own self-interest [in implementing SSI] every party would be better off than if no party had acted” (Caldeira 2012; emphasis added) Similarly, others claim that in their model simulations “all regions benefit by deployment of solar geoengineering at the level of any other regions preference” (Ricke et al. 2013, 5; emphasis added), while even those otherwise more circumspect are happy to assume that only a level of SSI deployment which “provides global net benefit appears likely to be implementable” (Rickles et al. 2018, 22). Unfortunately, such claims are controversial. On the one hand, some worry that SSI poses a grave risk to the welfare of particular populations (e.g., due to precipitation effects) or perhaps all (e.g., if there are dramatic unanticipated side effects). Recall that scientific research is at a very early stage, and the ecological impacts of SSI in particular are not well-understood. On the other hand, some argue that the universal benefit claim is implausible, both empirically and as an ethical standard (Gardiner 2013c). For instance, early modeling tends to assume that each country regards its current climate as optimal, which appears naïve (Rickles et al. 2018). Moreover, the rather crude early economic models of geoengineering are probably not reliable guides to welfare even for humans, and ignore wider values (such as justice, rights and the others listed above). That being said, it turns out that often proponents of SSI are trying to say something less ambitious: that the consequences of intervention will be better than allowing catastrophic climate impacts to unfold. Still, this approach is not very reassuring. If one assumes that future climate impacts would be extremely bad (i.e., genuinely catastrophic), then almost any alternative would be better simply by definition (i.e., because the comparison is with genuine catastrophe). As a result, justifying SSI becomes very easy; however, so does justifying all kinds of radical risk-reduction policies, some of which would be draconian and raise large ethical concerns (e.g., strongly coercive population policies). In short, justification relative to catastrophe

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is too simple, making the victory hollow or (at best) shallow. Therefore, further justification is needed beyond the claim that implementing SSI might be “better than catastrophe.” Crucially, this will require developing and meeting more robust ethical standards. Thus, ethics cannot be ignored. Robust ethical standards will also want to address values other than welfare, especially welfare understood very narrowly, in conventional economic terms. These additional values include justice, rights, political legitimacy, and the human relationship to nature. Justice concerns include questions of distribution (e.g., “winners and losers”), of procedural justice (e.g., “whose hand is on the thermostat?”), and of recognition (e.g., whose voices count, and in what terms must they express themselves). However, there are also foundational questions, including about how to register concern for all those affected by geoengineering, given that the effects of SSI will be felt not only globally but across many generations and all species. In particular, given that the most vulnerable (the global poor, future generations, and nonhuman nature) are unable to represent themselves, there are threats of an undue emphasis (or indeed profound bias) in geoengineering policy toward the richer and more powerful populations, the current generation, and narrowly human interests. Such issues connect with concerns about control and domination. One major worry about SSI is that would-be climate controllers attempt to exert control over the basic physical structure of the planet. If they succeed, their choices affect very many people around the world, and especially future generations, deeply and pervasively, to the extent of becoming at least a major determinant of their basic life prospects, and perhaps the dominant factor. What then do they owe those put under their yoke? Will they willingly take on such responsibilities? If not, what should be done about it? There are also ethical concerns about the human relationship to nature. One set involves our responsibilities to the nonhuman world and whether these can be appropriately captured through familiar ethical concepts such as welfare, justice and rights. Another set of concerns involves the profound politicization of nature suggested by SSI and related interventions. Many would resist turning global climate (say) into a political domain where justice and legitimacy are the salient values. To motivate this concern, consider an analogy. Suppose a device is invented that allows someone to insert thoughts inside another person’s brain. Few would argue that the main concern of public policy should be to facilitate the most efficient methods of thought control, or that the most important questions concern what thought controllers owe their victims in terms of procedural justice and the distribution of burdens (however demanding). Instead, most are likely to think that thought control ought simply to be off limits, and governments should prevent such power from being exerted. Many have the same instincts when it comes to climate. For instance, in opposition to SSI, they favor withdrawing interference with the climate (e.g., emissions reductions, carbon dioxide removal) over “managing” it, and they do not crave a grand ethics that tells us how to do “just” or “efficient” geoengineering.

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7.5 The Contextual Question Answers to the justificatory question cannot be offered in a vacuum. We must also consider: “Are the standards we have identified relevant to the world we live in or one that may plausibly emerge in the foreseeable future?” Crucially, in the case of climate change, the decision to pursue (say) SSI is being made under compromised circumstances. It is mainly because we have failed—and continue to fail—to do what we should have done, ethically speaking (e.g., seriously decrease emissions), that geoengineering is being considered at all. Hence, in the ethics of geoengineering, it is as if we are asking a paradoxical (though not incoherent) question: “What should we do, ethically speaking, given that we have not done, and will continue not to do, what we should be doing?” The paradoxical question illuminates many ethical misgivings about the pursuit of geoengineering. For instance, it fuels standard worries, such as about moral hazards, slippery slopes, moral schizophrenia, techno-fixes that do not respond to the real roots of the problems, and so on (Hale 2012; Gardiner 2013b; Scott 2018). Still, in my view, its main import lies in raising fundamental questions about what drives political inertia on mainstream climate action, and whether geoengineering policy is likely to be compromised by the same forces, perhaps severely. Specifically, I have argued that a central source of political inertia is that climate change involves a difficult collective action problem that I call a “perfect moral storm.” In a perfect moral storm, we (the current generation, especially in the powerful nations) face strong temptations to behave badly toward people in other parts of the world, nonhuman nature, and especially future generations (e.g., by violating reasonable ethical standards). We also lack adequate institutions and theories to defend against these temptations (e.g., effective intergenerational institutions). Consequently, the situation is ripe for corruption, where this includes distortion of the way we think and talk about the problem. The perfect storm analysis suggests several major threats to the prospects for an ethical geoengineering policy, including competitive geoengineering (e.g., different countries engaging in rival SSI schemes), predatory geoengineering (e.g., interventions aimed at damaging one’s geopolitical rivals), and parochial geoengineering (e.g., short-term geoengineering “fixes” on behalf of the current generation, without regard to the longer-term consequences for future people, even when these are bad and avoidable). In my view, geoengineering policy must take such threats seriously and employ explicit steps to confront them (e.g., in institutional design) (Gardiner 2014a). I am especially concerned about parochial geoengineering. A real danger exists that, even if ethically enlightened forms of geoengineering are available in principle, the geoengineering policy that ultimately emerges will be one that aims to benefit the current generation (e.g., by holding off some of the worse climate impacts for the next 50 years or so), at the cost of making things even worse for future generations than allowing climate change to unfold, and in ways that are ethically unjustifiable (e.g., because they violate the most basic moral constraints). Crucially, we should take seriously the risk that, far from being simply a welcome

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new tool for climate action, geoengineering may become yet another manifestation of the underlying problem.

7.6 Governance Principles In order to stress the centrality of ethics, and in light of the general concerns about justification and context, I have (with Augustin Fragniere) recently argued for a set of governance principles for geoengineering—the Tollgate Principles—focusing (again) on the paradigm case of SSI (Gardiner and Fragniere 2018). These principles are intended as an advance on the seminal Oxford Principles for geoengineering governance (Rayner et al. 2009, 2013), in that they offer a more robust framework that emphasizes the ethical dimensions of the task.3 The Tollgate Principles are: • 1st Tollgate Principle (Framing): Geoengineering should be administered by or on behalf of the global, intergenerational and ecological public, in light of their interests and other ethically-relevant norms. • 2nd Tollgate Principle (Authorization): Geoengineering decision-making (e.g., authorizing research programs, large-scale field trials, deployment) should be done by bodies acting on behalf of (e.g., representing) the global, intergenerational and ecological public, with appropriate authority and in accordance with suitably strong ethical norms (e.g., justice, political legitimacy). • 3rd Tollgate Principle (Consultation): Decisions about geoengineering research activities should be made only after proper notification and consultation of those materially affected and their appropriate representatives, and after due consideration of their self-declared interests and values. • 4th Tollgate Principle (Trust): Geoengineering policy should be organized so as to facilitate reliability, trust and accountability across nations, generations and species. • 5th Tollgate Principle (Ethical Accountability): Robust governance systems (including of authority, legitimacy, justification and management) are increasingly needed and ethically necessary at each stage from advanced research to deployment. • 6th Tollgate Principle (Technical Availability): For a geoengineering technique to be policy-relevant, ethically defensible forms of it must be technically feasible on the relevant timeframe. • 7th Tollgate Principle (Predictability): For a geoengineering technique to be policy-relevant, ethically defensible forms of it must be reasonably predictable on the relevant timeframe and in relation to the threat being addressed. • 8th Tollgate Principle (Protection): Climate policies that include geoengineering schemes should be socially and ecologically preferable to other available climate 3 In doing so, they build both on the Oxford Principles and other early principles offered by Jamieson

(1996).

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policies, and focus on protecting basic ethical interests and concerns (e.g., human rights, capabilities, fundamental ecological values). • 9th Tollgate Principle (Respecting General Ethical Norms): Geoengineering policy should respect general ethical norms that are well-founded and salient to global environmental policy (e.g., autonomy, justice). • 10th Tollgate Principle (Respecting Ecological Norms): Geoengineering policy should respect well-founded ecological norms, including norms of environmental ethics and governance (e.g., sustainability, precaution, respect for nature, ecological accommodation). The Tollgate principles paint a picture of the challenge of geoengineering governance which coheres with and extends those found in some literature on geoengineering governance, but is markedly different than the understanding of the governance problem implicit in narrowly economic assessments. Notably, all of the principles are relevant to the engagement of Latin America with the potential pursuit of geoengineering, both politically and philosophically. Most obviously, numerous general ethical norms falling under the 9th Tollgate Principle are highly salient, such as those of participatory justice, distributive justice, justice in recognition, human rights, and political legitimacy. Less obviously, cross-cultural engagement must occur around the 10th Tollgate principle, respecting ecological norms. Specifically, different political cultures and ethical traditions view the human relationship with the natural environment differently (e.g., Watene 2016; Whyte 2012, 2019). This makes it important for those developing a system of geoengineering governance to engage with regional environmental norms. In the context of Latin America, this would include norms of governance (such as constitutional provisions for nature enshrined in the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia), and influential social ideals (such as Buen Vivir—Gudynas 2011).

7.7 Conclusion Sensible climate policy faces large obstacles in the face of current geopolitical circumstances and the context of the perfect moral storm. Ethical action will not be easy. Nevertheless, this is our challenge and it cannot be avoided. In this overview, I have tried to make clear that the call by some scientists to pursue SSI does not escape the challenge, nor make it any less one dominated by central ethical values, including those associated with human welfare, justice, rights, political legitimacy, and respect for nature. Similar things are likely to be true of many other forms of geoengineering. This makes it worrying to reflect on the emerging situation in geoengineering policy, where ethical concerns are acknowledged in theory, but often marginalized in practice. Sadly, as in other areas of climate policy, there remain profound risks of moral corruption.

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References Blomfield M (2015) Geoengineering in a climate of uncertainty. In: Moss J (ed) Climate change and justice. Cambrigde University Press, Cambridge, pp 39–58 Buck HJ, Gammon AR, Preston CJ (2013) Gender and geoengineering. Hypatia 10(10):1–19 Burns WCG (2013) Climate geoengineering: solar radiation management and its implications for intergenerational equity. In: Burns WCG, Strauss AL (eds) Climate change geoengineering: philosophical perspectives, legal issues, and governance frameworks, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Caldeira K (2012) Ethics of geoengineering (Food). Geoeng Google group. April 12 Callies D (2019) Institutional legitimacy and geoengineering governance. Ethics Policy Environ Elliot Kn (2010) Geoengineering and the precautionary principle. Int J Appl Philoso 24(2):237–253 Gardiner SM (2010) Is arming the future with geoengineering really the lesser evil? In: Gardiner SM, Caney S, Jamieson D, Shue H (eds) Climate ethics: essential readings. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 284–312 Gardiner SM (2011a) A perfect moral storm. Oxford University Press, New York Gardiner SM (2011b) Some early ethics of geoengineering: a commentary on the values of the royal society report. Environ Values 20:163–188 Gardiner SM (2012) Are we the scum of the Earth? In: Thompson A, Bendik-Keymer J (eds) Ethical adaptation to climate change. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 241–260 Gardiner SM (2013a) The desperation argument for geoengineering. PS Polit Sci Polit 46(1):28–33 Gardiner SM (2013b) Geoengineering and moral Schizophrenia. In: Burns WCG, Strauss AL (eds) Climate change geoengineering. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 11–3 Gardiner SM (2013c) Why geoengineering is not a global public good, and why it is ethically misleading to frame it as one. Climatic Change 121:513–525 Gardiner SM (2014a) A call for a global constitutional convention focused on future generations. Ethics Int Aff 28(3):299–315 Gardiner SM (2014b) Why global public good is a treacherous term, especially for geoengineering. Climatic Change 123:101–106 Gardiner SM (2016) Geoengineering. In: Gardiner SM, Thompson A (eds) The oxford handbook on environmental ethics. Oxford University Press, New York Gardiner SM, Fragnière A (2018) The tollgate principles of geoengineering. Ethics Policy Environ 21(2):143–174 Gudynas E (2011) Buen vivir. Development 54(4):441–447 Hamilton C (2013). Earthmasters. In: The dawn of the age of climate engineering. Yale University Press, London Hale B (2012) The world that would have been: moral hazard arguments against geoengineering. In: Preston CJ (eds) Engineering the climate. the ethics of solar radiation management. Lexington Books, Plymouth Hartzell-Nichols L (2012) Precaution and solar radiation management. Ethics Policy Environ 15(2):158–171 Hourdequin M (2019) Climate change, climate engineering, and the global poor: what does justice require? Ethics Policy Environ Jamieson D (1996) Ethics and intentional climate change. Climatic Change 33(3):323-336 Lenferna GA, Russotto RD, Amanda T, Gardiner SM, Ackerman TP (2017) Relevant climate response tests for stratospheric aerosol injection: a combined ethical and scientific analysis. Earth’s Future 5(6):577-591 Morrow DR, Robert EK, Michael O (2013) Political legitimacy in decisions about experiments in solar radiation management. In: Burns WCG, Strauss AL (eds) Climate change geoengineering. Philosophical perspectives, legal issues, and governance frameworks. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 146–161 Morrow DR (2014a) Starting a flood to stop a fire? Some moral constraints on solar radiation management. Ethics Policy Environ 17(2):123–128

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Morrow DR (2014b) Why geoengineering is a public good, even if its bad. Clim Change 123:95–100 National Research Council (2015) Climate intervention: reflecting sunlight to cool Earth. The National Academies Press, Washington DC Preston CJ (2012a) Engineering the climate. In: The ethics of solar radiation management. Lexington Books, Plymouth Preston CJ (2012b) Solar radiation management and vulnerable populations. In: Preston CJ (ed) Engineering the climate. The ethics of solar radiation management. Lexington Books, Plymouth Preston CJ (2017) Carbon emissions, stratospheric aerosol injection, and unintended harms. Ethics Int Aff 31(4):479-493 Preston C, Wylie C (2019) Recognitional justice, climate engineering, and the care approach. Ethics Policy Environ Rayner S, Heyward C, Kruger T, Pidgeon N, Redgwell C, Savulescu J (2013) The oxford principles. Clim Change 121(3):512–599 Rayner S, Heyward C, Kruger T, Pidgeon N, Redgwell C, Savulescu J (2009) Memorandum on draft principles for the conduct of geoengineering research. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee enquiry into the regulation of geoengineering Ricke KL, Granger MM, Myles A (2010) Regional climate response to solar radiation management. Nat Geosci 3:537–541 Ricke KL, Caldeira K, Moreno-Cruz JB (2013) Strategic incentives for climate geoengineering coalitions to exclude broad participation. Environ Res Lett 8(1):014021 Rickles W, Quaas MF, Ricke K, Quaas J, Moreno Cruz J, Smulders S. (2018). Turning down the global thermostat. Kiel Working Paper Sandler R (2012) Solar radiation management and nonhuman species. In: Perston CJ (ed) Engineering the climate. The ethics of solar radiation management. Lexington Books, Plymouth Scott D (2018) Philosophy of technology and geoengineering. In: Blackstock JJ, Low Sean (eds) Geoengineering our climate? Ethics, politics, and governance. Routledge, London Smith PT (2012) Domination and the ethics of solar radiation management. In: Preston CJ (ed) Engineering the climate. The ethics of solar radiation management. Lexington Books, Plymouth Smith PT (2019) Legitimacy and non-domination in solar radiation management research. Ethics Policy Environ Shepherd J et al (2009) Geoengineering the climate. In: Science, governance and uncertainty. The Royal Society Svoboda T (2017) The ethics of climate engineering. In: Solar radiation management and non-ideal justice. Routledge, London Watene K (2016) Valuing nature: M¯aori philosophy and the capability approach. Oxf Dev Stud 44(3):287–296 Whyte KP (2012) Now this! Indigenous sovereignty, political obliviousness and governance models for SRM research. Ethics Policy Environ 15(2):172–187 Whyte KP (2019) Indigeneity in geoengineering discourses: some considerations. Ethics Policy Environ Wong P-H (2015) Consenting to geoengineering. Philoso Technol 29(2):173–188

Chapter 8

Two Conceptions of Embracing Ecological Change in Ecosystem Management and Species Conservation: Accommodation and Intervention Ronald Sandler Abstract In this chapter I consider two different perspectives on what it means to acknowledge and embrace anthropogenic ecological change with respect to ecosystem management and species conservation. On one view, embracing anthropogenic change involves taking greater responsibility for and control of the ecological future. We ought to use our best science and technology to thoughtfully and intentionally manage, and where necessary design and modify, ecological systems and species. On another view, embracing ecological change involves reducing human influences and allowing systems and species space and opportunities to transition and reconfigure without intentionally designing them in accordance with how we think they need or ought to be. Anthropogenic change does not itself imply that there is a responsibility to take an interventionist and control-oriented approach to ecosystem management and species conservation. Whether and when people ought to do so will vary by case and context, not only in accordance with the relevant empirical information, but also in accordance with the operative values as stake. Keywords Climate change · Ecosystem management · Anthropocene · Values · Anthropogenic change

8.1 Introduction Human impacts on Earth are immense. Humans appropriate approximately 25 percent of the Earth’s primary plant production (Krausmann et al. 2013). Over a third of the terrestrial surface of the Earth is used for agriculture (FAOSTAT 2015). Over 90 percent of global fish stocks are considered fully exploited or overexploited (FAO 2014). Vertebrate populations are estimated to have been reduced by half, on average, in the past forty years due to human activities (World Wildlife Fund 2014).

Parts of this chapter are adapted from Sandler (2017, 2018). R. Sandler (B) Department of Philosophy and Religion, Northeastern University, Boston, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_8

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Human activities generate more reactive nitrogen than do all other planetary processes (Galloway et al. 2004), and human activities (particularly agriculture, mining, and construction) are responsible for more geomorphic change than are all other planetary processes (Wilkinson and McElroy 2007). The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is higher than it has been in millions of years due primarily to fossil fuel use, and this is causing the oceans to acidify (NOAA 2015; Tripati et al. 2009). Damming, irrigation, channeling, pumping and floodplain engineering now control or influence the movement of most freshwater and sediment discharge into the oceans (Syvitski and Kettner 2011). Synthetic chemicals and waste from human industrial activities permeate terrestrial and aquatic systems and organisms. When all of these (and other) impacts are considered together, it is clear that the human influence on the environment is pervasive and transformative. It is also enduring. It is not possible to undue human impacts in the sense of returning ecological systems and processes to how they were or to the trajectory on which they would have been without human influences. Moreover, climatic and ecological systems are going to continue to experience high-rate and high-magnitude changes in comparison with the recent historical past for the foreseeable future (IPCC 2014; United States Climate Change Science Program 2008; Climate Interactive 2017). Even the most ambitious ideas for technological interventions—e.g. solar radiation management, ambient carbon capture, gene drives, and de-extinction— address only some factors that drive global and local change, restore only parts of systems, and do not forestall the feedbacks, cascades and potential tipping points that have already been reached. There is still much that can be done to limit future anthropogenic change. For example, there is a wide range of scenarios regarding what the overall magnitude and rate of global climate change will be (Climate Interactive 2017). Mitigating future emissions by both behavioral and technological means is crucial for accomplishing a lower trajectory (Pacala and Socolow 2004; Cafaro 2011), and there is a strong ethical responsibility grounded in intergenerational justice, global justice, human rights, and natural value to do so (Caney 2010; Sandler 2014). However, even if there were widespread and robust efforts to reduce future anthropogenic impacts, the current and future ecological reality is one of rapid change. While we ought to try to reduce the scale, we must also recognize the fact of it. Infrastructure projects need to take into account less predictability in temperature, rainfall and frequency and severity of extreme weather events, as well as a wider range of possible environmental futures. Ecosystem management and species conservation efforts need to consider projected species range changes and ecological transitions. Farmers need to plan for shifting precipitation and temperature patterns. Fisherpeople need to plan for changes in fish stock abundance and ranges. Planning for the future involves accounting for higher levels of disruption than in the recent past, as well as a wider range of possible scenarios. In this chapter I consider two different perspectives on what it means to acknowledge and embrace anthropogenic ecological change with respect to ecosystem management and species conservation. On one view, embracing anthropogenic change involves taking greater responsibility for and control of the ecological future. We

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ought to use our best science and technology to thoughtfully and intentionally manage, and where necessary design and modify, ecological systems and species. Let us call this the “rambunctious garden” view (Marris 2011; Donlan et al. 2006). On this view, given the scale and depth of ongoing anthropogenic change, we should reconceive our relationship with the natural world as one in which humans guide nature. On another view, embracing ecological change involves reducing human influences and allowing systems and species space and opportunities to transition and reconfigure without intentionally designing them in accordance with how we think they need or ought to be. Let us call this the “respecting the wild” view (Wuerthner et al. 2014; Cafaro 2017; Crist 2013). On this view, given the scale and depth of ongoing anthropogenic change, we should be modest about our abilities to predict and control ecological systems, and we should prioritize protection and appreciation of the increasingly scarce human independent ecological and evolutionary processes that have generated such wonderful and amazing biological diversity. There is of course a continuum between strict design and continuous intervention, on the one hand, and total acceptance and nonintervention on the other. But perspectives from the two sides of the continuum are manifest in myriad discussions within the ecosystem management and conservation community, including around nonnative species management, the use of synthetic genomics in conservation, the use of assisted relocation as a conservation tool, how to allocate scarce funding sources, whether to prioritize ecosystem services or species conservation, and the role of the park and reserve model of conservation in a rapidly changing world. My primary aim in this chapter is to demonstrate that large scale anthropogenic change does not itself imply that there is a responsibility to take an interventionist and control-oriented approach to ecosystem management and species conservation. Whether and when people ought to do so will vary by case and context, not only in accordance with the relevant empirical information, but also in accordance with the operative values as stake.

8.2 The Appeal of the “Anthropocene” The term “Anthropocene” has been widely adopted to refer to the ongoing period of high magnitude anthropogenic change. However, it has also received considerable criticism (Crist 2013; Moore 2013). One concern about it is that it is an instance of claiming by naming (Crist 2013). The language that we use to refer to things is tied to how we conceive of them and situate them within our descriptive and normative outlooks. With respect to the nonhuman world, the language used, particularly within resource-oriented capitalistic societies, often both names and claims for human use. For example, aquatic ecological systems are “fisheries”, forests are “timber”, seacoasts are “beachfront”, and animals are “livestock”, “broilers” and “layers.” The “Anthropocene”, when considered through this lens, seems to favor conceiving of the world as one in which humans are and should be dominant. If we think of ourselves as living in the human age, one that is characterized—even in the name—by human

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power and impacts, then it favors the view that humans can and should take a design and control approach to the natural world. This attitude is evident in the species conservation discourse. It is often argued that in order to conserve species and maintain ecological systems in a human dominated world, we must take a more interventionist, forward-looking and hands on approach. Many people argue that we even have a responsibility to do so, since humans are the source of the rapid and high magnitude change that is the threat to species and systems (Camacho et al. 2010; Minteer and Collins 2010; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2008; Donlan et al. 2006). Rapid, macroscale anthropogenic change is now the ecological reality—it is part of the “natural” history of the planet. Under these conditions, trying to go back and recapture the ecological past is an instance of ecological insensitivity. Therefore, according to this view, conservation must involve less historicity, less nostalgia, than it has traditionally done. Moreover, species and populations are increasingly threatened by changes in background climatic and ecological conditions, or deep and irreversible (or difficult to reverse) ecosystem transitions. As a result, traditional species conservation approaches, such as ecological restoration and in situ park and reserve conservation, are often much less effective (Higgs et al. 2014; Minteer and Collins 2010; Camacho et al. 2010; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2008). It often will not be feasible to conserve species populations where they are now, or where they have been in the recent past, when changing ecological and climate conditions are the threats to them, rather than locally manageable stressors such as poaching or pollution. It is not possible to preserve coral reefs and the species that depend upon them as they are now, where they are now, by designating their locations as marine sanctuaries when increases in ocean temperatures due to climate change and ocean acidification due to elevated atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are the causes of coral declines. It is not possible to preserve American pika populations in the western United States or cloud forest orchid populations in Costa Rica by protecting the mountain tops where they live, when climactically altered temperature and precipitation patterns are the threat to them. Given this, what else can we do but step in, take control, and design things as they need to be for species to flourish and ecological systems to function? This is the “Anthropocene” after all, and it is the fault of humans that these species are at risk and these systems are so stressed. We must embrace the “Anthropocene” and take on the role of managing the natural world as a “rambunctious garden.” We need to move species to where they need to be in order to persist (assisted translocation and re-wilding), modify organisms and populations so that they are better suited to their novel ecological conditions (synthetic genomics, assisted evolution and gene drives), and engineer ecological systems so that they continue to provide requisite ecosystem services (ecosystem engineering). The language of the “Anthropocene” in this way favors a certain sort of attitude and form of reasoning. We might call it the argument from the Anthropocene: the fact that human impacts on the planet are immense and that these impacts are causing enormous social and ecological problems implies that we are justified, indeed required, to take an active, interventionist, control-oriented role in addressing them.

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But there is a gap in this reasoning. It does not immediately follow from the magnitude of human impacts that the appropriate response is yet more human control and design. It is problematic to infer from this: (1) We are in a time of high-rate, high-magnitude change in large part due to human activities. To this: (2) Therefore, we ought to X (where X is any general behavior type). It is problematic because (1) is strictly descriptive, so it is invalid to infer from it to a prescriptive conclusion without any additional normative or value premise (Vucetich et al. 2015). Here is another way to think about this. Those who reason in accordance with the argument from the Anthropocene in support of the rambunctious garden view believe that human impacts on the Earth are now so pervasive and long-lasting that we must revise our understanding of the “natural” world and our relationships to it. We must acknowledge that human beings are now (and for the foreseeable future) the dominant planetary force, whether we like it or not. We need to recognize the roles that we fill in ecological and climatic systems and embrace the responsibility of managing them, from the flow of rivers to the composition of the atmosphere. We must reconceive the ecological world as a place to be tended by people, rather than as a wilderness to be protected from them. However, advocates of the respecting the wild view believe that this is the wrong response. On their view, the fact that we have such large and detrimental impacts on the natural world is confirmation of human too-manyness and too-muchness. It is the scale of our influence on the natural world that is the problem that needs to be addressed. The way to do this is not by taking more control, but by pulling ourselves back. We must decrease our population and consumption. We must reduce our efforts to design and manage ecological systems and processes as we think they should be. We must ensure that we leave enough resources for other species and spaces for human-independent ecological and evolutionary processes. Extensive intervention into ecological systems is what created our environmental problems. Increasing them further, no matter how well intentioned, is apt to cause more problems in the future. There is thus a fundamental disagreement about whether to respond to anthropogenic change with greater intervention and control or greater restraint and accommodation. But, crucially, both of these attitudes are consistent with the fact that human impacts on the planet are immense. They are competing responses to that ecological and climatic reality. That there is high-rate, high-magnitude ecological change does not itself tell us which response is warranted. Other considerations need to be provided to settle the issue. Moreover, a blanket position is not likely to be justified. There is too much divergence in types of systems, social contexts and operative values.

