Diversity is not only a characteristic of living organisms but

Chapter 13
also of content in biology textbooks. Biology is presented either
Organisms and Populations
as botany, zoology and microbiology or as classical and
modern. The later is a euphemism for molecular aspects of
Chapter 14
biology. Luckily we have many threads which weave the
Ecosystem
different areas of biological information into a unifying
principle. Ecology is one such thread which gives us a holistic
Chapter 15
perspective to biology. The essence of biological understanding
Biodiversity and Conservation
is to know how organisms, while remaining an individual,
interact with other organisms and physical habitats as a group
Chapter 16
and hence behave like organised wholes, i.e., population,
Environmental Issues
community, ecosystem or even as the whole biosphere.
Ecology explains to us all this. A particular aspect of this is the
study of anthropogenic environmental degradation and the
socio-political issues it has raised. This unit describes as well as
takes a critical view of the above aspects.
 Ramdeo Misra is revered as the Father of Ecology in India. Born on 26 August
1908, Ramdeo Misra obtained Ph.D in Ecology (1937) under Prof. W. H. Pearsall,
FRS, from Leeds University in UK. He established teaching and research in
ecology at the Department of Botany of the Banaras Hindu University,
Varanasi. His research laid the foundations for understanding of tropical
communities and their succession, environmental responses of plant
populations and productivity and nutrient cycling in tropical forest and
grassland ecosystems. Misra formulated the first postgraduate course in
ecology in India. Over 50 scholars obtained Ph. D degree under his supervision
and moved on to other universities and research institutes to initiate ecology
teaching and research across the country.
He was honoured with the Fellowships of the Indian National Science
RAMDEO MISRA Academy and World Academy of Arts and Science, and the prestigious Sanjay
(1908-1998)
Gandhi Award in Environment and Ecology. Due to his efforts, the
Government of India established the National Committee for Environmental
Planning and Coordination (1972) which, in later years, paved the way
for the establishment of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (1984).
CHAPTER 13

ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

13.1 Organism and Its

Environment
13.2 Populations Our living world is fascinatingly diverse and amazingly
complex. We can try to understand its complexity by
investigating processes at various levels of biological
organisation–macromolecules, cells, tissues, organs,
individual organisms, population, communities and
ecosystems and biomes. At any level of biological
organisation we can ask two types of questions – for
example, when we hear the bulbul singing early morning
in the garden, we may ask – ‘How does the bird sing ?’
Or, ‘Why does the bird sing ?’ The ‘how-type’ questions
seek the mechanism behind the process while the ‘why-
type’ questions seek the significance of the process. For
the first question in our example, the answer might be in
terms of the operation of the voice box and the vibrating
bone in the bird, whereas for the second question the
answer may lie in the bird’s need to communicate with its
mate during breeding season. When you observe nature
around you with a scientific frame of mind you will
certainly come up with many interesting questions of both
types - Why are night-blooming flowers generally white?
How does the bee know which flower has nectar? Why
does cactus have so many thorns? How does the chick
recognise her own mother ?, and so on.
 BIOLOGY

You have already learnt in previous classes that Ecology is a subject

which studies the interactions among organisms and between the
organism and its physical (abiotic) environment.
Ecology is basically concerned with four levels of biological
organisation – organisms, populations, communities and biomes. In this
chapter we explore ecology at organismic and population levels.

13.1 ORGANISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT

Ecology at the organismic level is essentially physiological ecology which
tries to understand how different organisms are adapted to their
environments in terms of not only survival but also reproduction. You
may have learnt in earlier classes how the rotation of our planet around
the Sun and the tilt of its axis cause annual variations in the intensity
and duration of temperature, resulting in distinct seasons. These
variations together with annual variation in precipitation (remember
precipitation includes both rain and snow) account for the formation of
major biomes such as desert, rain forest and tundra (Figure 13.1).

Figure 13.1 Biome distribution with respect to annual temperature and precipitation

Regional and local variations within each biome lead to the formation of a
wide variety of habitats. Major biomes of India are shown in Figure 13.2.
220 On planet Earth, life exists not just in a few favourable habitats but even
in extreme and harsh habitats – scorching Rajasthan desert, perpetually
rain-soaked Meghalaya forests, deep ocean trenches, torrential streams,
permafrost polar regions, high mountain tops, boiling thermal springs,
and stinking compost pits, to name a few. Even our intestine is a unique
habitat for hundreds of species of microbes.
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 13.2 Major biomes of India : (a) Tropical rain forest; (b) Deciduous forest;
(c) Desert; (d) Sea coast

What are the key elements that lead to so much variation in the
physical and chemical conditions of different habitats? The most
important ones are temperature, water, light and soil. We must remember
that the physico-chemical (abiotic) components alone do not characterise
the habitat of an organism completely; the habitat includes biotic
components also – pathogens, parasites, predators and competitors – of
the organism with which they interacts constantly. We assume that over
a period of time, the organism had through natural selection, evolved
adaptations to optimise its survival and reproduction in its habitat.

13.1.1 Major Abiotic Factors

Temperature: Temperature is the most ecologically relevant
environmental factor. You are aware that the average temperature on
land varies seasonally, decreases progressively from the equator towards
the poles and from plains to the mountain tops. It ranges from subzero
levels in polar areas and high altitudes to >500C in tropical deserts in
221
summer. There are, however, unique habitats such as thermal springs
and deep-sea hydrothermal vents where average temperatures exceed
1000 C. It is general knowledge that mango trees do not and cannot grow
in temperate countries like Canada and Germany, snow leopards are not
found in Kerala forests and tuna fish are rarely caught beyond tropical
 BIOLOGY

latitudes in the ocean. You can readily appreciate the significance of

temperature to living organisms when you realise that it affects the kinetics
of enzymes and through it the basal metabolism, activity and other
physiological functions of the organism. A few organisms can tolerate and
thrive in a wide range of temperatures (they are called eurythermal), but, a
vast majority of them are restricted to a narrow range of temperatures (such
organisms are called stenothermal ). The levels of thermal tolerance of
different species determine to a large extent their geographical distribution.
Can you think of a few eurythermal and stenothermal animals and
plants?
In recent years, there has been a growing concern about the gradually
increasing average global temperatures (Chapter 16 ). If this trend
continues, would you expect the distributional range of some species to
be affected?
Water: Next to temperature, water is the most important factor influencing
the life of organisms. In fact, life on earth originated in water and is
unsustainable without water. Its availability is so limited in deserts that
only special adaptations make it possible to live there. The productivity
and distribution of plants is also heavily dependent on water. You might
think that organisms living in oceans, lakes and rivers should not face
any water-related problems, but it is not true. For aquatic organisms the
quality (chemical composition, pH) of water becomes important. The salt
concentration (measured as salinity in parts per thousand), is less than
5 per cent in inland waters, 30-35 per cent the sea and > 100 per cent in
some hypersaline lagoons. Some organisms are tolerant of a wide range
of salinities (euryhaline) but others are restricted to a narrow range
(stenohaline). Many freshwater animals cannot live for long in sea water
and vice versa because of the osmotic problems, they would face.
Light: Since plants produce food through photosynthesis, a process which
is only possible when sunlight is available as a source of energy, we can
quickly understand the importance of light for living organisms,
particularly autotrophs. Many species of small plants (herbs and shrubs)
growing in forests are adapted to photosynthesise optimally under very
low light conditions because they are constantly overshadowed by tall,
canopied trees. Many plants are also dependent on sunlight to meet their
photoperiodic requirement for flowering. For many animals too, light is
important in that they use the diurnal and seasonal variations in light
intensity and duration (photoperiod) as cues for timing their foraging,
reproductive and migratory activities. The availability of light on land is
222 closely linked with that of temperature since the sun is the source for
both. But, deep (>500m) in the oceans, the environment is perpetually
dark and its inhabitants are not aware of the existence of a celestial source
of energy called Sun. What, then is their source of energy?). The spectral
quality of solar radiation is also important for life. The UV component of
the spectrum is harmful to many organisms while not all the colour
components of the visible spectrum are available for marine plants living
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

at different depths of the ocean. Among the red, green and brown algae
that inhabit the sea, which is likely to be found in the deepest waters?
Why?
Soil: The nature and properties of soil in different places vary; it is
dependent on the climate, the weathering process, whether soil is
transported or sedimentary and how soil development occurred. Various
characteristics of the soil such as soil composition, grain size and
aggregation determine the percolation and water holding capacity of the
soils. These characteristics along with parameters such as pH, mineral
composition and topography determine to a large extent the vegetation in
any area. This is in turn dictates the type of animals that can be supported.
Similarly, in the aquatic environment, the sediment-characteristics often
determine the type of benthic animals that can thrive there.

13.1.2 Responses to Abiotic Factors

Having realised that the abiotic conditions of many habitats may vary
drastically in time, we now ask–how do the organisms living in such
habitats cope or manage with stressful conditions? But before attempting
to answer this question, we should perhaps ask first why a highly variable
external environment should bother organisms after all. One would expect
that during the course of millions of years of their existence, many species
would have evolved a relatively constant internal (within the body)
environment that permits all biochemical reactions and physiological
functions to proceed with maximal
efficiency and thus, enhance the overall
‘fitness’ of the species. This constancy, for
example, could be in terms of optimal
temperature and osmotic concentration of
body fluids. Ideally then, the organism
should try to maintain the constancy of its
internal environment (a process called
homeostasis) despite varying external
environmental conditions that tend to
upset its homeostasis. Let us take an
analogy to clarify this important concept.
Suppose a person is able to perform his/
her best when the temperature is 250C and Figure 13.3 Diagrammatic representation of
wishes to maintain it so, even when it is organismic response
scorchingly hot or freezingly cold outside.
It could be achieved at home, in the car while travelling, and at workplace 223
by using an air conditioner in summer and heater in winter. Then his/
her performance would be always maximal regardless of the weather
around him/her. Here the person’s homeostasis is accomplished, not
through physiological, but artificial means. How do other living
organisms cope with the situation? Let us look at various possibilities
(Figure 13.3).
 BIOLOGY

(i) Regulate : Some organisms are able to maintain homeostasis by

physiological (sometimes behavioural also) means which ensures
constant body temperature, constant osmotic concentration, etc.
All birds and mammals, and a very few lower vertebrate and
invertebrate species are indeed capable of such regulation
(thermoregulation and osmoregulation). Evolutionary biologists
believe that the ‘success’ of mammals is largely due to their ability
to maintain a constant body temperature and thrive whether they
live in Antarctica or in the Sahara desert.
The mechanisms used by most mammals to regulate their body
temperature are similar to the ones that we humans use. We maintain
a constant body temperature of – 370C. In summer, when outside
temperature is more than our body temperature, we sweat profusely.
The resulting evaporative cooling, similar to what happens with a
desert cooler in operation, brings down the body temperature. In
winter when the temperature is much lower than 370C, we start to
shiver, a kind of exercise which produces heat and raises the body
temperature. Plants, on the other hand, do not have such
mechanisms to maintain internal temperatures.
(ii) Conform : An overwhelming majority (99 per cent) of animals and
nearly all plants cannot maintain a constant internal environment.
Their body temperature changes with the ambient temperature. In
aquatic animals, the osmotic concentration of the body fluids
change with that of the ambient water osmotic concentration. These
animals and plants are simply conformers. Considering the benefits
of a constant internal environment to the organism, we must ask
why these conformers had not evolved to become regulators. Recall
the human analogy we used above; much as they like, how many
people can really afford an air conditioner? Many simply ‘sweat it
out’ and resign themselves to suboptimal performance in hot
summer months. Thermoregulation is energetically expensive for
many organisms. This is particularly true for small animals like
shrews and humming birds. Heat loss or heat gain is a function of
surface area. Since small animals have a larger surface area relative
to their volume, they tend to lose body heat very fast when it is cold
outside; then they have to expend much energy to generate body
heat through metabolism. This is the main reason why very small
animals are rarely found in polar regions. During the course of
224 evolution, the costs and benefits of maintaining a constant internal
environment are taken into consideration. Some species have evolved
the ability to regulate, but only over a limited range of environmental
conditions, beyond which they simply conform.
If the stressful external conditions are localised or remain only
for a short duration, the organism has two other alternatives.
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

(iii) Migrate : The organism can move away temporarily from the
stressful habitat to a more hospitable area and return when stressful
period is over. In human analogy, this strategy is like a person
moving from Delhi to Shimla for the duration of summer. Many
animals, particularly birds, during winter undertake long-distance
migrations to more hospitable areas. Every winter the famous
Keolado National Park (Bhartpur) in Rajasthan host thousands of
migratory birds coming from Siberia and other extremely cold
northern regions.
(iv) Suspend: In bacteria, fungi and lower plants, various kinds of thick-
walled spores are formed which help them to survive unfavourable
conditions – these germinate on availability of suitable environment.
In higher plants, seeds and some other vegetative reproductive
structures serve as means to tide over periods of stress besides helping
in dispersal – they germinate to form new plants under favourable
moisture and temperature conditions. They do so by reducing their
metabolic activity and going into a date of ‘dormancy’.
In animals, the organism, if unable to migrate, might avoid the
stress by escaping in time. The familiar case of bears going into
hibernation during winter is an example of escape in time. Some
snails and fish go into aestivation to avoid summer–related
problems-heat and desiccation. Under unfavourable conditions
many zooplankton species in lakes and ponds are known to enter
diapause, a stage of suspended development.

13.1.3 Adaptations
While considering the various alternatives available to organisms for
coping with extremes in their environment, we have seen that some are
able to respond through certain physiological adjustments while others
do so behaviourally (migrating temporarily to a less stressful habitat).
These responses are also actually, their adaptations. So, we can say that
adaptation is any attribute of the organism (morphological, physiological,
behavioural) that enables the organism to survive and reproduce in its
habitat. Many adaptations have evolved over a long evolutionary time
and are genetically fixed. In the absence of an external source of water,
the kangaroo rat in North American deserts is capable of meeting all its
water requirements through its internal fat oxidation (in which water is
a by product). It also has the ability to concentrate its urine so that
minimal volume of water is used to remove excretory products.
Many desert plants have a thick cuticle on their leaf surfaces and
225
have their stomata arranged in deep pits to minimise water loss through
transpiration. They also have a special photosynthetic pathway (CAM)
that enables their stomata to remain closed during day time. Some desert
plants like Opuntia, have no leaves – they are reduced to spines–and the
photosynthetic function is taken over by the flattened stems.
 BIOLOGY

Mammals from colder climates generally have shorter ears and limbs
to minimise heat loss. (This is called the Allen’s Rule.) In the polar seas
aquatic mammals like seals have a thick layer of fat (blubber) below their
skin that acts as an insulator and reduces loss of body heat.
Some organisms possess adaptations that are physiological which
allow them to respond quickly to a stressful situation. If you had ever
been to any high altitude place (>3,500m Rohtang Pass near Manali and
Mansarovar, in China occupied Tibet) you must have experienced what
is called altitude sickness. Its symptoms include nausea, fatigue and
heart palpitations. This is because in the low atmospheric pressure of
high altitudes, the body does not get enough oxygen. But, gradually you
get acclimatised and stop experiencing altitude sickness. How did your
body solve this problem? The body compensates low oxygen availability
by increasing red blood cell production, decreasing the binding capacity
of hemoglobin and by increasing breathing rate. Many tribes live in the
high altitude of Himalayas. Find out if they normally have a higher red
blood cell count (or total hemoglobin) than people living in the plains.
In most animals, the metabolic reactions and hence all the
physiological functions proceed optimally in a narrow temperature range
(in humans, it is – 370C). But there are microbes (archaebacteria) that
flourish in hot springs and deep sea hydrothermal vents where
temperatures far exceed 1000C. How is this possible?
Many fish thrive in Antarctic waters where the temperature is always
below zero. How do they manage to keep their body fluids from freezing?
A large variety of marine invertebrates and fish live at great depths in
the ocean where the pressure could be >100 times the normal atmospheric
pressure that we experience. How do they live under such crushing
pressures and do they have any special enzymes? Organisms living in
such extreme environments show a fascinating array of biochemical
adaptations.
Some organisms show behavioural responses to cope with variations
in their environment. Desert lizards lack the physiological ability that
mammals have to deal with the high temperatures of their habitat, but
manage to keep their body temperature fairly constant by behavioural
means. They bask in the sun and absorb heat when their body
temperature drops below the comfort zone, but move into shade when
the ambient temperature starts increasing. Some species are capable of
burrowing into the soil to hide and escape from the above-ground heat.

226 13.2 POPULATIONS

13.2.1 Population Attributes
In nature, we rarely find isolated, single individuals of any species; majority
of them live in groups in a well defined geographical area, share or compete
for similar resources, potentially interbreed and thus constitute a
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

population. Although the term interbreeding implies sexual reproduction,

a group of individuals resulting from even asexual reproduction is also
generally considered a population for the purpose of ecological studies.
All the cormorants in a wetland, rats in an abandoned dwelling, teakwood
trees in a forest tract, bacteria in a culture plate and lotus plants in a
pond, are some examples of a population. In earlier chapters you have
learnt that although an individual organism is the one that has to cope
with a changed environment, it is at the population level that natural
selection operates to evolve the desired traits. Population ecology is,
therefore, an important area of ecology because it links ecology to
population genetics and evolution.
A population has certain attributes that an individual organism does
not. An individual may have births and deaths, but a population has birth
rates and death rates. In a population these rates refer to per capita births
and deaths, respectively. The rates, hence, are expressed is change in numbers
(increase or decrease) with respect to members of the population. Here is an
example. If in a pond there are 20 lotus plants last year and through
reproduction 8 new plants are added, taking the current population to 28,
we calculate the birth rate as 8/20 = 0.4 offspring per lotus per year. If 4
individuals in a laboratory population of 40 fruitflies died during a specified
time interval, say a week, the death rate in the population during that period
is 4/40 = 0.1 individuals per fruitfly per week.
Another attribute characteristic of a population is sex ratio. An
individual is either a male or a female but a population has a sex ratio
(e.g., 60 per cent of the population are females and 40 per cent males).
A population at any given time is composed of individuals of different
ages. If the age distribution (per cent individuals of a given age or age
group) is plotted for the population, the resulting structure is called an
age pyramid (Figure 13.4). For human population, the age pyramids
generally show age distribution of males and females in a combined
diagram. The shape of the pyramids reflects the growth status of the
population - (a) whether it is growing, (b) stable or (c) declining.

227
Figure 13.4 Representation of age pyramids for human population

The size of the population tells us a lot about its status in the habitat.
Whatever ecological processes we wish to investigate in a population, be
it the outcome of competition with another species, the impact of a
 BIOLOGY

predator or the effect of a pesticide application, we always evaluate them

in terms of any change in the population size. The size, in nature, could
be as low as <10 (Siberian cranes at Bharatpur wetlands in any year) or
go into millions (Chlamydomonas in a pond). Population size, more
technically called population density (designated as N), need not
necessarily be measured in numbers only. Although total number is
generally the most appropriate measure of population density, it is in
some cases either meaningless or difficult to determine. In an area, if
there are 200 Parthenium plants but only a single huge banyan tree with
a large canopy, stating that the population density of banyan is low relative
to that of Parthenium amounts to underestimating the enormous role of
the Banyan in that community. In such cases, the per cent cover or biomass
is a more meaningful measure of the population size. Total number is
again not an easily adoptable measure if the population is huge and
counting is impossible or very time-consuming. If you have a dense
laboratory culture of bacteria in a petri dish what is the best measure to
report its density? Sometimes, for certain ecological investigations, there
is no need to know the absolute population densities; relative densities
serve the purpose equally well. For instance, the number of fish caught
per trap is good enough measure of its total population density in the lake.
We are mostly obliged to estimate population sizes indirectly, without
actually counting them or seeing them. The tiger census in our national
parks and tiger reserves is often based on pug marks and fecal pellets.

13.2.2 Population Growth

The size of a population for any species is not a static parameter. It keeps
changing in time, depending on various factors including food availability,
predation pressure and reduce weather. In fact, it is these changes in
population density that give us some idea of what is happening to the
population – whether it is flourishing or declining. Whatever might be
the ultimate reasons, the density of a population in a given habitat during
a given period, fluctuates due to changes in four basic processes, two of
which (natality and immigration) contribute an increase in population
density and two (mortality and emigration) to a decrease.
(i) Natality refers to the number of births during a given period in the
population that are added to the initial density.
(ii) Mortality is the number of deaths in the population during a given
period.
228 (iii) Immigration is the number of individuals of the same species that
have come into the habitat from elsewhere during the time period
under consideration.
(iv) Emigration is the number of individuals of the population who
left the habitat and gone elsewhere during the time period under
consideration.
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

So, if N is the population density at time t, then its density at time t +1 is

Nt+1 = Nt + [(B + I) – (D + E)]
You can see from the above equation that population density will
increase if the number of births plus the number of immigrants (B + I) is
more than the number of deaths plus the number of emigrants (D + E),
otherwise it will decrease. Under normal conditions, births and deaths
are the most important factors influencing population density, the other
two factors assuming importance only under special conditions. For
instance, if a new habitat is just being colonised, immigration may
contribute more significantly to population growth than birth rates.
Growth Models : Does the growth of a population with time show any
specific and predictable pattern? We have been concerned about unbridled
human population growth and problems created by it in our country
and it is therefore natural for us to be curious if different animal
populations in nature behave the same way or show some restraints on
growth. Perhaps we can learn a lesson or two from nature on how to
control population growth.
(i) Exponential growth : Resource (food and space) availability is
obviously essential for the unimpeded growth of a population. 229
Ideally, when resources in the habitat are unlimited, each species
has the ability to realise fully its innate potential to grow in number,
as Darwin observed while developing his theory of natural selection.
Then the population grows in an exponential or geometric fashion.
If in a population of size N, the birth rates (not total number but
 BIOLOGY

per capita births) are represented as b and death rates (again, per
capita death rates) as d, then the increase or decrease in N during a
unit time period t (dN/dt) will be
dN/dt = (b – d) × N
Let (b–d) = r, then
dN/dt = rN
The r in this equation is called the ‘intrinsic rate of natural increase’
and is a very important parameter chosen for assessing impacts of
any biotic or abiotic factor on population growth.
To give you some idea about the magnitude of r values, for the
Norway rat the r is 0.015, and for the flour beetle it is 0.12. In
1981, the r value for human population in India was 0.0205. Find
out what the current r value is. For calculating it, you need to
know the birth rates and death rates.
The above equation describes the exponential or geometric growth
pattern of a population (Figure 13.5) and results in a J-shaped curve
when we plot N in relation to time. If you are familiar with basic
calculus, you can derive the integral form of the
exponential growth equation as
Nt = N0 ert
where
Nt = Population density after time t
N0 = Population density at time zero
r = intrinsic rate of natural increase
e = the base of natural logarithms (2.71828)
Any species growing exponentially under unlimited
resource conditions can reach enormous population
densities in a short time. Darwin showed how even
Figure 13.5 Population growth curve a slow growing animal like elephant could reach
a when responses are not enormous numbers in the absence of checks. The
limiting the growth, plot is following is an anecdote popularly narrated to
exponential,
b when responses are limiting demonstrate dramatically how fast a huge
the growth, plot is logistic, population could build up when growing
K is carrying capacity exponentially.
The king and the minister sat for a chess game. The king, confident
of winning the game, was ready to accept any bet proposed by the
230 minister. The minister humbly said that if he won, he wanted only
some wheat grains, the quantity of which is to be calculated by placing
on the chess board one grain in Square 1, then two in Square 2,
then four in Square 3, and eight in Square 4, and so on, doubling each
time the previous quantity of wheat on the next square until all the 64
squares were filled. The king accepted the seemingly silly bet and started
the game, but unluckily for him, the minister won. The king felt that fulfilling
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

the minister’s bet was so easy. He started with a single grain on

the first square and proceeded to fill the other squares following
minister’s suggested procedure, but by the time he covered half the
chess board, the king realised to his dismay that all the wheat
produced in his entire kingdom pooled together would still be
inadequate to cover all the 64 squares. Now think of a tiny
Paramecium starting with just one individual and through binary
fission, doubling in numbers every day, and imagine what a mind-
boggling population size it would reach in 64 days. (provided food
and space remain unlimited)
(ii) Logistic growth: No population of any species in nature has its
disposal unlimited resources to permit exponential growth. This
leads to competition between individuals for limited resources.
Eventually, the ‘fittest’ individual will survive and reproduce. The
governments of many countries have also realised this fact and
introduced various restraints with a view to limit human population
growth. In nature, a given habitat has enough resources to support
a maximum possible number, beyond which no further growth is
possible. Let us call this limit as nature’s carrying capacity (K) for
that species in that habitat.
A population growing in a habitat with limited resources show
initially a lag phase, followed by phases of acceleration and
deceleration and finally an asymptote, when the population density
reaches the carrying capacity. A plot of N in relation to time (t)
results in a sigmoid curve. This type of population growth is called
Verhulst-Pearl Logistic Growth (Figure 13.5) and is described by
the following equation:
⎛K −N⎞
dN/dt = rN ⎜ ⎟
⎝ K ⎠
Where N = Population density at time t
r = Intrinsic rate of natural increase
K = Carrying capacity

Since resources for growth for most animal populations are finite
and become limiting sooner or later, the logistic growth model is
considered a more realistic one.
Gather from Government Census data the population figures
for India for the last 100 years, plot them and check which growth
pattern is evident. 231

13.2.3 Life History Variation

Populations evolve to maximise their reproductive fitness, also called
Darwinian fitness (high r value), in the habitat in which they live. Under
a particular set of selection pressures, organisms evolve towards the most
 BIOLOGY

efficient reproductive strategy. Some organisms breed only once in their

lifetime (Pacific salmon fish, bamboo) while others breed many times
during their lifetime (most birds and mammals). Some produce a large
number of small-sized offspring (Oysters, pelagic fishes) while others
produce a small number of large-sized offspring (birds, mammals). So,
which is desirable for maximising fitness? Ecologists suggest that life
history traits of organisms have evolved in relation to the constraints
imposed by the abiotic and biotic components of the habitat in which
they live. Evolution of life history traits in different species is currently an
important area of research being conducted by ecologists.