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8.3 The Importance of Value Identification and Analysis We need to determine how to respond to a wide range of ecological problems, from global climate change to microplastic pollution. Moreover, we need to be more attentive to how technological power and population growth have changed our relationships to the natural world, as well as our ethical responsibilities regarding the environment and to other people. However, appealing to the fact of macroscale anthropogenic change (or the “Anthropocene”) does not itself make those decisions. The change itself underdetermines whether and when a more control-oriented (rambunctious garden) or accommodation-oriented (respecting the wild) response is appropriate. It is crucial to attend as well to what values are operative in the case and the ways in which they intersect with different sorts of strategies and interventions. Imagine that a team of conservationists is trying to decide whether they ought to engage in an assisted colonization for a climate threatened alpine mammal species; or a team of geneticists and marine biologists are trying to decide whether to engage in assisted evolution of corals and ecosystem engineering for a stressed reef system. To determine if the intervention is feasible and well-justified, they would need a great deal of information about the species involved, the recipient systems, climate change, and other empirical data. They would need to conduct risk assessments, as well as cost-benefit, opportunity cost, and legal analyses. But they would also need to extensively engage local stakeholders and conduct a comprehensive value analysis in order to identify the full range of anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric values and principles at stake—e.g. economic values, ecosystem services, natural value, historical value, ecological value, cultural value, organism value, recreational value, and scientific value. Some values, such as natural resources and ecosystem services, can in some cases be well protected and promoted through interventionist forms of management. However, others, such as natural value and historical value are often undermined by human interventions. So it is not only a matter of recognizing all the values at stake, but also understanding their different logics and how they intersect with different forms of conservation and management practices (Sandler 2010, 2018). There is no short-cutting this case-by-case, value-by-value work by appealing to the fact of high-rate, high-magnitude change. A possible response to this argument by proponents of more interventionist, rambunctious garden approaches to conservation and ecosystem management might be that the sorts of values that favor the more restraintful, respecting the wild view no longer exist—e.g. natural values, wilderness values, and historical values. If we really are at the end of nature (McKibben 2000)—if human impacts on climatic systems mean human influences are everywhere—then there is no naturalness, wildness, spontaneity, and human-independence left to respect. This is, after all, what it means to be in the “Anthropocene.” However, this response is flawed conceptually and empirically, and it expresses the arrogance of the “Anthropocene.” Conceptually, it is a mistake to think of humanity as an inherent defiler of nature and wildness. It is not the case that any human impact

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or influence obliterates naturalness and wildness. This way of conceiving the humannature relationship not only excludes the possibility of humans living well with and in the natural world. It is also unhelpful for environmental ethics and policy, where the project is identifying how we ought to interact with and treat the nonhuman. There are many different conceptions of nature—e.g. as anything subject to the laws of physics, as anything biological or ecological, as anything that is not supernatural. None of the conceptions is the uniquely correct one. But they are more or less useful in particular contexts. When doing environmental ethics and policy, when thinking about how we ought to interact with the nonhuman world, it is crucial to employ a conception of nature that allows for differentiation and degrees. Some places are more natural than others—old growth forest is more natural than secondary growth forest, which his more natural than a manicured park, which is more natural than a parking lot. There is naturalness and wildness—and so there can be associated values—in many (perhaps all) places and processes to at least some degree. For this reason, environmental ethicists often employ a conception of nature on which something is natural to the extent that it is independent of human design, control and impacts (Katz 1992; Taylor 1986; Sandler 2018). Empirically, the extent of human impacts and control is not the same everywhere. Many ecological spaces are now novel, no-analog or hybrid systems (Higgs et al. 2014; Harris et al. 2006; Hobbs et al. 2006, 2009). However, others retain relatively high levels of historical continuity and human independence. Fifteen percent of the terrestrial surface of the Earth is protected and a much larger percentage is ecologically intact and lightly touched by human activities (UNEP-WCNC and IUCN 2016). There are areas of the planet—the deep oceans, for example—that are as yet barely impacted (let alone well understood). Moreover, while human impacts on Earth are immense, so too are human independent processes—e.g. geological, atmospheric, evolutionary, and ecological. This, then, is the arrogance of the “Anthropocene.” Even if it is true that a distinctive feature of the current period of the Earth’s natural history is the outsized impact of one species, the “Anthropocene” discourse and the idea that nature has ended obscures the naturalness, wildness, and spontaneity that persists. In the most managed cases—e.g. a garden—human inputs are only a small part of the explanations for what occurs. It is not justified to defend an interventionist stance in ecosystem management and species conservation by rendering invisible human-independence and the values associated with it.

8.4 Conclusion The main aim of this chapter has been to show that the fact of high-magnitude, high-rate anthropogenic change does not imply that humans have a responsibility to take a more interventionist, control-oriented approach to ecosystem management and species conservation. Nor is it implied by the fact (if it is a fact) that we are in the “Anthropocene” or a period of natural history characterized by outsized human impacts

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on the planet. Whether a more control-oriented or a more accommodation-oriented approach should be taken depends not only on the relevant empirical information about a case, but also on the values at stake. Moreover, despite the very large amount of human impacts on Earth, there remains considerable naturalness and wildness. Therefore, it is not possible to defend a general interventionist stance by arguing that human independent places and processes, and the values associated with them, no longer exist. Doing so depends on dubious conceptual foundations and betrays an arrogance—an overestimation of the importance of humans—that is expressed and fostered by the idea of the “Anthropocene.” Decisions regarding when and where to employ such things as assisted colonization, genetically modified organisms, gene drives, ecosystem engineering, rewilding, and assisted evolution need to be informed by comprehensive and robust value analyses that identify the full range of goods and values at stake, appreciate their different logics, and understand how they are impacted by different conservation strategies and activities.

References Cafaro P (2011) Beyond business as usual: alternative wedges to avoid catastrophic climate change and create sustainable societies. In: Arnold D (ed) The ethics of global climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 192–215 Cafaro P (2017) Valuing wild nature. In: Gardiner SM, Thompson A (eds) Oxford handbook of environmental ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 125–135 Camacho AE, Doremus H, McLachlan JS, Minteer BA (2010) Reassessing conservation goals in a changing climate. Issues Sci Technol 26(4) Caney S (2010) Climate change, human rights, and moral thresholds. In: Gardiner SM, Caney S, Jamieson D, Shue H (eds) Climate ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 163–177 Climate Interactive (2017) Scoreboard science and data. Available via https://www. climateinteractive.org/tools/scoreboard/scoreboard-science-and-data/. Accessed 1 Aug 2018 Crist E (2013) On the poverty of our nomenclature. Enviro Humanit 3:129–147 Donlan CJ, Berger J, Bock CE, Bock JH, Burney DA, Estes JA et al (2006) Pleistocene rewilding: an optimistic agenda for twenty-first century conservation. Am Nat 168:660–681 FAO (2014) The state of the world fisheries and aquaculture 2014. Rome, Italy, FAO FAOSTAT (2015) Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Statistics Division. Available via http://faostat.fao.org. Accessed 20 Sept 2018 Galloway JN, Dentener F, Boyer EW, Asner GP, Cleveland C, Green P et al (2004) Nitrogen cycles: past, present, and future. Biogeochemistry 70(2):153–226 Harris JA, Hobbs RJ, Higgs E, Aronson J (2006) Ecological restoration and global climate change. Restor Ecol 14(2):170–176 Higgs E, Falk DA, Guerrini A, Hall M, Harris J, Hobbs RJ et al (2014) The changing role of history in restoration ecology. Front Ecol Environ 12(9):499–506 Hobbs RJ, Arico S, Aronson J, Baron JS, Bridgewater P, Cramer VA et al (2006) Novel ecosystems: theoretical and management aspects of the new ecological world order. Glob Ecol Biogeogr 15:1–7 Hobbs RJ, Higgs E, Harris JA (2009) Novel ecosystems: implications for conservation and restoration. Trends Ecol Evol 24(11):599–605 Hoegh-Guldberg O, Hughes L, McIntyre S, Lindenmayer DB, Parmesan C, Possingham HP et al (2008) Assisted colonization and rapid climate change. Science 321(5887):345–346

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IPCC (2014) Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC. Available via https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_ SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf. Accessed 6 Apr 2018 Katz E (1992) The Big Lie: human restoration of nature. Res Philos Technol 12:231–241 Krausmann F, Erb K-H, Gingrich S, Haberl H, Bondeau A, Gaube V et al (2013) Global human appropriation of net primary production doubled in the 20th century. Proc Natl Acad Sci 110(25):10324–10329 Marris E (2011) Rambunctious garden: saving nature in a post-wild world. Bloomsbury, New York McKibben B (2000) The end of nature. Random House, New York Minteer BA, Collins JP (2010) Move it or lose it? The ecological ethics of relocating species under climate change. Ecol Appl 20:1801–1804 Moore KD (2013) Anthropocene is the wrong word. Earth Island J. Available via http://www. earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/anthropocene_is_the_wrong_word/. Accessed 10 Apr 2018 NOAA (2015) What is ocean acidification? Available via http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/ What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F. Accessed 7 July 2018 Pacala S, Socolow RH (2004) Stabilization wedges: solving the climate problem for the next 50 years with current technologies. Science 305:968–972 Sandler R (2010) The value of species and the ethical foundations of assisted colonization. Conserv Biol 24(2):424–431 Sandler R (2014) The ethics of climate change mitigation. In: Di Paola M, Pellegrino G (eds) Canned heat: ethics and politics of global climate change. Routledge, New Delhi, pp 61–79 Sandler R (2017) Deextinction and conservation genetics in the anthropocene. Recreating the wild: de-extinction, technology, and the ethics of conservation. Hasting Cent Rep Spec Rep 47(4):S43–S47 Sandler R (2018) Environmental ethics: theory in practice. Oxford University Press, Oxford Syvitski JPM, Kettner A (2011) Sediment flux and the anthropocene. Philos Trans R Soc A: Math Phys Eng Sci 369(1938):957–975 Taylor PW (1986) Respect for nature: a theory of environmental ethics. Princeton University Press, Princeton Tripati AK, Roberts CD, Eagle RA (2009) Coupling of CO2 and ice sheet stability over major climate transitions of the last 20 million years. Science 326(5958):1394–1397 UNEP-WCNC and IUCN (2016) Protected Planet Report 2016. Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC. Available via https://wdpa.s3.amazonaws.com/Protected_Planet_Reports/2445%20Global% 20Protected%20Planet%202016_WEB.pdf. Accessed 10 Sept 2018 United States Climate Change Science Program (2008) Preliminary review of adaptation options for climate-sensitive ecosystems and resources. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC. Available via www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4–4/final-report. Accessed 10 Mar 2011 Vucetich JA, Nelson MP, Chelsea K, Batavia K (2015) The anthropocene: disturbing name, limited insight. In: Minteer BA, Pyne SJ (eds) After preservation: saving American nature in the age of humans. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 66–73 Wilkinson BH, McElroy BJ (2007) The impact of humans on continental erosion and sedimentation. Geol Soc Am Bull 119(1–2):140–156 World Wildlife Fund (2014) Living Planet Report 2014. Gland, Switzerland: WWF. Available via http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/. Accessed 10 Oct 2017 Wuerthner G, Crist E, Butler T (2014) Keeping the wild: against domestication of earth. Island Press, Washington

Chapter 9

Groundwater as a Common Pool Resource: Modelling, Management and the Complicity Ethic in a Non-collective World Juan Carlos Castilla-Rho, Cameron Holley and Juan Carlos Castilla Abstract Sustainable development of the natural resources that support our current standards of living is arguably one the biggest challenges of the Anthropocene. Institutions and policies alone however cannot guarantee that the right decisions are made. In this chapter, we argue that sound decisions must overcome the ethical dilemmas that experts face when encapsulating hypotheses of the real-world into numerical models. Using groundwater as an example, we show how the socalled complicity ethic may unfold during the process of designing management and policy interventions, and subsequently recommend eight guiding principles (a charter) that can be followed to reduce the likelihood that this complicity ethic takes place. We then introduce The Collaborative Pathway—a mediated modelling activity that synergistically blends the eight guiding principles of our ethics charter into a practical decision-making process. This approach is designed to foster community engagement, to improve the way sectoral risks and trade-offs are evaluated, and to help stakeholders understand what might drive a particular sector towards bestand worst-case outcomes. If done right and with the right tools and strategies, The Collaborative Pathway can become a useful framework to encode ethics, resilience, and sustainability in our decisions relating to the development and protection of any common-pool resource that maintains our humanity. Keywords Groundwater · Common pool resources · Management · Modelling · Guiding principles · Collaboration · Complicity ethic J. C. Castilla-Rho (B) School of Information, Systems and Modelling and PERSWADE Center, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney 2007, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] C. Holley Faculty of Law and Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia J. C. Castilla Department of Ecology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Center for Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change (CCG-UC), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_9

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9.1 Introduction In 1833, William Forster Lloyd (a British writer on economic), in the context of the traditional local land-use medieval system that existed in Wales and England, where traditional allocation limits existed on the number of cattle that a household was allowed to place out to graze on the commons, presented a simple model where pasture land for common use (i.e., “the commons”) would be eventually transformed into a barren wasteland due to overgrazing by an increasing number of cattle owned by economically opportunistic and profit-seeking herders (review in Suga 2013). Later, Hardin (1968) used Lloyd’s metaphor to put a spotlight on the non-trivial aspects of Earth resource management and re-interpreted “the commons” in a different way. Hardin stated: “Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herder-man will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons… freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” This statement became what is now broadly known as the “tragedy of the commons.” In this chapter we use the concept of “common pool resources” (CPRs) to refer to a natural resource or man-made resource system whose size and availability makes it costly, although not impossible, to exclude people from obtaining benefits from its use. Classical examples of CPRs are forests, fisheries, biodiversity, groundwater, and global climate (for climate change see Ostrom 2009). Because access and consumption is difficult to coordinate, police, and manage, CPRs are prone to overexploitation. These so-called tragedies, “wicked” problems, or socio-environmental dilemmas, arise when individual and group interests come into conflict. In the case of fisheries, for example, fishers are tempted to extract as many fish as possible because if they do not, someone else will reap the profits. If all fishers follow the same logic, then collectively the depletion or exhaustion of the resource will occur—something that none intend and that all would like to avoid at all costs. In the late 1960s Hardin and others argued that individual interests would always come ahead of those of the group. Their initial claim was that without strict intervention from a centralized authority, privatization, a lottery, or an auction or merit-based system, the tragedy was de facto inescapable. In the early 1980s Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues challenged this claim, noting that under certain conditions some communities had put in place the necessary nudges (Thaler and Sunstein 2009) to steer their resource systems towards sustainable trajectories (McCay and Acheson 1987; Castilla et al. 1998; Castilla-Rho et al. 2017; Ostrom et al. 2002, 2007; Dietz et al. 2003; Gelcich et al. 2010). Ostrom’s seminal CPR project (Ostrom 1990) became a scientific field in itself and it is arguably of the most prolific and influential research programs in environmental and sustainability science. This first generation of empirical and theoretical CPR research focused its efforts in identifying resource systems where tragedies had been successfully avoided. Scholars found a number of ingredients (rules and institutional arrangements) common to all successful cases and absent in those that failed. One of the most iconic outcomes from this synthesis are Ostrom’s eight design principles

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(Ostrom 1990). These principles have helped scholars and decision-makers around the world to identify rule sets which, at least in principle, should help resource users internalize the social and economic costs and benefits of using the CPR and achieve desirable policy outcomes (i.e., Basurto et al. 2013). Some of the most salient lessons learnt from successful CPRs include the need of (1) establishing clear boundaries, (2) matching rules to local needs and conditions, (3) allowing resource users to modify the rules, (4) making sure that these rules are acknowledged by government authorities, (5) enabling users to monitor peer behavior, (6) using graduated sanctions for rule violators, (7) providing low-cost means for conflict resolution, and (8) building governance responsibility from the bottom-up, although acknowledging the existence of polycentric governance. Applying Ostrom’s design principles to promote the stewardship of natural resource systems is becoming ever more diffuse and difficult to enforce. A recent quantification of global groundwater depletion embedded in international food trade (Dalin et al. 2017) provides one striking example: a vast majority of the world’s population lives in countries sourcing nearly all their staple crop imports from partners who are rapidly depleting aquifers to produce these crops. The implications of such findings are far-reaching, when we consider, for instance, that the demand for a plate of food served in a New York restaurant is driving farmers in India to pump groundwater faster than it is naturally replenished. The bottom line is that we are confronted with the challenge of sustaining CPRs in a more connected world—The Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Castilla 2012; Ruddiman 2013)—where human impacts are increasing the risk of crossing planetary-scale critical transitions (Barnosky et al. 2012; Scheffer 2009). This epoch marks a decisive break in our relationship with the planet and how societies view, manage, and sustain their commons. The increasing interconnectedness and complexity (Johnson 2012) of the socioenvironmental systems that we so imperatively need to maintain raises two important, interrelated questions: How can scientists best guide communities towards a more sustainable use of their natural resources? And how do we achieve this ethically and collectively, in a hyper-connected, non-collective world? Sustainability scholars often recourse to computer-based models to answer the first question. In fact, a vast majority of literature focuses on the technical nuances of environmental modelling. Quite surprisingly, in our view the second ethical question, which we consider to be a central pillar of sustainability, has remained largely neglected. This chapter aims to address this shortfall by stimulating thinking about the ethical dimensions of environmental modelling and how enforcing these ethics can better support CPR management and policy decisions. We will use groundwater—the world’s biggest source of freshwater and one of humanity’s greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century (Wada et al. 2010; Gleeson et al. 2012; Taylor et al. 2013; Castilla-Rho et al. 2017)—as an example. The challenge of sustaining groundwater commons is exemplary. The sheer number of users competing for the same limited resource creates very few incentives for cooperation. Monitoring individual pumping decisions is also often logistically and practically prohibitive. Yet averting groundwater depletion is essential to achieve

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socially acceptable, environmentally sustainable and economically viable exploitation of aquifers that supply water and food to billions of people (Castilla-Rho et al. 2017). Elinor Ostrom’s Doctoral Thesis (Ostrom 1965) recognized these challenges and tells the story of how individuals escaped the tragedy of competitive water pumping from groundwater basins around the Los Angeles area, and how they managed to create the conditions and institutions to achieve sustainability. The challenges of managing groundwater resources are very general, hence our recommendations can be broadly extrapolated and applied to many other environmental management issues.

9.2 The Accomplices: Modelers, Managers, and Stakeholders An accomplice is someone who takes a course of action, provides information, or decides that either contributes to or increases the risk of someone else making the wrong decision. The Complicity Ethic Principle states that (Kutz 2007): (Basis) “I am accountable for what others do when I intentionally participate in the wrong they do or harm they cause.” (Object) “I am accountable for the harm or wrong we do together, independently of the actual difference I make.” In the context of groundwater management, the complicity ethic is staged between scientists, policy makers, and stakeholders (the accomplices) and how they interact through the discussion of environmental concerns, the provision of expert knowledge, and the implementation of water policy and conservation decisions. The typical staging of this process can be generalized in the following way (Fig. 9.1): 1. Stakeholders raise concerns about values that are under threat, goals that are not being met, or undesirable conditions that should be changed; 2. Managers engage modelers to undertake quantitative assessments of the needs and outcomes of concern raised by the stakeholders; 3. Modelers conceptualize, develop, and run computer-based groundwater simulations which are used to identify cause-effect relationships between decisions and their consequences, evaluate environmental and economic risks (in the form of forecasts scenarios, numbers and statistics), and compare the outcomes and impacts under alternative courses of action or inaction; 4. Modelers interpret, summarize and share the knowledge gained from the modelling study in form of a written report or presentation; 5. Managers evaluate the findings of the modeling study; and 6. A policy, investment, or management decision is implemented, discussed with or proposed to the stakeholders. In this “traditional” staging of the complicity ethic, the accomplices can make bad decisions either unintentionally by omission, due to lack of information, or

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Fig. 9.1 The traditional staging of the complicity ethic in groundwater modelling and management decisions

simply by miscommunication. Each accomplice sees the groundwater system through a different lens and uses different language to describe how it works. Modelers use the language of mathematics and statistics, managers use the language of laws and regulations, and stakeholders use everyday language (including local ecological knowledge) to describe the stocks and flows of water upon which their livelihoods and activities depend. This “language barrier” (represented by the shapes under each type of actor in Fig. 9.1) can hinder good decision making and disrupt the flow and transparency of requirements, opinions, and information through the series of steps leading up to a decision. Figure 9.1 portrays how the instance whereby stakeholders raise their concerns is temporally and spatially disconnected from the groundwater modelling study. Groundwater models are devised within the confinement of the hydrogeologist’s tools, expertise, and his or her personal understanding of how the groundwater system works. The result is often a model that focuses almost entirely on the physical aspects of subsurface flow, rather than on the dynamics of the coupled hydro-social system. It is often the case that in physically-oriented modeling, human stresses (e.g., pumping rates) are conceptualized as following a predetermined schedule, rather than responding and adapting to the condition of the groundwater system (as it is the case in real-world situations). In the end, models of this kind are likely to provide poor explanatory power and stall efforts to tackle groundwater issues in societally-relevant ways. The complicity ethic is further exacerbated when the modeler fails to clearly articulate and communicate the assumptions and findings from the modelling study in a way that can be understood by interested parties. Modelers often assume that

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numbers and statistics are all stakeholders need to make good decisions—they build a numerical model, they interpret the outputs, they write a report, they make a presentation, and then they leave. Crucially, valuable information about the underlying modelling assumptions (that could eventually invalidate the predictions and conclusions of the modelling study) is not openly and sometimes honestly communicated to the stakeholders. This conversation, if it were to happen, should take place throughout the modeling project. Discussing the rationale behind each model choice and the effects that they have on model predictions, helps create a shared understanding of the concerns of stakeholders as well as the limitations of what groundwater models can and cannot provide in terms of predictions (Peeters 2017). The complicity ethic presented herein also raises fundamental questions as to whether a groundwater model can and will effectively address questions and concerns raised by stakeholders and decision makers. Often years or decades pass between the conception of the model and the decision that it is meant to address, meaning that by the time a specific course of action is agreed, the hydro-social system might have already changed the way it functions. This can be a physical change (e.g. the duration and frequency of droughts or groundwater salinity levels), political change (e.g., a new administration or enactment of water regulations), social change (e.g., the level of compliance with water allocations), or economic change (e.g., fluctuations in crop or mining markets). Changes and delays can compromise the usefulness and validity of a groundwater model and any recommendations derived from it. The complicity ethic places the modeler in a position of utmost responsibility. Surely, it is the modeler’s job to answer, to the best of his or her abilities, the questions that policy makers and stakeholders need to address in order to make informed decisions. This responsibility should go beyond the burden of collecting and making sense of environmental data, building a sensible numerical model out of it, and evaluating a set of potential courses of action/inaction. Taking responsibility is really about communicating the results in a way that is transparent and easily understandable to everyone. Consider, for example, the task of developing a large-scale hydrogeological model in a region where agriculture, mining and the environment compete for water. The modeler ought to be concerned about the potential harm to society if the forecasts prove to be wrong. This means thoroughly testing and calibrating the models on historical observations. It means subjecting the models to critical review by fellow modelers and listening carefully to what they have to say. It means placing oneself in the shoes of those who will be subjected to the consequences that the model aims to predict. It means asking questions about what course of action best balances interests of all parties and understanding trade-offs between economic development and environmental protection. It requires modelers being honest about their models going to all necessary lengths to be objective. The bottom line is that everyone— modelers, managers and stakeholders—should be willing to discuss the assumptions and limitations of groundwater models and accept that their ability to accurately predict the behavior of groundwater flow in real-world situations is fraught with uncertainty (Peeters 2017; Voss 2011a, b).

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So how can groundwater modelers avoid the curse of the complicity ethic? The authors believe that it comes down to adhering to a core set of ethics and best practices. As a first step towards enforcing accountability though ethics, we propose a key set of guiding principles for groundwater modelers. Our hope is that by adhering to these principles, the likelihood of the complicity ethic taking place can be reduced.

9.3 Groundwater Modelling Ethics: Eight Guiding Principles Professional intentions are often mandated by discipline-specific professional codes of ethics or charters. By articulating what ought to be the core intentions of a groundwater modeler, we aim to stimulate thinking about the ethical dimension of modelling and its role in supporting groundwater management and conservation decisions. This is not to suggest that groundwater modelers are unethical. Nor is it to suggest that being ethical is sufficient to make a good modeler; there is no substitute for scientific expertise. Rather, the goal is to give a new appreciation that a charter can be used not only to promote the highest scientific standards, but also to establish trust and acceptance by the stake holders and general public, and to protect the interests of all the parties with a stake in a groundwater resource. The following guiding principles might be useful: (a) Guiding Principle 1: Is a Numerical Model Really Needed? Does the matter at issue merit the development of a numerical groundwater model? It would be unethical for a modeler not to ask this question. Prior to embarking on any modelling project, the modeler first needs to critically assess both the quantity and quality of the data that is available to support, guide, and constrain the modelling exercise. If data is insufficient or unreliable, a numerical model will not be able to simulate the behavior of the groundwater system or do so with considerable bias, unpredictability and uncertainty. In such cases, simpler, alternative methods, such as the analysis of field data without a model, may be sufficient for stakeholders to consider possible options, choose strategies for making decisions, and evaluate how well they perform (Anderson et al. 2015). (b) Guiding Principle 2: Visit the Study Area If a numerical model is warranted, the modeler should become familiar with the study area and visit the site in person. As obvious as this may seem, the widespread availability of satellite imagery, remote sensing, and geospatial datasets can give the modeler a false sense of familiarity with the study area. Regardless of the amount and quality of the digital information that is available, it would be unethical for a modeler build and deliver a groundwater model without ever visiting the study site. A site visit will most likely reveal facts that cannot be obtained by reviewing journal articles or scientific reports, expose potential inconsistencies or flaws in the hydrogeological

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conceptual model, and provide insight on how to address them. Crucially, a site visit offers the opportunity to interview and engage with farmers, water users and local residents. This can give the modeler the knowledge and information need to place the model’s data and assumptions in the context of the hydro-social reality that it is trying to represent. (c) Guiding Principle 3: Acknowledge that Groundwater Models Cannot Provide a Single True Answer Many combinations of groundwater model inputs and parameters can be tuned to produce results that match field observations: i.e., the parameters of a model therefore can never be exactly known. Consequently, there is always the potential for many different groundwater models to appear as acceptable descriptions of the system of interest. Technically, this issue is referred to as nonuniqueness or equifinality (Anderson et al. 2015). In practice it means that two hydrogeologists holding exactly the same data are bound to deliver groundwater models with different conceptualizations and parameters. Each modeler will hence scout a different hypothesis of how the system works. Although both models honor the observations, it is impossible to discern which the best is. Both possess conceptual errors and their forecasts are fraught with uncertainty. Typical sources of uncertainty include lack of knowledge of the underlying system, numerical approximations, observation errors, and lack of data. Uncertainty is an inescapable element of groundwater modeling, but it can be measured characterized. The modeler is therefore ethically accountable for acknowledging and conveying that groundwater models cannot provide a single true answer. At the very least, the modeler should explore one alternative conceptualization and characterize the uncertainty of all model parameters. The modeler should also develop a healthy skepticism of model outputs and strive to understand how uncertainty propagates to model results. (d) Guiding Principle 4: Communicate Forecasts and Their Uncertainty in a Clear and Unambiguous Manner Guiding principle 3 highlights the critical role of uncertainty within the groundwater modelling process. The fact that uncertainty must be quantified, evaluated, and reported—regardless of the framework or approach that is adopted—cannot be overstated. The objective of reporting uncertainty is to present an estimate of the true uncertainty (which can only be computed probabilistically) considering what is known about the system, the type of forecasts that are being sought, and the knowledge gained through the process of building and calibrating the groundwater model. In our view, unambiguous communication of uncertainty is the cornerstone of ethical groundwater modelling practice. It would be simply unethical and misleading to present results without a measure of the uncertainty limits around a forecast. This leads to the idea that model results should be represented as forecasts—that is, a prediction expressed through a probability distribution, statistical quantity, or percentile from a cumulative probability distribution (e.g., the 95% exceedance estimate of annual groundwater discharge to a wetland). The approach is similar to how

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weather forecasts are communicated. Weather forecasts combine extensive datasets, representations of atmospheric physics, meteorology, and real-time satellite images within a highly sophisticated model, but daily forecasts are always given with the associated probabilities (Anderson et al. 2015). The modeler must realize, however, that stakeholders are unfamiliar with statistics and the theoretical formalities of uncertainty analysis. The use of engaging and illustrative visual aids to represent capture zones, contributing areas, flow paths, and Pareto fronts should prevail over the use of numbers, statistics, tables, and text. A graphical representation of the nature and magnitude of forecast uncertainties will better inform and educate policy developers about the likelihood and risks associated with particular actions or inactions. If stakeholders can understand and appreciate that the uncertainty around a forecast is too large, they will be in better ground to deliberate on the worth of investing in additional field data according to its ability to reduce the uncertainty around the forecast of concern. (e) Guiding Principle 5: Find Assumptions Before They Find You Peeters (2017) describes the virtues of conducting so-called assumption hunting—a forensic examination of how each modeling assumption affects predictions. Assumption hunting entails a formal scoring and structured discussion in plain English about model choices, the possible alternatives, and how they can affect model predictions. Assumption hunting is applied by scoring each modelling assumption (high, medium, low) based on four questions. The first three questions relate to the rationale behind each assumption in terms of data availability, project resources, and technical limitations. The last—and most important—question pertains to the expected effect of the assumptions on the predictions. Assumption hunting can be a powerful tool to enforce ethics and accountability in groundwater modelling. A plain English discussion of modelling assumptions democratizes the modelling process and fosters stakeholder engagement by allowing non-experts to quickly assess and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the modeling exercise, to qualify confidence in the forecasts that are being presented, and to prioritize future data collection efforts. (f) Guiding Principle 6: Identify and Manage Behavioral Effects Modeling is not just about models. Every groundwater model captures, to a lesser or greater extent, behavioral traits and biases from the accomplices that participate in the complicity ethic. Confirmation bias (Nickerson 1998) is a common psychological trap in which people tend to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. One situation where a modeler may unintentionally introduce bias is through preference or advocacy for a specific graphical user interface or modelling package. Stakeholders and managers can also introduce bias by arguing for modelling assumptions that further their cause. Modelers should strive to avoid confirmation bias or at least be conscious how it may affect predictions. Expert opinion (Krueger et al. 2012) may be helpful in fact finding, problem solving, or understanding a situation, but it can add subjectivity and personal bias

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to the analyses. It is often the case that a modeler misuses or misunderstands the specification of a fixed-head, specified-flow boundary or no-flow boundary condition within a model. For example, if a well is placed near a stream and the stream is defined as fixed-head, the drawdown may be underestimated if the pumping is large enough to affect the stream stage (the specified flow boundary may supply more flow that the stream carries, and drawdowns should be greater for the given pumping rate). Mental models (Jones et al. 2011) are cognitive constructs used by people to understand and handle the complexity of the real-world. Since these constructs can vary widely between modelers, managers and stakeholders, the modelling process should necessarily aim at making individual mental models explicit and provide a means to help the accomplices build a shared understanding of a given problem. Ethical concerns over these (and other) behavioral effects should motivate a requirement for open scrutiny and peer review of the modelling process by stakeholders, regulators, opposing parties, and the general public. This requirement can be met through participatory modelling methods (Castilla-Rho 2017; Reeves and Zellner 2010). (g) Guiding Principle 7: Use Free Software The modeler must realize that open-source software is not just the most economical option—it is also an opportunity for ethical change. Open-source software does not have a monetary cost, it does not require a license and therefore can be used by anyone. Groundwater codes like MODFLOW have been developed and vetted by institutions like the US Geological Survey, whose business is not to sell software. Flopy—a Python library for creating, running, and post-processing MODFLOWbased models—is updated and maintained on a daily basis (see Github repository https://github.com/modflowpy/flopy). The use of open-source codes can help futureproof groundwater resource evaluations, since software is no longer an obstacle or excuse not to revisit or challenge models previously developed by other agencies. A groundwater modeler that uses free software can therefore promote and ethical scientific dialogue and long-term tracking of his or her hydrogeological investigations. (h) Guiding Principle 8: Build and Use Groundwater Models in a Facilitated Mode Groundwater models are used to simulate hydrogeological processes and subsequently inform the design and implementation of alternative courses of action. As shown in Fig. 9.1, groundwater models are traditionally constructed by hydrogeologists who are more detached from the decision process than those parties who have a stake on the groundwater issue that is being decided upon (Bots and Van Daalen 2008). In the following section, we argue that participatory modelling approaches, including group model building using System Dynamics and Agent-based models (Étienne 2013; Van den Belt 2004; Castilla-Rho et al. 2015) have the potential to transform any modelling exercise into a purposeful and ethical activity where the stakeholders become directly involved in the specification, construction and use of a groundwater model, and most importantly, in defining the questions that the model should be able to answer (Fig. 9.2).