13.2.4 Population Interactions

Can you think of any natural habitat on earth that is inhabited just by a
single species? There is no such habitat and such a situation is even
inconceivable. For any species, the minimal requirement is one more
species on which it can feed. Even a plant species, which makes its own
food, cannot survive alone; it needs soil microbes to break down the organic
matter in soil and return the inorganic nutrients for absorption. And then,
how will the plant manage pollination without an animal agent? It is
obvious that in nature, animals, plants and microbes do not and cannot
live in isolation but interact in various ways to form a biological
community. Even in minimal communities, many interactive linkages
exist, although all may not be readily apparent.
Interspecific interactions arise from the interaction of populations of
two different species. They could be beneficial, detrimental or neutral
(neither harm nor benefit) to one of the species or both. Assigning a ‘+’
sign for beneficial interaction, ‘-’ sign for detrimental and 0 for neutral
interaction, let us look at all the possible outcomes of interspecific
interactions (Table13.1).

Table 13.1 : Population Interactions

Species A Species B Name of Interaction

+ + Mutualism

– – Competition

+ – Predation

+ – Parasitism
232 + 0 Commensalism

– 0 Amensalism

Both the species benefit in mutualism and both lose in competition in

their interactions with each other. In both parasitism and Predation only
one species benefits (parasite and predator, respectively) and the interaction
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

is detrimental to the other species (host and prey, respectively).

The interaction where one species is benefitted and the other is neither
benefitted nor harmed is called commensalism. In amensalism on
the other hand one species is harmed whereas the other is
unaffected. Predation, parasitism and commensalisms share a common
characteristic– the interacting species live closely together.
(i) Predation: What would happen to all the energy fixed by
autotrophic organisms if the community has no animals to eat the
plants? You can think of predation as nature’s way of transferring
to higher trophic levels the energy fixed by plants. When we think
of predator and prey, most probably it is the tiger and the deer that
readily come to our mind, but a sparrow eating any seed is no less
a predator. Although animals eating plants are categorised
separately as herbivores, they are, in a broad ecological context,
not very different from predators.
Besides acting as ‘conduits’ for energy transfer across trophic
levels, predators play other important roles. They keep prey
populations under control. But for predators, prey species could
achieve very high population densities and cause ecosystem
instability. When certain exotic species are introduced into a
geographical area, they become invasive and start spreading fast
because the invaded land does not have its natural predators. The
prickly pear cactus introduced into Australia in the early 1920’s
caused havoc by spreading rapidly into millions of hectares of
rangeland. Finally, the invasive cactus was brought under control
only after a cactus-feeding predator (a moth) from its natural habitat
was introduced into the country. Biological control methods adopted
in agricultural pest control are based on the ability of the predator
to regulate prey population. Predators also help in maintaining
species diversity in a community, by reducing the intensity of
competition among competing prey species. In the rocky intertidal
communities of the American Pacific Coast the starfish Pisaster is
an important predator. In a field experiment, when all the starfish
were removed from an enclosed intertidal area, more than 10 species
of invertebrates became extinct within a year, because of inter-
specific competition.
If a predator is too efficient and overexploits its prey, then the
prey might become extinct and following it, the predator will also
become extinct for lack of food. This is the reason why predators in
233
nature are ‘prudent’. Prey species have evolved various defenses to
lessen the impact of predation. Some species of insects and frogs
are cryptically-coloured (camouflaged) to avoid being detected easily
by the predator. Some are poisonous and therefore avoided by the
predators. The Monarch butterfly is highly distasteful to its predator
 BIOLOGY

(bird) because of a special chemical present in its body.

Interestingly, the butterfly acquires this chemical during its
caterpillar stage by feeding on a poisonous weed.
For plants, herbivores are the predators. Nearly 25 per cent of
all insects are known to be phytophagous (feeding on plant sap
and other parts of plants). The problem is particularly severe for
plants because, unlike animals, they cannot run away from their
predators. Plants therefore have evolved an astonishing variety of
morphological and chemical defences against herbivores. Thorns
(Acacia, Cactus) are the most common morphological means of
defence. Many plants produce and store chemicals that make the
herbivore sick when they are eaten, inhibit feeding or digestion,
disrupt its reproduction or even kill it. You must have seen the
weed Calotropis growing in abandoned fields. The plant produces
highly poisonous cardiac glycosides and that is why you never see
any cattle or goats browsing on this plant. A wide variety of chemical
substances that we extract from plants on a commercial scale
(nicotine, caffeine, quinine, strychnine, opium, etc.,) are produced
by them actually as defences against grazers and browsers.
(ii) Competition: When Darwin spoke of the struggle for existence and
survival of the fittest in nature, he was convinced that interspecific
competition is a potent force in organic evolution. It is generally
believed that competition occurs when closely related species
compete for the same resources that are limiting, but this is not
entirely true. Firstly, totally unrelated species could also compete
for the same resource. For instance, in some shallow South
American lakes visiting flamingoes and resident fishes compete for
their common food, the zooplankton in the lake. Secondly,
resources need not be limiting for competition to occur; in
interference competition, the feeding efficiency of one species might
be reduced due to the interfering and inhibitory presence of the
other species, even if resources (food and space) are abundant.
Therefore, competition is best defined as a process in which the
fitness of one species (measured in terms of its ‘r’ the intrinsic rate
of increase) is significantly lower in the presence of another species.
It is relatively easy to demonstrate in laboratory experiments, as
Gause and other experimental ecologists did, when resources are
limited the competitively superior species will eventually eliminate
the other species, but evidence for such competitive exclusion
234 occurring in nature is not always conclusive. Strong and persuasive
circumstantial evidence does exist however in some cases. The
Abingdon tortoise in Galapagos Islands became extinct within a
decade after goats were introduced on the island, apparently due
to the greater browsing efficiency of the goats. Another evidence for
the occurrence of competition in nature comes from what is called
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

‘competitive release’. A species whose distribution is restricted to a

small geographical area because of the presence of a competitively
superior species, is found to expand its distributional range
dramatically when the competing species is experimentally removed.
Connell’s elegant field experiments showed that on the rocky sea
coasts of Scotland, the larger and competitively superior barnacle
Balanus dominates the intertidal area, and excludes the smaller
barnacle Chathamalus from that zone. In general, herbivores and
plants appear to be more adversely affected by competition than
carnivores.
Gause’s ‘Competitive Exclusion Principle’ states that two closely
related species competing for the same resources cannot co-exist
indefinitely and the competitively inferior one will be eliminated
eventually. This may be true if resources are limiting, but not
otherwise. More recent studies do not support such gross
generalisations about competition. While they do not rule out the
occurrence of interspecific competition in nature, they point out
that species facing competition might evolve mechanisms that
promote co-existence rather than exclusion. One such mechanism
is ‘resource partitioning’. If two species compete for the same
resource, they could avoid competition by choosing, for instance,
different times for feeding or different foraging patterns. MacArthur
showed that five closely related species of warblers living on the
same tree were able to avoid competition and co-exist due to
behavioural differences in their foraging activities.
(iii) Parasitism: Considering that the parasitic mode of life ensures
free lodging and meals, it is not surprising that parasitism has
evolved in so many taxonomic groups from plants to higher
vertebrates. Many parasites have evolved to be host-specific (they
can parasitise only a single species of host) in such a way that both
host and the parasite tend to co-evolve; that is, if the host evolves
special mechanisms for rejecting or resisting the parasite, the
parasite has to evolve mechanisms to counteract and neutralise
them, in order to be successful with the same host species. In
accordance with their life styles, parasites evolved special
adaptations such as the loss of unnecessary sense organs, presence
of adhesive organs or suckers to cling on to the host, loss of digestive
system and high reproductive capacity. The life cycles of parasites 235
are often complex, involving one or two intermediate hosts or vectors
to facilitate parasitisation of its primary host. The human liver fluke
(a trematode parasite) depends on two intermediate hosts (a snail
and a fish) to complete its life cycle. The malarial parasite needs a
vector (mosquito) to spread to other hosts. Majority of the parasites
 BIOLOGY

harm the host; they may reduce the survival, growth and
reproduction of the host and reduce its population density. They
might render the host more vulnerable to predation by making it
physically weak. Do you believe that an ideal parasite should be
able to thrive within the host without harming it? Then why didn’t
natural selection lead to the evolution of such totally harmless
parasites?
Parasites that feed on the external surface of the host organism
are called ectoparasites. The most familiar examples of this group
are the lice on humans and ticks on dogs. Many marine fish are
infested with ectoparasitic copepods. Cuscuta, a parasitic plant that
is commonly found growing on hedge plants, has lost its chlorophyll
and leaves in the course of evolution. It derives its nutrition from
the host plant which it parasitises. The female mosquito is not
considered a parasite, although it needs our blood for reproduction.
Can you explain why?
In contrast, endoparasites are those that live inside the host
body at different sites (liver, kidney, lungs, red blood cells, etc.).
The life cycles of endoparasites are more complex because of their
extreme specialisation. Their morphological and anatomical features
are greatly simplified while emphasising their reproductive potential.
Brood parasitism in birds is a fascinating example of parasitism
in which the parasitic bird lays its eggs in the nest of its host and
lets the host incubate them. During the course of evolution, the
eggs of the parasitic bird have evolved to resemble the host’s egg in
size and colour to reduce the chances of the host bird detecting the
foreign eggs and ejecting them from the nest. Try to follow the
movements of the cuckoo (koel) and the crow in your neighborhood
park during the breeding season (spring to summer) and watch
brood parasitism in action.
(iv) Commensalism: This is the interaction in which one species benefits
and the other is neither harmed nor benefited. An orchid growing
as an epiphyte on a mango branch, and barnacles growing on the
back of a whale benefit while neither the mango tree nor the whale
derives any apparent benefit. The cattle egret and grazing cattle in
close association, a sight you are most likely to catch if you live in
236 farmed rural areas, is a classic example of commensalism. The
egrets always forage close to where the cattle are grazing because
the cattle, as they move, stir up and flush out from the vegetation
insects that otherwise might be difficult for the egrets to find and
catch. Another example of commensalism is the interaction between
sea anemone that has stinging tentacles and the clown fish that
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

(a) (b)
Figure 13.6 Mutual relationship between fig tree and wasp: (a) Fig flower is pollinated
by wasp; (b) Wasp laying eggs in a fig fruit

lives among them. The fish gets protection from predators which
stay away from the stinging tentacles. The anemone does not appear
to derive any benefit by hosting the clown fish.
(v) Mutualism: This interaction confers benefits on both the interacting
species. Lichens represent an intimate mutualistic relationship
between a fungus and photosynthesising algae or cyanobacteria.
Similarly, the mycorrhizae are associations between fungi and the
roots of higher plants. The fungi help the plant in the absorption of
essential nutrients from the soil while the plant in turn provides the
fungi with energy-yielding carbohydrates.
The most spectacular and evolutionarily fascinating examples
of mutualism are found in plant-animal relationships. Plants need
the help of animals for pollinating their flowers and dispersing their
seeds. Animals obviously have to be paid ‘fees’ for the services that
plants expect from them. Plants offer rewards or fees in the form of
pollen and nectar for pollinators and juicy and nutritious fruits for
seed dispersers. But the mutually beneficial system should also
be safeguarded against ‘cheaters’, for example, animals that try to
steal nectar without aiding in pollination. Now you can see why
plant-animal interactions often involve co-evolution of the
mutualists, that is, the evolutions of the flower and its pollinator
species are tightly linked with one another. In many species of fig
trees, there is a tight one-to-one relationship with the pollinator
237
species of wasp (Figure 13.6). It means that a given fig species can
be pollinated only by its ‘partner’ wasp species and no other species.
The female wasp uses the fruit not only as an oviposition (egg-laying)
site but uses the developing seeds within the fruit for nourishing
its larvae. The wasp pollinates the fig inflorescence while searching
 BIOLOGY

for suitable egg-laying sites. In return for the favour of

pollination the fig offers the wasp some of its developing
seeds, as food for the developing wasp larvae.
Orchids show a bewildering diversity of floral
patterns many of which have evolved to attract the right
pollinator insect (bees and bumblebees) and ensure
guaranteed pollination by it (Figure 13.7). Not all
orchids offer rewards. The Mediterranean orchid Ophrys
employs ‘sexual deceit’ to get pollination done by a
species of bee. One petal of its flower bears an uncanny
resemblance to the female of the bee in size, colour and
markings. The male bee is attracted to what it perceives
as a female, ‘pseudocopulates’ with the flower, and
during that process is dusted with pollen from the
flower. When this same bee ‘pseudocopulates’ with
Figure 13.7 Showing bee a pollinator another flower, it transfers pollen to it and thus,
on orchid flower pollinates the flower. Here you can see how co-evolution
operates. If the female bee’s colour patterns change even
slightly for any reason during evolution, pollination success will be reduced
unless the orchid flower co-evolves to maintain the resemblance of its
petal to the female bee.

SUMMARY
As a branch of biology, Ecology is the study of the relationships of
living organisms with the abiotic (physico-chemical factors) and biotic
components (other species) of their environment. It is concerned
with four levels of biological organisation-organisms, populations,
communities and biomes.
Temperature, light, water and soil are the most important
physical factors of the environment to which the organisms are
adapted in various ways. Maintenance of a constant internal
environment (homeostasis) by the organisms contributes to optimal
performance, but only some organisms (regulators) are capable of
homeostasis in the face of changing external environment. Others
either partially regulate their internal environment or simply
conform. A few other species have evolved adaptations to avoid
unfavourable conditions in space (migration) or in time (aestivation,
238 hibernation, and diapause).
Evolutionary changes through natural selection take place at
the population level and hence, population ecology is an important
area of ecology. A population is a group of individuals of a given
species sharing or competing for similar resources in a defined
geographical area. Populations have attributes that individual
organisms do not- birth rates and death rates, sex ratio and age
ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

distribution. The proportion of different age groups of males and

females in a population is often presented graphically as age pyramid;
its shape indicates whether a population is stationary, growing or
declining.
Ecological effects of any factors on a population are generally
reflected in its size (population density), which may be expressed in
different ways (numbers, biomass, per cent cover, etc.,) depending
on the species.
Populations grow through births and immigration and decline
through deaths and emigration. When resources are unlimited, the
growth is usually exponential but when resources become
progressively limiting, the growth pattern turns logistic. In either
case, growth is ultimately limited by the carrying capacity of the
environment. The intrinsic rate of natural increase (r) is a measure
of the inherent potential of a population to grow.
In nature populations of different species in a habitat do not live
in isolation but interact in many ways. Depending on the outcome,
these interactions between two species are classified as competition
(both species suffer), predation and parasitism (one benefits and the
other suffers), commensalism (one benefits and the other is
unaffected), amensalism (one is harmed, other unaffected) and
mutualism (both species benefit). Predation is a very important
process through which trophic energy transfer is facilitated and some
predators help in controlling their prey populations. Plants have
evolved diverse morphological and chemical defenses against
herbivory. In competition, it is presumed that the superior competitor
eliminates the inferior one (the Competitive Exclusion Principle), but
many closely related species have evolved various mechanisms which
facilitate their co-existence. Some of the most fascinating cases of
mutualism in nature are seen in plant-pollinator interactions.

EXERCISES
1. How is diapause different from hibernation?
2. If a marine fish is placed in a fresh water aquarium, will the fish be
able to survive? Why or why not?
3. Define phenotypic adaptation. Give one example.
4. Most living organisms cannot survive at temperature above 450C. How
239
are some microbes able to live in habitats with temperatures exceeding
1000C?
5. List the attributes that populations but not individuals possess.
6. If a population growing exponentially double in size in 3 years, what is
the intrinsic rate of increase (r) of the population?
7. Name important defence mechanisms in plants against herbivory.
 BIOLOGY

8. An orchid plant is growing on the branch of mango tree. How do you

describe this interaction between the orchid and the mango tree?
9. What is the ecological principle behind the biological control method of
managing with pest insects?
10. Distinguish between the following:
(a) Hibernation and Aestivation
(b) Ectotherms and Endotherms
11. Write a short note on
(a) Adaptations of desert plants and animals
(b) Adaptations of plants to water scarcity
(c) Behavioural adaptations in animals
(d) Importance of light to plants
(e) Effect of temperature or water scarcity and the adaptations of animals.
12. List the various abiotic environmental factors.
13. Give an example for:
(a) An endothermic animal
(b) An ectothermic animal
(c) An organism of benthic zone
14. Define population and community.
15. Define the following terms and give one example for each:
(a) Commensalism
(b) Parasitism
(c) Camouflage
(d) Mutualism
(e) Interspecific competition
16. With the help of suitable diagram describe the logistic population
growth curve.
17. Select the statement which explains best parasitism.
(a) One organism is benefited.
(b) Both the organisms are benefited.
(c) One organism is benefited, other is not affected.
(d) One organism is benefited, other is affected.
18. List any three important characteristics of a population and explain.

240
CHAPTER 14

ECOSYSTEM

14.1 Ecosystem–Structure
and Function
An ecosystem can be visualised as a functional unit of
14.2. Productivity nature, where living organisms interact among themselves
and also with the surrounding physical environment.
14.3 Decomposition Ecosystem varies greatly in size from a small pond to a
large forest or a sea. Many ecologists regard the entire
14.4 Energy Flow biosphere as a global ecosystem, as a composite of all
local ecosystems on Earth. Since this system is too much
14.5 Ecological Pyramids
big and complex to be studied at one time, it is convenient
14.6 Ecological Succession to divide it into two basic categories, namely the
terrestrial and the aquatic. Forest, grassland and desert
14.7 Nutrient Cycling are some examples of terrestrial ecosystems; pond, lake,
wetland, river and estuary are some examples of aquatic
14.8 Ecosystem Services ecosystems. Crop fields and an aquarium may also be
considered as man-made ecosystems.
We will first look at the structure of the ecosystem, in
order to appreciate the input (productivity), transfer of
energy (food chain/web, nutrient cycling) and the output
(degradation and energy loss). We will also look at the
relationships – cycles, chains, webs – that are created as
a result of these energy flows within the system and their
inter- relationship.
 BIOLOGY

14.1 ECOSYSTEM – STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION

In chapter 13, you have looked at the various components of the
environment- abiotic and biotic. You studied how the individual biotic
and abiotic factors affected each other and their surrounding. Let us look
at these components in a more integrated manner and see how the flow of
energy takes place within these components of the ecosystem.
Interaction of biotic and abiotic components result in a physical
structure that is characteristic for each type of ecosystem. Identification
and enumeration of plant and animal species of an ecosystem gives its
species composition. Vertical distribution of different species occupying
different levels is called stratification. For example, trees occupy top
vertical strata or layer of a forest, shrubs the second and herbs and grasses
occupy the bottom layers.
The components of the ecosystem are seen to function as a unit when
you consider the following aspects:
(i) Productivity;
(ii) Decomposition;
(iii) Energy flow; and
(iv) Nutrient cycling.
To understand the ethos of an aquatic ecosystem let us take a small
pond as an example. This is fairly a self-sustainable unit and rather simple
example that explain even the complex interactions that exist in an aquatic
ecosystem. A pond is a shallow water body in which all the above
mentioned four basic components of an ecosystem are well exhibited.
The abiotic component is the water with all the dissolved inorganic and
organic substances and the rich soil deposit at the bottom of the pond.
The solar input, the cycle of temperature, day-length and other climatic
conditions regulate the rate of function of the entire pond. The autotrophic
components include the phytoplankton, some algae and the floating,
submerged and marginal plants found at the edges. The consumers are
represented by the zooplankton, the free swimming and bottom dwelling
forms. The decomposers are the fungi, bacteria and flagellates especially
abundant in the bottom of the pond. This system performs all the functions
of any ecosystem and of the biosphere as a whole, i.e., conversion of
inorganic into organic material with the help of the radiant energy of the
sun by the autotrophs; consumption of the autotrophs by heterotrophs;
decomposition and mineralisation of the dead matter to release them back
for reuse by the autotrophs, these event are repeated over and over again.
242 There is unidirectional movement of energy towards the higher trophic
levels and its dissipation and loss as heat to the environment.

14.2. PRODUCTIVITY
A constant input of solar energy is the basic requirement for any ecosystem
to function and sustain. Primary production is defined as the amount of
ECOSYSTEM

biomass or organic matter produced per unit area over a time period by
plants during photosynthesis. It is expressed in terms of weight (g –2) or
energy (kcal m–2). The rate of biomass production is called productivity.
It is expressed in terms of g –2 yr –1 or (kcal m –2) yr –1 to compare the
productivity of different ecosystems. It can be divided into gross primary
productivity (GPP) and net primary productivity (NPP). Gross primary
productivity of an ecosystem is the rate of production of organic matter
during photosynthesis. A considerable amount of GPP is utilised by plants
in respiration. Gross primary productivity minus respiration losses (R),
is the net primary productivity (NPP).
GPP – R = NPP
Net primary productivity is the available biomass for the consumption
to heterotrophs (herbiviores and decomposers). Secondary productivity
is defined as the rate of formation of new organic matter by
consumers.
Primary productivity depends on the plant species inhabiting a
particular area. It also depends on a variety of environmental factors,
availability of nutrients and photosynthetic capacity of plants. Therefore,
it varies in different types of ecosystems. The annual net primary
productivity of the whole biosphere is approximately 170 billion tons
(dry weight) of organic matter. Of this, despite occupying about 70 per
cent of the surface, the productivity of the oceans are only 55 billion tons.
Rest of course, is on land. Discuss the main reason for the low
productivity of ocean with your teacher.