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Fig. 9.2 Eight guiding principles for ethical groundwater modelling practice

So far in this chapter, we have underscored the need for innovative, effective and efficient ways to make decisions about the development, use, and protection of groundwater resources. The eight guiding principles outlined in the previous section suggest that these decisions will be ethically rooted only to the extent that groundwater practitioners act in an unbiased, objective, and morally responsible manner when planning, designing, and executing groundwater models and presenting their results to the interested parties.

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9.4 Ethics in Practice: The Pragmatic Pathway—Science that Informs with Models that Engage Communities acknowledge that activities that further economic development—such as those involving the extraction of coal, gas, minerals, or water for irrigation— will bring change, and that this change will have both positive (jobs, taxes to pay for things) and negative consequences (often social and environmental). Within this duality, communities have much to gain from better understanding the science and having a space where their concerns and opinions can be openly shared and debated. Industries that need groundwater for increasing throughput could also greatly benefit from working more closely with stakeholders, communities and regulators to reach consensus on whether, when, and under what circumstances their operation will be approved under legal, environmental and licenses to operate. Working in this way would increase project certainty, reduce risk, improve investment terms, enhance profitability, and lower community management and remediation costs. It seems natural to believe that both communities and industries would gain from having a well-defined, transparent, objective, inclusive, and ethical process of deliberation. We envisage a process where our eight guiding principles blend into a truly interactive and collaborative environmental impact assessment and decision-making process (Fig. 9.3). This process relies, to a great extent, on the capabilities of open-source software and the increase in computing power that has become widely available

Fig. 9.3 The Collaborative Pathway: a framework to overcome the complicity ethic in a noncollective world

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over the past couple of years. The purpose is to increase transparency and the flow of information, which together lead to better decision making. In the following we outline of how this new paradigm for groundwater modelling and stakeholder engagement might be initiated and maintained. The process itself is a learning journey that evolves as a contentious groundwater issue triggered by a new development proposal traverses what we call the “Collaborative Pathway.” The Collaborative Pathway enables negotiation and decision-making with collaborative software platforms that fulfil three fundamental and interrelated aims: (i)

collate and present all available information in a dynamic, and visual flow of numerical, environmental, social, and economic data in a way that transparently informs stakeholders of the various issues at play, (ii) allow real-time modelling based on state-of-the art methods, and (iii) enable interactive learning via “management flight simulators” whereby stakeholders explore and evaluate trade-offs within, between, and across sectors and the effects that candidate policies and management strategies might have in steering the system toward sustainable outcomes. It is our belief that any process that achieves these three aims will enable stakeholder groups to effectively integrate sectoral views, identify shared or diverging interests, and facilitate joint problem solving. Overall, it allows people to co-create a better-functioning system together. The Collaborative Pathway can be formulated in six phases which, at a bare minimum, are necessary to deploy and maintain the process with fidelity. While the six phases suggest a linear sequence of events, in actual implementation there are often feedback loops and improvement cycles that might need to be considered. Some phases, steps and activities may be occurring simultaneously, and the process may circle back to revisit earlier stages. (a) Phase 1—Pathway Initiation Stakeholders decide that it is sufficiently important controversial that a new and controversial resource development needs to be scrutinized and evaluated under the Collaborative Pathway. There are a number of reasons that may lead a community to embark on this process, which may include: • • • • •

A newly-defined water governance vision or direction An impending environmental degradation or crisis A new mandate or regulation A new dataset and/or research suggesting that action is needed The status quo is not delivering the desired outcomes.

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A timeline and an initial cost estimate for the Collaborative Pathway is made and funding commitments are made by the proponent of the new development, donors, and/or any other suitable source. (b) Phase 2—Collective Exploration of the Problem Representatives of the community meet with the proponent, regulatory and advisory agencies to collectively: • Identify the key stakeholders who share concerns about the proposal • Assess the degree to which these stakeholders perceive the issue and the assessment to be a priority • Liaise the willingness and commitment from multiple agencies and programs to support the Collaborative Pathway over a set period of time • Nominate a leadership and modelling team responsible for the oversight of the process • Define the terms of reference and scope of analysis (e.g. is climate change, socioeconomics in or out of scope?) • Determine what baseline data are critical/important to be collected and provided on an agreed data platform, accessible to all participants • Identify the key concerns, impacts, and strategies that need to be addressed by the analysis. The goal is to determine what factors, drivers, and parameters are most important to the analysis and to identify quantitative thresholds of what will be defined as “failure”. Within the collective exploration phase a largely ignored key valuable aspect to consider is gender. Collaboration, solidarity, norms of reciprocity, collective action and conflict resolution are more likely to operate in women’s and mixed groups (Agarwal 2000; Westermann et al. 2005). (c) Phase 3—Geospatial Information The proponent, stakeholders and government agencies feed baseline data into a webbased geospatial information platform. Examples of platforms in production include those developed in Nicaragua and Haiti (see https://hydrata.com/) to manage groundwater. Next, the leadership and modelling teams evaluate the various inputs from Phase 2 and develops a Data Acquisition Plan and a Modelling Plan. The Data Acquisition Plan is designed based on data worth and uncertainty analyses performed on existing numerical models (if available). This step ensures that critical data gaps that are being considered. The Data Acquisition and Modelling Plans are then published on the geospatial information platform and feedback is sought from participants. This feedback is assessed by the leadership and modelling teams and each Plan is amended as required. If requested, additional field investigations are conducted and completed by the proponent, and the new datasets are fed into the geospatial information.

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(d) Phase 4—Groundwater Modelling Real-time groundwater modelling capabilities are used to perform forecast and uncertainty analyses in accordance with the Modelling Plan, periodically reporting on progress and consulting with proponents and stakeholders via participatory modelling exercises. Modelling results and scenarios explored during each exercise are documented, saved, and uploaded to the geospatial information platform, including clear statements about the levels of confidence, uncertainty, and assumptions made during the modelling. A final phase of collaborative modelling and consultation is undertaken to ensure that the modelling results align with everyone’s expectations. (e) Phase 5—Hydro-Social Simulation Modelers and stakeholders get together to build a shared description of the socioeconomic system that the intended resource development will intervene. The goal here is to conceptualize an agent-based model (Epstein and Axtell 1996; Castilla-Rho 2017) that captures the hydro-social processes and dynamics of the given problem. The agent-based model is then coupled to the groundwater modelling platform. The end product is a customized management flight simulator (Castilla-Rho 2017) that can be used as a laboratory in which a wide range of policies, decisions, and models can be tried and tested without the risk of making mistakes on the real system. Management flight simulator experiments can be instantiated, paused and rerun any number of times, enabling participants to evaluate management strategies, interpret simulation results, and propose solutions in a dynamic and iterative fashion. (f) Phase 6—Making Collective Decisions Based on the outcomes of Phase 5, stakeholders and responsible agencies decide about the proposal, and document the process of arriving at that decision using the management flight simulator. Depending on the problem, this decision would be provisional, and would involve a process of periodic re-interrogation (phase 2 to phase 6) recognizing the dynamic nature of social and ecological systems, and the need to test and rest management strategies and modeling accuracy. We recognise that integrating and institutionalising the Collaborative Pathway into policy and law processes is likely to confront barriers. Water law and environmental law have traditionally been based on a view that governments and their experts understood water problems clearly, these problems could be defined in advance and that problems afflicted relatively stable social and ecological systems (de Burca et al. 2013; Garmestani et al. 2008; Holley 2017; Holley and Sofronova 2017, 129). Based on these assumptions, governments exercised their authority via uniform, mandatory and typically rigid rules, to try and halt degradation and return ecological systems to their prior ‘pristine’ conditions (de Burca et al. 2013; Cosens et al. 2014; Garmestani et al. 2014; Holley and Sofronova 2017, 129). Fortunately, this way of thinking about and implementing law has been increasingly confronted with new developments and visions (Holley et al. 2012; Dorf and Sabel 1998; Burris et al. 2005), that seek to understand and respond to the presence of uncertainty and variability within systems, the scales of their critical functions

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and harness multiple local knowledges and capacities for learning and innovation (Garmestani et al. 2008; Cohen 2008; Holley and Sofronova 2017, 130). As documented elsewhere (e.g. Drahos 2017), there are various theories, practices and models emerging in this ‘line of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). One prominent approach is the pragmatist model—sometimes referred to as experimentalism or democratic experimentalism (Dorf and Sabel 1998). As described by Nourse and Shaffer (2014, 125–126), this is an approach that “bring(s) together regulators and stakeholders in iterative processes… [and] refocuses attention on local context while envisioning conditions for deliberative engagement among officials and stakeholders to enhance learning and coordination… By focusing on learning and innovation in a world of uncertainty and dynamic change, new governance theorists implicitly put the need for emergent analytics front and center.” This governance model aspires for a continual flow of information and learning through a network of placed based problem-solving groups (such as we proposed above, and including various public decision makers) that are explicitly experimental in nature (Karkkainen et al. 2000). These groups are minimally directed by a central body (such as a government agency) whose role is primarily to monitor and coordinate local experiments, to facilitate horizontal diffusion of best practice (e.g. best modelling technologies), peer to peer benchmarking (e.g., whether collective exploration in Phase 2 was more inclusively in some areas than others, despite comparable resources and contexts) and continual improvements in management techniques and the design of institutions to respond to the problem (such as the outcomes of Phase 5/6) and build on continually refined minimum benchmarks (Sabel et al. 1999). For further on this model see Table 9.1. Glimpses of the applicability of this model have been revealed across the globe (Sabel and Zeitlin 2011; Holley et al. 2012) albeit often confronting their own challenges (such as resourcing) and they offer a potential way forward for institutionalizing the Collaborative Pathway.

9.5 Conclusion Although sophisticated numerical modelling tools elevate our intuition and improve our predictive capabilities on which to base groundwater conservation decisions, they too often hinder our ability to steer these decisions through complex community consultation processes. Modelers must strive to effectively communicate complex information (i.e., our current scientific understanding, including the quantification of risk and uncertainty) to all stakeholders, including the public. The technology, time, and resources needed to build effective and engaging decision-support platforms, until recently, were only available within highly skilled and multidisciplinary teams in a select group of research institutions. Today, this task can be undertaken by a lone programmer in a laptop computer, leveraging on the diverse ecosystem of opensource numerical modelling and web-based visualization frameworks that exist in the Github community.

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Table 9.1 Pragmatist Learning Architecture (Karkkainen et al. 2000; Scheuerman 2004) Core institution

Overview

Place-based institutions

• Whilst the precise form of these decentralized participatory institutions varies, they often involve a collaborative effort of government, citizens and businesses that deliberate together to solve local problems • These locales are to be given autonomy as problem-solving institutions to self-assess and self-adjust their problem solving. Such adjustments/adaptation are based on their own assessment and on a benchmarking process using reported information about similarly located institutions

Central government body

• The chief purposes of these bodies include assisting the State and local institutions in experimentalism by reducing the costs of information flow and fostering local benchmarking processes by assisting different governing locales to determine which locales are similarly situated, what projects those bodies are pursuing and what modifications of the project might be needed under local conditions • In consultation with local actors, the central agency uses the locally reported data to periodically reformulate and progressively refine minimum performance standards, desirable targets, and preferred means to achieve them

Within the proposed Collaborative Pathway, the intended purpose of numerical models is no longer to synthesize data and knowledge to generate numbers and statistics, but to create a process where these numbers and statistics can be explored, updated, scrutinized, contested and qualified by all interested parties. Since perceptions of the issue at hand can vary widely among different people, such process should aim at making individual mental models explicit and facilitate the interactions that are needed for building a shared mental model of the natural system or resource whose intervention is being assessed (Jones et al. 2011). The co-design of management flight simulators within a Collaborative Pathway can potentially capture and deal with the plurality of people’s perceptions, values and goals, and how these change over time. The success of the Collaborative Pathway relies on using technology to elicit, shape, and align people’s mental models, and in doing so, identify a set of policies or conditions that need to be put in place for a resource development to be approved by the community. The Collaborative Pathway may provide a practical framework for overcoming the complicity ethic in groundwater modelling and management decisions in a noncollective world. The six phases of the Collaborative Pathway operate sequentially and synergistically to blend the eight guiding principles of our ethics charter and build a level of engagement that enhances the ability of stakeholders to agree, for instance, on the viability and constraints that need to be imposed on a new resource development project. The open and transparent sharing of information, through web interfaces which collate datasets that would otherwise be buried in physical reports and/or proprietary GIS software, democratizes the access and the interpretation of

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data. Real-time modelling can then map this data into insights about the likely impacts of the proposed development, and most importantly, it enables rapid scenario testing to find answers to questions that stakeholders may ask at different stages of the process. Real-time modelling also allows a prescriptive review process whereby model uncertainty can be kept minimal by constantly recalibrating the model against a stream of real-time monitoring data (e.g., groundwater level or river base flow observations can be used to periodically update initial conditions, model parameters, and predictive scenarios). Finally, agent-based modelling provides a working environment to investigate complex social, economic, cultural and governance processes that are seldom captured by the traditional modelling toolbox. Management flight simulators are co-constructed and subsequently used to drive a thought-provoking participatory modelling process to elicit and shape peoples’ understanding (mental models) of biophysical, governance and inter-sectoral relationships. Such processes can be useful to overcome issues of trust and competing goals. We are confident that the Collaborative Pathway can and will increase the likelihood that stakeholders understand the science underpinning decisions, sectoral risks and trade-offs, and what might drive a particular sector towards best- and worst-case outcomes. The Collaborative Pathway however is not a silver bullet or panacea. We should not underestimate the many complexities and difficulties that arise as the process is implemented. But if done right and with the right tools and strategies, it can become a useful framework to encode ethics, resilience, and sustainability in our decisions relating to the development and protection of groundwater or any other common-pool resource that sustains our humanity. Acknowledgements J. C. Castilla-Rho acknowledges Peter Dupen from WaterNSW for his original ideas and interest in this work. Cameron Holley acknowledges financial support under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project funding scheme (project numbers DP170100281 DP190101584). J. C. Castilla acknowledges financial support from “Cátedra Arauco in Environmental Ethic” and Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas and the Centro Interdisciplinario de Cambio Global, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Conflict of Interests We declare to have no conflict of interest.

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Chapter 10

Sustainability and the Future of the Commons. An Epistemological Examination Gonzalo Salazar and Nicolás Cerna

Abstract The current ecological crisis and its most obvious planetary expression, climate change, represents true limitations to current ways of life, especially regarding the management of so-called common goods. This implies a critical revision of the philosophical basis that sustains current socio-ecological dynamics. First of all, this article enquires into modern “anti-commons” philosophy: the “possessive individualism” of processes for the cordoning off and privatization of common goods. Secondly, collective sustainability actions are critically reviewed. Such actions are considered to have veered in one way or another from their original intentions, due mainly to paradigmatic limitations stemming from the modern “anti-commons” agenda. Finally, a reflexive analysis is made in order to progress towards a procommons sustainability agenda in order to: (1) make effective fulfillment of global sustainability agreements obligatory; and (2) valuate and promote institutions of collective action for government of the commons on a local scale. Keywords Tragedy of the commons · Sustainability · Urbanism · Common goods

10.1 From the Tragedy of the Commons to “The Commonality of Tragedy” Climate change is an expression of the results of a predatory political paradigm that has allowed for unlimited exploitation of the biosphere and its socio-ecological components. It is impossible to face this scenario without posing the question: how are we to guide the behavior of the actors involved, given that political inequities and economic interests lead to ambiguities and distortions regarding the definition of minimum levels of sustainability that must be collectively established? Moreover, how do property relations influence the feasibility of the actions needed for such G. Salazar (B) Institute of Urban and Territorial Studies & Campus Villarrica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] N. Cerna Center for Local Development, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Villarrica, Chile © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_10

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a definition to take place? Is it possible to achieve and/or impose agreements on sustainability in the context of the “possessive individualist” paradigm, in which regulatory frameworks exacerbate private property at the same time that the elements of the biosphere outside of the realm of private property are exposed to deterioration? The latter shall be referred to as common goods (also known as communal, or simply commons), and are defined by Helfrich as “the networks of life that sustain us”, including air, water, seeds, space, cultural diversity and the human genome. They are, as such, “a network woven to create productive, reproductive and creative processes”, and providing through their use the means to feed, communicate, educate, transport and process wastes (Ramis 2017, 14). The global neoliberal political and economic system, consolidated as a result of the Washington Consensus of 1989, far from promoting pathways or institutions for the collective management of the commons, established a mercantile administration. This form of administration exacerbates the appropriation and depredation of the biosphere and its components, excluding a poor (and impoverished) majority who are forced to carry the burden of the environmental impacts of the same administration. Why, if sustainability is a challenge of planetary proportions, does management of the commons respond to a profoundly “anti-common” neoliberal system? An “anticommons” attitude within neoliberalism stems from the historical project of modern rationality, in particular from Hobbes’ political realism and Locke’s economic liberalism. The former proposed the need for coercive power in order to domesticate man in his natural state, as neither freedom nor property could be constituted without such domestication. The latter defended the right to property (and the consequent appropriation of the earth by means of money and “Primary Contracts”) as an essential attribute of individual freedom, prior to the State and superior to political power. The regime of common goods, as a “pre-social” relation contrary to free appropriation, had to be overcome in order to dissipate the state of permanent war and make way for freedom, based on property. Processes of political centralization and the dynamics of privatization that characterized the progression of these historical experiences, led by defenders of the possessive individualist paradigm, were unable to neutralize the emergence of pro-commons proposals. During the 19th century, utopian and mutualistic anarchism denounced bourgeoisie property relations as a source of misery among the masses, and proclaimed property as theft (Ramis 2017); Marx and Engels attributed the origin of economic and political inequality to private property over the means of production (land and machines), obligating the proletariat class to sell their labor for a subsistence salary, transforming the bourgeoisie into a class that accumulated wealth through the appropriation of external labor. Such property relations also led to the ecological collapse of small landholders and the socio-environmental crisis of urban workers (Foster 1999). In 1968, the biologist Garrett Hardin published a provocative article in Science entitled “The tragedy of the commons” (Hardin 1968). In his view, the regime of common goods led inevitably to a tragic fate, as each user intensifies his own use of the commons over that which he has been assigned, to the point that the irrational collapse of the commons becomes an obvious paradox. Hardin concluded that in order to prevent and/or mitigate the collapse of the commons, it would be necessary

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to eliminate collective management institutions, replacing them with coercive mechanisms such as privatization or state control. Gardiner (2001) recognizes the truth behind Hardin’s paradox. In his article “The Real Tragedy of the Commons,” Gardiner highlights the ecological impact of the population over the “carrying capacity” of the Earth. Thus the “real tragedy” is that the planetary ecological footprint and climate change have been essentially passed down to future generations. Given the impossibility of intergenerational cooperation, intervention by coercive means will be necessary in order to establish a common binding agenda for the reduction of pollution and GHG emissions, and responsibility for this would fall on future generations. Wallman-Hellmer (2015) established that the inapplicability of agreements to reduce GHG emissions would reveal a truly “liberal tragedy of the commons,” as the regulatory frameworks of liberal democracies would end up reproducing global behavior on a national scale regarding the management of waste, emissions and common goods. This begs the question: what is the difference between the anti-commons attitude of “possessive individualism,” and proposals for coercion inspired by mercantile or state administration? This coercive “pro-commons” attitude is not necessarily opposed to an “anticoercive pro-commons” vision. However, within the framework of the possessive individualism philosophy, the relation between these two views may not be entirely clear. For example, Acselrad et al. (2010) provide a critical review of the implementation of mechanisms for “negotiated resolution”, or the development of an area of “social dominion” in which environmental conflicts are resolved in an “extrajudicial” manner, through direct relation between the actors involved. In this view, the dynamic of negotiation is built upon a hypothetically symmetrical relation of mutual interests between communities and investors that respond to a process of “depoliticization” of conflicts. This dynamic pursues the reduction of operational costs in order to “unlock” investments. In the end, this apparently non-coercive alternative is inspired by a Hobbesian “socializing” vision of domination without politics. Such an alternative involves a true “technology of social demobilization” similar to macro-strategies for the insertion of global economic dynamics into local territories through unlimited exploitation and the extraction of raw materials (Acselrad et al. 2010). Ruling out from the start the idea of a “one way” view based on a theoretical recipe, Elinor Ostrom (2010) highlights positive experiences of a “Common-Pool Resource” (CPR) regime, with certain particular characteristics: small-scale systems, located in a specific territory, in which the number of actors varies between 50 and 15,000 users (whose income depends directly on the CPR), mainly fisheries, grazing lands, groundwater basins, irrigation systems and forests. In such experiences, the value of trust, self-organization and relations of reciprocity and redistribution is evident. However, the author also points out the limits of a CPR regime: they are limited to renewable resources, situations of scarcity and free of negative externalities for third parties (notwithstanding hypothetical scenarios of asymmetrical relations in which a powerful monopoly perpetrates highly polluting activities). Ostrom’s study allows for higher precision regarding the notion of commons adopted by Hardin,

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which implies a fallacy: the absence of property relations and clear rules among participants, similar to the colonial principle of nullius terras (Ostrom 2000). In light of these arguments, it is worth asking: are there sustainability alternatives within pro-commons proposals, for which the foundations are not substantially different from the “possessive individualist” vision? What role can collective action institutions with particularly localist experiences play in the construction of a democratic sustainability alternative? Can such “pro-commons” collective action institutions in each territory, co-exist with coercive alternatives that provide for global orientation towards commons management?

10.2 Hegemonic Sustainability Agenda and Its Connection to Possessive Individualism The environmental movement of the 1960s posed a key political issue: that the tragedy of the commons has a fundamentally ethical basis, based on how relations between the individual with his peers, the rest of the environment, and with future generations, are understood. For the environmental movement, this assertion made sense only in the context of a profound criticism of the dominant form of sociopolitical organization imposed by the possessive individualist philosophy. Connected to this ethical reflection was a direct and pragmatic call to change the patterns of global destruction caused by modern society’s lifestyles. As authors such as Carson (1962) showed empirically that “in nature nothing exists alone,” not only was the systemic complexity of the tragedy of the commons better understood, but so was the socioecological interconnection of the human condition. The disruptive science of “rightorientation environmentalism” (Foster 2014) made it clear that the ethical problem of the relation between society and environment and pragmatic change in order to respond to the tragedy were spatially-temporally united. In this way, from the work of Leopold (1949), Carson (1962), Ehrlich (1968), Commoner (1971), among others, the need for action that seeks out profound and effective changes was brought to light. Many such actions were viewed from a coercive dynamic perspective, but all were in connection with the socio-environmental heterogeneity that the ecological principles that emerged from their work demanded (e.g. Commoner’s “laws of ecology,” or Leopold’s Land Ethics, or Naess’s Ecosophy). However, as the 20th century progressed and the concept of sustainable development was institutionalized, the call for ethics and the ecological pragmatism of the environmental movement became secondary. Starting with the first Earth Summit in 1972, up to its latest version in Rio 2012, the UN agenda has placed the challenge of seeking out institutional formats capable of achieving a balance between the “environment” and “economic development” at the center of its framework for action. This can be seen through article 8 of the Brundtland Report of 1987: “There has been a growing realization in national governments and multilateral institutions that it is impossible to separate economic development issues from environment issues; many

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forms of development erode the environmental resources upon which they must be based, and environmental degradation can undermine economic development.” On the one hand, the UN World Commission on Environment and Development, created in 1983 (replaced in 1992 by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development), was a significant agent for the global institutionalization and expansion of the need to respond to complex socio-environmental challenges. However, this expansion has been unavoidably accompanied by a reduction of the matter to an operating sphere in the form of a political transaction, within the paradigmatic limitations of the current economic system. In this way, in light of the new “sustainable development” equation, the “disruptive” questioning by the environmental movement became nuanced, over time leading to the installation of a political agenda under the eaves of dominant democratic liberalism. In this context, the “neoliberal business-as-usual approach to development” is seen as part of the solution, and not part of the problem (Castro 2005; Singer 2010; Salazar 2018). In this arena of political transaction, rather than question the ethical and paradigmatic basis that has unleashed the tragedy, the focus has been on developing mechanisms that adjust social and environmental externalities to pro-growth economic policies. This has led to reformist sustainable development economic agendas (Rees 1995; Hopwood et al. 2005; Salazar 2018) reflected in the oxymoronic concept of “sustainable growth”, promoted by the Rio+20 Declaration (2012), and the idea of “green growth” as the primary engine of change in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, promoted afterwards by the UN in 2016. From this optic, and in line with the tradition of the “only possible way” (Ostrom 2002), multilateral agreements on matters of sustainable development and climate change have been reduced to programs based on the achievement of future goals. The problem with this is that on the way, such goals are often changed, nuanced or lose a sense of urgency, priority or public recognition. The lack of political will show by States for the implementation of Agenda 21, the delays in the onset of the Kyoto Protocol, or the sudden departure of the United States from the Parris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are all indicative of such ambivalence. In this context, the establishment of a paradigmatically coercive agenda has been dominant in the continuation of “modern anticommons.” In practice, the supposedly coercive mechanisms for achieving goals, has been relegated to little more than cheap rhetoric. This is what Singer (2010) and Foster (2014) refer to as the prevalence of an organized culture of denial, often financed by large corporations, and ultimately facilitated by the self-imposed complacency of the sustainable development agenda. In this context, both Gardiner and Wallimar-Hellmer are correct: the complex challenges of sustainability and climate change must be treated as the real tragedy of the commons. This is not due solely to the fact that liberal democracies cannot guarantee that the tragedy will not occur, or the impossibility of establishing dialogues with future generations; it is also because in practice the dominant sustainability agenda, supposedly seeking for a re-signification of the commons, has been incapable of looking beyond current paradigmatic limits.