14.3 DECOMPOSITION
You may have heard of the earthworm being referred to as the farmer’s
‘friend’. This is so because they help in the breakdown of complex organic
matter as well as in loosening of the soil. Similarly, decomposers break
down complex organic matter into inorganic substances like carbon
dioxide, water and nutrients and the process is called decomposition.
Dead plant remains such as leaves, bark, flowers and dead remains of
animals, including fecal matter, constitute detritus, which is the raw
material for decomposition. The important steps in the process of
decomposition are fragmentation, leaching, catabolism, humification and
mineralisation.
Detritivores (e.g., earthworm) break down detritus into smaller particles.
This process is called fragmentation. By the process of leaching, water-
soluble inorganic nutrients go down into the soil horizon and get precipitated 243
as unavailable salts. Bacterial and fungal enzymes degrade detritus into
simpler inorganic substances. This process is called as catabolism.
It is important to note that all the above steps in decomposition operate
simultaneously on the detritus (Figure 14.1). Humification and
mineralisation occur during decomposition in the soil. Humification leads
 BIOLOGY

Figure 14.1 Diagrammatic representation of decomposition cycle in a terrestrial ecosystem

to accumulation of a dark coloured amorphous substance called humus

that is highly resistant to microbial action and undergoes decomposition
at an extremely slow rate. Being colloidal in nature it serves as a reservoir
of nutrients. The humus is further degraded by some microbes and release
of inorganic nutrients occur by the process known as mineralisation.
Decomposition is largely an oxygen-requiring process. The rate of
decomposition is controlled by chemical composition of detritus and
climatic factors. In a particular climatic condition, decomposition rate
is slower if detritus is rich in lignin and chitin, and quicker, if detritus is
244 rich in nitrogen and water-soluble substances like sugars. Temperature
and soil moisture are the most important climatic factors that regulate
decomposition through their effects on the activities of soil microbes.
Warm and moist environment favour decomposition whereas low
temperature and anaerobiosis inhibit decomposition resulting in build
up of organic materials.
ECOSYSTEM

14.4 ENERGY FLOW

Except for the deep sea hydro-thermal ecosystem, sun is the only source
of energy for all ecosystems on Earth. Of the incident solar radiation less
than 50 per cent of it is photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). We
know that plants and photosynthetic and chemosynthetic bacteria
(autotrophs), fix suns’ radiant energy to make food from simple inorganic
materials. Plants capture only 2-10 per cent of the PAR and this small
amount of energy sustains the entire living world. So, it is very important
to know how the solar energy captured by plants flows through different
organisms of an ecosystem. All organisms are dependent for their food
on producers, either directly or indirectly. So you find unidirectional flow
of energy from the sun to producers and then to consumers. Is this in
keeping with the first law of thermodynamics?
Further, ecosystems are not exempt from the Second Law of
thermodynamics. They need a constant supply of energy to synthesise
the molecules they require, to counteract the universal tendency toward
increasing disorderliness.
The green plant in the ecosystem-terminology are called producers.
In a terrestrial ecosystem, major producers are herbaceous and woody
plants. Likewise, primary producers in an aquatic ecosystem are various
species like phytoplankton, algae and higher plants.
You have read about the food chains and webs that exit in nature.
Starting from the plants (or producers) food chains or rather webs are
formed such that an animal feeds on a plant or on another animal and in
turn is food for another. The chain or web is formed because of this
interdependency. No energy that is trapped into an organism remains in
it for ever. The energy trapped by the producer, hence, is either passed on
to a consumer or the organism dies. Death of organism is the beginning
of the detritus food chain/web.
All animals depend on plants (directly or indirectly) for their food needs.
They are hence called consumers and also heterotrophs. If they feed on
the producers, the plants, they are called primary consumers, and if the
animals eat other animals which in turn eat the plants (or their produce)
they are called secondary consumers. Likewise, you could have tertiary
consumers too. Obviously the primary consumers will be herbivores.
Some common herbivores are insects, birds and mammals in terrestrial
ecosystem and molluscs in aquatic ecosystem.
The consumers that feed on these herbivores are carnivores, or more
correctly primary carnivores (though secondary consumers). Those 245
animals that depend on the primary carnivores for food are labelled
secondary carnivores. A simple grazing food chain (GFC) is depicted
below:

Grass Goat Man

(Producer) (Primary Consumer) (Secondary consumer)
 BIOLOGY

The detritus food chain (DFC) begins with dead organic matter. It is
made up of decomposers which are heterotrophic organisms, mainly
fungi and bacteria. They meet their energy and nutrient requirements by
degrading dead organic matter or detritus. These are also known as
saprotrophs (sapro: to decompose). Decomposers secrete digestive
enzymes that breakdown dead and waste materials into simple, inorganic
materials, which are subsequently absorbed by them.
In an aquatic ecosystem, GFC is the major conduit for energy flow.
As against this, in a terrestrial ecosystem, a much larger fraction of energy
flows through the detritus food chain than through the GFC. Detritus
food chain may be connected with the grazing food chain at some levels:
some of the organisms of DFC are prey to the GFC animals, and in a natural
ecosystem, some animals like cockroaches, crows, etc., are omnivores.
These natural interconnection of food chains make it a food web. How
would you classify human beings!
Organisms occupy a place in the natural surroundings or in a
community according to their feeding relationship with other organisms.
Based on the source of their nutrition or food, organisms occupy a specific
place in the food chain that is known as their trophic level. Producers
belong to the first trophic level, herbivores (primary consumer) to the
second and carnivores (secondary consumer) to the third (Figure 14.2).

246

Figure 14.2 Diagrammatic representation of trophic levels in an ecosystem

ECOSYSTEM

The important point to note is that the amount of energy decreases at

successive trophic levels. When any organism dies it is converted to
detritus or dead biomass that serves as an energy source for decomposers.
Organisms at each trophic level depend on those at the lower trophic level
for their energy demands.
Each trophic level has a certain mass of living material at a particular
time called as the standing crop. The standing crop is measured as the
mass of living organisms (biomass) or the number in a unit area. The
biomass of a species is expressed in terms of fresh or dry weight.
Measurement of biomass in terms of dry weight is more accurate. Why?
The number of trophic levels in the grazing food chain is restricted as
the transfer of energy follows 10 per cent law – only 10 per cent of the
energy is transferred to each trophic level from the lower trophic level. In
nature, it is possible to have so many levels – producer, herbivore, primary
carnivore, secondary carnivore in the grazing food chain (Figure 14.3) .
Do you think there is any such limitation in a detritus food chain?

Figure 14.3 Energy flow through different trophic levels

247
14.5 ECOLOGICAL PYRAMIDS
You must be familiar with the shape of a pyramid. The base of a pyramid
is broad and it narrows down at the apex. One gets a similar shape,
whether you express the food or energy relationship between organisms
 BIOLOGY

at different trophic level. Thus, relationship is expressed in terms of

number, biomass or energy. The base of each pyramid represents the
producers or the first trophic level while the apex represents tertiary or
top level consumer. The three ecological pyramids that are usually studied
are (a) pyramid of number; (b) pyramid of biomass and (c) pyramid of
energy. For detail (see Figure 14.4 a, b, c and d).

Figure 14.4 (a) Pyramid of numbers in a grassland ecosystem. Only three top-carnivores are
supported in an ecosystem based on production of nearly 6 millions plants

Figure 14.4 (b) Pyramid of biomass shows a sharp decrease in biomass at higher trophic levels

248

Figure 14.4 (c) Inverted pyramid of biomass-small standing crop of phytoplankton supports large
standing crop of zooplankton
ECOSYSTEM

Figure 14.4 (d) An ideal pyramid of energy. Observe that primary producers convert only 1% of
the energy in the sunlight available to them into NPP

Any calculations of energy content, biomass, or numbers has to

include all organisms at that trophic level. No generalisations we make
will be true if we take only a few individuals at any trophic level into
account. Also a given organism may occupy more than one trophic level
simultaneously. One must remember that the trophic level represents a
functional level, not a species as such. A given species may occupy more
than one trophic level in the same ecosystem at the same time; for example,
a sparrow is a primary consumer when it eats seeds, fruits, peas, and a
secondary consumer when it eats insects and worms. Can you work out
how many trophic levels human beings function at in a food chain?
In most ecosystems, all the pyramids, of number, of energy and
biomass are upright, i.e., producers are more in number and biomass
than the herbivores, and herbivores are more in number and biomass
than the carnivores. Also energy at a lower trophic level is always more
than at a higher level.
There are exceptions to this generalisation: If you were to count the
number of insects feeding on a big tree what kind of pyramid would you
get? Now add an estimate of the number of small birds depending on the
insects, as also the number of larger birds eating the smaller. Draw the
shape you would get.
The pyramid of biomass in sea is also generally inverted because the
biomass of fishes far exceeds that of phytoplankton. Isn’t that a paradox?
How would you explain this?
249
Pyramid of energy is always upright, can never be inverted, because
when energy flows from a particular trophic level to the next trophic level,
some energy is always lost as heat at each step. Each bar in the energy
pyramid indicates the amount of energy present at each trophic level in a
given time or annually per unit area.
 BIOLOGY

However, there are certain limitations of ecological pyramids such as

it does not take into account the same species belonging to two or more
trophic levels. It assumes a simple food chain, something that almost
never exists in nature; it does not accommodate a food web. Moreover,
saprophytes are not given any place in ecological pyramids even though
they play a vital role in the ecosystem.

14.6 ECOLOGICAL SUCCESSION

You have learnt in Chapter 13, the characteristics of population and
community and also their response to environment and how such
responses vary from an individual response. Let us examine another aspect
of community response to environment over time.
An important characteristic of all communities is that composition
and structure constantly change in response to the changing
environmental conditions. This change is orderly and sequential, parallel
with the changes in the physical environment. These changes lead finally
to a community that is in near equilibrium with the environment and
that is called a climax community. The gradual and fairly predictable
change in the species composition of a given area is called ecological
succession. During succession some species colonise an area and their
populations become more numerous, whereas populations of other species
decline and even disappear.
The entire sequence of communities that successively change in a
given area are called sere(s). The individual transitional communities are
termed seral stages or seral communities. In the successive seral stages
there is a change in the diversity of species of organisms, increase in the
number of species and organisms as well as an increase in the total biomass.
The present day communities in the world have come to be because
of succession that has occurred over millions of years since life started on
earth. Actually succession and evolution would have been parallel
processes at that time.
Succession is hence a process that starts where no living organisms
are there – these could be areas where no living organisms ever existed,
say bare rock; or in areas that somehow, lost all the living organisms that
existed there. The former is called primary succession, while the latter is
termed secondary succession.
250 Examples of areas where primary succession occurs are newly cooled
lava, bare rock, newly created pond or reservoir. The establishment of a
new biotic community is generally slow. Before a biotic community of
diverse organisms can become established, there must be soil. Depending
mostly on the climate, it takes natural processes several hundred to several
thousand years to produce fertile soil on bare rock.
ECOSYSTEM

Secondary succession begins in areas where natural biotic

communities have been destroyed such as in abandoned farm lands,
burned or cut forests, lands that have been flooded. Since some soil or
sediment is present, succession is faster than primary succession.
Description of ecological succession usually focuses on changes in
vegetation. However, these vegetational changes in turn affect food and
shelter for various types of animals. Thus, as succession proceeds, the
numbers and types of animals and decomposers also change.
At any time during primary or secondary succession, natural or
human induced disturbances (fire, deforestation, etc.), can convert a
particular seral stage of succession to an earlier stage. Also such
disturbances create new conditions that encourage some species and
discourage or eliminate other species.

14.6.1 Succession of Plants

Based on the nature of the habitat – whether it is water (or very wet areas)
or it is on very dry areas – succession of plants is called hydrach or xerarch,
respectively. Hydrarch succession takes place in wetter areas and the
successional series progress from hydric to the mesic conditions. As against
this, xerarch succession takes place in dry areas and the series progress
from xeric to mesic conditions. Hence, both hydrarch and xerach
successions lead to medium water conditions (mesic) – neither too dry
(xeric) nor too wet (hydric).
The species that invade a bare area are called pioneer species. In
primary succession on rocks these are usually lichens which are able to
secrete acids to dissolve rock, helping in weathering and soil formation.
These later pave way to some very small plants like bryophytes, which
are able to take hold in the small amount of soil. They are, with time,
succeeded by bigger plants, and after several more stages, ultimately a
stable climax forest community is formed. The climax community remains
stable as long as the environment remains unchanged. With time the
xerophytic habitat gets converted into a mesophytic one.
In primary succession in water, the pioneers are the small
phytoplanktons, they are replaced with time by free-floating angiosperms,
then by rooted hydrophytes, sedges, grasses and finally the trees. The
climax again would be a forest. With time the water body is converted
into land (Figure 14.5).
In secondary succession the species that invade depend on the
251
condition of the soil, availability of water, the environment as also the
seeds or other propagules present. Since soil is already there, the rate of
succession is much faster and hence, climax is also reached more quickly.
What is important to understand is that succession, particularly
primary succession, is a very slow process, taking maybe thousands of
 BIOLOGY

252
Figure 14.5 Diagramatic representation of primary succession

years for the climax to be reached. Another important fact is to understand

that all succession whether taking place in water or on land, proceeds to
a similar climax community – the mesic.
ECOSYSTEM

14.7 NUTRIENT CYCLING

You have studied in Class XI that organisms need a constant supply of
nutrients to grow, reproduce and regulate various body functions. The
amount of nutrients, such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, etc.,
present in the soil at any given time, is referred to as the standing state. It
varies in different kinds of ecosystems and also on a seasonal basis.
What is important is to appreciate that nutrients which are never lost
from the ecosystems, they are recycled time and again indefinitely. The
movement of nutrient elements through the various components of an
ecosystem is called nutrient cycling. Another name of nutrient cycling
is biogeochemical cycles (bio: living organism, geo: rocks, air, water).
Nutrient cycles are of two types: (a) gaseous and (b) sedimentary. The

Figure 14.6 Simplified model of carbon cycle in the biosphere 253

reservoir for gaseous type of nutrient cycle (e.g., nitrogen, carbon cycle)
exists in the atmosphere and for the sedimentary cycle (e.g., sulphur and
phosphorus cycle), the reservoir is located in Earth’s crust. Environmental
factors, e.g., soil, moisture, pH, temperaturer etc., regulate the rate of
release of nutrients into the atmosphere. The function of the reservoir is
 BIOLOGY

to meet with the deficit which occurs due to imbalance in the rate of influx
and efflux.
You have made a detailed study of nitrogen cycle in class XI. Here we
discuss carbon and phosphorus cycles.

14.7.1 Ecosystem – Carbon Cycle

When you study the composition of living organisms, carbon constitutes
49 per cent of dry weight of organisms and is next only to water. If we
look at the total quantity of global carbon, we find that 71 per cent carbon
is found dissolved in oceans. This oceanic reservoir regulates the amount
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (Figure 14.6). Do you know that the
atmosphere only contains about 1per cent of total global carbon?
Fossil fuel also represent a reservoir of carbon. Carbon cycling occurs
through atmosphere, ocean and through living and dead organisms.
According to one estimate 4 × 1013 kg of carbon is fixed in the biosphere
through photosynthesis annually. A considerable amount of carbon
returns to the atmosphere as CO2 through respiratory activities of the
producers and consumers. Decomposers also contribute substantially
to CO2 pool by their processing of waste materials and dead organic matter
of land or oceans. Some amount of the fixed carbon is lost to sediments
and removed from circulation. Burning of wood, forest fire and combustion
of organic matter, fossil fuel, volcanic activity are additional sources for
releasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
Human activities have significantly influenced the carbon cycle. Rapid
deforestation and massive burning of fossil fuel for energy and transport
have significantly increased the rate of release of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere (see greenhouse effect in Chapter 16).

14.7.2 Ecosystem – Phosphorus Cycle

Phosphorus is a major constituent of biological membranes, nucleic acids
and cellular energy transfer systems. Many animals also need large
quantities of this element to make shells, bones and teeth. The natural
reservoir of phosphorus is rock, which contains phosphorus in the form
of phosphates. When rocks are weathered, minute amounts of these
phosphates dissolve in soil solution and are absorbed by the roots of the
plants (Figure 14.7). Herbivores and other animals obtain this element
from plants. The waste products and the dead organisms are decomposed
254 by phosphate-solubilising bacteria releasing phosphorus. Unlike carbon
cycle, there is no respiratory release of phosphorus into atmosphere. Can
you differentiate between the carbon and the phosphorus cycle?
The other two major and important differences between carbon and
phosphorus cycle are firstly, atmospheric inputs of phosphorus through
rainfall are much smaller than carbon inputs, and, secondly, gaseous
ECOSYSTEM

Figure 14.7 A simplified model of phosphorus cycling in a terrestrial

ecosystem

exchanges of phosphorus between organism and environment are

negligible.

14.8 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Healthy ecosystems are the base for a wide range of economic,
environmental and aesthetic goods and services. The products of
ecosystem processes are named as ecosystem services, for example,
healthy forest ecosystems purify air and water, mitigate droughts and
floods, cycle nutrients, generate fertile soils, provide wildlife habitat,
maintain biodiversity, pollinate crops, provide storage site for carbon
and also provide aesthetic, cultural and spiritual values. Though value
of such services of biodiversity is difficult to determine, it seems
reasonable to think that biodiversity should carry a hefty price tag.
Robert Constanza and his colleagues have very recently tried to
put price tags on nature’s life-support services. Researchers have put
an average price tag of US $ 33 trillion a year on these fundamental
ecosystems services, which are largely taken for granted because they
are free. This is nearly twice the value of the global gross national 255
product GNP which is (US $ 18 trillion).
Out of the total cost of various ecosystem services, the soil
formation accounts for about 50 per cent, and contributions of other
services like recreation and nutrient cycling, are less than 10 per
cent each. The cost of climate regulation and habitat for wildlife are
about 6 per cent each.
 BIOLOGY

SUMMARY
An ecosystem is a functional unit of nature and comprises abiotic and
biotic components. Abiotic components are inorganic materials- air,
water and soil, whereas biotic components are producers, consumers
and decomposers. Each ecosystem has characteristic physical structure
resulting from interaction amongst abiotic and biotic components.
Species composition and stratification are the two main structural
features of an ecosystem. Based on source of nutrition every organism
occupies a place in an ecosystem.
Productivity, decomposition, energy flow, and nutrient cycling are
the four important components of an ecosystem. Primary productivity
is the rate of capture of solar energy or biomass production of the
producers. It is divided into two types: gross primary productivity (GPP)
and net primary productivity (NPP). Rate of capture of solar energy or
total production of organic matter is called as GPP. NPP is the remaining
biomass or the energy left after utilisation of producers. Secondary
productivity is the rate of assimilation of food energy by the consumers.
In decomposition, complex organic compounds of detritus are converted
to carbon dioxide, water and inorganic nutrients by the decomposers.
Decomposition involves three processes, namely fragmentation of
detritus, leaching and catabolism.
Energy flow is unidirectional. First, plants capture solar energy
and then, food is transferred from the producers to decomposers.
Organisms of different trophic levels in nature are connected to each
other for food or energy relationship forming a food chain. The storage
and movement of nutrient elements through the various components
of the ecosystem is called nutrient cycling; nutrients are repeatedly
used through this process. Nutrient cycling is of two types. gaseous
and sedimentary. Atmosphere or hydrosphere is the reservoir for the
gaseous type of cycle (carbon), whereas Earth’s crust is the reservoir
for sedimentary type (phosphorus). Products of ecosystem processes
are named as ecosystem services, e.g., purification of air and water by
forests.
The biotic community is dynamic and undergoes changes with the
passage of time. These changes are sequentially ordered and constitute
ecological succession. Succession begins with invasion of a bare lifeless
area by pioneers which later pave way for successors and ultimately a
stable climax community is formed. The climax community remains
stable as long as the environment remains unchanged.

EXERCISES
256
1. Fill in the blanks.
(a) Plants are called as_________because they fix carbon dioxide.
(b) In an ecosystem dominated by trees, the pyramid (of numbers)
is_________type.
(c) In aquatic ecosystems, the limiting factor for the productivity
is_________.
ECOSYSTEM

(d) Common detritivores in our ecosystem are_________.

(e) The major reservoir of carbon on earth is_________.
2. Which one of the following has the largest population in a food chain?
(a) Producers
(b) Primary consumers
(c) Secondary consumers
(d) Decomposers
3. The second trophic level in a lake is-
(a) Phytoplankton
(b) Zooplankton
(c) Benthos
(d) Fishes
4. Secondary producers are
(a) Herbivores
(b) Producers
(c) Carnivores
(d) None of the above
5. What is the percentage of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), in
the incident solar radiation.
(a) 100%
(b) 50 %
(c) 1-5%
(d) 2-10%
6. Distinguish between
(a) Grazing food chain and detritus food chain
(b) Production and decomposition
(c) Upright and inverted pyramid
(d) Food chain and Food web
(e) Litter and detritus
(f) Primary and secondary productivity
7. Describe the components of an ecosystem.
8. Define ecological pyramids and describe with examples, pyramids of
number and biomass.
9. What is primary productivity? Give brief description of factors that affect
primary productivity.
10. Define decomposition and describe the processes and products of
decomposition.
11. Give an account of energy flow in an ecosystem. 257
12. Write important features of a sedimentary cycle in an ecosystem.
13. Outline salient features of carbon cycling in an ecosystem.
CHAPTER 15

BIODIVERSITY AND
CONSERVATION

15.1 Biodiversity

15.2 Biodiversity Conservation
If an alien from a distant galaxy were to visit our planet
Earth, the first thing that would amaze and baffle him
would most probably be the enormous diversity of life
that he would encounter. Even for humans, the rich variety
of living organisms with which they share this planet never
ceases to astonish and fascinate us. The common man
would find it hard to believe that there are more than
20,000 species of ants, 3,00,000 species of beetles, 28,000
species of fishes and nearly 20,000 species of orchids.
Ecologists and evolutionary biologists have been trying
to understand the significance of such diversity by asking
important questions– Why are there so many species?
Did such great diversity exist throughout earth’s history?
How did this diversification come about? How and why
is this diversity important to the biosphere? Would it
function any differently if the diversity was much less?
How do humans benefit from the diversity of life?

15.1 BIODIVERSITY
In our biosphere immense diversity (or heterogeneity)
exists not only at the species level but at all levels of
biological organisation ranging from macromolecules
within cells to biomes. Biodiversity is the term popularised
by the sociobiologist Edward Wilson to describe the
BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

combined diversity at all the levels of biological organisation.

The most important of them are–
(i) Genetic diversity : A single species might show high diversity at
the genetic level over its distributional range. The genetic variation
shown by the medicinal plant Rauwolfia vomitoria growing in
different Himalayan ranges might be in terms of the potency and
concentration of the active chemical (reserpine) that the plant
produces. India has more than 50,000 genetically different strains
of rice, and 1,000 varieties of mango.
(ii) Species diversity : The diversity at the species level. For example,
the Western Ghats have a greater amphibian species diversity than
the Eastern Ghats.
(iii) Ecological diversity : At the ecosystem level, India, for instance,
with its deserts, rain forests, mangroves, coral reefs, wetlands,
estuaries, and alpine meadows has a greater ecosystem diversity
than a Scandinavian country like Norway.
It has taken millions of years of evolution, to accumulate this rich
diversity in nature, but we could lose all that wealth in less than two
centuries if the present rates of species losses continue. Biodiversity and
its conservation are now vital environmental issues of international concern
as more and more people around the world begin to realise the critical
importance of biodiversity for our survival and well- being on this planet.

15.1.1 How Many Species are there on Earth and How Many
in India?
Since there are published records of all the species discovered and named,
we know how many species in all have been recorded so far, but it is not
easy to answer the question of how many species there are on earth.
According to the IUCN (2004), the total number of plant and animal species
described so far is slightly more than 1.5 million, but we have no clear
idea of how many species are yet to be discovered and described. Estimates
vary widely and many of them are only educated guesses. For many
taxonomic groups, species inventories are more complete in temperate
than in tropical countries. Considering that an overwhelmingly large
proportion of the species waiting to be discovered are in the tropics,
biologists make a statistical comparison of the temperate-tropical species
richness of an exhaustively studied group of insects and extrapolate this 259
ratio to other groups of animals and plants to come up with a gross
estimate of the total number of species on earth. Some extreme estimates
range from 20 to 50 million, but a more conservative and scientifically
sound estimate made by Robert May places the global species diversity
at about 7 million.
 BIOLOGY

Let us look at some interesting aspects about earth’s biodiversity based

on the currently available species inventories. More than 70 per cent of
all the species recorded are animals, while plants (including algae, fungi,
bryophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms) comprise no more than 22
per cent of the total. Among animals, insects are the most species-rich
taxonomic group, making up more than 70 per cent of the total. That
means, out of every 10 animals on this planet, 7 are insects. Again, how
do we explain this enormous diversification of insects? The number of
fungi species in the world is more than the combined total of the species
of fishes, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. In Figure 15.1, biodiversity
is depicted showing species number of major taxa.

Figure 15.1 Representing global biodiversity: proportionate number of

species of major taxa of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates

260 It should be noted that these estimates do not give any figures for
prokaryotes. Biologists are not sure about how many prokaryotic species
there might be. The problem is that conventional taxonomic methods are
not suitable for identifying microbial species and many species are simply
not culturable under laboratory conditions. If we accept biochemical or
molecular criteria for delineating species for this group, then their diversity
alone might run into millions.
BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

Although India has only 2.4 per cent of the world’s land area, its share
of the global species diversity is an impressive 8.1 per cent. That is what
makes our country one of the 12 mega diversity countries of the world.
Nearly 45,000 species of plants and twice as many of animals have been
recorded from India. How many living species are actually there waiting
to be discovered and named? If we accept May’s global estimates, only
22 per cent of the total species have been recorded so far. Applying this
proportion to India’s diversity figures, we estimate that there are probably
more than 1,00,000 plant species and more than 3,00, 000 animal species
yet to be discovered and described. Would we ever be able to complete
the inventory of the biological wealth of our country? Consider the immense
trained manpower (taxonomists) and the time required to complete the
job. The situation appears more hopeless when we realise that a large
fraction of these species faces the threat of becoming extinct even before
we discover them. Nature’s biological library is burning even before we
catalogued the titles of all the books stocked there.

15.1.2 Patterns of Biodiversity

(i) Latitudinal gradients : The diversity of plants and animals is
not uniform throughout the world but shows a rather uneven
distribution. For many group of animals or plants, there are
interesting patterns in diversity, the most well- known being the
latitudinal gradient in diversity. In general, species diversity
decreases as we move away from the equator towards the poles.
With very few exceptions, tropics (latitudinal range of 23.5° N to
23.5° S) harbour more species than temperate or polar areas.
Colombia located near the equator has nearly 1,400 species of birds
while New York at 41° N has 105 species and Greenland at 71° N
only 56 species. India, with much of its land area in the tropical
latitudes, has more than 1,200 species of birds. A forest in a tropical
region like Equador has up to 10 times as many species of vascular
plants as a forest of equal area in a temperate region like the Midwest
of the USA. The largely tropical Amazonian rain forest in South
America has the greatest biodiversity on earth- it is home to more
than 40,000 species of plants, 3,000 of fishes, 1,300 of birds, 427
of mammals, 427 of amphibians, 378 of reptiles and of more than
1,25,000 invertebrates. Scientists estimate that in these rain forests
there might be at least two million insect species waiting to be
discovered and named.
What is so special about tropics that might account for their greater
261
biological diversity? Ecologists and evolutionary biologists have
proposed various hypotheses; some important ones are (a) Speciation
is generally a function of time, unlike temperate regions subjected
to frequent glaciations in the past, tropical latitudes have remained
relatively undisturbed for millions of years and thus, had a long
 BIOLOGY

evolutionary time for species diversification, (b) Tropical environments,

unlike temperate ones, are less seasonal, relatively more constant
and predictable. Such constant environments promote niche
specialisation and lead to a greater species diversity and (c) There
is more solar energy available in the tropics, which contributes to
higher productivity; this in turn might contribute indirectly to greater
diversity.
(ii) Species-Area relationships : During his pioneering and extensive
explorations in the wilderness of South American jungles, the great
German naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt
observed that within a region species
richness increased with increasing
explored area, but only up to a limit. In
fact, the relation between species richness
and area for a wide variety of taxa
(angiosperm plants, birds, bats,
freshwater fishes) turns out to be a
rectangular hyperbola (Figure15.2). On
a logarithmic scale, the relationship is a
straight line described by the equation
log S = log C + Z log A
where
S= Species richness A= Area
Z = slope of the line (regression
coefficient)
C = Y-intercept
Ecologists have discovered that the
Figure 15.2 Showing species area relationship.
value of Z lies in the range of 0.1 to 0.2,
Note that on log scale the relationship
becomes linear regardless of the taxonomic group or the
region (whether it is the plants in Britain,
birds in California or molluscs in New York state, the slopes of the regression
line are amazingly similar). But, if you analyse the species-area
relationships among very large areas like the entire continents, you will
find that the slope of the line to be much steeper (Z values in the range
of 0.6 to 1.2). For example, for frugivorous (fruit-eating) birds and
mammals in the tropical forests of different continents, the slope is found
to be 1.15. What do steeper slopes mean in this context?

262 15.1.3 The importance of Species Diversity to the Ecosystem

Does the number of species in a community really matter to the functioning
of the ecosystem?This is a question for which ecologists have not been
able to give a definitive answer. For many decades, ecologists believed
that communities with more species, generally, tend to be more stable
than those with less species. What exactly is stability for a biological
BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

community? A stable community should not show too much variation

in productivity from year to year; it must be either resistant or resilient to
occasional disturbances (natural or man-made), and it must also be
resistant to invasions by alien species. We don’t know how these attributes
are linked to species richness in a community, but David Tilman’s
long-term ecosystem experiments using outdoor plots provide some
tentative answers. Tilman found that plots with more species showed
less year-to-year variation in total biomass. He also showed that in his
experiments, increased diversity contributed to higher productivity.
Although, we may not understand completely how species richness
contributes to the well-being of an ecosystem, we know enough to realise
that rich biodiversity is not only essential for ecosystem health but
imperative for the very survival of the human race on this planet. At a
time when we are losing species at an alarming pace, one might ask–
Does it really matter to us if a few species become extinct? Would Western
Ghats ecosystems be less functional if one of its tree frog species is lost
forever? How is our quality of life affected if, say, instead of 20,000 we
have only 15,000 species of ants on earth?
There are no direct answers to such näive questions but we can develop
a proper perspective through an analogy (the ‘rivet popper hypothesis’)
used by Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich. In an airplane (ecosystem) all
parts are joined together using thousands of rivets (species). If every
passenger travelling in it starts popping a rivet to take home (causing a
species to become extinct), it may not affect flight safety (proper functioning
of the ecosystem) initially, but as more and more rivets are removed, the
plane becomes dangerously weak over a period of time. Furthermore,
which rivet is removed may also be critical. Loss of rivets on the wings
(key species that drive major ecosystem functions) is obviously a more
serious threat to flight safety than loss of a few rivets on the seats or
windows inside the plane.

15.1.4 Loss of Biodiversity

While it is doubtful if any new species are being added (through speciation)
into the earth’s treasury of species, there is no doubt about their continuing
losses. The biological wealth of our planet has been declining rapidly
and the accusing finger is clearly pointing to human activities. The
colonisation of tropical Pacific Islands by humans is said to have led to
the extinction of more than 2,000 species of native birds. The IUCN Red
List (2004) documents the extinction of 784 species (including 338 263
vertebrates, 359 invertebrates and 87 plants) in the last 500 years. Some
examples of recent extinctions include the dodo (Mauritius), quagga
(Africa), thylacine (Australia), Steller’s Sea Cow (Russia) and three
subspecies (Bali, Javan, Caspian) of tiger. The last twenty years alone
have witnessed the disappearance of 27 species. Careful analysis of records
 BIOLOGY

shows that extinctions across taxa are not random; some groups like
amphibians appear to be more vulnerable to extinction. Adding to the
grim scenario of extinctions is the fact that more than 15,500 species
world-wide are facing the threat of extinction. Presently, 12 per cent of
all bird species, 23 per cent of all mammal species, 32 per cent of all
amphibian species and 31per cent of all gymnosperm species in the world
face the threat of extinction.
From a study of the history of life on earth through fossil records, we
learn that large-scale loss of species like the one we are currently
witnessing have also happened earlier, even before humans appeared on
the scene. During the long period (> 3 billion years) since the origin and
diversification of life on earth there were five episodes of mass extinction
of species. How is the ‘Sixth Extinction’ presently in progress different
from the previous episodes? The difference is in the rates; the current
species extinction rates are estimated to be 100 to 1,000 times faster
than in the pre-human times and our activities are responsible for the
faster rates. Ecologists warn that if the present trends continue,
nearly half of all the species on earth might be wiped out within the next
100 years.
In general, loss of biodiversity in a region may lead to (a) decline in
plant production, (b) lowered resistance to environmental perturbations
such as drought and (c) increased variability in certain ecosystem processes
such as plant productivity, water use, and pest and disease cycles.
Causes of biodiversity losses: The accelerated rates of species
extinctions that the world is facing now are largely due to human
activities. There are four major causes (‘ The Evil Quartet ’ is the sobriquet
used to describe them).
(i) Habitat loss and fragmentation: This is the most important
cause driving animals and plants to extinction. The most dramatic
examples of habitat loss come from tropical rain forests. Once
covering more than 14 per cent of the earth’s land surface, these
rain forests now cover no more than 6 per cent. They are being
destroyed fast. By the time you finish reading this chapter, 1000
more hectares of rain forest would have been lost. The Amazon
rain forest (it is so huge that it is called the ‘lungs of the planet’)
harbouring probably millions of species is being cut and cleared
for cultivating soya beans or for conversion to grasslands for raising
beef cattle. Besides total loss, the degradation of many habitats by
264 pollution also threatens the survival of many species. When large
habitats are broken up into small fragments due to various human
activities, mammals and birds requiring large territories and certain
animals with migratory habits are badly affected, leading to
population declines.
(ii) Over-exploitation: Humans have always depended on nature for
food and shelter, but when ‘need’ turns to ‘greed’, it leads to
BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

over -exploitation of natural resources. Many species extinctions

in the last 500 years (Steller’s sea cow, passenger pigeon) were due
to overexploitation by humans. Presently many marine fish
populations around the world are over harvested, endangering the
continued existence of some commercially important species.
(iii) Alien species invasions: When alien species are introduced
unintentionally or deliberately for whatever purpose, some of them
turn invasive, and cause decline or extinction of indigenous species.
The Nile perch introduced into Lake Victoria in east Africa led
eventually to the extinction of an ecologically unique assemblage of
more than 200 species of cichlid fish in the lake. You must be
familiar with the environmental damage caused and threat posed
to our native species by invasive weed species like carrot grass
(Parthenium), Lantana and water hyacinth (Eicchornia). The recent
illegal introduction of the African catfish Clarias gariepinus for
aquaculture purposes is posing a threat to the indigenous catfishes
in our rivers.
(iv) Co-extinctions: When a species becomes extinct, the plant and
animal species associated with it in an obligatory way also become
extinct. When a host fish species becomes extinct, its unique
assemblage of parasites also meets the same fate. Another example
is the case of a coevolved plant-pollinator mutualism where
extinction of one invariably leads to the extinction of the other.

15.2 BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION

15.2.1 Why Should We Conserve Biodiversity?
There are many reasons, some obvious and others not so obvious, but all
equally important. They can be grouped into three categories: narrowly
utilitarian, broadly utilitarian, and ethical.
The narrowly utilitarian arguments for conserving biodiversity are
obvious; humans derive countless direct economic benefits from nature-
food (cereals, pulses, fruits), firewood, fibre, construction material,
industrial products (tannins, lubricants, dyes, resins, perfumes ) and
products of medicinal importance. More than 25 per cent of the drugs
currently sold in the market worldwide are derived from plants and 25,000
species of plants contribute to the traditional medicines used by native
peoples around the world. Nobody knows how many more medicinally
useful plants there are in tropical rain forests waiting to be explored.
265
With increasing resources put into ‘bioprospecting’ (exploring molecular,
genetic and species-level diversity for products of economic importance),
nations endowed with rich biodiversity can expect to reap enormous
benefits.
The broadly utilitarian argument says that biodiversity plays a
major role in many ecosystem services that nature provides. The fast-
 BIOLOGY

dwindling Amazon forest is estimated to produce, through

photosynthesis, 20 per cent of the total oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere.
Can we put an economic value on this service by nature? You can get
some idea by finding out how much your neighborhood hospital spends
on a cylinder of oxygen. Pollination (without which plants cannot give
us fruits or seeds) is another service, ecosystems provide through
pollinators layer – bees, bumblebees, birds and bats. What will be the
costs of accomplishing pollination without help from natural
pollinators? There are other intangible benefits – that we derive from
nature–the aesthetic pleasures of walking through thick woods, watching
spring flowers in full bloom or waking up to a bulbul’s song in the
morning. Can we put a price tag on such things?
The ethical argument for conserving biodiversity relates to what we
owe to millions of plant, animal and microbe species with whom we share
this planet. Philosophically or spiritually, we need to realise that every
species has an intrinsic value, even if it may not be of current or any
economic value to us. We have a moral duty to care for their well-being
and pass on our biological legacy in good order to future generations.

15.2.2 How do we conserve Biodiversity?

When we conserve and protect the whole ecosystem, its biodiversity at all
levels is protected - we save the entire forest to save the tiger. This approach
is called in situ (on site) conservation. However, when there are situations
where an animal or plant is endangered or threatened and needs urgent
measures to save it from extinction, ex situ (off site) conservation is the
desirable approach.
In situ conservation– Faced with the conflict between development and
conservation, many nations find it unrealistic and economically not feasible
to conserve all their biological wealth. Invariably, the number of species
waiting to be saved from extinction far exceeds the conservation resources
available. On a global basis, this problem has been addressed by eminent
conservationists. They identified for maximum protection certain
‘biodiversity hotspots’ regions with very high levels of species richness
and high degree of endemism (that is, species confined to that region
and not found anywhere else). Initially 25 biodiversity hotspots were
identified but subsequently nine more have been added to the list,
bringing the total number of biodiversity hotspots in the world to 34.
These hotspots are also regions of accelerated habitat loss. Three of
266 these hotspots – Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, Indo-Burma and
Himalaya – cover our country’s exceptionally high biodiversity regions.
Although all the biodiversity hotspots put together cover less than 2
percent of the earth’s land area, the number of species they collectively
harbour is extremely high and strict protection of these hotspots could
reduce the ongoing mass extinctions by almost 30 per cent.
BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

In India, ecologically unique and biodiversity-rich regions are legally

protected as biosphere reserves, national parks and sanctuaries. India
now has 14 biosphere reserves, 90 national parks and 448 wildlife
sanctuaries. India has also a history of religious and cultural traditions
that emphasised protection of nature. In many cultures, tracts of forest
were set aside, and all the trees and wildlife within were venerated and
given total protection. Such sacred groves are found in Khasi and Jaintia
Hills in Meghalaya, Aravalli Hills of Rajasthan, Western Ghat regions of
Karnataka and Maharashtra and the Sarguja, Chanda and Bastar areas
of Madhya Pradesh. In Meghalaya, the sacred groves are the last refuges
for a large number of rare and threatened plants.
Ex situ Conservation– In this approach, threatened animals and plants
are taken out from their natural habitat and placed in special setting
where they can be protected and given special care. Zoological parks,
botanical gardens and wildlife safari parks serve this purpose. There are
many animals that have become extinct in the wild but continue to be
maintained in zoological parks. In recent years ex situ conservation has
advanced beyond keeping threatened species in enclosures. Now gametes
of threatened species can be preserved in viable and fertile condition for
long periods using cryopreservation techniques, eggs can be fertilised in
vitro, and plants can be propagated using tissue culture methods. Seeds
of different genetic strains of commercially important plants can be kept
for long periods in seed banks.
Biodiversity knows no political boundaries and its conservation is
therefore a collective responsibility of all nations. The historic Convention
on Biological Diversity (‘The Earth Summit’) held in Rio de Janeiro in
1992, called upon all nations to take appropriate measures for
conservation of biodiversity and sustainable utilisation of its benefits. In
a follow-up, the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in 2002
in Johannesburg, South Africa, 190 countries pledged their commitment
to achieve by 2010, a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity
loss at global, regional and local levels.

SUMMARY
Since life originated on earth nearly 3.8 billion years ago, there had
been enormous diversification of life forms on earth. Biodiversity refers
to the sum total of diversity that exists at all levels of biological
organisation. Of particular importance is the diversity at genetic, species 267
and ecosystem levels and conservation efforts are aimed at protecting
diversity at all these levels.
More than 1.5 million species have been recorded in the world, but
there might still be nearly 6 million species on earth waiting to be
discovered and named. Of the named species, > 70 per cent are animals,
of which 70 per cent are insects. The group Fungi has more species
 BIOLOGY

than all the vertebrate species combined. India, with about 45,000
species of plants and twice as many species of animals, is one of the 12
mega diversity countries of the world.
Species diversity on earth is not uniformly distributed but shows
interesting patterns. It is generally highest in the tropics and decreases
towards the poles. Important explanations for the species richness of
the tropics are: Tropics had more evolutionary time; they provide a
relatively constant environment and, they receive more solar energy
which contributes to greater productivity. Species richness is also
function of the area of a region; the species-area relationship is generally
a rectangular hyperbolic function.
It is believed that communities with high diversity tend to be less
variable, more productive and more resistant to biological invasions.
Earth’s fossil history reveals incidence of mass extinctions in the past,
but the present rates of extinction, largely attributed to human activities,
are 100 to 1000 times higher. Nearly 700 species have become extinct
in recent times and more than 15,500 species (of which > 650 are from
India currently face the threat of extinction. The causes of high
extinction rates at present include habitat (particularly forests) loss
and fragmentation, over -exploitation, biological invasions and
co- extinctions.
Earth’s rich biodiversity is vital for the very survival of mankind.
The reasons for conserving biodiversity are narrowly utilitarian, broadly
utilitarian and ethical. Besides the direct benefits (food, fibre, firewood,
pharmaceuticals, etc.), there are many indirect benefits we receive
through ecosystem services such as pollination, pest control, climate
moderation and flood control. We also have a moral responsibility to
take good care of earth’s biodiversity and pass it on in good order to our
next generation.
Biodiversity conservation may be in situ as well as ex situ. In in situ
conservation, the endangered species are protected in their natural
habitat so that the entire ecosystem is protected. Recently, 34
‘biodiversity hotspots’ in the world have been proposed for intensive
conservation ef forts. Of these, three (Wester n Ghats-Sri Lanka,
Himalaya and Indo-Burma) cover India’s rich biodiversity regions. Our
country’s in situ conservation efforts are reflected in its 14 biosphere
reserves, 90 national parks, > 450 wildlife sanctuaries and many sacred
groves. Ex situ conservation methods include protective maintenance
of threatened species in zoological parks and botanical gardens, in vitro
fertilisation, tissue culture propagation and cryopreservation of
gametes.

268
EXERCISES
1. Name the three important components of biodiversity.
2. How do ecologists estimate the total number of species present in the
world?
BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

3. Give three hypotheses for explaining why tropics show greatest levels
of species richness.
4. What is the significance of the slope of regression in a species – area
relationship?
5. What are the major causes of species losses in a geographical region?
6. How is biodiversity important for ecosystem functioning?
7. What are sacred groves? What is their role in conservation?
8. Among the ecosystem services are control of floods and soil erosion.
How is this achieved by the biotic components of the ecosystem?
9. The species diversity of plants (22 per cent) is much less than that of
animals (72 per cent). What could be the explanations to how animals
achieved greater diversification?
10. Can you think of a situation where we deliberately want to make a
species extinct? How would you justify it?

269
CHAPTER 16
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
16.1 Air Pollution and Its
Control
16.2 Water Pollution and Its
Control
16.3 Solid Wastes
16.4 Agro-chemicals and
their Effects
16.5 Radioactive Wastes
16.6 Greenhouse Effect and
Global Warming
16.7 Ozone Depletion in the
Stratosphere
16.8 Degradation by Improper
Resource Utilisation and
Maintenance
16.9 Deforestation
Human population size has grown enormously over the
last hundred years. This means increase in demand for
food, water, home, electricity, roads, automobiles and
numerous other commodities. These demands are exerting
tremendous pressure on our natural resources, and are
also contributing to pollution of air, water and soil. The
need of the hour is to check the degradation and depletion
of our precious natural resources and pollution without
halting the process of development.
Pollution is any undesirable change in physical,
chemical or biological characteristics of air, land, water or
soil. Agents that bring about such an undesirable change
are called as pollutants. In order to control environmental
pollution, the Government of India has passed the
Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 to protect
and improve the quality of our environment (air, water
and soil).
16.1 AIR POLLUTION AND ITS CONTROL
We are dependent on air for our respiratory needs. Air
pollutants cause injury to all living organisms. They
reduce growth and yield of crops and cause premature
death of plants. Air pollutants also deleteriously affect the
respiratory system of humans and of animals. Harmful
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

effects depend on the concentration of pollutants, duration of exposure

and the organism.
Smokestacks of thermal power plants, smelters and other industries
release particulate and gaseous air pollutants together with harmless
gases, such as nitrogen, oxygen, etc. These pollutants must be separated/
filtered out before releasing the harmless gases into the atmosphere.

Figure 16.1 Electrostatic precipitator

There are several ways of removing particulate matter; the most widely
used of which is the electrostatic precipitator (Figure 16.1), which can
remove over 99 per cent particulate matter present in the exhaust from a
thermal power plant. It has electrode wires that are maintained at several
thousand volts, which produce a corona that releases electrons. These
electrons attach to dust particles giving them a net negative charge. The
collecting plates are grounded and attract the charged dust particles.
The velocity of air between the plates must be low enough to allow the
dust to fall. A scrubber (Figure 16.1) can remove gases like sulphur
dioxide. In a scrubber, the exhaust is passed through a spray of water or
lime. Recently we have realised the dangers of particulate matter that are 271
very very small and are not removed by these precipitators. According to
Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), particulate size 2.5 micrometers
or less in diameter (PM 2.5) are responsible for causing the greatest harm
to human health. These fine particulates can be inhaled deep into the
lungs and can cause breathing and respiratory symptoms, irritation,
inflammations and damage to the lungs and premature deaths.
 BIOLOGY

Automobiles are a major cause for atmospheric pollution atleast in

the metro cities. As the number of vehicles increase on the streets, this
problem is now shifting to the other cities too. Proper maintenance of
automobiles along with use of lead-free petrol or diesel can reduce the
pollutants they emit. Catalytic converters, having expensive metals namely
platinum-palladium and rhodium as the catalysts, are fitted into
automobiles for reducing emission of poisonous gases. As the exhaust
passes through the catalytic converter, unburnt hydrocarbons are
converted into carbon dioxide and water, and carbon monoxide and nitric
oxide are changed to carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas, respectively. Motor
vehicles equipped with catalytic converter should use unleaded petrol
because lead in the petrol inactivates the catalyst.