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10.3 Towards Sustainability of the Commons Acselrad et al. (2010) make a valuable critique of mechanisms for “negotiated conflict resolution.” This critique can also be extrapolated to the issue of mechanisms for the implementation of sustainability agreements. As mentioned, these authors highlight the depoliticizing character of such negotiated conflict resolution mechanisms. These mechanisms are considered to be “social demobilization technologies” that contribute to “unlocking” natural resource investment agendas and facilitate the “economic insertion” of investment-worthy territories into the global economy. This social demobilization technology is framed within a “field of negotiation” that pursues the eradication of conflict and political action from issues regarding the control of territories and their biological and socio-ecological components. This “field of negotiation” requires “common interests” which, when hypothetically met through the assistance of brokers, neutralize environmental conflicts. In addition, such conflicts are neutralized in a manner that is supposedly “non-coercive,” extra-judicial and based on an interaction “between the stakeholders directly involved,” without “delegating” management of their interests through third parties such as the judicial system. In other words, this process involves civilizing for investment. In any other way, local communities would simply oppose without reason, never truly comprehending the way in which the investment agenda materializes its expectations. This approach is framed within a general strategy of depoliticization, implemented in the same way as “strike breakers” in the world of labor. The episteme from which it stems can be traced to what authors such as Beck et al. (2001) denominate “reflexive modernity.” It is a “self-critical revision” of the foundations of modern rationality, and an attitude that originates from the historical roots of such rationality, seeking to impose a change of direction. What are the tools of this self-critical process? Modern rationality. Into what is this epistemological limitation translated for effects of sustainability challenges? In the view of Leff (2010), reflexive modernity seeks to “comprehend ecological risk and reabsorb the effects of modern rationality within its theoretical and instrumental frameworks, established within the process of globalization”. Such frameworks are oriented towards the “integration” of territories and cultures into the global system, which, in their ecological and economic essence, do not vary significantly from the political order that Wallerstein defined as the world system. Is it possible, then, to develop a proposal for sustainability based on modern reflexivity that is not based on negotiated resolution? Furthermore, is there space for a “pro-commons” perspective within the sustainability agenda established by modern reflexivity? In answering these questions, Leff (2010) emphasizes that the capacity to provide a response to the tragedy (what is referred to as a “civilizational crisis”) requires sources of thought and action beyond the knowledge and self-complacent mechanisms of modernity, which depend on the “ecologization” of technology and markets. This calls for a different praxis of sustainability, established from a socio-ecological rationality that transcends the possessive individualism philosophy and the objectification of nature. From this socio-ecological perspective, the commons are not

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understood solely for their inherent value, but also as a dynamic that emerges out of social imaginaries (Leff 2010) and collective socio-spatial practices of resistance, resignification and creativity. On the one hand, there is an entire regulatory tradition inspired by the tragic narrative of the commons, in which knowledge on the social relations that protect the “pro-commons” is limited. However, this tradition has been displayed as a framework of action that is opposed to collective governance of goods, and prone to mechanisms of restricted access through privatization. This is what leads to the tragic scenario, now of global proportions. On the other hand, there are fruitful experiences of commons management by collective action institutions that operate within limited spaces. Such experiences are developed by relatively small-scale communities, with a strong collective identity and identification to territory on a very local scale. Although such pro-commons experiences appear to be potent alternatives of epistemological openness and creative solution, their spheres of action are far outweighed by the full magnitude of the tragedy caused by industrial development on a planetary scale (Harvey 2011). As such, there is a continued search for sustainability alternatives oriented towards common goods which, within a socio-ecological paradigm: (1) overcome current frameworks of global action that have weakened or relativized global sustainability agreements in favor of investment patterns that States utilize to further their development goals. This can be achieved through instruments of negotiation that exempt investors from environmental legislation, or through economic compensation (“purchasing” the right to break sustainability agreements within current regulatory frameworks); and (2) respect and incorporate the complex network of social relations which, on a local scale, maintain communities with strong ties between their members and the ecosystems that they inhabit. This approach seeks to reconcile the individual interests of community members with the collective interest, harmonizing the economic advantage that members have through use of the commons. The latter are administered with the appropriate ecosystemic balance that guarantees the equilibrium and survival of the commons over time. In taking up the critique of Wallman-Hellmer (2015) on the regulatory framework of liberal democracies, such systems must become open to profound modifications both on the level of public policies and constitutionally, if the idea is to avoid repeating experiences with failed global sustainability agreements. On the level of public policy, there are serious limitations for the fulfillment of global sustainability agreements due to the weight of historic global economic insertion under the neoliberal paradigm: in order to fulfill development goals and poverty reduction targets, this paradigm requires flexible regulatory frameworks oriented towards providing target countries with higher levels of competitive advantage, favoring investments in predatory and polluting extractive activities (Anderson 1996; Harvey 2005; Katz 2014). On a constitutional level, research by Patricio Meller (1998), Juan Gomez (2004) and Gárate (2012), among others, claim that based on the Chilean experience, the liberal democratic system is incapable of producing modifications to the legal property structure or public-private economic relations without this resulting

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in a drastic crisis. This is a logical consequence derived from the “mandatory provision” (Páez and Cabello 2011) logic that private property represents within the “possessive individualist” agenda. How then can a global sustainability proposal be constructed, considering State inertia, the current political order, as well as local experiences of commons management? One possible alternative can be found in a relational and inter-scalar outlook that allows for coercive action when a global agreement strategy and/or action is necessary, while at the same time protecting and promoting positive experiences of commons governance. One of the possible solutions to the sterility of global sustainability agreements is the idea of radical democracy coined by Chantall Mouffe, revealing the importance of recognizing the “constitutive role of social antagonism” that has been made invisible by liberal democracies. This action requires recognition that the regulatory framework of liberal democracy is the product of an “original exclusion” that can and must be sanctioned and overcome (Mouffe 1999). The political action needed for liberal democracies to fulfill established global sustainability agreements requires overcoming the neoliberal consensus and the “mandatory provisions” or “Pandora’s boxes” on which economic actors base their actions for weakening or relativizing sustainability agreements. This political action must give way to processes of local democratization that habilitates communities to pressure companies and States to fulfill global sustainability agreements. In addition, local communities must establish the minimum standards of environmental subsistence that they deem necessary: “really” democratize, recognizing the antagonism and original exclusion that must be overcome, which can become a “globalization” strategy by means of popular democracy. This is a key pillar for also facilitating the emergence of collective and associative actions. Such actions serve not only as trigger mechanisms for the social change necessary for the care of and responsibility for the common good, but also as creative processes in which the common is continually produced and cultivated. The latter can occur concretely through two interdependent dynamics: from the “power of collective labor” as productive processes that produce common value (Harvey 2011), expressed increasingly through countless local initiatives around the world; and from social imaginaries (Leff 2010) which, as forms of world views and creations, contribute to the emergence of social relations in the context of an integral paradigm based on diversity and difference. As a whole, the capacity to combine different mechanisms, regulatory and collective processes (such as those that have been described), represents a significant challenge for the commons. This is to say, a challenge for “the networks of life that sustain us,” or the foundation and the end result of the praxis of sustainability. Acknowledgements This manuscript was supported by CONICYT Research Project Fondecyt Regular N1181575; by Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable (CONICYT, FONDAP No 15110020); by Centro de Estudios Interculturales e Indıgenas (CONICYT, FONDAP No 15110006) and by Research Project VRI Interdisciplina UC No II160035.

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References Acselrad H, Das Bezerra NB, Muñoz E (2010) Inserción económica internacional y “resolución negociada” de conflictos ambientales en América Latina. Rev EURE Rev Estud Urbano Regionales 36(107):27–47 Anderson P (1996) Balance del Neoliberalismo: lecciones para la izquierda. Rev Viento del Sur 6:37–47 Beck U, Giddens A, Lash S (2001) Modernización reflexiva. Política, tradición y estética en el orden social moderno. Alianza, Madrid Carson R (1962) Silent spring. Houghton Mifflin, Boston Castro CJ (2005) Sustainable development: mainstream and critical approaches. Org Environ 17:195–225 Commoner B (1971) The closing circle: nature, man, and technology. Knopf, New York Foster B (1999) Marx’s ecology. Materialism and nature. Monthly Review Press, New York Foster J (2014) After sustainability: Denial, hope, retrieval. Routledge, London Gárate M (2012) La revolución capitalista de Chile. 1973–2003. Ediciones UAH, Santiago Gardiner SM (2001) The real tragedy of the commons. Philos Public Aff 30(4):387–416 Gomez J (2004) La frontera de la democracia. El derecho de la propiedad en Chile, 1925–1973. Ediciones LOM, Santiago Hardin G (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science 162(3859):1243–1248 Harvey D (2005) Brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford Harvey D (2011) The future of the commons. Radical Hist Rev 109:101–107 Ehrlich PR (1968) The population bomb. Buccaneer Books, New York Hopwood B, Mellor M, O’Brien G (2005) Sustainable development: mapping different approaches. Sustain Dev 13(1):38–52 Katz C (2014) “Neoliberales en América Latina: Ortodoxos y Convencionales”, en Conceptos y Fenómenos Fundamentales de Nuestro Tiempo. Ediciones UNAM, Ciudad de México Leopold A (1949) A Sand County Almanac: and sketches here and there. Oxford University Press, Oxford Leff E (2010) Imaginarios sociales y sustentabilidad. Cultura y Representaciones Sociales 5(9):1–121 Meller P (1998) Un siglo de economía política chilena (1890–1990). Editorial Andrés Bello, Santiago Mouffe C (1999) El retorno de lo político: Comunidad, ciudadanía, pluralismo, democracia radical. Paidos, Barcelona Ostrom E (2000) El gobierno de los bienes comunes. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Ciudad de México Ostrom E (2010) The Challenge of common-pool resources. Environ: Sci Policy Sustain Dev. 50(4):8–21 Ostrom E (2002) Reformulating the commons. Ambiente Soc 10:1–22 Páez LC, Cabello S (2011) El coto vedado como fundamento de la desobediencia civil. Derecho y Humanidades. 18:85–98 Ramis Á (2017) Bienes comunes y democracia. Crítica del individualismo posesivo. Ediciones LOM, Santiago Rees W (1995) Achieving sustainability: reform or transformation? J Planning Lit 9(4):343–361 Singer M (2010) Eco-nomics: are the planet-unfriendly features of capitalism barriers to Sustainability? Sustainability 2(1):127–144 Salazar G (2018) The incongruities of sustainability: an examination of the UN Earth Summit Declarations 1972–2012. In: Spinozzi P, Mazzanti M (eds) Routing sustainable development towards a culture of wellbeing. Routledge, London, pp 46–62 Wallman-Hellmer I (2015) The liberal tragedy of the commons: the deficiency of democracy in a changing climate. In: Birnbacher D, Thorseth M (eds) The politics of sustainability: philosophical perspectives. Routledge, New York, pp 20–35

Chapter 11

Global Social Change: Human Ecology from an Eco-Ethical Perspective Ronaldo Gomes Alvim, Magda Matos de Oliveira and Hernan Gerardo Castellanos

Abstract The human role in the transformation of nature and the impacts of the significant changes that have occurred over time have been accompanied by an increasing awareness of ecology and bioethics in human development. It is important to discuss the environment and its variability in several narratives from the perspective of human ecology. Human ecology examines anthropic relationship with the surrounding environment to describe and discuss complex problems, such as global warming, decreasing biodiversity, large-scale deforestation and human ethical bias. This study presents a reflexive analysis of the bioethical context from the human ecology perspective. The study’s purpose is to establish an eco-ethical conscience that enables us to rethink the future of our species and reaffirms the relevance of ethical, social and environmental values in pursuing the global common good. Keywords Human ecology · Eco-ethics · Multidisciplinarity · Environmental philosophy

11.1 Introduction “Human ecology” combines two terms that stem from juxta-posed concepts. Essentially, the first term refers to the meaning of life and the interdependence of biotic and abiotic factors, as expressed by Tansley in the 1930s. The second term concerns new ways of observing nature and reflects differing degrees of interaction between social and environmental phenomena. This interaction generates cultural and economic values that result in concrete actions and subjective interferences that may be direct (Alvim 2012, 20). The combination of these terms implies understanding the reality of a social group within the specific environmental factors of its ecosystem in a relation of intra- and R. G. Alvim (B) · M. M. de Oliveira Health and Environment Programme, Centro Universitário Tiradentes, Maceió, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] H. G. Castellanos Ecological Research Center, Universidad Nacional Experimental de Guayana, Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_11

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interdependence. The combined concept considers the influence of abiotic factors, space, time and population concentrations that affect the behavior of the human species. These factors are mechanisms of survival, i.e., direct or indirect adaptation, that determine population structures, their bases of interpretation, management and valuation of (or contempt for) the resources that are part of their cultural basis and the circumstances that may result in the success or decline of the occupation of a territory. The ecological foundations described here and the successful and failed attempts of the human species throughout history position us as an integral part of an environment and as one of the millions of other beings that are part of a physicalnatural space, not just as a being placed in this environment to use it as we wish (Valera 2018). Human ecology is rooted in the human condition as an object of study. The field’s variability is based on human behavior in an interdisciplinary perspective. This perspective transcends views based on norms, standards or social values. It considers adaptability, variation and the pressures that the physical-natural environment exerts on the development of individual and collective practices (Morán 1990; Pires and Craveiro 2011). The study of human ecology was introduced in 1936 by Robert Ezra Park as a means to explore the relationships between human beings and their environment, primarily the urban human environment. This approach was initially characteristic of the Chicago School. Subsequently, human ecology addressed three fundamental points: 1. The urban phenomenon: its development viewed not only through the economic aspect but also through ecological, social, cultural and political aspects; 2. The socio-environmental perspective: here, the environment is the source of one’s subsistence, and therefore, the attempt to avoid the extinction of other living beings is an attempt to avoid one’s own extinction; 3. The economic factor: the ability to use resources practically is the same ability that preserves or degrades the social and cultural values of a social group. From these viewpoints, the complexity of the human universe constitutes a dynamic of interdependent factors. The viewpoints enable one to conceptualize human activities as research objects that positively or negatively influence the conditions of human life. Each point is linked to a larger entity, whereby all are presented as having a close relationship with the human universe, its relations with its surroundings and the development of a sustainable pattern of life. In this perspective, human ecology appears to be complex and dynamic. Each force or social movement manifests itself, and it is understood and analyzed in a multidisciplinary way because there are no boundaries between types of knowledge. Rather, there is a universe of circumstances that are formed and must be analyzed as a whole (Fig. 11.1). Human ecology involves the recognition, practice, maintenance and transformation of bioethical values within the social evolutions of each individual and/or the

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Fig. 11.1 Multidisciplinary view of human ecology (Alvim 2017)

collective. This approach seeks evidence and motivations in relation to degradation, conflict and the sentimental approximation of myth, religion and the use and misuse of the environment. Human ecology is a relationship constructed over generations. This relationship influences the contemporary decisions of a community, as expressed by Hans Jonas regarding the principle of responsibility according to Siqueira (2009). In fact, these decisions are conditions that make the understanding of approximation (love) result in rejection (contempt), convert harmony to disorder and facilitate the contradiction between growth and environmental sustainability (Alier 2002). In essence, the study of human ecology is the study of human survival. Therefore, one should not criticize its anthropocentric perspective. However, obviously, one should never ignore the other species that inhabit our planet. One should seek symbiosis, not domination or uncontrolled possession according to the post-modern paradigm (Bernal 2014). One cannot deny the strong influence of human ecology in social and biological contexts that are understood in similar ways and vary only according to a specific point of view (Table 11.1). The condition that converges human ecology as one of the most influential, dynamic and complex areas of study is the strong influence of the classical studies of society on its anthropocentric context to the aspects of biological ecology itself, as described by Alvim and Castellanos (2014), searching for the unit through the subject to socio-environmental complexity (Villar 1997), definitively nullifying the vision of a simplistic paradigmatic study. Human ecology seeks to adopt a holistic vision without falling into plant-plant, animal-plant or man-man mutualistic simplifications. It understands the power of sustainability to lie in the ability of various social groups to manage their resources

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Table 11.1 Comparison of biological and sociological views (Alvim 2014) Contexts

Biological view

Sociological view

Ecosystem

The interaction between biotic components and their physical environment. Both influence long-term stability

The human being as a biotic community interacts with its surroundings but also contributes its anthropogenic acts (technological, industrial, social, economic, political, cultural revolutionary, landscape-related and urbanization-related), which influence the stability of the physical and natural ecosystems

Migration

Intense directional movements from one place to another governed by diverse biological and environmental factors

Human displacements to other regions involved in distinct phenomena and diverse implications (social and environmental)

Extinction

The complete disappearance of a species

Extinction applies to ethnic, linguistic, and cultural disappearance

Dynamics of space use

A region is occupied and sized according to the abundance of resources and for reproduction

The occupation of space for food production and settlement, without the physical-natural space preventing its occupation

Demographic growth

It depends on the physical and biological conditions and characteristics of space, such as depredation, reproductive capacity and food

It depends fundamentally on the physical characteristics of space because humans can produce food in other areas and transport it

Resilience

Ability of the physical-natural environment to undergo modification without compromising the surroundings and to return to its natural aspect

The human capacity to avoid environmental catastrophe is based on the philosophy of sustainable development, which seeks to harmonize growth and environmental respect

based on local development and the dynamics of interrelationships that function in networks (Loring 2016). That is, human ecology accepts the complexity of relationships. It enables one to view the human species first hand as an animal being and its relationships with plants, geography, health and space based on historicalphilosophical similarity. This approach serves as the basis for perceiving the human species in its surroundings from a multisystem perspective. Human ecology’s response to contemporary science is not only to analyze environmental impacts, as most studies suggest, but also to understand the entire coevolutionary thought model (i.e., man-nature-man) from the sense of necessity and adaptability of the man-nature-man triad.

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Human ecology’s attractiveness stems from the fact that it is the most democratic of academic fields. It is up to the researcher and the reader how to study or interpret the analyzed object, which may be approached from a wide range of scientific fields, including those in which the researcher has not been formally trained, while not requiring one to leave one’s analytical comfort zone. To paraphrase Camões in Lusíadas (1999), to be a human ecologist is to study areas “never previously navigated.”

11.2 Human Ecology in the Contemporary World The planet seems to be suffering intense effects from the “scorched earth” tactics of anthropocentric schizophrenia. We create conflicts and seek resolutions that do not acknowledge the need for effective and satisfactory action on behalf of our species and biodiversity. The sense of self-alienation described by Alvim (2012) causes us to avoid recognizing the truth. Thus, we do not feel compelled to change our views because this would affect our standard of living. As a result, the current paradigm creates a false impression of abundance and the eternal ability of science to smooth out the chaos we have created. In addition, as we have seen, science does not respond to society but to corporate interests. To avoid misinterpreting human ecology, it is necessary to emphasize that it does not seek to neutralize the human view or to humanize ecology. In fact, it tries to approach closer to the common sense of science, mutual respect and values. These values include social standards in the sense of adaptation, responsible public policy, conflict resolution and social and environmental justice, whereby technology should be applied to improving the quality of human life in terms of a stable environment, rights and, above all, duties. Considering these points as fundamental to global sustainability, the following question arises: which political position approaches human ecology? We believe that this question is highly politicized. However, considering the current rules, it does not reflect to a particular political tendency. It does not fit the consumerist, capitalist or goods accumulation pattern, much less the relations of production of technocentric goods. In addition, it does not involve socialist thinking because humankind provides the force and awards value, whereas the physical-natural environment is directed to serving the needs of our species. Thus, all positions are anthropocentric. That is, they do not regulate the use of resources in a sensible and sustainable way, whereas, in truth, they should be closer to a new ethics of social and environmental responsibility. In human ecology, human perception conforms to eco-centrism. That is, individual and collective behavior must be based on the ecosystem, including living and nonliving entities. One must realize that each action is based on self-perception of how our actions affect other entities, not only the present and future generations of human beings (Stenmark 2002; Samuelsson 2008). In other words, human ecology involves the quest to understand local human needs and the biological conditions capable of supporting human life in a given territory as a collective responsibility. Although it

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may seem paradoxical, bioethical values apply to the resilient sentiment of the local ecosystem rather than to the human condition itself.

11.3 Eco-Ethics and Technology Throughout human history, ethical reflection has occurred regarding scientific, economic and social dilemmas but not regarding technological dilemmas. With respect to the latter, we often do not consider determining the positioning of the problems that generate them. This failing is particularly apparent with respect to the controversy regarding global warming, biodiversity loss and large-scale deforestation. It primarily appears in social forums characterized by ideology, whether the responsibility to meet human needs at any cost or the constant attempt to present complete and sustainable foundations as opposed an ethical principle for nature and society. This approach makes it impossible to break through the barriers that perpetuate centuries-old dogmas and standards. To bring the meaning of eco-ethics into the context of human ecology, we must go back to the year 1927, when Paul Max Fritz Jahr coined the word “bioethics”. Jahr’s proposition was to recognize the best way to relate human beings to other living beings, which was a way to reduce all forms of suffering in life. In the 1970s, Van Rensselaer Potter offered a new, more complete and holistic concept of human ecology. Potter started from the view of Aldo Leopold, who discussed the “Land Ethics.” That is, Leopold sought to connect the biological sciences with ethics. Potter’s view concerned the human condition in its civilizing behavior, which depends on the maintenance of ethical values (Potter 1971; Cini 2017). This new view introduced an interdisciplinary perspective that correlated science and ethics. This perspective facilitated discussing issues related to the survival of the species and respect for other beings. It brought ecological knowledge closer to human values. The ethical and emerging problems perceived from this new perspective apply to water pollution, global climate change, disease epidemics, the configuration of the civilization model and sustainable development, among other issues, whether on a local or global scale. According to González (2014), Hans Jonas addresses, on the one hand, these large themes based on the precautionary principle, which warns about catastrophes and the risks caused by the advance of technoscience. On the other hand, as noted earlier, the principle of responsibility seeks to encourage humankind to adopt an eco-ethical consciousness that enables us to rethink and safeguard our future. However, it is notable and worrisome that reductionist appropriations have limited the discussion of eco-ethics issues to scientific research, particularly that of technoscience. Such reductionism does not permit philosophical reflection but rather the mere commercialization of cutting-edge products. It minimizes the proposal of an interdisciplinary and global eco-ethics concerned of broadly environmental and consumption issues (Biasoli and Calgaro 2017).

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According to Braña and Grisolia (2012), the discussions regarding bioethics, denominated and resized in this context, have been little examined in relation to environmental issues and the advance of technoscience. In the context of human ecology, bioethics could be an important tool for the analysis of the current development model, with the goal of establishing a model that meets the needs of the global community while encouraging sustainability on behalf of future generations. Therefore, a profoundly relevant reflection that applies bioethics to science and technology is inevitable. Here, both science and technology should be encouraged to rely on eco-ethical values, i.e., to avoid increasing the fragility of life while respecting the principle of precaution and, as previously stated, based on the principle of responsibility (Jonas 1995). The adoption of a retrograde posture reveals the ethical neglect of humankind, human development and the changing technological implications of the civilization of the future, in which the environment will have suffered from decisions based on poor environmental policies. The lack of scientific and social changes interferes with the development of life and is characterized by a cyclical response of aggression, with significant adverse consequences for humanity. Thus, an ethical and global philosophical rethink is required. According to Freitas et al. (2012, 903), this rethink refers to human behavior, whether an intentional act of caring for the environment or only each individual’s responsibility for him- or herself and for others. However, to analyze how individuals regard the universe, it is necessary to resort to the morality in question, i.e., how beneficial or harmful one is regarding the environment. An ethical position should start from “the human home.” That is, it should refer to everything that helps make one’s environment better starting with creating one’s own healthy home. However, contradictorily, it seems that humankind is not part of this concept. That is, it is as if the human were a divine being placed into the environment, whose exploitation was necessary to provide humankind with things beyond its basic needs. One must question this human attitude in the sense of preserving the determining macro space based on a view of humanity as sovereign, unique and superior to other living beings by virtue of being rational. Therefore, it is imperative that egocentrism, consumption and technological production should not overshadow other values and principles to the detriment of humankind’s ability to preserve nature. This contradiction is interesting. Humans recognize personal finitude and that of the human ecosystem. However, no significant efforts are made in relation to the conscious use of natural resources (renewable and non-renewable) and the resolution of the problems that we have created. This lack of action will significantly affect human life and the planet, whose size and complexity require the concerted involvement of many, who must be held accountable (Fischer et al. 2017, 11). Can the problems produced by this sense of supremacy be overcome? If not, how could we state that the human is a rational being? When we acknowledge that this “thinking” being kills its own kind, annihilates cultures and peoples, deforests, pollutes, contributes to the extinction of other living beings, tortures such beings in the name of pointless scientific research and pursues constant industrialization (with its intense social and environmental impacts), one realizes how limited human

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reason, responsibility, morality and ethics are in relation to the socio-environmental situation. In response to humanity’s various aggressions, nature demonstrates its power in the form of severe climatic variation, global warming, glacial thawing, the greenhouse effect, pandemics and countless manifestations that undermine the quality of life. These factors contribute to complex contemporary problems, such as the migratory phenomenon or the extinction of the human species (Diamon 2005; Veiga 2006; Waldman 2006). Pereira and Fonseca (2017) highlight the need to use environmental ethics to protect the fundamental values of humanity. They argue one should consider all humans as included in their hermeneutic curriculum. i.e., it should be made evident how the conditions of the denial of humanity inform social conflicts. This view makes us think that each society has its economic limitations, natural resources and access to goods and services. Thus, we should act to strengthen environmentalist values, that is, to view the environment as an irreplaceable source of basic goods to improve the quality of human life. These values should be upheld regardless of differences or the number of people added to a community. We should value diversity of culture and knowledge within the same social space. The misfortunes suffered by environmental immigrants should serve to teach us to value and better manage natural resources, which are clearly correlated with well-being.

11.4 Conclusion Eco-ethics viewed from a human ecology perspective must be governed by the principles of the inseparability of human health and the social and physical-natural environment. This statement is particularly valid today, with the use of state-of-the-art technologies that seek to harmonize knowledge with the life of the planet. Contemporary and global problems, such as emerging diseases, migratory phenomena and uncontrolled technological consumption generated by environmental damage, have surpassed the resilience capacity of ecosystems. Such problems represent an extraordinary challenge for humankind and our ability to see our planet with a complex and interconnected view. It is necessary to state that the contemporary human population is conditioned by its fragmented, atomistic vision and the simple fact that we use technologies that were introduced to improve the quality of life. However, such technologies are often used to justify disastrous decisions or interventions, whether natural, social, cultural or economic, that inflict substantial costs on the public. Similarly, people are reluctant to accept decreased quality of life, which is an uncomfortable reality that distances us from fundamental ethical principles and from environmental negentropy.

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References Alier JM (2002) The environmentalism of the poor - a study of ecological conflicts and valuation. Cheltenham, UK Alvim RG (2014) Bases da Ecologia Humana. In: Alvim RG, Badiru AI, Marques J (eds) Ecologia Humana: uma visão global. Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, Feira de Santana, pp 21–40. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278667539_Ecologia_Humana_uma_ visao_global_Human_Ecology_a_global_vision. Accessed 15 Sept 2018 Alvim RG, Castellanos HG (2014) ¿Es el desarrollo sostenible ajustado a la visión de equilibrio en la ecología? In: Alvim RG, Badiru AI, Marques J (eds) Ecologia Humana: uma visão global. UEFS, Feira de Santana, pp 247–295. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278667539_Ecologia_ Humana_uma_visao_global_Human_Ecology_a_global_vision. Accessed on 15 Sept 2018 Alvim RG (2017) A Ecologia Humana em sua complexidade. Paper presented at the International lecture cycle on Human Ecology. Conference. Maceió, Brazil Alvim RG (2012) Ecologia Humana, da visão acadêmica aos temas atuais. Edufal, Maceió Bernal GG (2014) El ser humano y su condición bioética. Universidad de la Sabana, Bogotá Biasoli LF, Calgaro C (2017) Fronteiras da bioética: os reflexos éticos e socioambientais. Educs, Caxias do Sul Braña GMR, Grisólia CK (2012) Bio(ética) ambiental: estratégia para enfrentar a vulnerabilidade planetária. Rev bioét 20(1):41–8 Camões LV (1999) Os Lusíadas. Scipione, São Paulo Cini RC et al (2017) Categorização dos sujeitos em condição de vulnerabilidade: uma revisão na perspectiva da bioética. Revista Iberoamericana de Bioética. 0(5):1–16. https://doi.org/10.14422/ rib.i05.y2017.002 Diamond J (2005) Colapso:como as sociedades escolhem o fracasso ou o sucesso. Record, Rio de Janeiro Fischer ML et al (2017) Da ética ambiental à bioética ambiental: antecedentes, trajetórias e perspectivas. Hist Ciênc Saúde Manguinhos 24(2):391–409 Freitas LV et al (2012) Ética do cuidado de enfermagem diante da crise ambiental. Online Braz J Nurs 11(3):893–906. Nov 2012. http://www.objnursing.uff.br/index.php/nursing/article/view/ 3833/html. Accessed on 13 may 2018 González G (2014) El principio de responsabilidad y el principio de precaución. Hans Jonas y la constitución de una ecoética. Diacrítica 28(2):241–270 Jonas H (1995) El Principio de Responsabilidad: Ensayo de una ética para la civilización. Editorial Herder, Barcelona Loring PA (2016) Toward a theory of coexistence in shared social-ecological systems: the case of cook inlet salmon fisheries. Human Ecol 44(2):153–165 Morán EF (1990) A ecologia humana das populações da Amazônia. Vozes, Petrópolis Park RE (1936) Human Ecology. Am J Sociol 17(1):1–15 Pereira A, Fonsec MCV (2017) Além de números e estatísticas: o fenômeno migratório sob uma perspectiva ética. Rev Pesq Interdiscip 1(l):79–90 Pessini L (2013) As origens da bioética: do credo bioético de Potter ao imperativo bioético de Fritz Jahr. Rev Bioét 21(1):9–19 Pires IM, Craveiro JL (2011) Ética e prática da Ecologia Humana: questões introdutórias sobre a Ecologia Humana e a emergência dos riscos ambientais. Apenas Livros Ltda, Lisboa Potter VR (1971) Bioethics: bridge to the future. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs Samuelsson L (2008) The moral status of nature reasons to care for the natural world. Umeå University. http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2%3A141556/FULLTEXT01.pdf. Accessed on 24 ago 2018 Siqueira JE (2009) El principio de responsabilidad de Hans Jonas. Bioethikos 3(2):171–193. http:// www.saocamilo-sp.br/pdf/bioethikos/71/171-193.pdf. Accessed on 2 set 2018 Stenmark M (2002) Environmental ethics and policy-making. In: Ashgate Translations in Philosophy, Theology and Religion. Ashgate Publishing, New York

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Valera L (2018) Home, ecological self and self-realization: understanding asymmetrical relationships through Arne Næss’s Ecosophy. J Agric Environ Ethi. www.rsearchgate.net/deref/https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1007%2Fs10806-018-9715-x Accessed on 2 set, 2018 Veiga JE (2006) Meio ambiente & desenvolvimento. SENAC, São Paulo Vilar S (1997) La nueva racionalidad. Comprender la complejidad con métodos transdisciplinarios. Kairós, Barcelona Waldman M (2006) Meio ambiente & antropologia. SENAC, São Paulo

Chapter 12

Life and Evolution: Why Theology Matters Lucio Florio

Abstract The religions include a vision about life that has gravitated for millennia and that seems to survive, even in a time of supremacy of the scientific and technological rationality. In fact, they operate as great shapers of meaning for a large part of humanity. Particularly, the coexistence between a scientific view of the phenomenon of the life with religious understanding frames of it is a fact in many places. In effect, the religious vision continues to confer an ultimate horizon of meaning for many biologists, for a significant number of teachers in biology, as well as for a multitude of believers. There are many people who nurture their vision of life both in science and in some religious conception. For this reason, it is important the analysis of the biblical theology of life. It allows evaluating the scope of a cultural force that persists in its reading of the phenomenon of life, even coinciding with scientific visions of it. One of the aspects to understand is the inclusion of the evolutionary perspective assumed by the present Christian theology of life. The theology of evolution is one of the most significant approaches of this way of thinking about the phenomenon of the life. Moreover, in the current state of risk of the biosphere, the need to promote integrated visions becomes imperious. This is the reason to try to understand the new perspectives of the eco-theology. Keywords Life · Evolution · Theology · Anthropocene · Eco-theology

12.1 Theology of Life and Evolution The evolutionary vision of life has implied a varied reaction on part of Christian theology since its scientific formulation by Charles Darwin. In our time, theological reflection, after a hesitant first stage, has incorporated the evolutionary explanation in its worldview (Pascual 2005; Auletta et al. 2011; De Asúa 2009). In fact, there has been an important increase in theological publications on the evolutionary topic. L. Florio (B) Department of Philosophy and Literature, Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_12

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In the field of the Catholic Church, this has occurred even within the scope of its official publications (Martínez 2011, 589–612). Theology has been conceived by the Christian tradition as an understanding of the faith through the available rational resources. Therefore, to think the life as a creature today requires using the paradigm of evolution (Arnould 2010). Since the phase of the controversial debate between evolution and revelation seems to have passed, it is possible elaborate a “theology of evolution.” This theology tries to integrate the evolutionary understanding of life, without concordisms, into the theological thought (Lambert 1999; Haught 2006a, b; Kemp 2011). Anyway, there is still a conflict between some religious views and evolution. To be exact, the problem subsists between some different forms of creationism and the neo-Darwinist interpretations. The conflict continues primarily in the North American area, although resonances elsewhere: in Europe (Arnould 2010, 357) and also in Latin America (Machado Silva et al. 2015). However, such polarization does not affect the theology elaborated in other cultural environments. For now, purely literal hermeneutics of the Bible does not predominate in the Catholic field and in much of the European Protestant area. But neither is the influence of biologically reductionist readings on populations of widespread popular religiosity—like Latin America or African areas, for example, open to a religious understanding of life. On the other hand, academic scientific culture has English as its own language and it implies a gravitation of the methodological rules and problems of the Anglo-Saxon cultural milieu over the philosophical and theological perspectives of the evolution. In fact, issues such as random, finalism, body-spirit or mind-brain relationships, etc., reach other areas of thought with a link to the categories of Anglo-Saxon philosophical understanding. Moreover, some studies on the history of the connections of evolutionary ideas and the theology have shown the importance of considering biological science in its mature state of development (Ruse 2001), as well as the identification of positions not sufficiently critical in the philosophical and theological area (De Asúa 2009, 277–322).