16.1.1 Controlling Vehicular Air Pollution: A Case

Study of Delhi
With its very large population of vehicular traffic, Delhi leads the country
in its levels of air-pollution – it has more cars than the states of Gujarat
and West Bengal put together. In the 1990s, Delhi ranked fourth
among the 41 most polluted cities of the world. Air pollution problems
in Delhi became so serious that a public interest litigation (PIL) was
filed in the Supreme Court of India. After being censured very strongly
by the Supreme Court, under its directives, the government was asked
to take, within a specified time period, appropriate measures, including
switching over the entire fleet of public transport, i.e., buses, from diesel
to compressed natural gas (CNG). All the buses of Delhi were converted
to run on CNG by the end of 2002. You may ask the question as to why
CNG is better than diesel. The answer is that CNG burns most efficiently,
unlike petrol or diesel, in the automobiles and very little of it is left
unburnt. Moreover, CNG is cheaper than petrol or diesel, cannot be
siphoned off by thieves and adulterated like petrol or diesel. The main
problem with switching over to CNG is the difficulty of laying down
pipelines to deliver CNG through distribution points/pumps and
ensuring uninterrupted supply. Simultaneously parallel steps taken
in Delhi for reducing vehicular pollution include phasing out of old
vehicles, use of unleaded petrol, use of low-sulphur petrol and diesel,
use of catalytic converters in vehicles, application of stringent pollution-
level norms for vehicles, etc.
The Government of India through a new auto fuel policy has laid
272 out a roadmap to cut down vehicular pollution in Indian cities. More
stringent norms for fuels means steadily reducing the sulphur and
aromatics content in petrol and diesel fuels. Euro II norms, for example,
stipulates that sulphur be controlled at 350 parts-per-million (ppm) in
diesel and 150 ppm in petrol. Aromatic hydrocarbons are to be contained
at 42 per cent of the concerned fuel. The goal, according to the roadmap,
is to reduce sulphur to 50 ppm in petrol and diesel and bring down the
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

level to 35 per cent. Corresponding to the fuel, vehicle engines will also
need to be upgraded. The Bharat Stage II (equivalent to Euro-II norms),
which is currently in place in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai,
Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Surat, Kanpur and Agra,
will be applicable to all automobiles throughout the country from April
1, 2005. All automobiles and fuel-petrol and diesel – were to have met
the Euro III emission specifications in these 11 cities from April 1, 2005
and have to meet the Euro-IV norms by April 1, 2010. The rest of the
country will have Euro-III emission norm compliant automobiles and
fuels by 2010.
Thanks to the efforts made, the air quality of Delhi has significantly
improved. According to an estimate, a substantial fall in CO2 and SO2
level has been found in Delhi between 1997 and 2005.
In India, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act came
into force in 1981, but was amended in 1987 to include noise as an air
pollutant. Noise is undesired high level of sound. We have got used to
associating loud sounds with pleasure and entertainment not realising
that noise causes psychological and physiological disorders in humans.
The bigger the city, the bigger the function, the greater the noise!! A
brief exposure to extremely high sound level, 150 dB or more generated
by take off of a jet plane or rocket, may damage ear drums thus
permanently impairing hearing ability. Even chronic exposure to a
relatively lower noise level of cities may permanently damage hearing
abilities of humans. Noise also causes sleeplessness, increased heart
beating, altered breathing pattern, thus considerably stressing humans.
Considering the many dangerous effects of noise pollution can you
identify the unnecessary sources of noise pollution around you which
can be reduced immediately without any financial loss to anybody?
Reduction of noise in our industries can be affected by use of sound-
absorbent materials or by muffling noise. Stringent following of laws laid
down in relation to noise like delimitation of horn-free zones around
hospitals and schools, permissible sound-levels of crackers and of
loudspeakers, timings after which loudspeakers cannot be played, etc.,
need to be enforced to protect ourselves from noise pollution.

16.2 WATER POLLUTION AND ITS CONTROL

Human beings have been abusing the water-bodies around the world by
using them for disposal of all kinds of waste. We tend to believe that water
can wash away everything not taking cognizance of the fact that the water 273
bodies are our lifeline as well as that of all other living organisms. Can
you list what all we tend to try and wash away through our rivers and
drains? Due to such activities of human kind the ponds, lakes, stream,
rivers, estuaries and oceans are becoming polluted in several parts of the
world. Realising the importance of maintaining the cleanliness of the water
 BIOLOGY

bodies, the Government of India has passed the Water (Prevention and
Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 to safeguard our water resources.

16.2.1 Domestic Sewage and Industrial Effluents

As we work with water in our homes in the cities and towns, we wash
Figure 16.2 Composition of waste water
everything into drains. Have you
ever wondered where the sewage
that comes out our houses go?
What happens in villages? Is the
sewage treated before being
transported to the nearest river
and mixed with it? A mere 0.1
per cent impurities make
domestic sewage unfit for human
use (Figure 16.2).You have read
about sewage treatments
plants in Chapter 10. Solids are
relatively easy to remove, what
is difficult to remove are

274

Figure 16.3 Effect of sewage discharge on some important characteristics of a river

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

dissolved salts such as nitrates, phosphates, and other nutrients, and

toxic metal ions and organic compounds. Domestic sewage primarily
contains biodegradable organic matter, which readily decomposes –
thanks to bacteria and other micro-organisms, which can multiply using
these organic substances as substrates and hence utilise some of the
components of sewage. It is possible to estimate the amount of organic
matter in sewage water by measuring Biochemical Oxygen Demand
(BOD). Can you explain how? In the chapter on micro-organisms you
have read about the relation between BOD, micro-organisms and the
amount of biodegradable matter.
Figure 16.3 shows some of the changes that one may notice following
discharge of sewage into a river. Micro-organisms involved in
biodegradation of organic matter in the receiving water body consume a
lot of oxygen, and as a result there is a sharp decline in dissolved oxygen
downstream from the point of sewage discharge. This causes mortality of
fish and other aquatic creatures.
Presence of large amounts of nutrients in waters also causes excessive
growth of planktonic (free-floating) algae, called an algal bloom
(Figure 16.4) which imparts a distinct colour to the water bodies. Algal
blooms cause deterioration of the water quality and fish mortality. Some
bloom-forming algae are extremely toxic to human beings and animals.
You may have seen the beautiful mauve-colored flowers found on
very appealingly-shaped floating plants in water bodies. These plants
which were introduced into India for their lovely flowers have caused havoc
by their excessive growth by causing blocks in our waterways. They grow
faster than our ability to remove them. These are plants of water hyacinth
(Eichhornia crassipes), the world’s most problematic aquatic weed, also

275

Figure 16.4 Pictorial view of an algal bloom

 BIOLOGY

called ‘ Terror of Bengal’. They grow abundantly in

eutrophic water bodies, and lead to an imbalance in the
ecosystem dynamics of the water body.
Sewage from our homes as well from hospitals are
likely to contain many undesirable pathogenic micro-
organisms, and its disposal into a water without proper
treatment may cause outbreak of serious diseases, such
as, dysentery, typhoid, jaundice, cholera, etc.
Unlike domestic sewage, waste water from industries
like petroleum, paper manufacturing, metal extraction
and processing, chemical manufacturing, etc., often
contain toxic substances, notably, heavy metals (defined
as elements with density > 5 g/cm3 such as mercury,
cadmium, copper, lead, etc.) and a variety of organic
compounds.
A few toxic substances, often present in industrial
waste waters, can undergo biological magnification
(Biomagnification) in the aquatic food chain.
Biomagnification refers to increase in concentration of
the toxicant at successive trophic levels. This happens
because a toxic substance accumulated by an organism
cannot be metabolised or excreted, and is thus passed
on to the next higher trophic level. This phenomenon is
well-known for mercury and DDT. Figure 16.5 shows
biomagnification of DDT in an aquatic food chain. In this
manner, the concentration of DDT is increased at
successive trophic levels; say if it starts at 0.003 ppb
(ppb = parts per billion) in water, it can ultimately can
reach 25 ppm (ppm = parts per million) in fish-eating
birds, through biomagnification. High concentrations of
Figure 16.5 Biomagnification of DDT disturb calcium metabolism in birds, which causes
DDT in an aquatic thinning of eggshell and their premature breaking,
food chain eventually causing decline in bird populations.
Eutrophication is the natural aging of a lake by
biological enrichment of its water. In a young lake the water is cold and
clear, supporting little life. With time, streams draining into the lake
introduce nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which encourage
the growth of aquatic organisms. As the lake’s fertility increases, plant
276 and animal life burgeons, and organic remains begin to be deposited on
the lake bottom. Over the centuries, as silt and organic debris pile up, the
lake grows shallower and warmer, with warm-water organisms
supplanting those that thrive in a cold environment. Marsh plants take
root in the shallows and begin to fill in the original lake basin. Eventually,
the lake gives way to large masses of floating plants (bog), finally converting
into land. Depending on climate, size of the lake and other factors, the
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

natural aging of a lake may span thousands of years. However, pollutants

from man’s activities like effluents from the industries and homes can
radically accelerate the aging process. This phenomenon has been called
Cultural or Accelerated Eutrophication. During the past century, lakes
in many parts of the earth have been severely eutrophied by sewage and
agricultural and industrial wastes. The prime contaminants are nitrates
and phosphates, which act as plant nutrients. They overstimulate the
growth of algae, causing unsightly scum and unpleasant odors, and
robbing the water of dissolved oxygen vital to other aquatic life. At the
same time, other pollutants flowing into a lake may poison whole
populations of fish, whose decomposing remains further deplete the
water’s dissolved oxygen content. In such fashion, a lake can literally
choke to death.
Heated (thermal) wastewaters flowing out of electricity-generating units,
e.g., thermal power plants, constitute another important category of
pollutants. Thermal wastewater eliminates or reduces the number of
organisms sensitive to high temperature, and may enhance the growth of
plants and fish in extremely cold areas but, only after causing damage to
the indigenous flora and fauna.

16.2.2 A Case Study of Integrated Waste Water Treatment

Wastewater including sewage can be treated in an integrated manner, by
utilising a mix of artificial and natural processes. An example of such an
initiative is the town of Arcata, situated along the northern coast of
California. Collaborating with biologists from the Humboldt
State University, the townspeople created an integrated waste water
treatment process within a natural system. The cleaning occurs in two
stages – (a) the conventional sedimentation, filtering and chlorine
treatments are given. After this stage, lots of dangerous pollutants like
dissolved heavy metals still remain. To combat this, an innovative
approach was taken and (b) the biologists developed a series of six
connected marshes over 60 hectares of marshland. Appropriate plants,
algae, fungi and bacteria were seeded into this area, which neutralise,
absorb and assimilate the pollutants. Hence, as the water flows through
the marshes, it gets purified naturally.
The marshes also constitute a sanctuary, with a high level of
biodiversity in the form of fishes, animals and birds that now reside there.
A citizens group called Friends of the Arcata Marsh (FOAM) are responsible
for the upkeep and safeguarding of this wonderful project. . 277
All this time, we have assumed that removal of wastes requires water,
i.e., the creation of sewage. But what if water is not necessary to dispose
off human waste, like excreta? Can you imagine the amount of water that
one can save if one didn’t have to flush the toilet? Well, this is already a
reality. Ecological sanitation is a sustainable system for handling human
 BIOLOGY

excreta, using dry composting toilets. This is a practical, hygienic, efficient

and cost-effective solution to human waste disposal. The key point to
note here is that with this composting method, human excreta can be
recycled into a resource (as natural fertiliser), which reduces the need for
chemical fertilisers. There are working ‘EcoSan’ toilets in many areas of
Kerala and Sri Lanka.

16.3 SOLID WASTES

Solid wastes refer to everything that goes out in trash. Municipal solid
wastes are wastes from homes, offices, stores, schools, hospitals, etc.,
that are collected and disposed by the municipality. The municipal solid
wastes generally comprise paper, food wastes, plastics, glass, metals,
rubber, leather, textile, etc. Burning reduces the volume of the wastes,
although it is generally not burnt to completion and open dumps often
serve as the breeding ground for rats and flies. Sanitary landfills were
adopted as the substitute for open-burning dumps. In a sanitary landfill,
wastes are dumped in a depression or trench after compaction, and
covered with dirt everyday. If you live in a town or city, do you know
where the nearest landfill site is? Landfills are also not really much of
a solution since the amount of garbage generation specially in the metros
has increased so much that these sites are getting filled too. Also there
is danger of seepage of chemicals, etc., from these landfills polluting the
underground water resources.
A solution to all this can only be in human beings becoming more
sensitive to these environment issues. All waste that we generate can
be categorised into three types – (a) bio-degradable, (b) recyclable and
(c) the non-biodegradable. It is important that all garbage generated is
sorted. What can be reused or recycled separated out; our kabadiwallahs
and rag-pickers do a great job of separation of materials for recycling.
The biodegradable materials can be put into deep pits in the ground and
be left for natural breakdown. That leaves only the non-biodegradable to
be disposed off . The need to reduce our garbage generation should be a
prime goal, instead, we are increasing the use of non-biodegradable
products. Just pick any readymade packet of any ‘good quality’ eatable,
say a biscuit packet, and study the packaging – do you see the number
of protective layers used? Note that atleast one layer is of plastic. We have
started packaging even our daily use products like milk and water in
polybags!! In cities, fruits and vegetables can be bought packed in
278 beautiful polysterene and plastic packaging – we pay so much and what
do we do? Contribute heavily to environmental pollution. State
Governments across the country are trying to push for reduction in use
of plastics and use of eco-friendly packaging. We can do our bit by carrying
cloth or other natural fibre carry-bags when we go shopping and by
refusing polythene bags.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

16.3.1 Case Study of Remedy for Plastic Waste

A plastic sack manufacturer in Bangalore has managed to find the
ideal solution to the ever-increasing problem of accumulating plastic
waste. Ahmed Khan, aged 57 years old, has been producing plastic
sacks for 20 years. About 8 years ago, he realised that plastic waste
was a real problem. Polyblend, a fine powder of recycled modified plastic,
was developed then by his company. This mixture is mixed with the
bitumen that is used to lay roads. In collaboration with R.V.College of
Engineering and the Bangalore City Corporation, Ahmed Khan proved
that blends of Polyblend and bitumen, when used to lay roads, enhanced
the bitumen’s water repellant properties, and helped to increase road
life by a factor of three. The raw material for creating Polyblend is any
plastic film waste. So, against the price of Rs. 0.40 per kg that rag
pickers had been getting for plastic waste, Khan now offers Rs.6. Using
Khan’s technique, by the year 2002, more than 40 kms of road in
Bangalore has already been laid. At this rate, Khan will soon be running
short of plastic waste in Bangalore, to produce Polyblend. Thanks to
innovations like Polyblend, we might still avoid being smothered by
plastic waste.
Hospitals generate hazardous wastes that contain disinfectants and
other harmful chemicals, and also pathogenic micro-organisms. Such
wastes also require careful treatment and disposal. The use of incinerators
is crucial to disposal of hospital waste.
Irreparable computers and other electronic goods are known as
electronic wastes (e-wastes). E-wastes are buried in landfills or
incinerated. Over half of the e-wastes generated in the developed world
are exported to developing countries, mainly to China, India and Pakistan,
where metals like copper, iron, silicon, nickel and gold are recovered
during recycling process. Unlike developed countries, which have
specifically built facilities for recycling of e-wastes, recycling in developing
countries often involves manual participation thus exposing workers to
toxic substances present in e-wastes. Eventually recycling is the only
solution for the treatment of e-wastes provided it is carried out in an
environment-friendly manner.

16.4 AGRO-CHEMICALS AND THEIR EFFECTS

In the wake of green revolution, use of inorganic fertilisers and pesticides
has increased manifold for enhancing crop production. Pesticides, 279
herbicides, fungicides, etc., are being increasingly used. These incidentally,
are also toxic to non-target organisms,that are important components of
the soil ecosystem. Do you think these can be biomagnified in the terrestrial
ecosystems? We know what the addition of increasing amounts of artificial
fertilisers can do to aquatic ecosystems vis-à-vis eutrophication. The
current problems in agriculture are, therefore, extremely grave.
 BIOLOGY

16.4.1 Case Study of Organic Farming

Integrated organic farming is a cyclical, zero-waste procedure, where waste
products from one process are cycled in as nutrients for other processes.
This allows the maximum utilisation of resource and increases the
efficiency of production. Ramesh Chandra Dagar, a farmer in Sonipat,
Haryana, is doing just this. He includes bee-keeping, dairy management,
water harvesting, composting and agriculture in a chain of processes,
which support each other and allow an extremely economical and
sustainable venture. There is no need to use chemical fertilisers for crops,
as cattle excreta (dung) are used as manure. Crop waste is used to create
compost, which can be used as a natural fertiliser or can be used to
generate natural gas for satisfying the energy needs of the farm.
Enthusiastic about spreading information and help on the practice of
integrated organic farming, Dagar has created the Haryana Kisan Welfare
Club, with a current membership of 5000 farmers.

16.5 RADIOACTIVE WASTES

Initially, nuclear energy was hailed as a non-polluting way for generating
electricity. Later on, it was realised that the use of nuclear energy has two
very serious inherent problems. The first is accidental leakage, as occurred
in the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents and the second is safe
disposal of radioactive wastes.
Radiation, that is given off by nuclear waste is extremely damaging to
biological organisms, because it causes mutations to occur at a very high
rate. At high doses, nuclear radiation is lethal but at lower doses, it creates
various disorders, the most frequent of all being cancer. Therefore, nuclear
waste is an extremely potent pollutant and has to be dealt with utmost
caution.
It has been recommended that storage of nuclear waste, after sufficient
pre-treatment, should be done in suitably shielded containers buried
within the rocks, about 500 m deep below the earth’s surface. However,
this method of disposal is meeting stiff opposition from the public. Why
do you think this method of disposal is not agreeable to many people?

16.6 GREENHOUSE EFFECT AND GLOBAL WARMING

The term ‘Greenhouse effect’ has been derived from a phenomenon that
occurs in a greenhouse. Have you ever seen a greenhouse? It looks like a
280 small glass house and is used for growing plants especially during winter.
In a greenhouse the glass panel lets the light in, but does not allow heat
to escape. Therefore, the greenhouse warms up, very much like inside a
car that has been parked in the sun for a few hours.
The greenhouse effect is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is
responsible for heating of Earth’s surface and atmosphere. You would be
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Figure 16.6 Sunlight energy at the outermost atmosphere

surprised to know that without greenhouse effect the average temperature

at surface of Earth would have been a chilly –18oC rather than the present
average of 15oC. In order to understand the
greenhouse effect, it is necessary to know the
fate of the energy of sunlight that reaches the
outermost atmosphere (Figure16.6). Clouds
and gases reflect about one-fourth of the
incoming solar radiation, and absorb some of
it but almost half of incoming solar radiation
falls on Earth’s surface heating it, while a small
proportion is reflected back. Earth’s surface
re-emits heat in the form of infrared radiation
but part of this does not escape into space as
atmospheric gases (e.g., carbon dioxide,
methane, etc.) absorb a major fraction of it. The
molecules of these gases radiate heat energy, Figure 16.7 Relative contribution of various
greenhouse gases to total global
and a major part of which again comes to
warming
Earth’s surface, thus heating it up once again.
This cycle is repeated many a times. The
281
above-mentioned gases – carbon dioxide and methane – are commonly
known as greenhouse gases (Figure 16.7) because they are responsible
for the greenhouse effect.
Increase in the level of greenhouse gases has led to considerable heating
of Earth leading to global warming. During the past century, the
temperature of Earth has increased by 0.6 oC, most of it during the last
 BIOLOGY

three decades. Scientists believe that this rise in temperature is leading

to deleterious changes in the environment and resulting in odd climatic
changes (e.g. El Nino effect) , thus leading to increased melting of polar
ice caps as well as of other places like the Himalayan snow caps. Over
many years, this will result in a rise in sea level that can submerge many
coastal areas. The total spectrum of changes that global warming can
bring about is a subject that is still under active research.
How can we control global warming? The measures include cutting
down use of fossil fuel, improving efficiency of energy usage, reducing
deforestation, planting trees and slowing down the growth of human
population. International initiatives are also being taken to reduce the
emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

16.7 O Z O N E D E P L E T I O N IN THE

STRATOSPHERE
You have earlier studied in the Chemistry
textbook of Class XI about ‘bad’ ozone, formed
in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) that harms
plants and animals. There is ‘good’ ozone also;
this ozone is found in the upper part of the
atmosphere called the stratosphere, and it acts
as a shield absorbing ultraviolet radiation from
the sun. UV rays are highly injurious to living
organisms since DNA and proteins of living
organisms preferentially absorb UV rays, and its
high energy breaks the chemical bonds within
these molecules. The thickness of the ozone in a
Figure 16.8 Ozone hole is the area above column of air from the ground to the top of the
Antarctica, shown in purple atmosphere is measured in terms of Dobson
colour, where the ozone layer
units (DU).
is the thinnest. Ozone
thickness is given in Dobson Ozone gas is continuously formed by the
unit (see carefully the scale action of UV rays on molecular oxygen, and also
shown in colour violet to red). degraded into molecular oxygen in the
The ozone hole over Antarctica
stratosphere. There should be a balance between
develops each year between
late August and early production and degradation of ozone in the
October. Curtesy: NASA stratosphere. Of late, the balance has been
disrupted due to enhancement of ozone
282 degradation by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
CFCs find wide use as refrigerants. CFCs discharged in the lower part of
atmosphere move upward and reach stratosphere. In stratosphere, UV
rays act on them releasing Cl atoms. Cl degrades ozone releasing
molecular oxygen, with these atoms acting merely as catalysts; Cl atoms
are not consumed in the reaction. Hence, whatever CFCs are added to
the stratosphere, they have permanent and continuing affects on Ozone
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

levels. Although ozone depletion is occurring widely in the stratosphere,

the depletion is particularly marked over the Antarctic region. This has
resulted in formation of a large area of thinned ozone layer, commonly
called as the ozone hole (Figure 16.8).
UV radiation of wavelengths shorter than UV-B, are almost completely
absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, given that the ozone layer is intact. But,
UV-B damages DNA and mutation may occur. It causes aging of skin,
damage to skin cells and various types of skin cancers. In human eye,
cornea absorbs UV-B radiation, and a high dose of UV-B causes
inflammation of cornea, called snow-blindness cataract, etc. Such
exposure may permanently damage the cornea.
Recognising the deleterious affects of ozone depletion, an international
treaty, known as the Montreal Protocol, was signed at Montreal (Canada)
in 1987 (effective in 1989) to control the emission of ozone depleting
substances. Subsequently many more efforts have been made and
protocols have laid down definite roadmaps, separately for developed and
developing countries, for reducing the emission of CFCs and other ozone
depleting chemicals.

16.8 DEGRADATION BY IMPROPER RESOURCE UTILISATION

AND MAINTENANCE

The degradation of natural resources can occur, not just by the action of
pollutants but also by improper resource utilisation practices.
Soil erosion and desertification: The development of the fertile top-soil
takes centuries. But, it can be removed very easily due to human activities
like over-cultivation, unrestricted grazing, deforestation and poor
irrigation practices, resulting in arid patches of land. When large barren
patches extend and meet over time, a desert is created. Internationally, it
has been recognised that desertification is a major problem nowadays,
particularly due to increased urbanisation.
Waterlogging and soil salinity: Irrigation without proper drainage of
water leads to waterlogging in the soil. Besides affecting the crops,
waterlogging draws salt to the surface of the soil. The salt then is deposited
as a thin crust on the land surface or starts collecting at the roots of the
plants. This increased salt content is inimical to the growth of crops and
is extremely damaging to agriculture. Waterlogging and soil salinity are
some of the problems that have come in the wake of the Green Revolution.
283
16.9 DEFORESTATION
Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested ones.
According to an estimate, almost 40 per cent forests have been lost in the
tropics, compared to only 1 per cent in the temperate region. The present
scenario of deforestation is particularly grim in India. At the beginning of
 BIOLOGY

the twentieth century, forests covered about 30 per cent of the land of
India. By the end of the century, it shrunk to 19.4 per cent, whereas the
National Forest Policy (1988) of India has recommended 33 per cent forest
cover for the plains and 67 per cent for the hills.
How does deforestation occur? A number of human activities
contribute to it. One of the major reasons is the conversion of forest to
agricultural land so as to feed the growing human population. Trees are
axed for timber, firewood, cattle ranching and for several other purposes.
Slash and burn agriculture, commonly called as Jhum cultivation in
the north-eastern states of India, has also contributed to deforestation.
In slash and burn agriculture, the farmers cut down the trees of the forest
and burn the plant remains. The ash is used as a fertiliser and the land is
then used for farming or cattle grazing. After cultivation, the area is left
for several years so as to allow its recovery. The farmers then move on to
other areas and repeat this process. In earlier days, when Jhum cultivation
was in prevalence, enough time-gap was given such that the land recovered
from the effect of cultivation. With increasing population, and repeated
cultivation, this recovery phase is done away with, resulting in
deforestation.
What are the consequences of deforestation? One of the major effects
is enhanced carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere because
trees that could hold a lot of carbon in their biomass are lost with
deforestation. Deforestation also causes loss of biodiversity due to habitat
destruction, disturbs hydrologic cycle, causes soil erosion, and may lead
to desertification in extreme cases.
Reforestation is the process of restoring a forest that once existed
but was removed at some point of time in the past. Reforestation may
occur naturally in a deforested area. However, we can speed it up by
planting trees with due consideration to biodiversity that earlier existed
in that area.
16.9.1 Case Study of People’s Participation in
Conservation of Forests
People’s participation has a long history in India. In 1731, the king of
Jodhpur in Rajasthan asked one of his ministers to arrange wood for
constructing a new palace. The minister and workers went to a forest
near a village, inhabited by Bishnois, to cut down trees. The Bishnoi
community is known for its peaceful co-existence with nature. The effort
to cut down trees by the kings was thwarted by the Bishnois. A Bishnoi
284 woman Amrita Devi showed exemplary courage by hugging a tree and
daring king’s men to cut her first before cutting the tree. The tree mattered
much more to her than her own life. Sadly, the king’s men did not heed to
her pleas, and cut down the tree along with Amrita Devi. Her three
daughters and hundreds of other Bishnois followed her, and thus lost
their lives saving trees. Nowhere in history do we find a commitment of
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

this magnitude when human beings sacrificed their lives for the cause of
the environment. The Government of India has recently instituted the
Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award for individuals or
communities from rural areas that have shown extraordinary courage
and dedication in protecting wildlife.
You may have heard of the Chipko Movement of Garhwal Himalayas.
In 1974, local women showed enormous bravery in protecting trees from
the axe of contractors by hugging them. People all over the world have
acclaimed the Chipko movement.
Realising the significance of participation by local communities,
the Government of India in 1980s has introduced the concept of
Joint Forest Management (JFM) so as to work closely with the local
communities for protecting and managing forests. In return for their
services to the forest, the communities get benefit of various forest products
(e.g., fruits, gum, rubber, medicine, etc.), and thus the forest can be
conserved in a sustainable manner.

SUMMARY
Major issues relating to environmental pollution and depletion of
valuable natural resources vary in dimension from local, regional to
global levels. Air pollution primarily results from burning of fossil fuel,
e.g., coal and petroleum, in industries and in automobiles. They are
harmful to humans, animals and plants, and therefore must be removed
to keep our air clean. Domestic sewage, the most common source of
pollution of water bodies, reduces dissolved oxygen but increases
biochemical oxygen demand of receiving water. Domestic sewage is rich
in nutrients, especially, nitrogen and phosphorus, which cause
eutrophication and nuisance algal blooms. Industrial waste waters are
often rich in toxic chemicals, especially heavy metals and organic
compounds. Industrial waste waters harm living organisms. Municipal
solid wastes also create problems and must be disposed of in landfills.
Disposal of hazardous wastes like defunct ships, radioactive wastes
and e-wastes requires additional efforts. Soil pollution primarily results
from agricultural chemicals (e.g., pesticides) and leachates from solid
wastes deposited over it.
Two major environmental issues of global nature are increasing
greenhouse effect, which is warming Earth, and depletion of ozone in
the stratosphere. Enhanced greenhouse effect is mainly due to
increased emission of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and CFCs., 285
and also due to deforestation. It may drastically change rainfall pattern,
global temperature, besides deleteriously affecting living organisms.
Ozone in the stratosphere, which protects us from harmful effects of
ultraviolet radiation, is depleting fast due to emission of CFCs thus
increasing the risks of skin cancer, mutation and other disorders.
 BIOLOGY

EXERCISES
1. What are the various constituents of domestic sewage? Discuss the
effects of sewage discharge on a river.
2. List all the wastes that you generate, at home, school or during your
trips to other places, could you very easily reduce? Which would be
difficult or rather impossible to reduce?
3. Discuss the causes and effects of global warming. What measures need
to be taken to control global warming?
4. Match the items given in column A and B:
Column A Column B
(a) Catalytic converter (i) Particulate matter
(b) Electrostatic precipitator (ii) Carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides
(c) Earmuffs (iii) High noise level
(d) Landfills (iv) Solid wastes
5. Write critical notes on the following:
(a) Eutrophication
(b) Biological magnification
(c)Groundwater depletion and ways for its replenishment
6. Why ozone hole forms over Antarctica? How will enhanced ultraviolet
radiation affect us?
7. Discuss the role of women and communities in protection and
conservation of forests.
8. What measures, as an individual, you would take to reduce
environmental pollution?
9. Discuss briefly the following:
(a) Radioactive wastes
(b) Defunct ships and e-wastes
(c) Municipal solid wastes
10. What initiatives were taken for reducing vehicular air pollution in Delhi?
Has air quality improved in Delhi?
11. Discuss briefly the following :
(a) Greenhouse gases
(b) Catalytic converter
(c) Ultraviolet B

286
Corso di Laurea magistrale (ordinamento
ex D.M. 270/2004)
in Filosofia della società, dell’arte e della
comunicazione

Tesi di Laurea

Dealing with the

environmental crisis:
a case for cultural approaches

Relatore
Ch. Prof. Fiorino Tessaro

Laureando
Catia Squarcia
Matricola 843235

Anno Accademico
2014 / 2015
 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank several persons and subjects whose contribution or support allowed the
realization of this work.

I thank the Venice International University, through which I could access the environmental topics,
otherwise too difficult to study given the nature of the academic curriculum of my course, and I
could conduct my research at RCC. Thanks to the Rachel Carson Centre in Munich, where most
part of my research could develop, in a great environment, a source of enrichment, precious inputs
and human warmth. Thanks to my supervisor, Professor Fiorino Tessaro, who embraced my project
although it was unusual and linked to other institutions and projects in its realization. Thanks to
Wega Association and the staff of Filofest, for the positive energy and the friendship that gave me
the sprint to start my research. Thanks to my parents, who supported me in the choices that I made,
even when they seemed more difficult or not linear as usual plans expected. Thanks to my brother
and my sister, Marco and Chiara, because they are unique friends and I can always count on them.
Thanks to my friends, those who are there every Christmas, although every one took his own way.
Thanks to the persons I keep with me from the time of the University, in Bologna and in Venice,
because I can still share my way with them and therefore they are part of my research, in particular
Fabio, Salvo, Marco, Sari, Marti, Giuli e Vale. Thanks to Valentina, for being there with her loyalty.
Thanks to Alice and Giada for supporting me in my emotional crisis and for the connection that
we’ve never lost, even though we lose ourselves from time to time. Finally, thanks to Martin, whose
support has always been incomparable and without whom my way would have been different.
Summary

1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 7
2. Part One: Environmental Crisis and Technical Approach ....................... 10
3. Chapter I - Understanding the background: the Environmental Situation
and the current responses.............................................................................. 10
The Environmental Crisis .................................................................................................................................... 10
1.1 Climate Change ............................................................................................................................. 12
1.2 Fossil Fuels Combustion................................................................................................................ 14
1.3 Oceans’ acidification and pollution .............................................................................................. 15
1.4 Deforestation ................................................................................................................................ 16
1.5 Biodiversity loss ............................................................................................................................ 18
1.6 Overpopulation and global Feeding ............................................................................................. 19
Current responses .............................................................................................................................................. 21
Sustainable Development and Ecological Economics......................................................................... 21
Technical approach in economy: Green Economy, its limits and its strategies ................................. 24
Technical approach in Politic: ‘Green Parties’, Environmental Law and Environmental Policy
Instruments......................................................................................................................................... 27
Limits of technical approach in Politics .............................................................................................. 38

4. Chapter II – Technical or cultural approach to the ecological crisis........ 41

The technical orientation and its reductionism ................................................................................................. 41
The effects of the market ideology and its invasion of improper fields in the last decades ............................. 44
The dangerous faith in the technological efficiency and Jonas’ “Imperative of responsibility” ........................ 47
Cultural approaches beyond the reductionism of technical solutions: a culture of sustainability .................... 50

5. Part two: Cultural Approach and how to realize it .................................... 53

6. Chapter III - The domain of environmental issues: global actors and the
need to “think globally and act locally” ....................................................... 53
Globalization and Glocalization .......................................................................................................................... 53
The world as an interconnected system ............................................................................................................ 56
From the Nation-states to a Global Citizenship ................................................................................................. 58
What does Citizenship mean and the possibility to conceive a Global Citizenship ............................................ 61
Political Activism from bottom: Global Civil Society and its role ....................................................................... 64

3
 7. Chapter IV – Towards Cultural approaches: reflecting on the
relationship between Humankind and Nature ............................................ 69
Anthropocentrism and learning to love the nature ........................................................................................... 69
The need of a cultural revolution in the relationship between human and nature: four inspiring voices. ....... 71
James Lovelock and the Gaya hypothesis ............................................................................... 71
Felix Guattari and The three ecologies .................................................................................... 72
Raimon Panikkar, Ecosophy and Earth’s spirituality ................................................................ 75
Arne Naess’s ecosophy and the Deep Ecology ........................................................................ 76
New consciousness, new culture: Aesthetics, Spirituality and “Deep Ecology” ................................................ 78
The role of Aesthetics in reawakening Spirituality ............................................................................. 79
The prospect of Deep Ecology and the controversies of the movement ........................................... 80

8. Chapter V - Education to sustainability ...................................................... 86

Consumerism and its unsustainable education to “consume” the Nature. ....................................................... 87
Institutional pathway of education to sustainability: the goals according to the international frameworks ... 91
Focus on Philosophy as strategic instrument towards sustainability: the potential of “Philosophy for
Children” ........................................................................................................................................................... 107
Education and awareness from bottom: civil society movements. ................................................................. 108
The introduction of policies needs to be accompanied by the civil society’s cultural change ........ 108
Social movements: mainstream environmentalism and grassroots social innovations .................. 111
Focus on Social Innovations: four levels of actions and some examples for each ........................... 116

9. Chapter VI - Transdisciplinarity and the role of Humanities in

Environmental Studies ................................................................................ 131
The need of an integrated paradigm ................................................................................................................ 131
The role of the Humanities and the relation with the Nature in the Western cultural history towards the
Anthropocene ................................................................................................................................................... 133
Humanities and social sciences to avoid the reductionism of the technical approach ................................... 135
Environmental Humanities ............................................................................................................................... 136
Fragmented Knowledge and Transdisciplinarity .............................................................................................. 138

10. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 144

11. Bibliography ................................................................................................. 146
12. Filmography.................................................................................................. 154
13. Sitography ..................................................................................................... 156

4
5
 You'd think that the most intellectual creature on the planet would know better than to destroy its
only home, but we are destroying the planet very, very quickly.
We must learn to live in peace and harmony, sharing the same philosophy, not only with each other,
but also with the natural world, because we will see the results tomorrow, if we didn’t learn it we
will pick up weapons, fighting over water, over the last natural resources…we have to help the
young people to remodel the way how we act in this planet before it’s too late. Giving them hope is
the most important thing to do. If young people lose hope there really is no hope at all. And what I
would tell every one of them is that every single day that you live you make a difference to impact
the world, and you have a choice on what kind of impact you are going to make. Your life matters
and you can make a difference.

Jane Goodall, from the documentary “Jane’s Journey”.

6
Introduction

When I started to attend classes about Environmental policy and Sustainability, mostly run by
economy or political science courses, I felt pretty outsider among all the other students. When I
began to read, study and write about sustainability I have frequently been asked, with amazement of
who asked, where was the link between my field of study and those matters. Philosophy has often
been conceived in the most imaginary ways by people who have never approached it. I remember a
friend asking me if my future perspective was about sitting under a tree smoking a pipe. However,
to me the connection between philosophy and environmental matters was simply evident and
spontaneous. How could the nature and the political role of the humans in it not be a philosophical
topic?

Attending economic classes about environment was interesting and funny. My background and the
lack of the economic knowledge didn’t make things easy to understand. I used to utilise a deeply
different language and way of thinking in front of problematics and it could happen that I brought in
class input that were totally useless for my “economy colleagues”. Nevertheless I continued to learn
and research and the more I felt stranger to the economic approach the more I was persuaded that
the reductionism of those lessons was missing something important. Those classes didn’t usually
consider the topic of their lectures, the nature, from a different point of view from resources,
scarcity, costs and benefits, although they were aimed to speak about effective pathways to propose
sustainable economic strategies. They were talking of technical instruments to pollute less, but their
speeches were generally absent of ethical observations and very poor of cultural considerations .
Yet, I repeated to myself, there is so much more than this!

I realised step by step that the Humanities have academically still a pretty reduced role into the
research about sustainable development and environmental studies. They are late in being involved
in the topic and the field is mostly approached by natural sciences, political or economic disciplines.

This reductionism is a consequence of the tendency of current responses to the environmental crisis
that privilege technical strategies to deal with such issue. Nevertheless, the contribution of all these
subjects whose topic is the humankind seems to me indispensable to have a faithful and integrated
outlook of the current situation, because they deal with culture and culture is the stage where social,
economic and political dynamics take place. Can technical strategies produce effective and long-
term results towards sustainability without the promotion of radical cultural change?

Modern global challenges, among which the environmental one, require a real deep cooperation of
all fields of study and of the multiplicity of actors, in order to promote effective solutions. These
solutions are not just technical, but especially cultural. The whole global population is involved and
to make it politically active we need education and new paradigms of knowledge. To respond
adequately to the ecological crisis, cultural approaches are urgently needed, next to and beyond
technical solutions, in order to transcend their limits and reductionism.

I argue in this dissertation why, in my opinion, it is urgent to promote cultural responses to the
environmental crisis, through educating citizens to “think” and live their daily life sustainable and
addressing a more appropriate study approach to the issues, according to a trans-disciplinary
perspective.

In the first part I will introduce the environmental crisis and the current responses to it, identifying
the tendency to treat the problem through what I call “technical approach”. Such approach provides
economic, political and legal strategies to limit the consequences of the environmental degradation
and to “green” the economy, but, I will argument, their only attempt is ineffective if it remains
lacking of a cultural strategy. In the second part I will explain what I intend with “cultural
approach”, and why I consider this perspective indispensable to deal with global problems in
general and in particular with the ecological one. To define the domain and social level where these
challenges have to be met, I will touch on the context of globalisation to sketch the complexity and
controversies of the “Global Village” as interconnected system. Such system is the stage to define a
“Global Citizenship” as main actor that, with its activism, assumes a determinant role in dealing
with environmental problems. Just involving the Civil Society and promoting strongly a culture of
sustainability, it is possible to induce the social change and deep redirection of lifestyles towards
sustainable patterns. I will identify two elements as instruments to promote cultural and effective
responses and limit the reductionism of technical solutions. One is the education that passes through
formal and institutional channels (schools, international frameworks and programs) and also
through informal pathways (Civil Society movements and social innovations). An education to
sustainability should shape the future citizenship to new ways of conceiving the relationship
between humankind and environment and a different mentality towards the nature. To this end I
will mention four examples of philosophies and outlooks of thinkers oriented towards paradigms
like the Ecosophy and the Deep Ecology and a new spirituality towards the world and the nature.

8
The second element necessary for cultural responses is the promotion of a Transdisciplinary
orientation in the research about environmental issues and in the academic milieu, that allows to
conceive more adequate, systemic and holistic paradigms, through the integration among all
disciplines, first of all the humanities that are extremely precious to shape minds oriented to
sustainability, and to facilitate cooperation between academics and society stakeholders.

9
Part One: Environmental Crisis and Technical Approach

Chapter I - Understanding the background: the Environmental Situation

and the current responses.
The Environmental Crisis

An exponentially growing, partially or totally irreversible environmental deterioration or

devastation perpetuated through firmly established ways of production and consumption and
a lack of adequate policies regarding human population increase. 1

Common speeches in the daily life concern often weather and meteorological conditions. When we
entertain an informal conversation with somebody we don’t have intimate relation with, we are
likely to talk about the forecasts of the weather and how cold or warm is the day. Weather is
considered a neutral argument to talk about and allows breaking the ice in the elevator or in the
office, when we want to exchange some chat. In the last decades, however, our conversations about
it differed pretty much from the chats of previous generations. My grandparents, all farmers born in
the 20s and 30s of the XX century, used to talk about it in base of the agricultural phases of their
fields and the natural development of the conditions to cultivate in the lapse of time of one year or
of some years. They used to report the trend of the season, the singular atmospheric events such as
huge raining, hail, ice or too much sun, and the consequences that they had on their cultivations.
Then they used to compare the current season with the previous years, analysing which factors
favoured or obstructed a better crop. Their output depended mostly on the behaviour of the weather
and they had an attitude towards it of adaptation and dependence, even forced submission. A new
bacteria bearing sickness to plants and spread from field to field could destroy a whole harvest of a
season and their economic income had to deal with this. Somehow they learnt, living in the nature
and transmitting the knowledge from the old generations, to predict and deduce how the weather
would behave, even if always with the inevitable uncertainty, and sometimes they were more
precise than our modern meteorologists would be. Still 70 years ago it was a little easier to forecast
the weather deriving it from small signals, such us a kind of wind or a certain disposition of the

1
Naess Arne (1990), Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, p. 23.
clouds, unless big sudden events happen, as always has happened in the history. The capability of
my grandparents to guess how the season will reveal in the last years decreased. It is pretty usual,
now, while it was a bit less before, that they just show an astonished expression and are unable to
find explanations if one asks them why in our warm and temperate region it snowed in April or why
we had just 10 days of sun and hot in the whole summer. They are able to remember weird events
like a snow in a hot season or a very bad annual crop for too much or too less raining, but they seem
pretty surprised in seeing how these unusual events happen so often nowadays. The attempt to
prevent disasters in agriculture crops is not really effective, because forecasting sudden frost or
heavy rain and flooding2 and the size of their impact is too difficult, so the farmers have to deal with
millions and millions of lost income because of sudden, short but strong phenomenon. Few days of
excessive cold can kill what has been brought up in months.
Beyond the astonishment of the common sense, which has always existed and is not of scientific
relevance, sciences agree by now on many points about climate change and environmental
degradation. The planet is experiencing an unprecedented situation of unbalance, deterioration and
impossibility of adaption, and the activity of the humans is considered (even if not by all scientists)
largely responsible for it.
This situation is resumed under the expression “Environmental Crisis” and the factors signalling the
critical aspects are several. The main ones that include other consequent factors are:

 Climate change and Global Warming

 Fossil fuels exploitation
 Acidification of oceans
 Deforestation
 Biodiversity loss
 Global Overpopulation

2
See Legambiente Study (2014), L’Italia delle Alluvioni. Gli impatti degli eventi estremi di pioggia nelle città italiane,
http://www.legambiente.it/sites/default/files/docs/litalia_delle_alluvioni_studio_ultimo.pdf Extreme weather events
are becoming more and more frequent. One of the most diffused phenomenon creating problems in Italy are floods
and they are not anymore “exceptional events”, but nowadays recurring and intensive, and create huge damage both
to agricultural activities but especially to urban areas. As Legambiente states: Aumenta “la difficoltà, diffusa in
moltissime città italiane, di rispondere ad eventi estremi di pioggia, di cui negli ultimi anni è aumentata anche
l'intensità. Episodi che in passato erano eccezionali, oggi tendono a rappresentare sempre più la normalità. Anche se
le proiezioni indicano per il Mediterraneo e per l'Italia una diminuzione delle precipitazioni in senso assoluto, gli eventi
estremi purtroppo saranno sempre più frequenti, e ciò soprattutto nelle regioni settentrionali. Il cambiamento di
alcuni parametri climatici, non solo rende inefficaci i regolamenti e gli strumenti di governo del territorio di cui
disponiamo, ma più urgentemente svela l'incapacità delle città nell'affrontare questo scenario di forte cambiamento e
di grande incertezza in cui siamo chiamati a ragionare”.

11
I will describe each of them, in order to show what are the elements signalling the “crisis”.

Afterwards I will talk about the current responses that have been and continue to be developed since
some decades, focusing on the tendency to privilege a technical approach to the problem and
explaining in what it consists.

1.1 Climate Change

The Climate Change issue refers mainly to the global warming and increase of temperature of the
planet. According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC)3, the temperature of the
globe increased by 0, 85 °C in the last century.

Global average temperature since 1880.The graph shows the annual trend in average global air temperature in
degrees Celsius, through December 2013. For each year, the range of uncertainty is indicated by the grey vertical bars.
The blue line tracks the changes in the trend over time. (Image NOAA's National Climatic Data Centre.)

Despite it has happened in the history of the planet that the clime would change and cross glacial
ages or hotter times, the climate change that we are experiencing is an exceptional event because it
is happening in an extremely short time. We refer to a couple of centuries, since the industrial
revolution transformed our role on Earth. While this warming process takes place in the lapse of

3
See NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-monitoring/ ,
October 2014.

12
hundred years, usually this phenomenon required hundred thousand years in the past. The
correlation between the human activity and the global warming is evident and the specific factor
inducing or accelerating it is the excess of concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The greenhouse effect is a condition to allow life on earth, because it simulates a protective filter
from solar radiations, but that allows to rich a temperature on the surface of the earth enough warm
(15°C) to survive for living organisms. As Common and Stagl explain in Ecological Economics4

60 per cent of the solar radiation reaches the surface of the earth; about 18 per cent of it is
reflected back into space, with the remainder warming the earth’s surface. With warming, the
earth’s surface emits infra-red radiation. The so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ in the atmosphere
absorb some of this radiation, and re-emit it in all directions, including back towards the
surface of the earth. The effect of this reflected infra-red radiation is to warm the lower
atmosphere and the surface of the earth. The greenhouse gases act like a blanket around the
earth’s surface.