12.2 Natural Theology The theory of evolution has challenged the classical natural theology. After Darwin, no one can naively appeal to the natural order or the beauty of creation to justify the idea of a first efficient cause. Indeed, the display of the principle of natural selection as one of the structural elements of prevents setting a bloodless natural theology. To the old idea of evil as a questioning of any idea of a perfect and good God is added that of the bloody structure of competition and predation of the vital phenomena. Darwin himself knew the version of natural theology that William Paley proposed in his time. Recently, Richard Dawkins has updated the problem through the images of a “sadistic” or “bloody God” that would emerge from the understanding of life under the prism of natural selection (Dawkins 2000, 105). Theodicy has again been

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harmed, not by the lacerating enigma of human evil—especially of the innocent— but by the amplification of the tragic elements of living nature. Natural theology is fragile to explain the violence of an evolution that consumes individuals, populations and entire species. The evolutionary process is full of “victims” (Peters 2007). As with the mystery of human evil, the philosophical God is, at least, a principle of insufficient understanding for this dimension of natural death. Then, for believing thought it is necessary to appeal, like Job in the Old Testament, to a less rationalistic version of God. Precisely, the inadequacy of natural theology that dispenses with the bloody evolutionary dynamic has led some theologians to rethink God under the dramatic category (Deanne-Drummond 2009, 48–52). In the recent decades, the Intelligent Design project has resumed natural theology. It admits the fact of evolution, but maintains it cannot be explained exclusively by the principle of natural selection, especially in certain complex phenomena (Arnould 2011; Brand 2011). Then, there would be a rational predetermination of the process. But, in contrast with this, according to biblical theology there would be not strictly a design, but a plan, i.e., a non-absolutely-default scheme. In other words, there would be a project or purpose (Eph 3, 11), not a design (Haught 2006a, 87; Haught 2006b, 98–116; Gregersen and Görman 2001). Hence, creation could be understood as the donation of being to a living entity endowed with autonomy in the search for its forms. In addition, the image of God of the New Testament is, on the one hand, Trinitarian, that is, a reality of communion in unity; and, on the other hand, kenotic (Phil 2, 7), that is, altruistically donated, especially on the cross. For this reason, Christian theology has no problem to consider the creation as a donated and autonomous reality. The theology can accept, without problems, that God has given up shaping every species and living individual, leaving a margin of capacity for self-organization—of certain “creativity”—to the process itself.

12.3 Biblical Hermeneutics The crisis produced by the heliocentric theory was overcome, after several centuries, by the convergence of the scientific development with biblical hermeneutics that managed to distinguish the revealed message from the worldviews of the hagiographers. Indeed, the overcoming of the opposition between faith and natural sciences was overcome when criteria of biblical hermeneutics guided by literary and historical principles were established. In the Catholic field, the official solution came with the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) that established the distinctions between scientific and revealed trues. After that, the historical-critical method was formalized by the official hermeneutics as an indispensable method, although not the unique (Pontifical Biblical Commission 1993). As an indirect effect, the application of principles of hermeneutical sciences to biblical texts freed exegetes from dealing with problems established by the natural sciences, such as that of biological

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evolution. From then on, evolution could enter as thematic of theological research, without having to be limited to literal readings of the texts.

12.4 Theological and Scientific Narratives of Life There is a narrative pretension on the part of the biology and the theology. In effect, both disciplines have the intention of configuring a unitary narrative of their objects of study. Biology, on the one hand, tries to elaborate a history of the life, through a phylogenetic description that includes a semiology product: the phylogenetic tree or tree of life (O’Malley and Koonin 2011; Florio 2013). Theology, on the other hand, postulates a narrative unity of the creation, called “economy” by the patristic and, subsequently, “history of salvation.” This history includes the beginning of creation as a first step, and integrates also the history of life. Such a narrative pretension of biology and theology corresponds to an ontological topic. Indeed, biology presupposes a unity in the succession of living and humans; meanwhile, the so-called biblical revelation lies in the assumption of a unitary history of God with the world and human beings. Both ways of knowledge, then, rest on the conception of the temporal unity of their objects of reflection. Therefore, both narratives presuppose the existence of historical ontologies. The scientific narrative, on the one hand, is based on observations and theories that make up a vision of the history of life. This narration is symbolized in semiotic formulas like those of the tree of life. Issues such as the oneness of the whole process and the characteristics of macroevolution must still be demonstrated. Anyway, the theory has a dose of empirical evidence that allows you to string together a history and, later, compose a narration of it. For its part, the biblical narrative, supported by texts that articulate a succession of facts and words of a historical subject (Israel, Church), interprets history from a unity conferred by a divine plan made in time. The narration of the story is plural, due to the diversity of authors, genres, etc. It has been interpreted as homogeneously within the same canonical body (Heb. 1, 1–2) and, more markedly, in the post-biblical time.1 These narratives of the cosmos, of life, of human history and revelation allow an interdisciplinary perspective to frame the question of reality without sacrificing its historicity. But the transfer of a cosmic and human historicity to the terrain of the narrative implies the translation of a complex phenomenon, epistemologically articulated in diverse fields, to a different one, where the scientific, literary and historical categories are recomposed and integrated in a single story (Peacocke 1993, 1–2; Cardenal 1993; Jou 2009, 19–33).

1 “The

history of the theology shows that its development is intimately related to the understanding of the natural, including the human, world that has prevailed at different periods” (Peacocke 1993, 21).

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12.5 Trinitarian Theology of Evolutionary Creation According to the Christianity, creation is the work of a Trinitarian God. Therefore, the origin and destiny of the whole process of the cosmos and life is a reality characterized by the coexistence of three “who” in the unity of the same divine entity. Thus, the beginning and the end of the universe are understood in the horizon of the interpersonal reality. And also, the network of beings in their complex interaction is considered as a reflection of its author. In fact, the structure of the beings is the referentiality, to be “towards-another;” this reveals something of the absolute relationality that is God in himself. The theological concept of perichoresis reminds us that the principle of the cosmos is a communion capable of integrating multiplicity into unity. This suggests the idea that the creation is a single project, but it houses a possibility of generating a multitude of individual and specific beings, as an effect of the Trinitarian reality. Evolution would be, in this sense, an epiphanic deployment of Trinitarian communion. The surprising successive appearance of living beings over the millions of years would emphasize the same ontological structure of God (Edwards 1991; Papanicolau 2006; Florio 2008, 153–158; Doncel 2002). In words of Haught (2006a, 87): “If God is the ultimate source of order, God is no less primordially the source of novelty that sometimes has to disrupt order so as to overcome triviality and monotony. The God of evolution is the inexhaustible wellspring of new form of order.”

12.6 Anthropology The question of the origin of the human being constitutes an exciting scientific debate, with philosophical and theological repercussions. The determination of the way and the moment of the appearance of humans corresponds to the paleontology. In the words of Teilhard de Chardin, the human being appeared silently in the history of life (Martelet 2007, 31). However it may have been the emergence of self-reflective and symbolic thought has been interpreted by theology as a non-gradual but essential novelty, explicable only by a new divine creative act, even in the context of a biological evolution (Ladaria 2012, 146). A hominid, or a group of them, at some point in the past million years, has reached a kind of abstracting, self-aware and symbolic thinking. This is interpreted theologically as the appearance of a spiritual dimension, characterized by its openness to the divine. In fact, according to the biblical perspective, the human being identifies himself as a “you” for God; even more, the human being is the living being in whom the divine Logos will become Homo sapiens in Jesus of Nazareth (Jn 1, 18). This Christological orientation of the hominization process-based on Eph 1, 3–14—leads theology to a very particular definition of what it means to be human.

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The directionality or chance of the process that culminates in the human being are accentuated by different authors in one or another line. Some theologians, privileging chance as a phenomenological note determined by neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologists, point out that God has created an absolutely casual process (Haught 2006a, b, 52–52). The difficulty of maintaining this position in its extreme form is that a casual process could not have arrived until the appearance of a subject fit to become a “you” to the creator -something essential in biblical thought. On the other side, there are authors that extreme the directionality in a vision focused on the human being (Teilhard de Chardin 1971); but also, the supporters of the Intelligent Design seem to lead the reasoning towards analogous conclusions. The anthropological question includes some relevant issues to theology, such as the dilemma between monogenism or polygenism (Facchini 2008, 142–144; Kemp 2011, 217–236), or the original sin (Nielsen 2010). Likewise, the question of the uniqueness of man in the universe is important for the vision of the biblical tradition (Tanzella-Nitti 2002). In any case, the essence of this vision remains that the human being is the image of God (imago Dei), recipient of the Alliance and, above all, the living creature where became incarnate the Word of God (Jn 1, 14).

12.7 Ecological Crisis and Theology The serious situation of this moment of the evolution of the biosphere, caused by the action of the combination of science and technology, seems to require an ethical and philosophical reflection. For this reason, an ecological philosophy and environmental ethics that consider the problem in its dimension of meaning and responsibility, have emerged. Theology has also tried to face the challenges of the ecological question. From the point of view of the biblical perspective, it proposes a consideration of life on the planet. Recently, different lines of theology have developed contributions to elaborate an “eco-theology.” Some of their ideas are: the fraternity or solidarity of human being with the rest of the planet based on the common creative relationships— idea that has crystallized in the image of the “common house” (Francis 2015); the intergenerational justice or ecological sin; the proposals for an ecological spirituality; etc. The ecological theology is guided by the conception of a unity of creation and salvation (Papanicolau 2006; Florio 2008; Conradie 2012). It insists on the vision of the human being as an administrator of the universe, trying to modify the traditional idea that humans have a despotic task respect of the creation. The dramatic situation of the biosphere demands to the theology an effort to approach with its peculiar horizon of perspectives: it has not a technical or scientific access to the problem, but it can offer a strong frame to the ecological Ethics, especially for the believers. In our times, where there are not many strong thoughts to ground a common Ethics, theology can give certain elements to the reflection. Moreover, many inhabitants of the world are believers of different religions. Then, it is important for the universal environmental awareness that they articulate an ecological thinking.

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12.8 Conclusions Why consider the theology, in the age of predominance of the sciences, to think the life? It would seem that it has been definitively overcome because the sciences are solids, they have their own methods and, integrated with technology, they have shaped an autonomous vision of the world, shared by different cultures and individuals. Nevertheless, religion continues to confer an ultimate horizon of meaning to many people—including scientists and teachers in sciences. In fact, there are many believers who nurture their vision of life both in science and in a religious conception. This is the reason to consider the religious worldviews, where scientific and theological sources are decisive. And then, hence the importance of analyzing the biblical theology of life, due its influx on Western cultures and contemporary thought. This would allow evaluating the features of a cultural force that persists in its interpretation of the phenomenon of life. Moreover, the current state of risk of the biosphere demands the integration of the perspectives originated not only in science and technology but also in other fields of the human experiences to promote integrated visions of the Anthropocene challenges. In this sense, the theological perspective could collaborate with elements to configure a strong environment basis of a common ecological Ethics.

References Arnould J (2010) ‘Theologians wanted!’ Some reflections about the creation/evolution debate. Theol Sci 8(4):357–370 Arnould J (2011) Creationism, intelligent design and evolution: a theological perspective. In: Auletta G, Leclerc M, Martínez RA (eds) Biological evolution, facts and theories. A critical appraisal 150 years after “the origin of species”. Gregoriana & Biblical Press, Rome, pp. 573–588 Auletta G, Leclerc M, Martínez RA (2011) Biological evolution, facts and theories. A critical appraisal 150 years after “the origin of species”. Gregoriana & Biblical Press, Rome Brand L (2011) Fe, Razón y la Historia de la Tierra. Un paradigma de los orígenes de la Tierra y de la vida mediante un diseño inteligente. Edit. Universidad Adventista del Plata, Libertador San Martín Cardenal E (1993) Cántico cósmico. Trotta, Madrid Conradie EM (2012) Creation and salvation. Vol 2: a companion on recent theological movements studies on religion and the environment. LIT, Münster Dawkins R (2000) El río del Edén. Madrid, Debate Deanne-Drummond C (2009) Christ and evolution. Wonder and wisdom. SCM Press De Asúa M (2009) De cara a Darwin. Lumen, Buenos Aires Doncel M (2002) The word as design-realiser for the creation, and the spirit as disorder-restorer for the new creation. Stud Sci Theol 8:43–75 Edwards D (1991) The god of evolution. A trinitarian theology. Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ Facchini F (2008) Le sfide della evoluzione. In: armonia tra scienza e fede. Jaca Book, Milano Florio L (2008) Cosmic christology and pneumatology. Updating a traditional theological topic to approach a dynamic univers. In: Valdemar Cistom KS, Zbigniew K (eds) Sens Ludzkiej Prozygody. Wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa, pp 153–158

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Florio L (2013) The tree of life. Philosophical and theological considerations. Stud Aloisiana 4:15–27 Francis P (2015) Laudato si’. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican Gregersen N, Görman U (2001) Design and disorder. Perspectives from science and theology. T&T Clark, Bodmin, Corwell Haught J (2006a) Responses to 101 questions on god and evolution. Paulist Press, New York Haught J (2006b) Is nature enough? Meaning and truth in the age of science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Jou D (2009) Reescribiendo el Génesis. De la gloria de Dios al sabotaje del universo. Destino, Barcelona Kemp KW (2011) Science, theology, and monogenesis. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 2:217–236 Ladaria LF (2012) El hombre en la creación. BAC, Madrid Lambert D (1999) Sciences et théologie. Les figures d’un dialogue. Presses Universitaires de Namur, Bruxelles Martelet G (2007) E se Teilhard dicesse il vero…. Jaca Book, Milano Martínez RA (2011) The reception of evolutionary theories in the church. In: Auletta G, Leclerc M, Martínez RA (eds) Biological evolution, facts and theories. A critical appraisal 150 years after “the origin of species”. Gregoriana & Biblical Press, Rome, pp 589–612 Machado Silva H, Fleury Mortimer E, Nicolini Nabuco Araújode ES, Da Silva PR, Lopes Souza AC (2015) A percepçâo no Brasil sobre a hipótese do Criacionismo da Terra Jovem. Quaerentibus. Teología y Ciencias 5:7–14 Nielsen MV (2010) Sin and selfish genes. christian and biological narratives. Peeters, Leveun-ParisWalpole O’Malley MA, Koonin EV (2011) How stands the tree of life a century and a half after the origin? Biol Direct 6:32 Papanicolau J (2006) Cristología cósmica. Epifanía, Buenos Aires Pascual R (2005) L’Evoluzione: Crocevia di Scienza, Filosofia e Teologia. Studium, Roma Peacocke A (1993) Theology for a scientific age. Fortress Press, Minneapolis Peters T (2007) Evolution, evil and the theology of the cross. Svensk Teol Kvart Årg 83:98–120 Pontifical Biblical Comission (1993) The interpretation of the Bible in the church. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican Ruse M (2001) El misterio de los misterios. ¿Es la evolución una construcción social? Tusquets, Barcelona Tanzella-Nitti G (2002) Extraterrestre, Vita. In: Tanzella-Nitti G, Strumia A (eds) Dizionario Interdisciplinare di Scienza e Fede. Urbaniana University Press, Roma, pp 591–605 Teilhard de Chardin P (1971) El Fenómeno Humano. Taurus, Madrid

Part III

Human Praxis in the Anthropocene. Our Current Situation

Chapter 13

Dwelling in the Anthropocene Cristián Simonetti

Abstract The Anthropocene—term proposed by the scientific community for the current geological epoch to signal humans as a leading geological force in earth history—has open intense debates across the sciences and humanities, in that the traditional gap between natural and social phenomena, occurring respectively at slow and fast temporal rates, have been questioned. Despite the enthusiasm, an irresolvable conceptual limitation marks the term. Irrespective of the very heterogeneity—human and other-than-human—that is currently at risk in this new epoch, the term often refers to a universal male human, sitting above nature. Humans are to be found simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, which risks diluting environmental responsiveness. This global dilemma resonates with the epistemic distance on which knowledge of the Anthropocene is constituted, which requires achieving a cosmic view on earth at the expense of ecological intimacy. Such cosmic view resonates, in turn, with the place the built environment affords humans, as ex-habitants of the earth. Yet, life—human or any other—is not lived on the exterior of a globe but in the Earth, nurtured by sensory attunements to the material transformations of an environment in constant becoming. Acknowledging the immanence of life, this chapter argues, requires a redefinition of what it means to be human. It is through this immanence that environmental responsiveness remains possible in a world in crisis. The chapter concludes by distinguishing responsibility from responsivity, two contrasting modes of engaging with environmental change, defined respectively as a retrospective act resulting from the achievement of epistemic distance and a forward-looking capacity related to knowing intimately the ongoing transformations of the environment. Keywords Anthropocene · Climate change · Epistemic distance · Intimate knowledge · Environmental responsibility · Environmental responsivity

C. Simonetti (B) Anthropology Program, Department of Social Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, A. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago 7820436, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_13

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13.1 Introduction Between December 2014 and September 2016, the Deutsches Museum—the largest technology museum in the world—opened up the first major exhibition on the Anthropocene, the term proposed by the scientific community to highlight humans as a planetary force, capable of irreversibly changing earth history (Crutzen 2002; Steffen et al. 2011). Emulating a widespread issue of the journal The Economist released in 2011, the exhibition was entitled ‘Welcome to the Anthropocene. The Earth in Our Hands’ and depicted the earth as a globe covered by a giant fingerprint (Fig. 13.1). The exhibition, along with its title and imagery, holds a tension that captures what this article is about. Although the exhibition was meant to immerse viewers in the

Fig. 13.1 Catalogue of the exhibition ‘Welcome to the Antropocene. The Earth in Our Hands’, 2015, André Judä and Karen Schmidt © Deutsches Museum, Munich

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reality of this new epoch, such reality was depicted as a godly fingerprint on the planet marked, as if, from the outside. As a scientific object, the Anthropocene requires achieving global knowledge at the expense of ecological intimacy (Raffles 2002). The research produced by both the Earth System Science (ESS) community that originally introduced the term and the geologists who are currently leading its formalisation has required taking an epistemic distance from what it feels like to be immersed in an environment. Yet, as the tension within the exhibition illustrates, this global definition of the Anthropocene presents what might be described as a global dilemma, which can be summarised in the following question: how are humans to become affected and, therefore, responsive to the challenges of this new epoch, if the very understanding of such epoch is somewhat beyond human felt experience? In this chapter, I argue that humans in the Anthropocene are meant to dwell simultaneously in and outside the earth in that, irrespective of the very heterogeneity—human and other-than-human—that is currently at risk in this new epoch, the term refers to a universal male human, standing above nature. Humans are meant to be simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, which risks diluting human responsiveness. This dilemma, I propose, is enhanced by the surfaces of the built environment on which global knowledge ultimately “germinates”. Yet, life—human or any other—is not lived on the exterior of a globe but in the Earth, nurtured by sensory attunements to the material transformations of an environment in constant becoming. Acknowledging the immanence of life, this chapter argues, requires a redefinition of what it is to be human. It is through this immanence that environmental responsiveness remains possible in a world in crisis. The inspiration for this argument comes from the above-mentioned exhibition at the Deutsches Museum. In collaboration with Rachel Harkness and Judith Winter, colleagues from Edinburgh and Manchester Schools of Art, I had the privilege to contribute an object to an Anthropocene Cabinet of Curiosities arranged by the Rachel Carlson Centre within the exhibition (Mitman et al. 2018). The cabinet held fifteen objects, all representative of the Anthropocene. Ours was a standard concrete test cube used globally in construction to measure the compressive strength of concrete formulas before building starts. Concrete is the most highly produced building material in human history and an important contributor to CO2 emissions. It is also an iconic marker of modern life. The standardised concrete structures of the urban landscape, dominated by orthogonal forms and casted in smooth and opaque surfaces, have provided not only a solid infrastructure for modern values to disseminate, but also have contributed literally to lift humans beyond nature, suffocating the exchange of nutrients and oxygen fundamental to the growth of life in the ground. Moreover, the vast layers of concrete verted over the past century—used to accommodate more than half of the world’s population, to power cities and to connect the globe—constitute a candidate to signal the start of this new epoch (Simonetti and Ingold 2018); bearing in mind how, according to stratigraphers, the formalisation of the Anthropocene requires the identification of a single synchronous marker across the globe (Zalasiewicz et al. 2008).

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13.2 The Anthropocene Debate Since it was introduced in 2000 by the ecologist Eugene Stroemer and the atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, the Anthropocene has generated unprecedented debates among social scientists and humanities scholars, which have resulted in numbers of books, articles, and journals written on the subject (Lorimer 2017). Particularly sensible is how the concept destabilises traditional divisions between natural and social phenomena, understood respectively as occurring at slow and fast temporal rates. For instance, according to Chakrabarti (2009, 2014), the Anthropocene is pushing historians of the recent industrial expansion over the last two centuries to incorporate the much longer biological evolution of the human species. Correspondingly, cultural and biological dimensions of the human—colloquially referred to as humanity and humankind respectively (Ingold 2000: 68)—have suddenly come together in the Anthropocene, which has invited humanities scholars and social scientists to redefine the human condition (Pálsson et al. 2013). Yet, not only the social sciences and the humanities have been accommodating their subjects of study to the new epoch. Earth scientists have broadened their thinking to forms of inquiry that have been regarded traditionally as being beyond their scope. For instance, choosing both a name and a starting date for the new epoch involves decisions where politics cannot be excluded from science, with the result that facts and values remain inseparable (Latour 2014). In theory, doing what geologists call boundary work, namely the task of formalising geological units such as the Anthropocene in the stratigraphic record, involves the unprecedented identification of a hybrid boundary: a stratum that is simultaneously natural and cultural, long and short, fast and slow (Simonetti 2018). The Anthropocene has invited us to simultaneously geologise the social and to socialise the geological (Clark and Yusoff 2017). From the particular viewpoint of anthropology, the discipline from which this article springs, the Anthropocene comes as an unprecedented gift, bearing in mind the historical investment of the discipline in defining what is social and natural in humans. Yet, unlike any other concept that has arrived unexpectedly to the vocabulary of anthropologists, the Anthropocene has been received as a poisonous gift (Latour 2014) in that it holds the risk of either dissolving the human all together into a mechanical understanding of nature or fetishising the human by seriously replicating modern narratives of progress, built on the exceptional place western thought has granted to humankind, among species, in evolution (Haraway et al. 2016). In a sense, these apparently incompatible risks tend to co-exist in scientific discourses on the Anthropocene. Corresponding with the first risk is the tendency to render the Anthropocene as an act of the human species (Haraway et al. 2016). Such act—of humankind as opposed to humanity—would be determined by universal principles governing what is natural in humans, including the widespread image of evolution as driven by species competition under limited resources. Corresponding with the second risk, the Anthropocene also tends to replicate a triumphalist narrative, where technology—a main driver in evolution—is meant to solve the environmental

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crisis, which forgets the long history of technological failures science has experienced in its efforts to control nature’s recalcitrance (Crist 2013). Either way, the Anthropocene would speak of a generalised human being, with the result that all the heterogeneity humanity scholars have gathered traditionally around words such as history, culture and society would be erased. This discontent among humanities scholars is reflected in the proliferation of alternative proposals to name the new epoch, using terminology that is sensible to cultural diversity and its varied history, an important example of which is the concept of Capitalocene (Haraway 2015).1

13.3 Global Science The discontent social scientists and humanities scholars, particularly anthropologists, experience regarding the Anthropocene concept is, to an extent, unsurprising, knowing how the reality of the Anthropocene is constituted scientifically. From the viewpoint of science, the Anthropocene is a global phenomenon. Had instruments not been scattered and connected through records across the globe there would be no sense of the changes justifying the establishment of a new geological unit such as the Anthropocene. Moreover, the very notion of earth history, as it is known among geologists, would be compromised had science not transcended local intimacy. Corresponding with the risk within the Anthropocene concept to dilute the human altogether, it is worth noting how the global scale merges with universal nature; a scale that, according to Tsing “takes precedence, because it is the scale of the model” (2005: 103). The global nature of the Anthropocene can be observed in the very practice of formalising it. Led by geologists, the task, as it has been stated already, involves the establishment of a single isochronous signal in stratigraphy identifiable across the globe. As in the formalisation of former geological units, identifying such a signal in the case of the Anthropocene requires a vast distribution of measurements and recordings mapped across the globe. Mapping this signal globally has required transcending the intimacy of scientific observations unfolded at specific places. Similar occurs with the appropriation of the atmosphere, on which essential aspects of the research conducted by the ESS community rests. Resembling the formalisation of geological units, appropriating scientifically atmospheric phenomena such as the weather requires the crafting of global synoptic charts—weather maps—on which isobars—lines of equal atmospheric pressure—are drawn, which again produces an epistemic distance.

1 Yet, for many scholars in the humanities, cultural heterogeneity no longer sits above a hard/natural

substrate, globally determined by universal laws, as if the word “nature”—in reference to humans— is meant to be written always in singular and “cultures,” written in plural, are meant to be volatile entities beyond matter (Haraway 2016; Tsing 2015; also Simonetti and Ingold 2018).

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In our daily understanding of weather, this loss of intimacy materialises, for instance, in how meteorologists distinguish between felt or apparent temperature— the subjective experience of feeling hot or cold, depending on temperature, wind and humidity—and measured temperature—the objective recording of an atmospheric variable using a thermometer. Local intimacy further decreases when the notion of climate gets introduced. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, climate and weather—two concepts often used to explain misunderstandings in climate research—are defined in contrast to one another. Compared to weather—continuous variations in temperature, humidity and precipitation, experienced or measured daily in the atmosphere—climate is defined as a thirty-year average of those variations. Knowing climate to describe, for instance, global warming has required transcending not just felt but also measured temperature, in that climate requires the establishment of a long-term record, spanning decades, and is therefore beyond the daily recollection and anticipations vernacular people are meant to conceive as they observe daily changes in weather. Ultimately, knowing the atmosphere scientifically is different from feeling it, in that people do not experience measured variables, not to mention averaged numbers. Historically, such epistemic distance has been fundamental to the establishment of the earth sciences. The geosciences fought to expand earth history, against the conservative pressures of the Christian Church and the narrow timescale on which its narrative of life on earth unfolded. Biblical scriptures not only supported a geocentric view of the universe but a short-term history. For instance, according to James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, who in the seventeenth century conducted an analysis of the chronology embedded in the counting of generations in the old testament, the earth had been created as recently as 4004 BC (Rudwick 1999; also Toulmin and Goodfield 1965). Expanding earth history required transcending the short-term history passed on through oral traditions, such as the one coming down to us through the old testament. Accordingly, the concept of deep time, fundamental for the constitution of knowledge in the earth sciences, rested on a transcendence of what might be called, in turn, shallow time. This expansion of the earth’s history followed the expansion of the universe pushed earlier by physics at the start of the so-called scientific revolution. Indeed, founding fathers of modern geology, such as Charles Lyell, mirrored the expansion of earth history on astronomy’s cosmic perspective on earth, inspired by Galileo’s invention of the telescope (Simonetti 2019). Astronomy’s cosmic perspective also informed the appropriation of the atmosphere on which knowledge of weather and climate rests. Conducted in the name of physics by early meteorologists, such as the Norwegian physicist Vilhelm Bjerknes, this appropriation depended on developments in transport and communication, which depended in turn on the establishment of a global time standard (Fiedman 1993). Included in such standardisation were discussions on whether light waves, a phenomenon dear to theoretical physicists at the time, should be adopted as a standard to coordinate transport and communication globally across different time zones (Canales 2015: 119). Unsurprisingly, among humanities scholars this cosmic view on earth has been regarded as fundamental to the historical development of humanity’s relationship with nature across the stage of the modern

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world. An example comes from Arendt’s much celebrated book The Human Condition when, in reference to Newton’s laws of universal gravitation that followed from the invention of the telescope, she states that ‘instead of observing natural phenomena as they were given to him, he [Newton] placed nature under the conditions of his own mind, that is, under conditions won from a universal, astrophysical viewpoint, a cosmic standpoint outside nature itself’ (1958: 265).2

13.4 From Responsibility to Responsivity Returning to the image at the start of this chapter, the cosmic view characteristic of modern science is what eventually led to the godly and gendered Apollo space program of NASA, which in 1972 secured the first focused and high-resolution image of the entire globe from outer space, taken at some 27,750 nautical miles from the ground (Fig. 13.2). NASA’s release of the image, known as AS17-14822727, resulted in an enthusiastic public response, paradoxically becoming an icon

Fig. 13.2 Apollo 17 photograph of the earth from outer space (AS17-148-22727). Courtesy of NASA 2 This

cosmic view on earth is rooted already in medieval times as in, for instance, Ptolemy’s view of the earth (Cosgrove 1994).