(Image: Common/Stagl (2005), p. 483)

Though, when the concentration of the gases is too high, their ‘blanket effect’ is too strong and the
temperature on the surface increases. The main gases provoking this process are Carbon dioxide
(CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O), Ozone (O3). The first two are the more responsible,
respectively for the 60% the first and 20% the second, of the current additional warming. Their high
concentration is due mostly to the fossil fuels combustion for energy production. As the graph

4
See Michael Common and Sigrid Stagl (2005), Ecological Economics: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, p. 483.

13
shows, the correlation between the two variables is clear, to the increase of greenhouse gases
concentration corresponds the growth of the temperature.

World atmospheric concentration of CO2 and average global temperature change.

Sources: Temperature data are from NASA (2013); CO2 concentration data from NOAA Earth
System Research Laboratory.5

1.2 Fossil Fuels Combustion

Fossil fuels are coal, oil and natural gas. They all have organic origin, coal comes from vegetation,
oil from animal tissue and gas consists in methane released as a by-product during the formation of
oil, and deposits are usually found in association with oil deposits6. They employed millions of
years to become what we use today to obtain energy. The human society started to produce energy
from fuels in the last 250 years, as in the pre-industrial society labour was the main energy source,
coming from animals, water power and wood. This simple society was based on local self-
sufficiency and auto-production of food supplies and was organised in small and distant cities.
After the industrialization modern societies needed to use four or five times as much energy as
agrarian societies did, therefore the transition from biomass energy to coal and then liquid fuels (oil
and gas) took place. With the high density power of fuels’ energy the Industrial Revolution could
start and phenomenon like technological progress, transports development and urbanization began.

5
Image: website Summer Daily Post, https://summerdailypost.wordpress.com/ , October 2014.
6
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 42.

14
Coal has been the first and most important fossil fuel for industrialization and its use is also the
most environmentally damaging, as at least 50% of the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is
associated with coal burning. Nevertheless the global demand for coal is still very high, especially
among new emerging economies like China and India and it continues to grow.
Oil is less polluting than coal, but as it is the most used fuel in transports, its indirect consequences
on emissions are anyway very grave. Natural gas used for electricity generation is about half as
polluting as coal, but, as the methane (CH4) in it is much more potent than CO2, it is a strong
contributor to greenhouse gas emissions too. However it is short-lived in the atmosphere compared
to CO2 (40-50 years against 100).
The alternative to fossil fuels energy production is the renewable energy coming from natural
sources like sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat, but we are still far from
investing in them rather than on the fuels. The negative effects of the fuels combustion, beyond the
global warming for the concentration of greenhouse gases are also directly relevant for humans in
their daily life, because water quality is threatened by pollutants’ discharge in freshwater and
groundwater resources, soil quality lowers for the waste released and the overexploitation of
industrial agriculture, and the same thing happens for air quality due to the emissions themselves in
the air that we breath.

1.3 Oceans’ acidification and pollution

Seventy per cent of Earth’s surface is covered by water and ninety per cent of this marine surface
consists in oceans, the rest in glaciers, lakes, rivers. With the raising of global temperature, the
glaciers (meanly the Artic see ice) melt and retreat at an unusual speed. As a consequence the level
of sees rises risking to submerge costal territories in the next hundred years.
Apart from this, another problem dramatizes: water is a sink, because it absorbs CO2. The
disproportionate concentration of CO2 in oceans’ water, however, determines its alteration of the
PH and it changes the chemical equilibrium. Oceans have never been so “acid” in the past and the
rate of acidification is growing 100 times faster than any time in the last few hundred thousand
years. This has deep consequences on the organisms living in it and the food chains. As water’s
chemistry changes so rapidly many marine organisms are not able to adapt to it and many
ecosystems are impacted (for example some plankton species may not be able to survive in these
conditions, jeopardising the food chain for other animals). Furthermore the waste released in oceans,
has reached very grave levels. Beyond toxic waste, plastic is one of the biggest pollutant of oceans.

15
The huge amounts of it that can’t be assimilated by natural elements remain on the bottom and on
the surface of oceans for hundreds of years, with terrible impacts on animals life cycles. The rate of
animals that dye for having ingested plastic or being remained trapped into plastic objects grows
day by day.7

1.4 Deforestation

While greenhouse gases increase their concentration in the atmosphere, human activity proceeds, in
the same time, to harm the so called “sinks” that absorb the gases through natural processes, like the
forests. A forest can be considered an ecosystem. An ecosystem is a system comprising living
organisms, known as biota, and their non-living, or abiotic, environment, and all of the interactions
between all of the biotic and abiotic components of the system.8 Every small group of interacting
organisms can be considered an ecosystem. Plants are autotrophs, or producers, as they produce by
themselves their energy. Animals are classified as heterotrophs, as they consume from the
environment the food that will be transformed in energy. Plants use energy to make organic matter
from inorganic one, using chlorophyll through the process of photosynthesis. As it is showed in the
graphic9, they take inflows from the environment and give back outflows. The necessary inflows are
water, nutrients from the soil, carbon dioxide and especially solar energy. The outflows are heat,
result of the energy consumption in the process called respiration, water and oxygen. For their
productivity plants need all of these elements. The absence or insufficiency of one cannot be
replaced by the abundance of another.

7
See Inside the Garbage of the World , documentary edited by Philippe and Maxine Carillo, California 2014.
8
See Common and Stagl (2005).
9
See Common and Stagl (2005), p. 33.

16
On the contrary, animals consume oxygen, water and nutrients and release out water, carbon
dioxide and heat. Animals and plants are elements in systemic interrelation because the processes of
one determine the processes of the others. The plants occupy also the first level of the so called
‘trophic pyramid’, the pyramid of nutrition relations among living organisms. They are producers
and represent the source for the category of herbivores. Herbivores are eaten by carnivores at the
next level. Without the plants as first ring the chain cannot start.

Image: Common and Stagl (2005), p. 38.)

The productivity of plants is not fixed but it varies with the latitude and the frame of the
environment. Desert areas have a very low productivity while tropical and equatorial zones have the
highest. Although tropical rain forest accounts for only 3.3 per cent of the surface, it accounts for
22 per cent of total global productivity. Cultivated land accounts for 2.7 per cent of the surface and
5.4 per cent of productivity. 10

10
See Common and Stagl (2005), p. 40.

17
Therefore plants are essential to the functioning of the ecosystem, they produce oxygen, which is
necessary for living organisms such as the human species and act as ‘sinks’ bio-sequestrating11
carbon dioxide and keeping the balanced concentration of gases in the atmosphere to allow the life.
They are base element in the nutrition pyramid and preserve the natural conditions of habitats for
animals protecting the biodiversity.
“Deforestation” is the process of removing forests and trees to destine the territory to non-forest use
such us urban use, farming and industrial production of goods. It is deforestation if the removal is
not compensated by replanting and reforestation. The main causes behind the massive cut of trees
are land-use, pastures, cultivation and industrial production of fuels, charcoal and timber, together
with other goods like paper, palm oil and so on. A minor cause of deforestation is the forest fire that
can occur naturally but in most of the cases is provoked by humans.
Many operations of deforestation are leaded illegally, out of the control of political authorities. The
phenomenon has accelerated pretty much in the last decades and it is recognised as one important
factor incrementing global warming. The role of forest as sink in absorbing greenhouse gases loses
effectiveness if the concentration of the gases is disproportionally high compared to the forest
surface and its capacity of photosynthesising.
Beyond other consequences such us hydrological alteration of water cycle (trees serve for soil
cohesion, intercepting precipitations, balancing infiltrations under earth, controlling the humidity of
the atmosphere by transpiring) and soil erosion (by growing the amount of runoff and reducing the
protection of the soil from tree litter), deforestation contributes to the increasing of greenhouse
gases emissions up to between 10 and 20%12 on global scale. Forests indeed absorb 5 of the 32
billion of tons of greenhouse gasses emitted annually by human activity13.

1.5 Biodiversity loss

Destroying forests also means destroying natural habitats for many spices that take the way of
extinction. “Biodiversity is the diversity of living organisms, the genes that they contain and the
ecosystems in which they exist.”14 The extent of biodiversity depends on the number of existing
species on Earth, which is unknown but is supposed to be extremely high. The species’ richness

11
Bio-sequestration is the process of absorbing atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by biological processes.
12
See REDD- Monitor (Reduce Emission from Deforestation and forest Degradation program) website,
http://www.redd-monitor.org/2009/11/04/20-of-co2-emissions-from-deforestation-make-that-12/ . Data from REDD
and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are controversial and continuously updated, but they never go
under the percentage of 10 and over the 20.
13
See video UN-REDD Indonesian National Program, October 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLxeiS4-J8s
14
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 521.

18
augments with the longitude and it is concentrated in tropical and equatorial areas. Species’
extinction is a phenomenon that has always happened in the biological history, with some rare
peaks like the period corresponding to the disappearance of dinosaurs and with them the 10% of
terrestrial species and 15 % of marine species, 65 million years ago. Although species extinct
normally, the rate of the phenomenon in the last 400 years increased dramatically15, with an
estimation of hundreds of times more than the background rates, that are the “normal rates” referred
to the standards of extinction in the history of the planet before the human activity became a main
cause of it. Species extinction, among others, has also impacts on the medical sector as some
biotopes sources of drugs are irreplaceable. Biodiversity loss means degradation and modification
of ecosystems, whose inner balance is kept by the presence of different organisms’ types and their
interactions. It is not just matter of food chain and availability of nutrition possibility for humans.
Neither it’s a matter of possibility of amenity of the nature. Thinking in a systemic way, destroying
ecosystems simply alter, in ways that are still not clear, the resilience16 capability of the planet.
Every part in the ecosystem Earth has a role that is not just relevant for human consumption.
Humans contribute to the phenomenon mainly through the intense human population growth and
the growth per capita of energy and materials consumptions, which determines consequences like:

 Habitat destruction for agriculture, forestry and urbanisation.

 Overharvesting
 Pollution
 Artificial introduction of alien species in new habitats with uncertain impacts on the existing
local flora and fauna (that, for example, can activate new competition relationships with
native species that may be not able to defend themselves and go extinct)

1.6 Overpopulation and global Feeding

Global human population has seen a huge growth in the last century. We passed from the 1 billion
in 1800 to the 2 billion in the 1950, to the 7 billion in 2012. It is expected that the rate keeps

15
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 523-24.
16
The resilience is the capability of an ecosystem to react responding to perturbations and disturbs by resisting
damage, recover and adapting to them. It has already happened in the history of the planet that temperature
decreased or increased dramatically, but the difference is that it never happened in the incredible short time of
decades like it does now. This speed does not allow to the ecosystem to use the natural resilience and adaptation
processes in the necessary lapse of time. Therefore we cannot consider the global warming as a ‘natural effect’
independent from human activity that, as it has been accepted, has instead a determinant role in it.

19
growing in the future to reach 10 billion by the end of the century. For several factors, like the
improvement of nutrition standards, health care and hygiene conditions the rate of mortality
decreased deeply while the birth-rate remained too high to compensate the previous. Especially the
global South contribute to the high birth-rate, while the global North keeps it at a very low level,
insomuch as they are being defined more and more “old populations” because the presence of old
inhabitants is higher than the one of youth. Bigger population means bigger request of energy and
production and, in the scenario of resource’s scarcity and overconsumption this is not sustainable.
We would need 5 planets to support such a global population with the consumption standards of the
American society. This topic is directly linked with the consumeristic type of society that is
responsible for the ecological disaster that we are living, but we will see this later. The more we are
on the Earth, the more we ask to the Planet, the less the Planet has left to offer and the less it can
support our survival in it, unless we change our way of living. Apart from the production and
consumption questions, that will open the next paragraph, and the need of policies to manage the
problem, an important factor determining the way how we will deal with global population growth
is our nutrition style.
The topic of how to feed the world in the next century is complex. It is expected that with these
rates of growth and urbanisation food production by 2050 must increase by 70 percent. It is
arguable if the planet can support such a trend; however what is still very less considered is the role
that nutrition styles and especially meat consumption have on these problematic. Meat consumption
in the last century saw an incredible growth. It seems a consequence of the economic development,
as earlier richer countries and now the current developing ones are starting to adopt so much this
trend. Eating meat in the past was more an exception than a habitude. The availability of it was too
less and private farming preferred to keep animals rather alive to produce milk, eggs, cheese and
derived instead of killing them. According to some scientific positions the human species is not
even omnivorous but is biologically herbivore.17 Without entering the topic of the vegetarian diet
and its ethics and the scientific validity of medical positions towards it, it is a fact that the rates of
meat consumption that the global North (especially US) keeps are unsustainable. Producing meat
for a population of individuals (and this rate still refers just to the richer minority of the world
population –that consists mainly in western countries- that can keep these habits at the expense of
the majority of the global South that risk starvation or live under the poverty threshold) that
consume it every day means dedicating an incredible large surface of fields to keep animals and to

17
Umberto Veronesi, important Italian oncologist, affirms that our species is biologically herbivore as we derive from
the chimpanzees, which are not carnivorous, and just in some specific conditions in the history of the humanity –
when there was no availability of the rest or no knowledge about it- the humans ate meat.

20
grow crop to feed them (30% of the earth’s land area is estimated to be used for livestock)18. This
means overexploitation of land, change in land-use and deforestation, pollution from land fertilising
and transports of the product, and also impact in terms of emissions directly from the farming,
because livestock is responsible for about 18 % of greenhouse gases increase. The most polluting
animals are cows. As ruminant, a caw releases with the metabolism processes, that is belching and
flatulence, a massive amount of methane in the atmosphere, even more than a car in a day.
If the world population that has access to meat consumption would diminish its usage to once/twice
per week per individual only, reducing so the land-use for farming, we could decrease the impact of
livestock on the environment and destine the same crop to human feeding, that needs 1/8 of how
much crop’s surface animals need, and the planet could probably be able to support such a
population with these nutrition habits. 19

Current responses

Having acknowledged the gravity of the environmental crisis, economic and political actors are
moving, with great delay respect to the urgency of the situation and the time of earlier warning from
academic voices about it, to develop strategies to deal with it. In the next paragraphs I will describe
the current solutions and perspectives that are mostly adopted, identifying the approach that is most
diffused as technical.

Sustainable Development and Ecological Economics

The environmental crisis, from an economic point of view, comes from the fact that the natural
resources that we consume to satisfy our needs and produce commodities became scars. The
economic exploitation of natural assets in the last two centuries were driven by a faith in their
unlimited availability and the myth of the growth, according to which it never comes the time to
stop incrementing production, consumption and well-being conditions. All this turned to be very
unsustainable from an ecological point of view, and the environmental destructive consequences
show it. Therefore economists started to talk about “sustainable development”, in order to conceive
economic models that allow preserving the natural heritage. For the purpose of sustainability, the
relation between nature and economy should be considered in new terms from the traditional
neoclassical models. Those models didn’t consider the environment as the stage where economy

18
See The hidden costs of hamburgers, October 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3URdEzlKQ
19
See How to feed the world, October 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QloMOOG-bbE

21
took place, but as a different system, from which the system “economy” could take resources for its
processes, therefore nature was considered simply in terms of capital to use. Recently studies of
economic and ecological processes are trying to be integrated, in hybrid fields such as the
Ecological Economics that is “the study of the relationships between human housekeeping and
nature’s housekeeping. Put another way, it is about the interactions between economic systems and
ecological systems” in their “economy--environment interdependence and its implications observed
with a trans-disciplinary approach, embracing parts of the traditional fields of study of the sciences
of economics and ecology.”20
As Common and Stagl state in their book, neoclassical economics until the 70s tended to ignore the
relation between “human housekeeping and nature’s housekeeping” and in its theories the
environment didn’t figure as relevant element in the growth, which could rise indefinitely. There
was no attention to the interaction that the economy has with the nature. On the contrary, the
relation between them is interdependent, simply because economy uses the natural resources and
releases waste in it. The environment is furnished of waste sinks, but it is important that the mass of
waste and of extracted resources is the same, to keep the natural balance in the matter
transformation processes. If this condition is not respected there can be too much waste and too less
resources, natural assets can be overexploited and with it some sinks are diminished, like the forests.
Economics is considered today to be an open system, as it takes from the environment and it returns
to it matter and energy, therefore it depends on it.
After the scientific community recognised the evidence of the environmental degradation described
in the previous paragraph, it has been understood that continuing this way we will simply not offer
to the future generations to have good life opportunities, because the planet they will live in may not
be able to offer the same conditions and resources that offered to us until now. As Jane Goodall21
says: “If we don't do anything to protect the environment, which we've already partially destroyed, I
wouldn't want to be a child being born in 50 years’ time”.
In the seventies the first edition of “The limits to growth” commissioned by the Club of Rome
(1972)22 was published and other important publications like “The Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson,

20
See Common/ Stagl (2005), p. 4.
21
Jane Goodall started to spread her knowledge about the environment after having studied for decades primates in
Africa, becoming one of the most important primatologists of our time. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a
global non-profit organisation, supporting the youth program Roots and Shoots, a project to nurture values of civic
responsibility, environmental stewardship, and peace, in order to create community-based solutions to big challenges
run by young people. For more see http://www.rootsandshoots.org/about

22
See Meadows D. H., & Club of Rome (1972). The Limits to growth: A report for the Club of Rome's project on the
predicament of mankind. New York: Universe Books.

22
started to focus on the environmental degradation. With the energy crisis in 1974, the concern about
economic growth and natural resources gained more attention and from that period the protection of
the environment became an issue of International Law, like we will see in the next part, and
important institutional events have been collected, such as world summits, agreements and
conventions23. It has been accepted the need to conceive a pathway that can ensure to preserve the
natural assets and the expression “sustainable development” has been coined, whose generally
accepted definition is, according to the report of WCED “Our common World”/ “The Brundtland
Report”24 “the one which meets the needs of the present without compromising future generations’
own needs”.
The need to sustain economic development into the prospect of sustainability means, according to
the mainstream perspective, opening the possibility to develop to many countries of the global
South. We deal with a massive poverty in those parts of the world, and for them economic
development and growth is the chance to alleviate these problems and promote better life conditions.
However this claim crashes with the evidence that models of growth like the western of the last
century, if adopted by these growing countries, will definitely provoke collapses in the
environmental ecosystem. Alleviating poverty and developing emerging countries is one of the
challenges of our time, but it must be done in a different way from how we learnt in the XX century
in the West, that is considering the relation between economy and environment. The perspective of
a Sustainable Development remains into the dimension of development, but that should happen
respecting sustainable standards and limiting the destructive consequences in the ecosystem of
models that ignored environmental and ethical responsibilities: Sustainable development is about
dealing with poverty without undermining sustainability25. Undertaking sustainable pathways,
according to Common and Stagl will depend on many factors, the rate of growth of the human
population, the patterns of consumption, the policies decided and the technologies developed and
their possibility to be widely diffused in the next decades. This means, from an economic point of
view that, although we have to act in the market dimension, the market alone will not take
sustainable ways: “Market forces alone cannot be relied on to do what sustainable development
23
For more information about the historical timeline of environmental issues see Common/Stagl (2005), p. 371. Some
of the main moments to remember are, after the publication of The limits to growth in 1972, the first UN Conference
on Human Environment/UNEP in Stockholm 1972, the publication of the report “Our common future”/” Brundtland
Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, the Rio Earth Summit ( UN Conference on
Environment and Development UNCED) in 1992, the First meeting of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development
in 1993, the Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, after which almost one Summit per year on sustainable
development has been leaded, among which to remark are the Johannesburg Summit in 2002, and in 2012 the Rio+20
UN Conference on Sustainable Development after 20 years from the first one.
24
See Our common future also known as The Brundtland Report by the United Nation World Commission on
Environment and Development (WCED), 1987.
25
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 117.

23
requires in these respects – government intervention in market systems is required. This
intervention needs to go beyond the correction of market failure, as efficiency, which is what an
ideal market system delivers, is not the same as equity and may not protect the environment as
sustainability requires.26
It also means, from a scientific point of view, that we are going to move under uncertainty and
ignorance, as, science finally admitted, we know very less about natural ecosystems and their
functioning and it cannot be predicted what will happen in the future.

Technical approach in economy: Green Economy, its limits and its strategies

The expression Sustainable Development is used to indicate a large range of issues. It keeps as core
the “development”, but that must be pursued respecting environmental limits. As the framework of
the concept is pretty open and flexible, it has been often weakened or adapted to ineffective
strategies, that try to reduce pollution or improve the production processes but still remaining in the
neoclassical logic of accumulation, progress, development and exploitation, therefore not promoting
a real change of direction: “One of the main problems with the actual interpretation of the concept
is the reliance on growth, innovation and technological solutions which has led into a lock-in
situation” 27.
One of the approaches that can be included in this situation is the Green Economy and/or Green
Growth. According to the World Bank, green growth is a growth that: is efficient in its use of
natural resources, clean in that it minimizes pollution and environmental impacts, resilient in that it
accounts for natural hazards and for the role of environmental management and natural capital in
preventing physical disasters. According to OECD green growth means: fostering economic growth
and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and
environmental services on which our well-being relies.28
The technical strategies “to green” the economy and address sustainable practices concern in part
the production-consumption system. It means developing alternative innovations, technologies,
organisation and controlling tools that would make the process more sustainable, reduce material of
production, re-use and recycle it (de-materialisation) and increase energy efficiency and renewable

26
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 354.
27
See Lorek Sylvia and Spangenberg Joachim H., “Sustainable Consumption within a sustainable Economy- beyond
Green Growth and Green Economy, in Journal of Cleaner Production 63 (2014), p. 33-44.
28
Ignazio Musu, Microsoft Power Point Presentations, Venice International University, Venice, May 2014: “Economic
Growth and Sustainable Development”, “The Economy and the Environment”, “The global challenge to sustainable
development: the Climate Change issue”.

24
resources’ use (de-fossilization)29. Among the innovations there are efforts to produce clean and
prevent pollution, promote sustainable manufacturing, favour Corporate Social Responsibility
engagement, encourage Eco Product and Co-Design, Green Supply Chain, Certifications and
Labelling, focus on the Service rather than on the selling of product, and endorsing Industrial
Ecology with Life-cycle-assessment. I will focus in particular in the last one, which may represent
an effective innovation in the production cycle.

Industrial Ecology is the systems-based, multidisciplinary study of material and energy flows
through industrial systems that seeks to understand emergent behaviour of complex integrated
human/natural systems30. IE shows that one of the stages where it is possible to act in order to
change the economic process is at the level of industrial production. The usual cycle of production
provides different passages, from the extraction of raw material, to manufacturing, distribution, use
and depletion of the product. This cycle exploits resources from and discharges waste into the
environment. The goods produced are usually consumed and then thrown away. This consumerist
attitude is not sustainable because it implies an unlimited use of resources without concern about
the waste released. Changing the models of production and consumption means transforming the
attitude towards the nature and consider a relation of reciprocal support instead of the traditional
one of exploitation and ownership. Industrial Ecology is able to define the framework for “greening”
the cycle in this sense, conceiving to integrate the human activity with the natural system, through
trying to understand how the natural systems work and imitate them. Natural systems have long-run
perspectives because nothing in their life-cycles is wasted or lost: everything is transformed and
reused through different processes. Similarly should the industry work, entering a cycle of energy
and flow that is recycled producing very limited waste. Not anymore a pathway with a start and an
end, but a continuous cycle. This idea is explained as the life-cycle assessment31: natural systems
develop cycles over time, while economy is traditionally based on linear flows and throughputs.
What Industrial Ecology proposes is to move from linear to cycling material and energy flows.
Ecologic production should also think in terms of system: a system is a group of interacting,

29
See Lorek Sylvia and Spangenberg Joachim H. (2014), “Sustainable Consumption within a sustainable Economy-
beyond Green Growth and Green Economy, in Journal of Cleaner Production 63.
30
See Allenby Brad (2006), “The ontologies of industrial ecology”. Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International
Journal, Vol.3, No.1/2, pp.28 - 40.
31
A similar approach is the “Cradle to Cradle” design, elaborated by William McDonough and Michael Braungart,
which proposes the adaptation of industrial processes to natural models, in order to create holistic waste-free systems,
where the products and materials can turn again into the natural cycles, as circulating nutrients. Instead of just
promoting efficiency, like ecology according to Braungart does, that reduces, recycles and limits the damages, but still
acting wrong, so being just efficient in being “less bad”, this holistic approach is positive-oriented, in the sense that it
wants to be effective in promoting a positive impact from the industry into the environment, instead of just limiting
the bad impact.