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of both the universalist rhetoric of modernism and the demise of confidence placed on modern capitalist expansion. Regarding the latter, the image became adopted, for instance, by important environmental movements, such as Friends of the Earth, and by public media, such as the BBC, which used it as a logo to cover the United Nation’s Rio Earth Summit in 1992 (Cosgrove 1994). As I have argued in this chapter, this cosmic view has afforded humanity a paradoxical place among living beings in evolution, in that it invites humans to be simultaneously in and outside the earth. In such a paradoxical place, feeling and knowing the Anthropocene take separate ways, as people respectively immerse in and depart from the particular landscapes in which they dwell. It is worth noting that my aim in developing this argument has been neither to deny the reality nor the relevance of science. Indeed, as I stated already, we would not know about phenomena such as global warming, ocean acidification or species extinction, all relevant to the definition of the Anthropocene, if not for global science. Yet, science seems far from providing us with a sense of what it is for humans to inhabit the earth. As Latour (1999) has rightly argued, accessing global scales comes at a great cost. In his analysis of how soil scientists map samples of soil in the Amazon, in correspondence to a global network of measurements and knowledge centres, envisioning the forest’s long-term change involves losing one’s foot in the world. This scientific perspective on the forest would be the exact opposite of that summarised by the old German adagio, upon which Ortega y Gasset (1914) famously developed his earthly perspectivism, firmly attached to the ground, and according to which ‘the forest cannot be seen for the trees’. When it comes to the cosmic perspective developed by Latour’s soils scientists ‘the trees cannot be seen for the forest’. In its efforts to transcend and map nature from a bird’s eye view, global science seems to miss the intimacy of being submerged in an environment, divorcing feeling from knowing. Furthermore, in modelling the world, science risks what might be described as an inversion of reality, where the model of reality slips into the reality of the model (Bourdieu 1992, 39). Take, for instance, the above-mentioned distinction between felt and measured temperature through which contemporary inhabitants of the built environment often appropriate the atmosphere scientifically. Felt temperature, regarded as subjective, is calculated from a combination of objectively measured variables, such as temperature, humidity and wind speed. This calculation is what modern citizens get each time they look at weather reports. As in the calculation of climate change— which, according to science, nobody feels or touches, in that it results from the averaging of weather changes expanding over decades and is therefore beyond felt experience—felt weather becomes a number arithmetically calculated from measured variables. The immanently short (felt weather) and the transcendently long (climate) turn equally into a technologically recorded and calculated reality. Conceptually, the idea of a calculated felt weather mirrors the epistemic detachment the image of the globe affords. In a calculated felt weather the atmosphere is encapsulated from the continuous transformations that originally gave birth to it, including the ongoing exchange of chemicals such as carbon and oxygen across earth, sea and sky that occurs as living organisms photosynthesise light, breathe air or

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eat and defecate organic matter. This process, started billions of years ago, has been driven continuously on earth by living organisms; it is a process in which humans also carry on. Accordingly, when it comes to calculated felt temperature, feeling hot or cold is no longer a relational phenomenon in that the experience occurs irrespective of the corporeal particularities of the organism immersed in the atmosphere. By becoming universally measurable, the calculated felt temperature closes the thermodynamic exchange bodies experience as they expose their skin to the air, breathe in and out or eat and defecate. Planning a day out following the forecasted temperature of a weather report is to be simultaneously in and out of the atmosphere. For inhabitants of the built environment, currently adding to more than fifty percent of the world’s population, this encapsulation of the atmosphere is enhanced by concrete infrastructure. Concrete’s impermeabilization of the ground has offered the illusion of a final transcendence from nature that has literally suffocated the growth of life from below, temporarily impeding any exchange of oxygen and nutrients across earth and sky (Simonetti and Ingold 2018).3 As in the Apollo image, the built environment affords an understanding of humans as ex-habitants of the earth (Ingold 2015). Yet in breathing, eating and defecating, living organisms, including humans, become one with their surroundings, as they surrender part of themselves into the atmosphere, while incorporating part of the atmosphere into themselves. Acknowledging the intimacy of this mingling of life is, I believe, crucial for humans to become responsive to the challenges of this new epoch. Responsivity, in this context, should be clearly distinguished from the retrospective act of assigning responsibility, as if all that is left to do is to wait for those in power to eventually redistribute guilt, after the evidence has been mapped across the globe and global science has formalised historical changes. Responsivity is a forward-looking capacity that grows from being intimately attentive to the ongoing changes of the environment in which we dwell. This, I believe, requires challenging the evolutionists understanding of organisms as self-contained entities driven by an inter-species competition. In its mingling, life— human or any other—, results from precarious ecological entanglements. Ultimately, we should be reminded that intimacy in the Anthropocene is no longer a choice. As Alaimo (2012) rightly points out, as soon as we open our mouths to breathe or eat, our bodies become transformed by the industrial and technological waste we have released into the environment including, for instance, the huge amounts of microplastic humans have released into the ocean in recent decades, which currently comes to our mouths in the fish we eat. The Anthropocene is not a distant phenomenon to be looked at from afar. It is rather in our guts! Acknowledgements The research on which this article is based has been supported by the project Solid Fluids in the Anthropocene: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry into the Archaeological Anthropology of Materials (2015-19). The project, led in collaboration with Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen), is funded by the British Academy for the Humanities and the Social Sciences, under its International Partnership and Mobility Scheme, No. PM150104. The research has also been supported by the

3 Coincidently,

western thinking has traditionally mirrored its dualisms between matter and mind, nature and culture, hard and soft knowledges on a separation between earth and sky (Ingold 2015).

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project Concrete Futures: An Inquiry into Modern Life in the Anthropocene with Materials (201518), funded by Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT), Chile, Nº 11150278. I am grateful to the British Academy and to FONDECYT for their support.

References Alaimo S (2012) State of suspension: transcorporeality at sea. Interdiscip Stud Lit Environ 19(3):476–493 Arendt H (1958) The human condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Bourdieu P (1992) Logic of practice (trans: Nice R). Stanford University Press, Stanford Canales J (2015) The physicist and the philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the debate that changed our understanding of time. Princeton University Press, Princeton Chakrabarty D (2009) The climate of history: four theses. Crit Inq 35(2):197–222 Chakrabarty D (2014) Climate and Capital: On Conjoined Histories. Critical Inquiry 41(1):1–23 Clark N, Yusoff K (2017) Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene. Theory Culture and Society 34(2–3):3–23 Cosgrove D (1994) Contested global visions: One-world, whole-earth, and the apollo space photographs. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 84:270–294 Crist E (2013) On the poverty of our nomenclature. Environ Humanit 3:129–147 Crutzen P (2002) Geology of mankind. Nature 415(3):23 Crutzen P, Stroemer E (2000) The “Anthropocene”. IGBP Newsletter 41:17–18 Friedman RM (1993) Appropriating the weather. Vilhelm Bjerknes and the construction of a modern meteorology. Cornell University Press, New York Haraway D (2015) Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: making Kin. Environ Humanit 6:159–165 Haraway D, Ishikawa N, Gilbert SF, Olwig K, Tsing AL, Budandt N (2016) Anthropologists are talking—about the Anthropocene. Ethnos 81(3):535–564 Ingold T (2015) The life of lines. Routledge, London Ingold T (2000) The perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge, London Latour B (1999) Pandora’s hope. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Latour B (2014) Anthropology at the time of the Anthropocene: a personal view of what is to be studied. Distinguished Lecture Delivered, 6 December, American Association of Anthropologists, Washington Lorimer J (2017) The Anthropo-scene: a guide for the perplexed. Soc Stud Sci 47(1):117–142 Mitman G, Armiero M, Emmett RS (2018) Future remains: a cabinet of curiosities for the Anthropocene. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Ortega y Gasset J (1914) Meditaciones de Quijote. Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid Pálsson G, Szerszynski B, Sörlin S, Marks J, Avril B, Crumley C et al (2013) Reconceptualizing the “Anthropos” in the Anthropocene: integrating the social sciences and humanities in global environmental change research. Environ Sci Policy 28:3–13 Raffles H (2002) Intimate knowledge. Int Soc Sci J 54:325–335 Rudwick M (1999) Geologist’s time: a brief history. In: Lippincott K (ed) The story of time. Merrell Holberton, London, pp 250–253 Simonetti C (2018) Sentient conceptualisations: feeling for time in the sciences of the past. Routledge, Abingdon Simonetti C (2019) Scales and telescopes. Optics in the study of prehistory. In: Souvatzi S, Baysal A, Baysal EL (eds) Problematising time and history in prehistory. Routledge, London, pp 42-57

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Simonetti C, Ingold T (2018) Ice and concrete: solid fluids of environmental change. J Contemp Archaeol 5(1):19–31 Steffen W, Grinevald JG, Crutzen PJ, McNeill J (2011) The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives. Philos Trans A 369:842–867 Toulmin S, Goodfield J (1965) The discovery of time. Hutchison, London Tsing AL (2005) Friction: an ethnography of global connection. University Press, Princeton Tsing AL (2015) The mushroom at the end of the world. On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton, Princeton University Press Zalasiewicz J, Williams M, Smith AG, Barry TL, Coe AL, Bown PR et al (2008) Are we now living in the Anthropocene? GSA Today 18(2):4–8

Chapter 14

The “3Hs” (Habitats, Habits, Co-in-Habitants) of the Biocultural Ethic: A “Philosophical Lens” to Address Global Changes in the Anthropocene Ricardo Rozzi, Francisca Massardo and Alexandria Poole Abstract Global culture, forms of governance, economic and development models have become drastically dissociated from biological and cultural diversity and their interrelationships. Global society is exposed to globally homogeneously governed life habits that tend to build globally homogeneous technological and urban habitats in the heterogeneous regions of the planet. Concurrently, these globally homogeneous habitats reinforce globally homogeneous life habits. These feedbacks between globalized habits and habitats generate processes of biocultural homogenization, which represents an overlooked dimension of global changes in the Anthropocene. Biocultural homogenization is both driver and product of complex and pervasive losses of biological and cultural diversity. We maintain that it is technically necessary and ethically imperative to reverse these losses. Toward this aim, we present the “3Hs” (Habitats, Habits, co-in-Habitants) conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic, which values the vital links among the diversity of life habits of distinct (human and other-than-human) co-in-habitants that share a common habitat. We offer this philosophical framework as a heuristic model for: (1) better understanding multidimensional and multi-scale processes involved in global changes; (2) designing policies that integrate biocultural diversity into ethical, political, and environmental dimensions of the contemporary technological world; and (3) orienting decisionmaking processes that can better assess the consequences that development policies might have for the conservation or degradation of habitats, life habits, and welfare of co-inhabitants. In this way, the 3Hs “philosophical lens” of the biocultural ethic can

R. Rozzi (B) Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Texas, Denton, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. Rozzi · F. Massardo University of Magallanes, Puerto Williams, Chile R. Rozzi · F. Massardo · A. Poole Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Puerto Williams, Chile A. Poole Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_14

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contribute to re-orienting global society toward sustainable forms of co-inhabitation amidst the rapidly changing socio-environmental scenarios of the Anthropocene. Keywords Biocultural homogenization · Environmental justice · Ethics · Latin American philosophy · Traditional ecological knowledge

14.1 Biocultural Homogenization: An Overlooked Driver of Global Changes The Anthropocene represents a new geological era in which the degree of influence that humans have over the biosphere exceeds that of other natural forces.1 To realize that global society is an anthropogenic agent with a power of change that surpasses the power of the geological forces that shape the planet Earth dissolves old dichotomies between “biophysical” and “cultural” dimensions of reality. Today, globalized lifehabits are causing rapid changes in global climate, stratospheric ozone, ocean acidification, the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, pollution, biodiversity losses, land-use change and freshwater use (Steffen et al. 2011). It becomes necessary to adopt a biocultural prism to understand the position of the human species amidst the Anthropocene, and introduces us to a characteristic that transcends the purely descriptive plane: to affirm that human agency has become the main force that shapes the face of the Earth, raises questions of ethics (Rozzi 2015a). We aim to contribute to this volume entitled Global Changes: Ethics, Politics and the Environment in the Contemporary Technological World by highlighting that in the Anthropocene not only technology but also culture, governance forms, development and economic models that drive global society have become drastically dissociated from (and indifferent towards) biological, linguistic, and cultural diversity and their interrelations. In this chapter, we use the philosophical framework the biocultural ethic (Rozzi 2012a) to address problematic divisions between cultural and biophysical dimensions of reality, which underlie global changes and socio-environmental injustices. Regarding ethics, modernity and coloniality have decoupled human habits from the habitats where they take place, “as if humans and their identities could exist in isolation from their habitats and other-than-human co-inhabitants” (Rozzi 2012a, 27). The conceptual omission of the links between habitats and habits has sustained a Eurocentric approach projected onto the colonies with minimal consideration for the native ethos: “As if indigenous ethics, and their intricate links with their habitats, would not exist or would be irrelevant” (Rozzi 2012a, 27). This has led to an 1 To mark the beginning of the geological era of the Anthropocene, different authors have proposed

dates as dissimilar as the origin and expansion of agriculture about 3000 years ago or the so-called Great Acceleration that has escalated since the mid-twentieth century (Leis and Maslin 2015; Zalisiewics et al. 2015; Waters et al. 2016). We agree with the date identified by Zalasiewics et al. (2015) as a distinct moment for the Anthropocene’s start: the end of the Second World War (Rozzi 2015a).

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erosion of communities that have values interlinked with their land, freshwater, and marine habitats (Maffi 2007). In turn, due to the displacement of indigenous and other local communities, these native habitats have lost their stewards and custodians. Consequently, native habitats (including the diverse communities of human and other-than-human living beings that inhabit them) are now more vulnerable to non-sustainable development practices (Rozzi 2013). Regarding development and economic policies, after World War II a major trend embedded in the neoliberal development agenda (see Escobar 1995) has impelled intensive processes of rural–urban migration worldwide (Rozzi 2015a; Lenzner et al. 2018). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, for the first time in the history of the human species, more than fifty percent of the world’s human population lives in cities (Flavin 2007). The intensive rural to urban migration is a recent and explosive phenomenon, which affects mostly young generations. Until the mid-twentieth century more than seventy percent of the world population still lived in rural areas. In the twenty-first century, land grabbing and other forms of concentration of land ownership are becoming a major driver for the accelerated rates of rural–urban migration in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Borras et al. 2011, 2012; Makki 2018; Lenzner et al. 2018). This migration has negative consequences for both the habitats, and human well-being (Rozzi 2013). For the native habitats, consequences cause a loss of ancestral human stewards or custodians of the land. For the displaced people, this migration causes a loss of everyday contact with their communities of co-inhabitants and diverse life habits. In the cities, displaced people frequently lose their autonomy and lack access to basic services, such as food, water, shelter, and sanitary conditions. They face extreme poverty conditions that are rapidly expanding in the marginal neighborhoods of metropolitan areas. Regarding the environment, we can identify a combination of physical, technological, conceptual, and philosophical barriers that have driven global society’s dissociation from and indifference towards biological and cultural diversity (Rozzi 2013). Physical and technological barriers are associated with mediating technologies that create conditions in which urban consumers experience nature (and everyday resources such as food and water) indirectly as opposed to immediate experiences (with plants, rivers, and other ecosystems) (Poole 2015; 2018). Conceptual barriers are associated with the fact that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, for the first time in the history of the human species, more than half of the world’s population inhabits symbolic worlds that are defined by less than ten languages. Today fifty-two percent of the world population speaks one of the following seven dominant languages: Mandarin, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Bengali (Lewis 2009). These seven languages represent only a minimal fraction (0.1%) of the 6,909 languages that are still spoken around the globe (Maffi 2005). This linguistic homogenization drastically reduces the spectrum of concepts and worldviews with which biological and cultural diversity are perceived, understood, and valued by global society. Consequently, multiple forms of ecological knowledge and of environmental ethics are lost.

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The lack of consideration for the ecological and cultural diversity, and their interrelationships in the heterogeneous regions of the planet, has driven processes of biocultural homogenization, which represents an overlooked dimension of the Global Changes, which drives the Anthropocene (Rozzi et al. 2018). Biocultural homogenization entails interwoven losses of native biological and cultural diversity at local, regional, and global scales. It is a driver and a product of complex and pervasive losses of biological and cultural diversity; however, it is not yet widely recognized to its full extent. The massive replacement of native biota and cultures by cosmopolitan species, languages, and cultures disrupts co-evolutionary interrelationships between local cultures and their habitats. A society exposed to globally homogeneously governed life habits is more likely to build globally homogeneous habitats. At the same time, globally homogeneous technological and urban habitats reinforce globally homogeneous life habits and mindsets. To recognize these positive, wicked feedbacks between cosmopolitan habits and habitats, and their consequences for human and non-human co-inhabitants, Rozzi (2001; 2012a) coined the term biocultural homogenization. To counterbalance biocultural homogenization, Rozzi (2012a) developed the conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic that values the vital links between the diversity of life habits of distinct (human and other-than-human) co-in-habitants that share a common habitat. For ecologists the links between the “3Hs” (Habitats, Habits, co-in-Habitants) might seem obvious. However, today these links are being rapidly, and extensively, disrupted through policies and development models that neither consider nor value unique, diverse, local biota and cultures, which are consequently eliminated and replaced by a reduced and uniform set of biological species and cultural habits globally. In this chapter, we propose that to address Global Changes in the Contemporary Technological World it is technically necessary and ethically imperative to acknowledge and revert the losses caused by biocultural homogenization. Policy decision at multiple scales, from global institutions, regional associations, local governments, decision makers, requires awareness and understanding of the significance of biological and cultural diversity and their interrelationships. To achieve this understanding, it is essential to broaden the “one-dimensional lens”2 of neoliberalism. Toward this aim, and better addressing the challenges of Global Changes associated with biocultural homogenization, we present the 3Hs theoretical framework of the biocultural ethic. To counteract the prevalence of neoliberal “one-dimensional lenses,” the biocultural ethic introduces multi-dimensional lenses to perceive and value biological and cultural diversity (Fig. 14.1). This “philosophical lens” examines and values diverse forms of knowledge considering complementary biophysical, cultural, socio-political dimensions embedded in life habits linked to specific habitats and communities of co-inhabitants. First, to understand the 3Hs philosophical model of the biocultural ethic, we concisely define the meaning assigned to habitats, habits, and co-inhabitants. Then, we discuss the need of this philosophical and 2 The

one-dimensional man portrayed by Herbert Marcuse in the 1960s has come to dominate. As Marcuse (1991) argued, one-dimensional linear thinking is a form of social control, which oppresses diversity.

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Fig. 14.1 The biocultural ethic values communities of co-in-Habitants with their specific life Habits linked to specific Habitats (“3Hs”). The colors show that each of the “3Hs” has biophysical dimensions (blue), symbolic-linguistic-cultural dimensions (yellow), and institutional-sociopolitical, infrastructural-technological dimensions (green). The green color (a blending of blue and yellow) of the latter was chosen to indicate the need for carefully combining biophysical and symbolic-linguistic–cultural dimensions into policy, decision-making, and infrastructure designs. The external circle makes explicit the value of ecological worldviews of Native American and other non-Western cultures, of pre-Socratic and non-mainstream Western philosophies, and of contemporary sciences. The circular form of the figure and the bidirectional arrows illustrate the dynamic character of all these forms of ecological knowledge, and the active exchanges occurring among them in the context of a rapidly changing global society

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biocultural approach for orienting global society toward more sustainable forms of co-inhabitation.

14.2 The “3Hs” of the Biocultural Ethic Since the 1960s, Latin American schools of liberation thought have emphasized the need to incorporate local forms of knowledge in education and development policies to better value cultural diversity and enable the participation of communities that exist at the borders of globalization (Rozzi 2012b). Liberation philosophy (Dussel 1980), liberation theology (Gutiérrez 1973), and liberation pedagogy (Freire 1970) have criticized the epistemological colonialism that goes hand in hand with a grand narrative of a global technological and economic development model that was invigorated after World War II (Escobar 1995). Social-environmental scientists have identified this historical moment as the beginning of the Great Acceleration that drives the Anthropocene (McNeill and Engelke 2014). The Great Acceleration is coupled with a grand narrative and an associated development model that have generated cultural assimilation, economic dependency of communities and nations, a growing socio-economic-inequity, and exploitation of worker classes that represent the majority of human population (Cardoso and Faletto 1979). Broadening the work of Latin American Liberation thought, at the end of the 20th century Rozzi (2001; 2003) proposed a biocultural conservation approach that linked processes of acculturation, dependency, and socio-economic inequity with the displacements of indigenous, fishermen, peasant, and other local communities from their native habitats. The conservation of habitats is scientifically understood and ethically valued as a necessary condition for the well-being and maintenance of cultural identity and associated life-habits of local communities. This approach provided the basis for framing the biocultural ethic that complemented the work developed earlier by Latin American liberation thinkers who focused on social and economic dimensions. To achieve equity and sustainability, Rozzi (2003, 2013) added that it is necessary to link the political, economic, and epistemological criticisms with an advocacy for the conservation of diverse and unique habitats and life habits evolved in each region.3 In this section, we concisely define the meaning assigned to Habitats, Habits, and co-in-Habitants with the goal of better understanding socio-ecological drivers of global changes and their ethical, political, and environmental implications. We propose that the “3Hs” conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic can be helpful to orient decision-making in environmental policies, development strategies, and

3 This

biocultural conservation approach is supported by the work of ecological economists, scientists, and historians of the global south, such as Martínez-Alier (2003), Shiva (1991), and Guha (1997) who have defended the value of local economies based on consuetudinary land tenure and conservation of biodiversity.

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educational programs for biocultural conservation practices that are technically effective, as well as socially and environmentally just. Consequently, it can help reverting the prevailing trend of biocultural homogenization associated with colonizing epistemologies, life habits, economic and development models; instead, it can help to foster conservation of local habitats that enable the continuity of local life habits that favor the well-being of both human and other-than-human co-inhabitants. In other terms, the 3Hs philosophical framework has a heuristic power to orient conservation and restoration of biological and cultural diversity.

14.2.1 Habitats and Protected Areas To conserve an habitat it is necessary to protect it from the abuse of unbalanced self-interests of particular agents that might cause degradation of ecosystems, biotic communities, or populations of particular species, as well as concomitant losses of local ecological knowledge, worldviews, practices, and vernacular languages. Care for the habitats is rooted in both traditional consuetudinary rights and contemporary civil legal frameworks that are framed differently in different countries. Care for the habitats, creation and implementation of protected areas have been also motivated by ethical values and practices (Callicott 1994). A keystone thesis of the biocultural ethic is that the care for habitats is rooted in the origin of ethical concepts and practices in Western, Native American, and other cultures. Regarding Western civilization, the intimate relationship between ethics and protected areas has historical roots in the Greek word ethos, which in its archaic sense referred to the den of an animal, and later to the human home. Ethos is one of the Greek roots for the word ethics. With an eco-philosophical hermeneutic, Rozzi (2012a, 2018a) translated this ancestral meaning of ethics as a protected habitat. In the conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic the notion of habitat includes three complementary dimensions; changes in one dimension imply changes in the other ones. The three dimensions of the biocultural concept of habitat are the following. (1). Biophysical dimensions that are scaled-up from local ecosystems to the global biosphere (sensu Vladimir Vernadsky, see Huggett 1999; Wu 2013). The biophysical dimension concentrates most of the definitions offered by dictionaries for the concept of habitat, which is understood as “the natural place of growth or occurrence of a species; the locality in which a plant or animal naturally grows or lives” (OED 1980). In ecology, the concept of habitat is often characterized as the place where an organism or a community of organisms live, including all living and nonliving factors or conditions of the surrounding environment. A host organism inhabited by parasites is a habitat as much as a grove of trees is a terrestrial habitat or a small pond is an aquatic habitat (Allen and Hoekstra 2015). (2). Cultural and symbolic-linguistic dimensions that scale-up from vernacular languages to the global logosphere. According to Krauss (2007), the logosphere

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is the planetary web of logos or words, symbols, languages, and narratives. Rozzi (2015a, b) interprets that the logosphere houses the sphere of thinking or intelligence (in Greek noos) that was defined by Vernadski as the noosphere. In 1926, he proposed that the noosphere is generated by the set of living beings endowed with intelligence and their interactions with the environment in which they live (Vernadsky 2007). In the 1970s, research about the interactions between language and the environment became active giving origin to the field of eco-linguistics (Haugen 1972; Fill and Mühlhauser 2001; Mühlhauser 2003; Bang et al. 2007). As Humberto Maturana has emphasized, humans inhabit languages, and we become who we are through “languaging” (Maturana et al. 1995). Language-habitat is a core concept of eco-linguistics (Bang and Trampe 2014). On the one hand, the language-habitat concept enables an understanding of why biocultural conservation is threatened by the drastic current losses of vernacular languages (Krauss 1992; Maffi 2001; Batibo 2005). On the other hand, the language-habitat concept enables an understanding of a core concept that contemporary philosophy can offer to ecologists: plants, animals, rivers, and other components of biodiversity exist in the mind and symbolic language of people (including researchers) as much as they exist in the biophysical domain (Rozzi 2015b). (3). Socio-political, institutional, and technological dimensions scale up from local institutions to the global technosphere (sensu Zev Naveh and Arthur Lieberman 1990). In the twentieth century, the technosphere was defined by Naveh and Lieberman as that part of the physical environment affected through building or modification by humans. In the twenty-first century, ecologists Redman and Miller (2015) extended the meaning of the term technosphere to integrate infrastructure (physical and organizational) and technological systems. The constructed habitat or technosphere includes both physical structures (e.g., roads, bridges, water supply, sewers, or electrical networks) and organizational structures of services and institutions. Redman and Miller (2015, 270) argue that “those concerned with sustainability […] must more robustly account for the centrality of technology in human-environment interactions, adjusting our conceptual frameworks to explore socio-eco-technological systems (SETS).” All three dimensions of habitats—biophysical, linguistic, and technological including both physical and organizational infrastructure (e.g., institutions and policies)—have decisive influences on (and, in turn, are influenced by) life habits (Rozzi 2015a).

14.2.2 Life Habits and Biocultural Diversity The notion of habit has become a lively topic of debate in various contemporary fields of theoretical and applied research, due to concern for the need to generate

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new habits in relation to socio-political and socio-environmental issues, such as neoracism or climate change (Bennet 2016). However, the meaning of habit is often limited to the behavioral or psychological spheres. Indeed, the definition offered by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED 1980) is constrained to “an established disposition or tendency to act in a certain way, especially one acquired by frequent repetition of the same act until it reaches almost or quite involuntarily, an established practice, custom, use.” This definition reduces the concept of habit to psychology and automatic behavior. This reductionist definition represents largely a legacy of the mind-body dualisms that prevailed in philosophy from Descartes to Kant (Plumwood 2002). In contrast, in the biocultural ethic conceptual framework the term habit has a broader connotation that considers its meanings through history and across disciplines. The concept of habit is not limited to the behavioral or psychological spheres, but includes biological, sociological, neurological, epistemological, phenomenological, ontological, and moral dimensions (Sparrow and Hutchinson 2015). Regarding the latter, the term habit has an ethical connotation linked to the Aristotelian notions of virtue and living well. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle stated that “neither by nature… nor contrary to nature do virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit” (2009, II, 1, 1103a 23–26). The process of character formation is based on the practice of habits, which are the foundation of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. To be fully human we rely on a “first nature” (biological) and a “second nature” (social, cultural) that is learned and practiced. In order to undertake biocultural conservation actions, this ethical dimension of habits helps us understand the socio-cultural roots of unsustainable lifestyles and to reorient them towards sustainable life habits. In the twentieth century, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu examined how life habits are learned through socialization processes that are influenced by family, social class, socioeconomic status, language, and culture. Bourdieu (1990, 56) defined this as the habitus: “Embodied history, internalized as a second nature.” Bordieu critically observed that the habitus seemed innate, but that it is actually formed from schemes of perception and valuation of a social structure. In the conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic, the meaning of the concept of habit is close to that of the Latin word habitus. Historically, habitus has encapsulated the intentional and intelligent dispositions that are part of practical reason (Crossley 2013), and Bourdieu’s work has clearly addressed its social conditions. However, as compared to the concept of habitus, the use of the term habit includes an additional ecological and evolutionary meaning (Odling-Smee et al. 2003; Laland et al. 2016). A modus vivendi, involving ways of life that are more complex than mere instincts, which allow the consideration of life habits of both human and other-thanhuman co-inhabitants. The sociological understanding of habitus combined with neo-Aristotelian schools of virtue ethics and new findings of ecological and ethological sciences give a broader biocultural meaning to the concept of habit. This biocultural meaning of habit has relevant implications for better understanding indirect drivers of global changes associated with human behavior, and for assessing the

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consequences that specific life habits have for the oppression (or, alternatively, the well-being) of the majority of human and other-than-human co-inhabitants.

14.2.3 Co-inhabitants and Companions Rozzi (2003, 2004) introduced the term co-inhabitant motivated by his fieldwork experiences in tropical and temperate forests of South America, where birds exhibit intentionality in their behaviors, including the care for their “family members.” These life habits take place in the same habitats that are inhabited by humans, who also take care for their family members. From this experience, emerged the meaning of being co-inhabitants; i.e., sharing the same habitat. Sharing the habitat implies an ecological-evolutionary process. Taking care of the habitat and the “family members” implies an ethical duty. Therefore, the concept of co-inhabitant has a double meaning; it is both descriptive and normative. The term co-inhabitant that refers to sharing the habitat has an analogous meaning to the concept of companion that alludes to sharing bread (from Latin, cum = with; panis = bread). The understanding that our species Homo sapiens share the habitats with other species is implicit in the etymological origin of the word human, which derives from the Latin word humus that means soil. Complementary, in the origins of the Judeo-Christian tradition the name of the first human being is Adam, which derives from the Hebrew adamah, which also means soil. In Genesis, both the name and the material origin of the first human being are associated in with soil, with nature: “Then God formed man (adam) from the dust of the earth (adamah), breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and was the man a living being” (in Callicott 1994, 45). These ancient biocultural understandings found in the origins of Western civilization is corroborated today by contemporary biogeochemical sciences that demonstrate that the molecular constitution of human bodies has a chemical composition similar to humus or organic matter of the soil (Schlesinger and Bernhardt 2013). The concept of co-inhabitant is not only consistent with early Western civilization concepts of humans and contemporary biogeochemical sciences but also with ecological worldviews of native peoples. For many Native American cultures, birds are seen as companions with whom habitat must be shared (Massardo and Rozzi 2004). In addition, in Native American stories there is often a sense of genealogical kinship as well. For some native cultures, such as the Koyukon in North America (Nelson 1983) or the Fuegian-Yahgans in South America (Rozzi et al. 2010), birds were humans in ancestral times. For other Native American cultures, such as the Ojibwa in North America (Callicott and Nelson 2004) and the Mapuche of South America (Rozzi 2004), human beings could be descendants of birds. In these indigenous worldviews, birds and humans share common ancestors; hence, birds and humans were considered as both co-inhabitants and “cousins,” an expression used by Charles Darwin in his On the Origin of Species. Indeed, Native American ecological knowledge and scientific Western knowledge converge in the notion of evolutionary kinship. The ethical implications of the notion of kinship implicit in

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Darwin’s evolutionary theory were elaborated in the mid-20th century by Leopold (1949), who introduced the concept of “companions in the odyssey of evolution” to extend the domain of the community of moral subjects to include the totality of beings with which humans co-inhabit. The notion of co-inhabitant has interrelated ethical and ontological implications, which are relevant to criticize the currently prevailing conceptual framework of ecosystem services (Naeem 2013). This perspective considers that human subjects administer goods and services provided by ecosystem objects and processes; consequently, the only subjects (active agents with their own interest) are humans (Rozzi 2015a). Under the perspectives of ecosystem services, biodiversity and ecosystems are viewed as passive objects without intentionality or interests. Hence, these objects are managed by a utilitarian ethics that supposes an ontological split between humansubjects and nature-objects. This ontological split has a long history in Western philosophy and underlies the anthropocentric concept of sustainable development envisioned by the Bruntland Commission report, Our Common Future (WCED 1987). Environmental philosopher Irene Klaver (2013, 93) has pointed out that “the dualism between subject and object has been pervasive, deeply imbedded in Western thought, and at the root of a variety of interlocking dualisms, such as activity (or agency) versus passivity, resonating in culture versus nature. A dualistic mindset comes with a value attribution, with an implied sense of superiority (culture, agency) versus inferiority (nature, passivity) and hence an implied legitimation for use, domination and exploitation.” In contrast to utilitarian ethics, the concept of co-inhabitant considers all living beings as active subjects with their own interests (Rozzi 2013). As argued above, this statement is supported by concepts associated with the notion of co-inhabitant that have ancient roots in Western philosophy and contemporary sciences. Pre-Socratic philosophers and Aristotle considered that all living beings had souls (Lat. anima), which meant spirit and, in turn, spirit (Lat. spiritus) meant breathing (Rozzi 2015a). Contemporary sciences have demonstrated that eukaryotes (that include all multicellular organisms and one-celled organisms belonging to the kingdom Protista) use the same cellular respiration processes. The same set of biochemical reactions take place in the mitochondria of cells of protists, fungi, plants, and animals that require oxygen to convert the energy of nutrients into molecules of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) (Mazzarello 1999). Today’s scientific understanding of cellular respiration resonates with the assertions of Aristotle and of Native American people for whom all living creatures, domestic and wild, are perceived as having “spirit,” and must be respected (May 2017). Respect frames human interactions with plants and animals. They are not “mere natural resources” but rather co-inhabitants that participate in rituals, farming, husbandry practices, and everyday life (Mamani-Bernanbé 2015; May 2015; Rozzi 2015b). For some Native American cultures, such as the Kayapó in Amazonia, plants and animals are considered friends with whom humans engage as co-inhabitants in interrelated processes of production, exchange, and consumption (Zanotti 2018). In summary, based on conceptual foundations of Western civilization,

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contemporary sciences, and Native American ecological worldviews, within the conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic, the word co-inhabitants acquires a broader meaning to emphasize three essential attributes of the diverse (human and other-thanhuman) beings that share a habitat. (1) Co-inhabitants are subjects not objects. (2) Co-inhabitants co-constitute their identities and their well-being by dwelling with other human and other-than-human beings. (3) Co-inhabitants share habitats that they co-structure through co-inhabitation relationships. They establish ecological relationships of complementarity and reciprocity that occur through exchanges of matter and energy. Therefore, the care and conservation of habitats is the condition of possibility for the existence and well-being of the diverse co-inhabitants. We propose a reconceptualization of the relationship between global society and the biosphere in terms of co-inhabitation. Co-inhabitation implies reciprocity. Based on this notion, a specific contribution of the co-inhabitation paradigm shift is the proposal to transform the Nature Contributions to People (NCP) framework currently used by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (Pascual et al. 2017), by adding the reciprocal components of People’s Contribution to Nature (Rozzi et al. In press).

14.3 Concluding Remarks In this chapter, we have criticized the reduction of language and “naturalization” of economic growth mindsets and aims to bring back into global society (its culture, science, and policy) concepts that have been marginalized. We have presented the 3Hs model of the biocultural ethic to provide a novel conceptual lens to discuss the threats to local ecological knowledge (LEK), traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), linguistic diversity and the interwoven relationship this has to the loss of biological diversity (Maffi 2001; Persic and Martin 2008; Pretty et al. 2009, Rozzi 2012a). Unless explicitly identified, threats to cultural diversity and alternative forms of economies will remain unaddressed within sustainable development discourse (Agyeman 2005; Argumedo et al. 2011; Argumedo and Pimbert 2008; Berkes et al. 2000; Cocks 2010; Mühlhäusler 2001; Rozzi 2013). Consequently, it is necessary to adopt a biocultural prism that enables to make explicit this missing piece in the current articulation of prevailing sustainable development policies and practices (UNESCO 2010; Zent 2009; Poole 2018). With the theoretical framework of the biocultural ethic, we aim to decolonize social mindsets dazzled by the paradigm of one-dimensional economic growth. Noncapitalist dimensions of human existence have been eliminated under the prevalence of this paradigm (Brand and Wissen 2013). The one-dimensional man portrayed by Herbert Marcuse in the 1960s has come to dominate. As Marcuse (1991) argued, consumerism is a form of social control. To transform the economic growth paradigm controlled by political, economic, and technological powers that drive major processes of global changes we maintain that it is necessary to change the prevailing

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language with which the natural world is perceived and valued by global society (Rozzi 2015a). To reorient unsustainable trends of global changes, we propose that it is indispensable to overcome the global mindset dominated by a one-dimensional instrumental way of thinking. Complementarily, it is indispensable to (re)incorporate a plethora of marginalized concepts, values, and ways of thinking and living (Rozzi 2018b). Reintegrating this multi-dimensionality into educational, political, and decision-making spheres could help to de-homogenize the mindsets and life habits of globalized society. A biocultural cascade effect triggered by changing the conceptual languages could, in turn, modify habits of thinking and acting (Rozzi 2018c). In the 2010s, some scientists have pointed out the need to change the language to implement effective conservation programs and to address complex socioenvironmental problems (Spash and Aslaksen 2015). They have warned about the shortcomings of an economic discourse that is being increasingly used by ecologists and conservation biologists who conceptualize biodiversity and ecosystems as goods and services that can be represented by monetary values in policy processes. Spash and Aslaksen (2015) caution that this narrow instrumentalist approach denies value pluralism and incommensurability, and call for re-establishing an ecological discourse in biodiversity and broader environmental policies. The biocultural cascade effect proposed by Rozzi (2018c) aim to tackle the need of transforming the prevailing language of global society and associated unsustainable life habits into sustainable ones, which can favor conservation of native habitats and the well-being of co-inhabitants with whom we share these habitats. In the 1980s, the UN World Charter for Nature had already stated that: “Every form of life is unique, warranting respect regardless of its worth to man [sic], and, to accord other organisms such recognition, man must be guided by a moral code of action” (UN 1982, 2). Three decades later, the United Nations General Assembly passed a new Resolution entitled Transforming Our World, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as “a plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity” (UNGA 2015, 1). This resolution launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to update goals by incorporating lessons learned from the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The SDGs are an expansion of the original eight proposed within the larger framework of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2003), and are intended to encapsulate the shortfalls for a more inclusive and sustainable future. However, the SDGs do not explicitly articulate the importance of local ecological knowledge and cultural diversity for sustainability as a high-level priority (Poole 2018). This absence represents a conceptual lacuna that must be addressed in order to recognize biocultural heritage within policies to address complex global changes. This is not just an academic exercise, but it is a crucial matter of life or death for myriads of co-inhabitants in all corners of the planet. In summary, we have presented the biocultural ethic’s 3Hs conceptual framework to offer a heuristic model that can be helpful in three fronts. First, to understand better the complexities of multidimensional and multi-scale processes involved in global changes. Second, to design policies that can integrate better the ethical, political, and environmental dimensions of the contemporary technological world. Third,

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to assist decision-making processes in assessing the consequences that development projects might have for the conservation or destruction of habitats, life habits, and welfare of co-inhabitants. In this way, the 3Hs philosophical framework of the biocultural ethic can contribute to orient global society toward sustainable forms of co-inhabitation amidst the rapidly changing socio-environmental scenarios that characterize the Anthropocene. Acknowledgements We acknowledge the support of the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB) through the grant AFB170008 (CONICYT, Chile). This chapter is a contribution to the SubAntarctic Biocultural Conservation Program coordinated by IEB and the University of Magallanes in Chile, and by the University of North Texas in the US.

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May Jr RH (2013) Andean Llamas and Earth Stewardship. In: Rozzi R, Pickett STA, Palmer C, Armesto JJ, Callicott JB (eds) Linking ecology and ethics for a changing world: values, philosophy, and action. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 77–86 Mazzarello P (1999) A unifying concept: the history of cell theory. Nat Cell Biol 1(1):E13–E15 McNeill JR, Engelke P (2014) The great acceleration: an environmental history of the anthropocene since 1945. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2003) Ecosystems and human well-being: a framework for assessment. Island Press, Washington Mühlhäusler P (2001) Ecolinguistic, linguistic diversity and ecological diversity. In: Maffi L (ed) On biocultural diversity: linking language, knowledge, and the environment. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, pp 133–144 Mühlhäusler P (2003) Language environment, environment of language: a course in ecolinguistics. Battlebridge, London Naeem S (2013) Ecosystem services: is a planet servicing one species likely to function? In: Rozzi R, Pickett STA, Palmer C, Armesto JJ, Callicott JB (eds) Linking ecology and ethics for a changing world: values, philosophy, and action. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 303–321 Naveh Z, Lieberman AS (1990) Landscape ecology. Springer, New York Nelson RK (1983) Make prayers to the raven. A Koyukon view of the northern forest. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN, Feldman MW (2003) Niche construction: the neglected process in evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton OED (1980) Oxford English dictionary. Oxford University Press, New York Pascual U, Balvanera P, Díaz S, Pataki G, Roth E, Stenseke M et al (2017) Valuing nature’s contributions to people: the IPBES approach. Curr Opinion Environ Sustain 26:7–16 Persic A, Martin G (2008) Links between biological and cultural diversity: report of the international workshop, 26–28 September 2007. Available via: UNESCO HQ Paris. http://unescodoc.unesco. org/images/0015/001592/1592551. Accessed 1 Octr 2018 Plumwood V (2002) Environmental culture: the ecological crisis of reason. Routledge, London Poole AK (2015) Urban sustainability and the extinction of experience: acknowledging drivers of biocultural loss for socio-ecological well-being. Dissertation, University of North Texas Poole AK (2018) Sustainable development goals and the biocultural heritage Lacuna: where is goal number 18? In: Rozzi R, May Jr RH, Stuart Chapin III F, Massardo F, Gavin MC, et al (eds) From biocultural homogenization to biocultural conservation. Springer, Dordrecht. In press Pretty J, Adams B, Berkes F, de Athayde SF, Dudley N, Hunn E et al (2009) The intersections of biological diversity and cultural diversity: towards integration. Conserv Soc 7(2):100–112 Redman CL, Miller TR (2015) The technosphere and earth stewardship. In: Rozzi R, Pickett STA, Palmer C, Armesto JJ, Callicott JB (eds) Linking ecology and ethics for a changing world: values, philosophy, and action. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 269–279 Rozzi R (2001) Éticas ambientales latinoamericanas: raíces y ramas. In: Primack R, Rozzi R, Feinsiger P, Dirzo R, Massardo F (eds) Fundamentos de conservación biológica: perspectivas Latinoamericanas. Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, pp 311–362 Rozzi R (2003) Biodiversity and social wellbeing in South America. Encyclopedia of life support systems (EOLSS). UNESCO-EOLSS. Available via: www.eolss.net. Accessed 1 Oct 2018 Rozzi R (2004) Implicaciones éticas de narrativas yaganes y mapuches sobre las aves de los bosques templados de Sudamérica austral. Ornitol Neotrop 15:435–444 Rozzi R (2012a) Biocultural ethics: The vital links between the inhabitants, their habits and regional habitats. Environ Eth 34:27–50 Rozzi R (2012b) South American environmental philosophy: ancestral amerindian roots and emergent academic branches. Environ Eth 34:343–365 Rozzi R (2013) Biocultural ethics: from biocultural homogenization toward biocultural conservation. In: Rozzi R, Pickett STA, Palmer C, Armesto JJ, Callicott JB (eds) Linking ecology and ethics for a changing world: values, philosophy, and action. Springer, Dordrecht, 113–136

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Zalasiewicz J, Waters CN, Williams M, Barnosky AD, Cearreta A, Crutzen P et al (2015) When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal. Q Int 383:196–203 Zanotti L (2018) Biocultural approaches to conservation: water sovereignty in the Kayapó lands. In: Rozzi R, May Jr RH, Stuart Chapin III F, Massardo F, Gavin MC, et al From biocultural homogenization to biocultural conservation. Springer, Dordrecht. In press Zent S (2009) Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and biocultural diversity: a close-up look at linkages, delearning trends, and changing patterns of transmission. In: Bates P, Chiba M, Kube S, Nakashima D (eds) Learning and knowing in indigenous societies today. UNESCO, Paris, pp 39–58

Chapter 15

Energetic Ethics. Georges Bataille in the Anthropocene Jochem Zwier and Vincent Blok

Abstract In this chapter, we develop the claim that today, in light of the distributed catastrophe called the Anthropocene, the question of ethics first and foremost becomes a question of economy and energy. Supplementing existing ethical approaches to the question of economy and energy, we offer what we understand to be a more fundamental economical interpretation of the Anthropocene by way of Georges Bataille’s philosophical thought on economy. We will argue that inasmuch as it results from what has come to be known as “the great acceleration”, the Anthropocene can be understood as a consequence of an economic consideration of energy that is oriented towards scarcity and utility, which is to say to Bataille’s “restricted economy”. Additionally, we show how for Bataille, such a ‘restricted’ consideration of energy is an ethical affair, since it misunderstands the constitutive abundance of energy associated with “the general economy”, thereby simultaneously and catastrophically misunderstanding the ethos of human existence in servile terms of labour and efficiency. Finally, we investigate how Bataille’s concept of sovereignty seeks to surpass such servility and efficiency by way of a consideration of energy that is oriented towards expenditure. We offer a reinterpretation of the ethics of sovereignty by confronting it with our contemporary deteriorating oikos inhabited in the Anthropocene. We close by arguing that notwithstanding its irrevocable difficulties, the question of ethics in the Anthropocene must be considered as an energetic ethics of sovereignty. Keywords Anthropocene · Georges Bataille · General economy · Energy · Ethos

J. Zwier Institute for Science in Society, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] V. Blok (B) Management Studies Chair Group and Philosophy Chair Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_15

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15.1 The Anthropocene. Ethics, Energy, and Economy The preeminent global change that confronts ethical thought today goes by the name of the Anthropocene. In leaving no part of our globe untouched, the Anthropocene stirs up a fundamental ethical question, not only in terms of what we must do, but also in terms of who we must be, of our character or ethos as Earthlings. In outlining the relevance of energy, the present chapter offers a way of responding to this ethical question. What, first of all, is the Anthropocene? While many differing interpretations of the concept have been generated (Lorimer 2017), they all generally understand the Anthropocene as the epoch in which humanity becomes the dominant factor shaping the Earth and its associated life-supporting systems (Steffen et al. 2007). Succeeding the Holocene, where a relatively warm climate was considered to be the foremost geological factor (Crutzen 2002; Fagan 2004; Dumanoski 2009), the Anthropocene forefronts the techno-industrial activity of anthropoi or humans, thus marking the time in which “natural and human forces [are] intertwined, so that the fate of the one determines the fate of the other” (Zalasiewicz et al. 2010, 2231). As emphasized by Clive Hamilton and his colleagues, this is not exclusively the scientific concern of climate science, geology, or Earth-system science. Rather, the Anthropocene more generally “represents the ground-breaking attempt to think together earth processes, life, [and] human enterprise […] into a totalizing framework” (Hamilton et al. 2015, 2). According to such a totalizing framework, human enterprise no longer merely registers as a force unfolding on Earth, but comes under consideration as Earth, which is to say as an earth-shaping force of considerable, even dominant magnitude (Zwier and Blok 2017). This magnitude, markedly expressed in the global demographic growth depicted in Fig. 15.1, concomitantly indicates the Anthropocene’s central problem, since humanity’s vast influence heats up the Earth-system to the extent that Fig. 15.1 Population growth—“the great acceleration” (image source: Steffen et al. 2015, 84)

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Fig. 15.2 Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa observatory (image source: https://www. esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/ trends/full.html)

its habitability becomes endangered, the gravity of which is perhaps best expressed in Fig. 15.2, depicting global warming. Both Figs. 15.1 and 15.2 are bolstered by the energy depicted in Fig. 15.3, given how demographic expansion has been made possible by large-scale exploitation of fossil forms of energy such as coal and oil, whilst this self-same exploitation led to an overall rise in global temperatures. The issue of energy therefore presents a central tenet of the Anthropocene in general, and for its ethical implications in particular. It may therefore come as no surprise that numerous ethical considerations of the Anthropocene cluster around the issue of energy, many of which relate it to economy. To name a few instances, one may think of the skewed distribution of economic wealth gained from the local exploitation of fossil fuels in the global North, versus its detrimental climatic effects on the globe as such (cf. Baskin 2015; Shue 2010). One may critically evaluate capitalist tendencies to ruthlessly exploit energy sources for profit, and point to neglected costs of environmental devaluation. Finally (yet of course far from exhaustively), one can think of ethical issues related to moving to Fig. 15.3 Primary energy use—“the great acceleration” (image source: Steffen et al. 2015, 84)

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an energetically sustainable economy: who pays, profits, which values are taken into account and which are ignored, etc. (Parry 2007; Blok and Lemmens 2015). While such ethical considerations address the issue of energy and the Anthropocene in many different ways, they share a common denominator of considerable import, namely that they address energy as a particular thing or good that exists within an economy. As a result of this basic assumption, ethical reflection comes to concern the normative dimension of the way in which energetic goods are economically exploited, appraised, valued, distributed, etc. Now, without belittling such considerations or denying them their place in the ethical and political discourse surrounding the Anthropocene, it is significant to note that they tend to bypass an equally relevant and more rudimentary interpretation of the relation between energy and economy. Georges Bataille’s philosophical contemplation of energy and economy offers such a rudimentary interpretation, and thus serves to situate the abovementioned understanding of energy (as an economic good) within a more general economic and energetic framework. As will become clear, his contemplation thereby raises an ethical consideration that differs from the ones sketched above, and turns out to be of central relevance to the issue of the Anthropocene.

15.2 Bataille: Energy and Economy In thinking of energy and economy, Bataille introduces a distinction between what he calls “the restricted economy” and “the general economy” (Bataille 1991). The restricted economy corresponds to how we usually conceive of economy, which is to say as a system of production and consumption of goods that is characterized by scarcity, neediness, and associated useful production. The economic logic is familiar here: scarcity of goods engenders demand, which elicits labour to address needs and overcome scarcity by way of producing useful goods. For example, we need electrical energy to power our homes, and must therefore engage in an economy of production and consumption of the scarce good of electrical energy. Such an engagement may accordingly raise the aforementioned ethical issues, for instance with regards to “green energy”, sustainability, etc. For Bataille, the restricted economy thereby implies a particular understanding of the world, a “consciousness of necessity, of an indigence,” according to which individuals like our colloquial selves come into view as “nothing but eternally needy individuals” (Bataille 1991, 23). Yet as its name suggests, Bataille considers the restricted economy to concern only a particular, restricted situation within the much larger framework of “the general economy” (Bataille 1991, 20). The latter concerns the flow of energy in general, where energy is not—and this is a cardinal difference compared to the restricted economy—considered as a good existing within a particular economy. Rather, energy is what first constitutes and literally sets in-operation all processes and activities of life on the surface of the globe, including particular economic processes involving the production and consumption of goods.

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A second cardinal difference is that from the perspective of general economy, energy is not primarily characterized by scarcity and exigence, but by abundance and excess. This concretely means that the energetic abundance of the sun constitutes natural organisms and propels life on the surface of the Earth. Bataille takes it as “a basic fact” that because the influx of solar energy is unremitting, natural organisms receive more energy than strictly required for maintaining life, resulting in excess energy (Bataille 1991, 21). He articulates this excess in terms of “pressure” (Bataille 1991, 29–36), the first effect of which is expansion, as this reduces pressure via spatial distribution. If otherwise unhindered, growth eventually runs up against spatial limits, and since the sun remains impartial to such limits and continues to relentlessly bestow its energizing gift, surplus energy can eventually no longer be incorporated via growth, but must be dissipated. For Bataille, therefore, “the impossibility of continuing growth makes way for squander” (Bataille 1991, 29) via “the production of increasingly burdensome forms of life” (Bataille 1991, 33). Where, for instance, plants make relatively efficient use of the sun’s gift for growth,1 so called higher organisms eat plants and other animals without growing to the same extent, thus making self-preservation and growth a more burdensome or expensive affair. Additionally, the extravagant, intricate, and painstakingly extensive sexual behaviours of higher organisms imply a relatively inefficient way of procreation. In short, for Bataille: “The mammalian organism is a gulf that swallows vast quantities of energy” (Bataille 1986, 60). To be clear, none of this denies that natural life occasionally faces energetic shortages and accordingly engages in a struggle for survival, but Bataille interprets such a struggle as both constituted by, and partaking in the general movement of energy that is characterized by abundance and ultimately by squander. A hungry lion may face a shortage of food, but its hunting and eating of a zebra (which itself “swallows vast quantities of energy” by inefficiently feeding on grass) partakes in the carnivorous squander of the abundant energy that constitutes the grass, the zebra, and the lion. Bataille’s general economy thus concerns the abundant energy that constitutes all living beings on Earth, including human beings. At the same time, humans occupy a unique position in this energetic constellation. Like all organisms, humanity is exposed to abundant solar energy, yet by tapping into fossil sources of energy like coal and oil (as well as nuclear energy), humanity exposes itself to energetic abundance even more. As a consequence of unlocking ever greater energy resources and using only a fraction of this resource for self-maintenance, humanity faces an increasing surplus of energy. As with other lifeforms, this engenders demographic expansion and spatial distribution of humans on Earth.

1 Although

relatively efficient (in comparison to higher organisms), plants also involve their own ‘burdensome’ ways, e.g. the fruitless sexuality of flowering plants (Wendlin 2007, 39).

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15.3 Bataille and the Anthropocene This brief sketch of Bataille’s thought already indicates its relevance to the topic of the Anthropocene. On the one hand, Bataille can be seen as an Anthropocenic thinker avant la lettre. If we recall Hamilton’s abovementioned idea that the Anthropocene places human enterprise and other earthly dynamics into one totalizing framework, it may be clear how Bataille anticipates this idea inasmuch as he positions human beings within the energetic framework of the general economy, in which all life on the planet is implicated. On the other hand, the Anthropocene can be understood as the concrete outcome of the unique way in which humanity is implicated in the general economy. If, following Bataille, energetic abundance engenders pressure which in turn effects expansion, the Anthropocene can be seen as its result (cf. Zwier and Blok 2019). Whatever its exact starting point (Lorimer 2017) it is clear that the Anthropocene involves an enormous increase of human beings on the planet since that point (recall Fig. 15.1). This increase is itself made possible by the tremendous accumulation, production, and transformation of energetic resources that modern, industrialized humanity accomplishes (recall Fig. 15.3). It is through this energetic accomplishment that now, in the Anthropocene, humanity takes the stage as the dominant earthshaping force. Be that as it may, this accomplishment is not simply a matter of abundant energy as such, but first and foremost concerns the way in which it is addressed and understood. In elucidating this point, it is relevant to note how Bataille characterizes modern, industrial human existence by a tendency to forget the general economy and its constitutive, abundant energy.2 Due to this forgetfulness, the modern understanding of the world exclusively follows the logic of the restricted economy and its aforementioned “consciousness of necessity.” This implies turning a blind eye to energetic abundance, only to consider questions of economy and energy in terms of scarcity and the need for efficient, productive labour.3 Our present-day colloquial understanding of economy attests to this hegemony of the restricted economy, given how we unquestioningly take for granted the need to engage in productive labour to “make a living,” i.e. compensate for insufficient economic resources. The same goes for mainstream economic science inasmuch as it is self-evidently oriented towards the complex dynamics of scarcity of production (Zwier et al. 2015). Due to the hegemony of the restricted economy, energy solely comes under consideration as a scarce good for which there exists a continuous and increasing demand. In response, energy is produced and mobilized in ever increasing amounts, with ever increasing efficiency, ultimately resulting in what Fig. 15.3 illustrates.

2 The dialectical movement that undergirds Bataille’s consideration of such forgetfulness is beyond

the scope of the present chapter (Gemerchak 2003). cannot here repeat Bataille’s (quasi-Weberian) analysis of the development of such forgetfulness, in which the rise of protestantism, capitalism, and industrialism are central (Bataille 1991, particularly 115–141).

3 We

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According to this Bataillean interpretation then, the Anthropocene distinctly comes into view as an energetic and economic affair. It appears as the outcome of the way in which human existence forgets the general economy, instead of adhering to the hegemonic logic of the restricted economy. The accompanying emphasis on efficiency and productivity gives rise to an economic growth that now reaches planetary proportions.

15.4 Energetic Ethics Bataille’s economic thought has an ethical character inasmuch as it addresses what he calls the “failure of humanity” (Bataille 2007, 15) to take heed of the general economy. In exclusively adhering to the restricted economy and thus solely addressing energy in terms of its efficient production, humanity becomes increasingly exposed to the abundant influx and pressure of the general economy. As with any living system, this causes expansion. But where the logic of the restricted economy celebrates such expansion under the heading of economic growth, Bataille stresses that all growth must eventually run out of space. When this happens, pressure builds up, and like any limited system that is subjected to increasing pressure, it finally explodes. Writing in the aftermath of two world wars which he understands as “the greatest orgies of wealth that history has recorded” (Bataille 1991, 37), Bataille imagines—with Argus’ eyes—the eruption of another war as the explosive and catastrophic outcome of (or rather outlet for) uncontainable pressure. As with other constituents of the general economy, “the impossibility of continuing growth makes way for squander” (Bataille 1991, 29), which in the case of forgetful human existence takes the catastrophic form of war. For Bataille therefore, the failure of neglecting the general economy “causes us to undergo what we could bring about in our own way” (Bataille 1991, 23). This failure evidently concerns ethics, and Bataille explicitly aims to find better ways of dealing with excess energy, of “exhausting the surplus without war” (Bataille 2007, 428). In exploring cultural history, he famously finds examples of pressure exhausts in the ritual of potlach, where the indigenous people in the American northwest wasted surplus energy by way of the destruction of accumulated and produced resources, for instance by wrecking one’s canoes, up to setting one’s own village on fire (Bataille 1991, 67–68). Other examples include pyramids as an energetically inefficient burial method (119), Lamaist monks who avoided activity in contemplative life, thus dissipating the surplus generated by Tibetan workers (Bataille 1991, 93–110), jewels, works of art (Bataille 1989; Wendlin 2007, 39), and most eminently eroticism (Bataille 1986, 2007). All of these indicate a different approach to energy: rather than considering it a scarce good to be accumulated and put to work, they acknowledge rather than forget its constitutive abundance, accordingly attesting to how “it is not necessity but its contrary, ‘luxury’ that presents living matter and mankind with their fundamental problems” (Bataille 1991, 12). For Bataille, such luxury is a fundamental ethical problem, given how refraining from burning off

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excess energy eventually causes humanity to undergo its catastrophic dissipation in war. The Anthropocene, however, complicates this problem. The reason for this is that Bataille does not take the ecological crisis into consideration. His analysis relies on a stable Earth-system upon which the human habitat is subjected to pressure, grows, and eventually either bursts out in war, or finds better ways of dissipating excess energy. However, where Bataille is concerned with burning of excess energy, the Anthropocene forefronts the aftermath of the excessive burning of fossil fuels.4 This is to say that in light of global warming, the already peculiar call for the dissipative burning of excess energy appears even more unacceptable. There are nonetheless at least two reasons why Bataille’s thought remains relevant for an ethics of energy in the Anthropocene. First, it is worth noting how many responses to the Anthropocene and ecological crisis frame the core energetic problem as one of economic efficiency. In attempting to confront “a world with growing pressures on resources and the environment”, initiatives like the Bio-Based Economy aim for the “transition to a resource-efficient and ultimately regenerative circular economy” (European Commission 2012, 1). Such a bio-based, circular economy is thereby envisioned as an “efficient economic system that produces no waste” (Asveld et al. 2011, 11). Accordingly, the ideals of circularity and “zero-waste” imply that energetic resources (e.g. biomass) are renewable and can always be mobilized for further use. In light of the above, it may come as a surprise that such an ideal quite explicitly adheres to Bataille’s restricted economy, given how (bio)energy is solely addressed as a scarce good that cannot be wasted, but must continuously be put to work. Now, on the one hand, it goes without saying that the Anthropocene compels us to take serious consideration of such initiatives. On the other hand, Bataille’s thought compels the critical question whether ideals like the bio-based economy are not short-sighted, and whether they do not merely offer momentary reprieve. An economic ideal that seeks after absolute efficiency whilst excluding any form of waste or squander cannot but result in an economy that must grow under the pressure of the (forgotten) general economy. It thus repeats Bataille’s “human failure” as it eventually moves towards a cataclysmic dissipation of surplus energy, a bio-based catastrophe.5 Therefore, even in the harrowing light of global warming, Bataille’s fundamental economic problem of luxury and its dissipation cannot simply be discounted. Secondly, Bataille’s ethical challenge remains relevant for the Anthropocene insofar as it raises the question concerning our character or ethos as Earthlings. Inasmuch as it articulates an approach to energy that calls for its useless expenditure and thus moves beyond the means-end relation according to which energy is primarily useful, 4 Alan Stoekl offers an instructive contextualization which explains why ecology was not a primary

concern for Bataille (Stoeckl 2007). However, where Stoeckl confronts Bataille with the depletion of fossil fuels, the Anthropocene primarily concerns the aftermath of their combustion. Indeed, it is now becoming increasingly clear that our present stockpile of fossil fuels suffices to render the planet uninhabitable (Bonneuil 2015, 26). 5 For an elaborate analysis of Bataille and the Bio-Based Economy, cf. Zwier et al. (2015); see also Painter-Morland et al. (2017).

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Bataille’s contemplation of economy ultimately raises the question whether human existence must be primarily characterized in terms of usefulness and efficiency. For Bataille, the expenditure witnessed in pyramids, religious festivals, eroticism, and artworks involves an ecstatic and rapturous experience that carries consciousness beyond its usual and restricted “consciousness of necessity.” Although the associated squander of energy may serve to fend off catastrophic war, this is never its final use and legitimation. Rather, it indicates the possibility of a domain beyond utility altogether. Strange and fleeting as this idea may be—and Bataille is well aware that his suggestions “go against the judgments that form the basis of a rational economy” and require a “reversal of thinking” (Bataille 1991, 22–25)—it forms a worthwhile complement to contemporary ethical considerations of the Anthropocene. Whereas many such considerations (quite rightly) concern the way in which energy and economy can be aligned according to a manner that fosters a good and sustainable way of maintaining our collective livelihoods, Bataille’s thought accentuates the horizon of such efforts. It confronts us with the question whether existence is principally characterized by (ethically honourable) self-maintenance and sustainability, or whether the need for self-maintenance is itself to be transgressed. Particularly now, when the survival of humankind can no longer be taken for granted, questioning the horizon— both energetic and ethical—of self-maintenance appears a worthwhile endeavour.

References Asveld L, van Est R, Stemerding D (2011) Executive summary. In: Asveld L, van Est R, Stemerding D (eds) Getting to the core of the bioeconomy: a perspective on the sustainable promise of biomass. Rathenau Institute, The Hague, pp 11–14 Baskin J (2015) Paradigm dressed as epoch: the ideology of the Anthropocene. Environ Values 24:9–29 Bataille G (1986) Erotism: death and sensuality (Trans: Dalwood M). City Lights Books, San Francisco Bataille G (1989) The tears of Eros (Trans: Connor, P). City Light Books, San Fransisco Bataille G (1991) The accursed share, vol. I (Trans: Hurley R). Zone Books, New York Bataille G (2007) The accursed share vol II & III (Trans: Hurley R). Zone Books, New York Blok V, Lemmens P (2015) The emerging concept of responsible innovation; three reasons why it is questionable and calls for a radical transformation of the concept of innovation. In: Koops B-J, Oosterlaken I, Romijn H, Swierstra T, van den Hoven J (eds) Responsible innovation. Vol. 2. concepts, approaches, and applications. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 19–35 Bonneuil C (2015) The geological turn: narratives of the Anthropocene. In: Hamilton C, Bonneuil C, Gemenne F (eds) The Anthropocene and the global environmental crisis. Routledge, London, pp 17–31 Crutzen PJ (2002) Geology Of mankind: the Anthropocene. Nature 415:23 Dumanoski D (2009) The end of the long summer: why we must remake our civilization to survive on a volatile Earth. Three Rivers Press, New York European Commission (2012) Manifesto for a resource-efficient Europe. Available via: http:// europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-12-989_en.htm. Accessed 1 Oct 2018 Fagan B (2004) The long summer: how climate changed civilisation. Basic Books, Cambridge

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Gemerchak CM (2003) The sunday of the negative. Reading Bataille Reading Hegel. SUNY Press, New York Hamilton C, Bonneuil C, Gemenne F (2015) Thinking the Anthropocene. In: Hamilton C, Bonneuil C, Gemenne F (eds) The Anthropocene and the global environmental crisis. Routledge, London, pp 1–13 Lorimer J (2017) The Anthroposcene: a guide for the perplexed. Soc Stud Sci 47(1):117–142 Painter-Morland M, Demuijnck G, Ornati S (2017) Sustainable development and well-being: a philosophical challenge. J Bus Ethics 146(2):295–311 Parry B (2007) Cornering the futures market in “Bio-epistemology”. BioSocieties 2(3):386–389 Shue H (2010) Subsistence emissions and luxury emissions. In: Gardiner SM, Caney S, Jamieson D, Shue H (eds) Climate ethics: essential readings. Oxford University Press, New York Steffen W, Crutzen PJ, McNeill JR (2007) The Anthropocene: are humans now overwhelming the great forces of fature? Ambio 36(8):614–621 Steffen W, Broadgate W, Deutsch L, Gaffney O, Ludwig C (2015) The trajectory of the Anthropocene: the great acceleration. Anthropos Rev 2(1):81–98 Stoekl A (2007) Bataille’s peak: energy, religion, and postsustainability. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis Wendlin AE (2007) Sovereign consumption as a species of communist theory. In: Winnubst S (eds) Reading Bataille now. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp 35–53 Zalasiewicz J, Williams M, Steffen W, Crutzen PJ (2010) The new world of the Anthropocene. Environ Sci Technol 44:2228–2231 Zwier J, Blok V, Lemmens P, Geerts R-J (2015) The ideal of a zero-waste humanity: philosophical reflections on the demand for a bio-based economy. J Agric Environ Ethics 28(2):353–374 Zwier J, Blok V (2017) Saving Earth: encountering Heidegger’s philosophy of technology in the Anthropocene. Techné: Res Philos Tech. https://doi.org/10.5840/techne201772167 Zwier J, Blok V (2019) Seeing through the fumes: technology and asymmetry in the Anthropocene. Hum Stud. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-019-09508-4

Chapter 16

Ecological Justice in the Anthropocene: A Proposal Vicente Bellver

Abstract The power created by technoscience during the 20th century has turned human beings into global ecological agents. In the face of this challenge, unique in the history of humankind, there are three answers that have been proposed: to accelerate the process of human control over nature (technocratic paradigm); to revert the present situation to a previous stage in which nature recovers its independence from human beings (decrecentism); and to maintain the current system with some measures to solve the side effects (ecocapitalism). The technocratic paradigm does not recognize the value and limits of nature. Decrecentism ignores the duty of using technology to provide more dignified, decent life conditions for humanity. And ecocapitalism is the contemporary version of an economic system which produces growth as well as inequality and environmental degradation, and that it is constantly reinventing itself to remain legitimate and keep its hegemony. Beyond the specific limitations of each of the models above, they all share a problem in their foundation: human beings are only marginally considered. In this chapter, I will offer an alternative to these models based on the UDHR. This Declaration recognizes the dignity of all human beings, the need to create the conditions for all people to exercise their rights, and the existence of duties to the community as a condition to full human development. The Declaration of Stockholm (1972) and of Rio (1992) materialize these synchronic and diachronic ecological justice demands. Keywords Ecological justice · Human rights · Technocratic paradigm · Decrecentism, ecocapitalism

16.1 Introduction Notwithstanding the moment in which the new geological era, called Anthropocene, is said to begin, it becomes essential to think of the future as a global human responsibility (Arias Maldonado 2018). The power created by technoscience during the 20th century has turned human beings into global ecological agents. The effects of their V. Bellver (B) Department of Philosophy of Law, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_16

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actions reach all the corners of the Earth and are transforming all the natural systems perpetually and unexpectedly. It is no exaggeration to claim that nature, understood as a living reality that evolves outside of human influence, has disappeared irreversibly. It has been replaced by the socio-nature, in which the natural processes and human actions are inextricably intertwined. Something which some decades ago was just an intuition1 has now become empirical evidence, and in a vastly extended social perception. Just when human beings were bragging about having tamed nature to serve them, the side effects of this “taming” have brought problems and uncertainty so serious that they amply surpass the benefits sought. The presence of the human mark on every ecosystem of the planet is considered a desecration of nature that can turn against human beings themselves. This alarmist discourse has characterized the ecological movement since its very inception and has affected it in particular ways: first an intense efficiency, which soon turned into indifference or even social rejection after confirming repeatedly that the worst scenarios have never become true (Simon 1981). In any case, scientific evidence of this new socio-natural universe appeals to us collectively and individually and demands from us an ethical and political answer. In the face of this challenge, unique in the history of humankind, there are three answers that have been proposed: to accelerate the process of human control over nature; to revert the present situation to a previous stage in which nature recovers its independence from human beings; and to maintain the current system with some measures to solve the side effects (Arias Maldonado 2018, 155). In this chapter, I claim that none of the options is satisfactory, and propose an alternative to face the Anthropocene according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This proposal aims to be, at the same time, realistic and according to the human good. In general, when discussing the challenges of the Anthropocene, the focus is on the political answer. The nomos comes after the demos. In this chapter, however, I propose the primary importance of the legal and educational answers. Politics depends to a great extent on the most ingrained values and attitudes in societies, and these come from Law and Education. The demos comes after the nomos. Seventy years after its proclamation, the UDHR (1948) is considered the cornerstone on which legal systems must be built in the democratic States of the World. Although it does not make any explicit reference to the ecological question, it does present a proposal on human life during the Anthropocene that overcomes the shortcomings of the other three, and gathers a great legitimacy worldwide. This answer does not provide a concrete policy for the Anthropocene, but a framework which all other answers must comply with. In this chapter, I will first define what is understood as Anthropocene and the main challenge that it poses for humanity. I will briefly mention the reasons why the three answers that have been provided are not sufficient. Next, I will focus on the proposal on human life in the Anthropocene that is contained in the UDHR. In 1 Philosophers

and social activists were the first to denounce, since the 19th century, this new form of relationship with nature that turned against human beings (Morris 2016).

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another instance, I will discuss the importance that the UDHR assigns to education to promote ecological justice.

16.2 The Challenge of the Anthropocene and the Inadequacy of the Dominant Answers The technological development experienced by humankind since the final years of the 19th century has provided human beings with a powerful tool to exploit natural resources, and to intervene and manipulate natural processes, sometimes causing irreversible alterations. This power has generated economic growth and has improved human life conditions beyond anything in the past, but at the same time, it has accelerated the changes in the Earth system2 with unpredictable effects for natural conditions: from an environment slightly modified by their own intervention, human beings have come to live in an environment completely altered by its technological power, which is called technosphere. Although it can be said that the technosphere appeared with human beings, who since their very beginning have modified their environment to adapt it to the development of their lives, this sphere has accelerated its expansion since the middle of last century, and even reached a world scale. As a result, a significant part of the natural evolution process is affected by human action and has left a stratigraphic mark that allows us to talk about a new geological era: the Anthropocene. These new environmental conditions appear as a threat to the quality of life of present generations and to the survival of the coming ones. Furthermore, they increase inequality among human beings, as the environmental problems hit those that have less the hardest, because they are more exposed and have less resources to fight against it. The ecological crisis, along with the increase in inequalities among people and the risks for coming generations that it poses, is fundamentally a problem of ecological justice.3 Thus, its solution demands that we start by discussing justice. Concepts such as Anthropocene, Technosphere or Great Acceleration have two functions. On the one hand, they reveal the indivisible relation between natural evolution and human action. On the other hand, they alert society in relation to the threat that human activities pose to the well-being of humanity itself. Whether the great acceleration began during the 1950s, or if the Anthropecene began with the first industrial revolution or with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are discussions better left to scientists. In any case, these concepts appeal to society in relation to the pressing need to take responsibility for a future that is completely conditioned to the decisions made during the present (Innerarity 2009). Up until now,

2 The

global economic system is the main change agent in the Earth system (Steffen et al. 2015).

3 The terms “environmental justice” or “climate justice” are well-established in the moral philosophy

literature (Bellver 1996; Innerarity 2012). Both refer to an implicit problem of global reach, that I define as “ecological justice”. However, this term has not been completely developed.

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we can identify three types of answers: the technocratic paradigm; decrecentism; and ecocapitalism. (a) The technocratic paradigm (Anders 2010) claims that the solution to the problems created by human action consists of accelerating the technological domain process in relation to natural evolution. The more visible expressions of this proposal (Baskin 2015) would be geoengineering, at a global scale, and posthumanism, at a human-species scale. Given that nature lacks any meaning and value in itself, and that technological power can reach an unlimited potential to modify the material world, we must give up our fearful attitudes, and decide to take full responsibility for the evolution of the world through a principle of proactive action (Fuller and Lipinska 2014). To arrogate to ourselves complete control over nature is not only childish bragging (Gray 2004), but also an act of violence toward human beings in general and the environmental foundation for their development. (b) Decrecentism understands that current life style and/or the increasing number of human beings that inhabit the Earth cannot be sustained, because there are natural limits and balances that, if they are modified, will make human life on this planet impossible. Thus, the reduction of economic and/or demographic growth is proposed. This proposal correctly identifies the problem in the development model based on financial capitalism, that equally causes exploitation of people and degradation of the environment (Taibo 2011). However, decrecentism doesn’t consider the impossibility of securing a decent life for present and future human beings without technological development. If we recognize the existence of a right to well-being for the masses that live in poverty all around the world, then a correlative duty of using technology to pursue this objective is created.4 (c) Ecocapitalism is the ecological version of the prevailing economic system. Even though it doesn’t question the social model based on self-interest, it does recognize the limits of growth, and provides two innovative elements: that the environmental problems are solved with technological innovations, and that these innovations that generate ecological production are economically and politically possible. Different proposals, such as ecological modernization (Spaargaren and Mol 1992), green economy and circular economy share the validation of the capitalist system, and the possibilities of technology in order to fight against environmental degradation and reduce poverty. Up to the present, these models have had a limited reach to certain countries or regions, where their productive processes have become more sustainable. However, the global outcome is still far from being reached (Brand 2012): financial speculation and instant benefits are still the main driving forces of our economic system. As a result, people and nature are still important only as mere production means (Ballesteros 2012). 4 “It

is also true that this civilization (the technological civilization) makes it possible, more than any other human civilization before, the following: a life without violence and with ample equality of opportunities” (Patocka 2016).

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The technocratic paradigm does not recognize the value and limits of nature. Decrecentism ignores the duty of using technology to provide more dignified, decent life conditions for humanity. And ecocapitalism is the contemporary version of an economic system that became globalized during the 20th century, which produces growth as well as inequality and environmental degradation, and that it is constantly reinventing itself to remain legitimate and keep its hegemony (Ballesteros 2010). The first two are ideal models that are more possible to find in books than in real life. The third combines elements from the other two and is the one that has governed human life and the planet for more than 70 years.

16.3 Ecological Justice During the Anthropocene Beyond the specific limitations of each of the models above, they all share a problem in their foundation: human beings are only marginally considered. In the technocratic paradigm, human beings are considered a deficient and transitory step toward posthumanity. Decrecentism may come to value nature more than each human being and the human family as a whole. Finally, ecocapitalism does not abandon the idea of the human being as an interchangeable individual (Ballesteros 2012). Next, I will offer an alternative that goes beyond the models described above that is based on the dignity of human beings; although humans have become another geological force of nature (Waters et al. 2016), they are also the only being that can become responsible for the environment and for providing the conditions of a good life for present and future generations (Ballesteros 1995). This proposal is based on the UDHR, arguably the most authoritative legal text in the world. Technological development has caused the well-being of countless people around the world. However, this effect is a consequence, to a great extent, of the irruption of the epistemological scientist paradigm, which has transformed our vision of reality and our relations with nature (Arnau 2017). Assuming this epistemological paradigm, human beings started to consider nature as a sterile or openly hostile environment (Sábato 1973). Once human beings start to perceive that material progress is causing environmental damage that threatens its future, the urgency to protect the environment for present and future generations appears in the international political agenda. In contrast, the same attention is not paid to the invalidity of scientism in the epistemological realm and the rise of the technosphere as a new reality in which our lives unfold. In 1972, the United Nations organized the first World Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm, which can be considered as the official date of the beginning of the environmental movement, whose objective is to prevent human action from harming human beings and the environment in which we live our lives (Bellver 1994). The first principle of the Declaration of Stockholm on human environment states: “Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present

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and future generations. In this respect, policies promoting or perpetuating apartheid, racial segregation, discrimination, colonial and other forms of oppression and foreign domination stand condemned and must be eliminated.” This principle sums up the synchronic and diachronic double dimension of ecological justice. On the one hand, it claims that human beings have the right to have decent and adequate life conditions, and that this objective cannot be accomplished without first overcoming any kind of discrimination or domination (synchronic dimension). On the other hand, present generations have the duty toward future generations to ensure an environment that will also allow them to live a decent life (diachronic dimension). The declaration places the human being as the center of attention: we must protect the environment because present and future human beings need it not only to survive, but also to lead a fulfilling life. Protecting the environment becomes a human right because it is a basic need for every human being. If the Conference of Stockholm proclaimed to the world the need for ecological justice, the Conference of Rio de Janeiro in 1992 consolidated and materialized this need. Based on the discussions of Stockholm, the First Principle of the Rio Declaration claims “Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.” Once again, present and future human beings are the main cause of concern in relation to the environment. The Declaration includes the principle of shared but differentiated responsibilities: “States shall co-operate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystem. In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command” (Principle 7).5 It is a decisive step forward, recognizing that the ones that have most damaged the environment and that have the biggest technological and financial resources have more responsibility in achieving sustainable development at a universal level. The Declaration includes an international recognition of the principle of precaution for the first time, which incorporates the diachronic dimension into the protection of people and the environment: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (Principle 17). These declarations specify the demands of the UDHR in relation to human development and the environment. When the UDHR was approved in 1948, the concern about the effect of human action on the environment was just spreading, and there 5 This principle is also contained in the Framework Convention on Climate Change: United Nations

Framework Convention on Climate Change, art. 3: Principles.

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were other urgent topics that required all the attention. As a result, no explicit reference to the environmental problem was included. Now, this doesn’t mean that a reading of the UDHR cannot be done in light of sustainability. The preface of the UDHR states: “The advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.”6 If human beings are free from fear (of losing their lives, their legal personality, their nationality, etc.) and from need (of feeding, clothing, education, etc.) they will be able to exercise their freedom to live their lives fully. This fullness is achieved when the individual leads his or her own life according to his or her deepest convictions. These convictions are achieved and improved when one reflects upon the ultimate purpose of life and interacts and talks to other human beings. This is the reason why the UDHR equally declares the rights to freedom of belief and expression as indispensable means to achieving a fulfilling life. The rights guarantee what is fair (freeing us from fear and need) and provide us the conditions to pursue that which is good (through the freedom of belief and expression): the “freedom from” is at the service of “the freedom to;” emancipation is at the service of commitment (Contreras 2014). Living in poor environmental conditions increments the threats of hardship for every human being. Furthermore, it also increases social inequalities. Similarly, the violation of human rights is a main agent of environmental degradation. These violations can relate to civic or political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights. In one case, life, physical integrity, legal guarantees, freedom of thought and expression, etc. are attacked. The State becomes the worst enemy of citizens or is simply absent, as what happens when states fail. In the other case, people do not suffer direct physical violence but complete lack of recognition, which condemns them to social exclusion and, in the worst scenarios, to be exposed to an avoidable death (by starvation, lack of sanitary assistance, insalubrious life conditions, etc.). The spirit of abstraction that characterizes modern scientism, which dissolves the value of the real human being, legitimatizes violence and the “culture of waste” (Bauman 2003). In this context, the environment is degraded, which makes life conditions even harder for human beings. Although the UDHR does not contain any reference to environment, Art. 28 says: “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.” For decades we have known that the social and international order that allows the effectiveness of rights, even includes a relationship between humanity and nature that guarantees the possibilities of development for present and future generations. So, the notion of sustainable development is not foreign to the UDHR: it is included explicitly and demands that this development be human (Marcos and Pérez Marcos 2018). The Preamble of the Declaration begins by stating: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human 6 This

text is an extract of the Four Freedom Speech, the State of the Union address given by American President Franklin D. Roosevelt before the United States Congress on January 6th, 1943 (Glendon 2011).

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family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”. It is important to consider that the authors of the UDHR decided to talk about “members of the human family” and not humanity, the human species, or everyone. Consistent with the term “human family,” Art. 1 of the Declaration claims: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” It is interesting that the declaration of rights begins by proclaiming a duty, and a duty as demanding as that of acting fraternally with each other. The UDHR does not mention duties until practically the end, when in the second to last article it says: “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible” (Art. 29.1). Duties to the community are not presented as a toll for the person to pay to develop freely in his or her life. The approach is richer. As the community is the framework that allows the possibility of a full life for everyone, it is no longer enough that human beings are free from hardship and fear to achieve a full life. At the same time, he or she needs the community. This community is not only a pre-existing reality that will welcome him or her and provide him or her the context needed to thrive as a person. This community is a dynamic reality that only exists with the concurrence of every and each human being, who enrich it when they fulfill their duties toward it and share their creativity (Ballesteros 1989). In sum, the UDHR provides not only human rights but also duties, which are a condition of the former: acting towards one another in a spirit of universal brotherhood (art. 1 UDHR) and duties to the community (art. 29 UDHR). These duties have a synchronic and diachronic scope, because they cover all present and future human beings, and they affect inter-human relationships, and the relationship of humans with the environment, which is the basis for human relationships. As technology turns the environment into a reality in which nature and human action interact, the duty of a human being does not only consist of preserving the natural environment, but also to contribute in the creation of environmental conditions that allow human life for all present and future human beings.

16.4 Conclusion The Anthropocene underlies the responsibility of human beings for the future of humanity and the planet. The proposals that have been suggested (technocratic paradigm, decrecentism, ecocapitalism) are insufficient and lack universal legitimacy. On the contrary, the UDHR is an ideal action framework to face the challenges of the Anthropocene, specifically those related to the environmental crisis and social exclusion. This Declaration recognizes the dignity of all human beings, the need to create the conditions for all people to exercise their rights, and the existence of duties to the community as a condition to full human development. The Declaration of Stockholm (1972) and of Rio (1992) materialize these synchronic and diachronic ecological justice demands.

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Chapter 17

New Questions on Global Environmental Changes and Ethics in the Contemporary Technological World Luca Valera and Juan Carlos Castilla

Abstract The crisis and the changes discussed in this book are not only environmental, but also socio-environmental: as humans, we are part of this crisis and responsible actors for finding possible solutions. We appear to live in a catastrophic era, better characterized as Capitalocene than Anthropocene, where unregulated capitalism, directly or indirectly, refuses its role to face the deep socio-environmental crisis. Although the diagnoses of the problems are well known, there is a lack of leadership regarding the establishment of a world comprehensive map-road, which could lead not only to deal with the different crisis more efficiently, but also to involve people more directly in the decisional processes. In this regard, leadership is about to create a sense of mission, to motivate others to join them on that mission, to create and adaptive social architecture for the followers, to develop other leaders and to “get the job done.” In this sense, we do not even need technological solutions to concrete problems, but rather ethical responses. Keywords Technology · Ethics · Cultural values · Interdisciplinary approach · Leadership The human factor has determined in the environment, both at the local and the global level, several direct and indirect consequences for the atmospheric, terrestrial, marine, and freshwater systems. Such systems demand that human beings face the urgent need of developing new policies of sustainability. Nevertheless, the crisis and the changes discussed in this book are not only environmental, but also socio-environmental: as humans, we are part of this crisis and responsible actors for finding possible solutions (Valera 2013). As discussed in the

L. Valera (B) Centre for Bioethics and Department of Philosophy, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. L. Bernardo O’Higgins 340, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] J. C. Castilla Department of Ecology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Center for Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change (CCG-UC), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. L. Bernardo O’Higgins 340, Santiago de Chile, Chile © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29443-4_17

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book, the contemporary epoch has widely called the attention to changes that societies are undergoing with respect to cultural, social, and ethical frameworks. There is a confrontation between the economic models ruling in the most part of the world (economistic and consumeristic) and the ethical and the cultural needs voiced from many sides. We have produced fundamental transformations in society and have lost many worldviews, cultural values, attitudes (Schafer 1994), attachments, and beliefs. We appear to live in a catastrophic era (Gardiner 2006), perhaps better characterized as Capitalocene than Anthropocene, where unregulated capitalism, directly or indirectly, refuses its role to face the deep socio-environmental crisis (Stengers 2015). Some of the most dramatic socio-environmental changes underway in society are internally driven, they “flow from our heart” (Jamieson 2008). For these reasons, despite the book is articulated in three Parts adopting different methodologies, the book should be read as a unitary work in which each part is functional to the others. The unity of the book is given by the need to respond ethically and critically to the new problems which are generated in an age of global change, in which ethics comes to play an indispensable role which requires a renewed reflection. With reference to the methodology of the book, we would like to stress the fact that one of the most fundamental aspects of this work is its interdisciplinary perspective. Interdisciplinarity is achieved through a dialogue on the same problem from different methodologies and points of view, sharing nevertheless questions and terminology. For this reason, the book does not develop one exclusive methodology but shows how a polycentric approach (Ostrom 2009) (bottom-up, top-down, and mixed) is the most adequate to grasp the complexity of one single problem. In this sense, the different disciplines represented in the book (philosophy, ecology, engineering, law, political sciences, anthropology, social sciences, and theology) enter a dialogue in which each one integrates the others thanks to its specific perspective. The book is an occasion for reflecting on methodological interdisciplinarity and the growing complexity of the world moving from concrete questions and circumscribed problems. The final perspective that the book aims to offer is essentially ethical. The different contributions do not offer technological solutions to concrete problems but rather ethical responses. Even when language becomes more technical (involving ecological, economical, anthropological, and sociological discussions), as exemplified by the Second and the Third Parts, the answers provided ultimately belong to the ethical sphere. In concrete terms, the fundamental question tackled in this book can be summarized in the following way: “How should we act, both individually and collectively, in an age of global changes?”. Such question, which accompanies implicitly all the chapters, is justified by the need to create a critical awareness of the necessity of a radical change in our actions, at the level of possibilities as well as at the level of context. As stressed in the Introduction and in the First Part of the book, the emerging technologies have generated possibilities of action and interaction for humanity, which now lives in one (or more) distinct environments, establishing new relations with subjects and other entities (the individual, the collective, and the social). To

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mention Hans Jonas (1984), the field that was once considered to be pre-ethical becomes now a possible object of our intervention, and it is for this reason that it enters the domain of ethics. In light of this new awareness, the book offers new interpretative keys and hypotheses of solution. Obviously, the problems discussed in the book, especially in the Second and Third Parts, are susceptible of multiple solutions. The question regarding the extension and depth of our interventions on nature remains open to some extent. A new element of complexity of our age is given by the uncertainty we deal with when we act through new technological instruments and change the features of nature radically. In this context, not only we have to be prudent, but we also have to be aware of the fact that our ethical decisions are always perfectible and object of constructive criticism. The several factors implied in our decisions, both technical and non-technical, determine the fact that our decisions can rarely be immediate or lead to simple solutions. On the other hand, the complexity of our decisional processes means that the dialogue with other disciplines, which is necessary for making the right ethical decisions, requires today some technical knowledge (economical, political, ecological) of the problems at stake: this is the origin of our idea of an “interdisciplinary ethics in practice.” In this sense, this book provides elements for a deeper ethical reflection on our age more than offering easy solutions to the problems. Finally, the book diagnoses that we face today the great challenge of re-educating our conduct in a world deeply impacted by a heavily-technological human praxis. For this reason, interdisciplinarity, the polycentric perspective in action and politics, and above all the ethical education of the present and the future generations, are all critical factors for overcoming the actual socio-environmental crisis. Our last remark regarding the modern socio-ecological crisis is that, although the diagnoses of the problems are well known, there is a lack of leadership regarding the establishment of a world comprehensive map-road, which could lead not only to deal with the different crisis more efficiently, but also to involve people more directly in the decisional processes. As Bennis (2007) pointed out, leadership is about to create a sense of mission, to motivate others to join them on that mission (individual and collective efforts), to create and adaptive social architecture for the followers, to develop other leaders and to “get the job done”. In our present world, characterized by a socio-environmental crisis, there is a lack of leadership and optimism, and perhaps these are issues for a new book.

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Ostrom E (2009) A polycentric approach for coping with climate change. Policy Research Working Paper 5095. The World Bank, Washington Schafer P (1994) Cultures and economies: irresistible forces encounter immovable objects. Futures 26(8):830–845 Stengers I (2015) In catastrophic times: resisting the coming barbarism. Open Humanities Press, London Valera L (2013) Ecologia Umana. Le sfide etiche del rapporto uomo/ambiente. Aracne, Roma