25
interdependent parts that exchange matter, energy and information. It is a complex structure where
many factors play a role and to understand it all of them need to be considered, with every variable
and reciprocal implication. Essential to develop an effective knowledge in this sense is the study of
stocks, flows of materials, water and energy that are involved. This conception implies the prospect
of complex interaction between industrial and natural systems that are not isolated or differentiated
from each other, but in concert with each other: properly economy must be conceived as a system
into the natural one, because without natural resources there wouldn’t be economy.

Although Industrial Ecology, as many others strategies mentioned above, may be useful and open to
new possibilities, the problem with such innovations is the perspective according to which the
“greening” of the economy is a process to be obtained especially through technological solutions.
According to Lorek and Spangenberg32 , with the focus on incremental improvements, Green
Economy doesn’t really promote the radical change that we need. Green Growth concept doesn’t
consider, for instance, as priority the redistribution of wealth and income, which is one of the main
elements to reduce poverty, stabilise the population birth-rate and promoting welfare state. They
affirm that
The dominant paradigm that technological innovations, in combination with suitable policies,
will be able to solve ecological problems, -it is becoming more and more recognised- will not
be able to solve the problem.33
Others, like Kathleen McAfee, are even more severe. In her chapter “The post- and future politics
of Green Economy and REDD”34 she argues that Green Economy, through the adoption of marked-
based management of the nature, that focuses on monetary valuation of natural capital, is a way, for
international financial institutions, private agencies and global-North governments, to incorporate
environmental factors into national and international strategies for economic growth and
sustainable development. In short, a strategy to save globalized capitalism from its most
ecologically and socially destructive consequences by constructing markets in environmental assets
and deficits.
Carbon-offset markets, which will be described in the next paragraph, are, for her, one of the
instruments of the Green Economy to operate, by creating a market in nature that allows buying
permits and therefore the right to pollute

32
See Lorek Sylvia and Spangenberg Joachim H. (2014), “Sustainable Consumption within a sustainable Economy-
beyond Green Growth and Green Economy”. Journal of Cleaner Production 63, pp. 33-44.
33
See Vergragt Philip, Akemji Lewis, Dewick Paul(2014), “Sustainable production, consumption, and livelihoods: global
and regional research perspectives”. Journal of Cleaner Production 63, pp. 1-12.
34
See Lane Richard and Stephan Benjamin (eds.) (2014), The Politics of Carbon Markets, Abingdon: Routledge.

26
In this way Green Economy attempts to slow the environmental damages and to keep the aim of
economic growth and development in their conventional conception. This conception projects also
an “idealized, static, unitary, and authoritative Nature” to be treated with “technocratic,
environmental economic management “. McAfee directly affirms that the base of Green Economy
is environmental economics, that is founded on neoclassical economics, where nature is considered
as part of a “market-world” and where anything “ought to be subject to monetary pricing,
ownership, and exchange”. The problem with it is the inner assumption that western-style of
development is the best desirable and that economic growth is essential, also to manage the
environmental crisis. In her words Green Economy:
is consistent with neoliberalism in that it presumes that such solutions can and must be
achieved within the framework of capitalism and economic growth, albeit with increased
public investment and regulation, and in its assumption that carbon trading and other
markets in nature can overcome ecological limits and resource scarcities. This is the vision
implicit in most green-economy discourse: that of a market-world in which individual interest
and the competitive quest for profitable advantage are the most objective and efficient
determinants of how resources are used, and in which the pursuit of growth is the necessary
basis of both greening and development35.

This approach, focusing on technology and remaining in the logic of growth and market instruments,
has been defined also “Weak Sustainability”, in contrast with a “Strong Sustainability” approach,
that considers the physical limits of the resources and starts to speak of alternative economies that
consider the de-growth possibilities, focus on consumption patterns and worn against the limits of
technology. The Weak approach, so Lorek and Spangenberg, simply has the potential of postponing
disasters, without providing solutions on the long-run to avoid them. Its technical adjustments don’t
propose an alternative or a solution to the long expected disasters like the peak in oil supply or the
biodiversity loss.

Technical approach in Politic: ‘Green Parties’, Environmental Law and Environmental Policy
Instruments

Politically speaking the environmental problem is delicate both at national and trans-national level.
The way how politics can design pathways towards sustainability is mostly through the decision

35
See McAfee Kathleen, “The post- and future politics of green economy and REDD”, in Lane Richard and Stephan
Benjamin (eds.) (2015).

27
making process to develop policies, reforms and legal frameworks and apply them. Unfortunately at
both levels, the effectiveness of policies until now has resulted to be pretty weak.

Green Parties

The representative of the environmental problem on the political stage has been assumed by
associations involved in mobilisation and by political parties especially from the second half of the
last century. After the first interest about the environment in the 70s, with the appearance of nuclear
weapons the environmental mobilisation connected with the peace movement. Their reasons
became close and interconnected because of the atomic tragedy and one example of this
convergence is the birth of Greenpeace 36Organization.37 During the 80s and 90s, there wasn’t a
deep integration of environmental matters in the politics. Associations, social participation, non-
profit organisations spread, but the political representation of the ecologic issue remained peripheral
and had the only way to try to enter the political debate through the creation of autonomous parties
mainly concerned with the environmental topic. They identified their politic as ‘green’,
concentrating on contents like ecology, social justice, grassroots democracy and non-violence, but
they were usually not enough strong to have an effective role in parliaments, so they needed to allay
with other coalitions, when this was possible. We got the “Greens” in Britain, the “Grüne” in
Germany, the “Verdi” in Italy, almost every country had a green party until we’ve got also an
official “Green Party” in the European Parliament38, in 2004.
The hoped perspective for the future is that the environmental issues will not be represented by a
specific coalition, in competition with others, but that they will be integrated in the programs of
every front, because saving the planet is not a left or right purpose but it is transversal and it regards

36
Greenpeace is one of the most important environmental NGOs active at global scale.
37
See the documentary Greenpeace: the Story, directed by Thierry de Lestrade, written by Jean Michel de Alberti,
Thierry de Lestrade, France 2011.
38
See European Green Party website, http://europeangreens.eu/content/history, :”The European Green Party was
founded on February 22, 2004 at the Fourth Congress of the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP). Thirty-four
Green parties from all over Europe have joined it. For the Greens this was the culmination of a process which had
started with the formation of a loose coordination 1979-1993 and the EFGP 1993 -2004. The first goal of the re-
organized European Greens was the 2004 European Parliament election campaign. The EGP ran the first election
campaign in Europe that featured common motifs and slogans in all EU countries. Greens had first contested the
European Parliament elections in 1979 achieving representation there in 1984 as part of wider and diverse grouping,
the Rainbow Alliance. Following the 1989 elections the Greens formed a separate parliamentary group, The Green
Group in the European Parliament (GGEP). Reduced in numbers in the 1994 elections the Greens formed part of the
European Radical Alliance but a successful outcome in 1999 allowed them to form a combined group with the
European Free Alliance having regionalist parties as members (GGEP/EFA) which is the current parliamentary group”.

28
everybody. A green orientation should be accepted independently from the side.39 Time passed
from the historical opposition of extreme ideologies40 among parties and global issues require
approaches that are free from this outdated antagonism. Using Naess image, the green should not be
seen as alternative to the red or the blue, but be included in every orientation. Every political
decision has green relevance and green parties should exist just until the green cause is absorbed
into every other program.

International Environmental Law

Environmental laws are enacted at international, national and local level, but since I’m interested in
the global domain of the issue, I will refer to the international stage.

From a transnational point of view, the situation is much more complicated than from the local, as
we enter the domain of global problems, to be managed together by hundreds of states through
International Law. International Environmental Law (IEL) is the stage where international
environmental issues are set. As global problems require a large domain of treatment which goes
beyond the national borders, through international laws it is possible to canalise the cooperation
among the many political actors and address the tools that all of them will be required to respect and
reach. IEL is defined indeed as the “aggregation of rules and principles aimed at protecting the
global environment and controlling activities within national jurisdiction that may affect another
state’s environment/areas beyond national jurisdiction”41. It has therefore to do with the kind of
problems that can be defined as ‘international’, that are those that physically regard trans-boundary
situations (when at least two countries are involved, like trans-boundary pollution), those that are
economically global common problems (relating to trade and investment) and those that have
transversal psycho- physiological implications (like the example of the pandas’ decline or the stress
of species living in specific damaged areas). Part of the activity of IEL consists in promoting soft
instruments such as recommendations, protocols, declarations, codes of conduct, and hard norms

39
See Naess Arne (1990), Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, Cambridge : Cambridge University
Press, p. 134.
40
I refer here to the 70s decade of the XX century, known in Italy as “Years of Lead” (“Anni di piombo” in Italian),
where the movements that in the rest of the world assumed more a socio-political character, involving people’s
participation in base of arguments and sharing of causes (anti-war protests, environmentalism, feminism, civil rights,
youth suffrage…), in Italy the social mobilisation assumed an extreme ideological character where the left and the
right sides opposed each other with violence instruments and terrorism.
41
Massai Leonardo, Microsoft Power Point Presentation, Venice International University, Venice, April 2014:
“Introduction to International Law and the Environment”.

29
coming from treaties, voluntary agreements, and customary laws. Through these instruments IEL
defines the tools to which the national states refer when promoting policies and laws to implement.

Into IEL itself the actors are several and go from States to International Organisations and
Institutions, and to Civil Society in the form of Non-Governmental Organisations. While the first
two play an active role in the decision-making process, the third doesn’t have effective power,
although it can assist and influence indirectly governments.

We start to speak historically about International Environmental Law since the XIX century, when
few meetings or conventions on specific issues where taken (like about birds conservation in 1868
or waters boundary in 1909). Nonetheless it’s properly in the second half of the XX century, as
already described, that more occasions were promoted in order to start a discussion related to the
environment, and from this moment a series of summits, conventions and meetings are made every
year or every few years. The first important result of these meetings was the Kyoto Protocol, the
international agreement established in 1997 during the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFFCC), which commits the Parties that participated in it by setting
internationally binding emission reduction targets through some flexible mechanisms (such us the
Certified Emission Reductions- CER). The acceptance and participation to the agreements and the
adoption of treaties into International Law by nations is voluntary. Therefore countries decide
spontaneously whether or not assuming problems, commitments and implementations promoted.
USA, indeed, one of the biggest polluters of the world, renounced to the Kyoto Protocol. From
1997 to 2014 time passed and the targets that were decided in the Kyoto Protocol are not anymore
actual and effective. Therefore programs aim to establish new regimes in order to readdress the way
to deal with global warming, as the lines used until now have been generally too weak or
unsuccessful. COP42 meets every year in order to find agreements and improve strategies, but the
democratic tactic of the consensus on decisions or the agreement among parties makes very
problematic to define arrangements and conclude treaties, extending much the time of action. It
comes up that although International Environmental Law has produced some theoretical results in
terms of establishing general tools and goals, the way how it works is very slow and it gets stuck
very easily, without producing relevant practical outcomes.

42
Conference of the Parties. See United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
http://unfccc.int/bodies/body/6383.php January 2015: “The COP is the supreme decision-making body of the
Convention on Climate Change. All States that are Parties to the Convention are represented at the COP, at which they
review the implementation of the Convention and any other legal instruments that the COP adopts and take decisions
necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention, including institutional and administrative
arrangements”.

30
Environmental Policy Instruments

On the practical level the environmental goals and targets are pursued through environmental
policies that work establishing instruments and laws to be implemented locally. Public Policies are
considered essential because the market alone has shown to be unable to favour sustainability. With
the definition of the concept of “sustainable development” the promotion of environmental policies
gradually increased in the last 30 years. Conceiving economic sustainable models means realising
some necessary conditions to reduce pollution and limit the damages that industrial production
provokes. To fulfil this, market needs policies because alone it is not able to take into account all
social benefits and costs. Neoclassical economists used to believe that the market is the best
institution to address our desires and allocate scarce resources, so the policy makers should just
work in order to allow market to function well. On the contrary, we experienced in the last decades
that the market is not able to do this because most part of goods that enhance humans are not market
goods. For example market can’t tell how clean the air is.
This phenomenon is called “market failure” and derives from the incapability of the market to take
in account the “externalities”, which are the social costs like pollution and are “external costs”
because it is not paid a market price for them43. These costs are paid upon environmental assets
which have a public good nature because they provide non rival and non-excludable services. Non
rival means that everybody has the right and possibility to enjoy the service without preventing
others from doing the same. Non excludable means that nobody can be excluded from enjoying a
service. As the benefits from the contribution to provide these assets are not received directly and
totally by who contributes, individuals don’t do it spontaneously. Therefore environmental policies,
that oblige to take the responsibilities of natural public assets, are needed to preserve them.
There are different kinds of environmental policy instruments, more or less officially regulated.
The less regulated are linked to informal moral suasion and social coordination. The traditional
regulatory instruments are instead the so called “command-and-control”, through legal and
administrative tools for emissions control and reduction.44 More recently market-based

43
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 327.

44
See Newman Julie and Robbins Paul editors (2011), Green Ethics and Philosophy. The SAGE Reference Series on
Green Society: Toward a Sustainable Future-Series Editor: Paul Robbins (Book 8), SAGE Publications, p. 204:
“Traditionally, public policy theories focused on regulation, incentives, and information as the tools of government.
From the 80s forward, the effectiveness of traditional public policy instruments for addressing environmental
problems declined. They could not effectively deal with the growing responsibilities and ambitions of governments
and the growing interdependency between private and public sectors”.

31
instruments have spread, as cited above when mentioning the critic to the Green Economy
strategies by McAfee.

Instruments in detail45

These instruments are conceived considering some principles that Common and Stagl list as
reference points for environmental policies:

1- Economic policy always has more than one goal, and each independent policy goal
requires an independent policy instrument. Governments have multiple goals developed
in a network of pressures, interests, influences in political and administrative systems. In
such context they tend to select the most convenient. When speaking about environmental
policy, the three main aims are:
a) achieve environmental improvements (e.g. a certain reduction in CO2 emissions),
b) cause the lowest possible cost for economic actors (businesses, households and
governments),
c) Avoid negative, and create positive, impacts in other areas of society (e.g. employment,
income distribution).
2- Policies should strive to attain the necessary degree of macro-control with the
minimum sacrifice of micro-level freedom and variability. What is done in the micro-
dimension should give a result in the macro. For example population stability needs the
average of 2, 1 child pro couple in the macro, but it admits variations in the micro (one has 3,
one 1). Market is useful in providing micro-variability but not in macro-control.
3- Policies should leave a margin of error when dealing with the biophysical environment.
That means being careful in the demands to the planet and the estimation of its capacity,
because we act in uncertainty and errors can be irreversible and too costly.
4- Policies must recognize that we always start from historically given initial conditions.
Everything that we’ll do we do it starting from the institutions already existing.
Transforming them instead of thinking new ones can be more convenient, but requires a
certain gradualism. What are our present institutions? Basically, the market system and
private property, but also public property and government regulation. The World Bank and

45
The following paragraph refers mostly to Common/Stagl (2005), Ch. 11.

32
 the IMF may be considered actors, though they are not nearly as basic an institution as
private property or the market.
5- Policies must be able to adapt to changed conditions. Adaptive management. Changing
policies as conditions change and as we learn more, must be a guiding principle. Change is
an ever-present reality. Human impacts on the ecosystem are enormous and are likely to
cause new and different problems over time.
6- The domain of the policy-making unit must be congruent with the domain of the
causes and effects of the problem with which the policy deals. Local problems can’t be
faced in bigger dimensions, so that global problems can’t be handled by municipal
institutions. Everything has to be managed by the right domain, even if then we need an
integrated management of the many dimensions (principle of subsidiarity). For example
garbage collection is a municipal problem, but global warming a global one.

Given this premise, the main mechanisms currently used are the following:

- Social coordination and Moral suasion:

It consists in actions that function exerting persuasion and acting through and upon the moral nature
or sense. An authority (e.g. the US EPA, EC, ministry of the environment) applies pressure without
applying force in an attempt to get firms and/or individuals to behave in ways that serve a policy.
Moral suasion aims to manipulate the cultural environment.
Examples of it as an environmental policy instrument are:
_ Finance of campaigns to raise public awareness;
_ Product-labelling requirements (for example the ISO 14000 scheme46);
_ Voluntary agreements by emissions sources on emissions targets;
_ Subsidization of research and development for alternative technologies;
_ Finance of research.

This kind of conditioning allows modifying people’s preferences over time, about for example their

46
See ISO International Organisation for Standardisation website,
http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/management-standards/iso14000.htm : The ISO 14000 is a family of
international standards that “addresses various aspects of environmental management. It provides practical tools, [for
instance eco-labelling ] for companies and organizations, looking to identify and control their environmental impact
and constantly improve their environmental performance.” The different standards in the family “focus on different
and specific environmental aspects such as life cycle analysis, communication and auditing.”

33
consumption attitude and political participation. The crucial question is, however, what the
mechanisms for changing preferences are. People form their preferences in interaction with other
people, adapting their basic believes and norms to others, and imitate peers with regard to spending
patterns. Preferences are also influenced by education, advertising and public policies, where mass
media play also a huge role. Individuals make different choices depending also on how a given
opportunity set was determined. For instance some issues may gain importance from participation
opportunities in the political process. Proposing occasions to participate actively into the decision-
making process provide involvement and inclusion, a feeling to have political influence and self-
determination in the citizens, and this is a factor of happiness for citizens in democratic countries.
Policies which address people reasoning and adequate institutions to assure individuals that they
are contributing to the larger good, will open opportunities which are beyond the reach of other
policy instruments47, that is, if people were better informed there would be more chance that they
would choose to act according to sustainable requirements and to vote for policies to protect the
environment.
However, what makes moral suasion a limited tool is that people are often confronted with too
many decisions, too much information, and too little time to process it all and many decisions in the
daily life are made by routine or without attributing them enough importance to deliberate critically
about.

- Direct regulation or Command-and-control instruments

They were the main method of environmental regulation in most part of the countries until two
decades ago and are mostly used for pollution control and the management of common property
resources (such as ocean fisheries within territorial waters).48
There are different tools:

Non-transferable emissions licenses

They consist in the setting of caps or limits (environmental standards) in the amount of pollutant
allowed to be emitted. The standard is established by scientific communities, policy makers and
stakeholders, so the safe emissions level is the result of a bargain among the different spheres of
influence, with the arbitrary difficulty to establish what ‘safe’ emission levels are. The amount of

47
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 408.
48
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 410.

34
emissions permissible is limited by licenses, called also permits or quota, created by the regulatory
authority.

Minimum technology requirements

It consists in the obligation for firms and households to comply with technology standards by
forbidding or phasing out technologies which are known for causing severe or unnecessary
environmental damage49.

Regulation of location of polluting activities

There are some pollutants, like from diesel engines and trace metal emissions, that don’t distribute
spatially or don’t disperse easily in the atmosphere. In such cases, in order to reduce human
exposure it is common to regulate by zoning or planning procedures which control where sources
or residences can be built.50

- Economic incentives or ‘market-based instruments’

They are policy instruments which seek to address environmental problems via price
mechanisms51 and based on incentives and disincentives in order to make external costs
perceived as internal. They consist mainly in environmental taxes and subsidies, including
Deposit-Refund systems52, and tradable permits, the last adopted in Europe in 2005 with the
European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

Taxation
The main aim is taxing the environmental damaging activities to reach allocatively an efficient level
of emission abatement and to encourage a sustainable production53. Typical is the taxation on the
air pollution.
Generally, environmental taxes have a big impact on goods market. When a tax is introduced, every
sector of the economy can be affected and provoke a chain of interrelated changes in the demand
and production of commodities: for example the most part of the world’s CO2 emissions come from
fossil fuel combustion. So carbon taxation, aimed at reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that

49
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 412.
50
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 412.
51
See Common/ Stagl (2005), p. 435.
52
See Walls Margaret, “Deposit-Refund Systems in Practice and Theory”. Resources for the Future, November 2011
http://rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-11-47.pdf : “A deposit-refund system combines a tax on product consumption
with a rebate when the product or its packaging is returned for recycling. Deposit-refunds are used for beverage
containers, lead-acid batteries, motor oil, tires, various hazardous materials, electronics, and more.”
53
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 415.

35
come from fossil fuels, would be a strategy. This taxation would, however, change all the economic
balance based on fuel combustion, so it would push up the use of other energy sources, it would
raise significant amounts of revenue for governments, to use for other sustainable projects, but it
would arise the price of other things, like oil gas and petrol and everything that is linked with
primary sources. Every sector, in the systemic and interrelated economic process, would be affected,
from agriculture that uses manufactory that needs carbon, to the service sector, communication and
transport. The impact of such introduction would be huge, and that’s why this kind of taxation is not
currently in use in any economy yet.
From another side, emissions taxes are appreciated by policy makers because they produce
incoming revenues for the governments. Taxing energy, for example, means a sure income because
energy is something that everybody needs always and the elasticity of the demand of it is very low
(that means that the reaction of consumers would not stop the use of it and the decision, individual
or collective, to use it differently may take a long run time – e.g. heating a house differently
requires building a new structural installation or changing the house; - e.g. using public transport
instead of car requires a good public transports infrastructure, that can take years to develop).
Generally these taxes may be effective, but they need a good, comprehensive of many factors,
management strategy in a long term scheme.

Tradable Permits54
They are licenses granted by the government, giving to firms’ owners the rights to discharge
pollution, usually greenhouse gas emissions, which can be bought and sold in a free or a controlled
permit-market. They have mainly impacts directly on firms. If taxes establish the prize to be paid
for the emissions, permits fix the amount that agents can collectively emit.
Also in this case, like with the instruments monitoring emissions, implementing a system of
penalties for non-permitted emissions is crucial.

54
See Common/Stagl (2005), p. 427: “On 1 January 2005 the European Union launched its Europe-wide Emissions
Trading Scheme. This aims to reduce the impacts of climate change through lowering carbon emissions by providing
clear incentives for investment in energy efficiency and cleaner technologies. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU
ETS) established the world’s largest-ever market in emissions. Participation in the scheme is mandatory for companies
in sectors covered by the first phase of the scheme. These are electricity generators, oil refineries, iron and steel
production, cement clinker and lime production, glass manufacturing, brick and tile manufacturing, pulp and paper. In
addition, installations in any sectors that have combustion plants of a thermal input of over 20MW, including
aggregated plants on a single site, are also covered (hospitals, universities and large retailers may find themselves
included under this provision)”. For further details see
http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/environment/climat/emission.htm.

36
The problem about permits is that economists organize policy instruments just in base of the
prospect of their delivering the desired outcome at least cost. The calculation of abatement, however,
is thought as a uniform taxation for every firm, but the abatement-costs of firms differ. In some
cases it is cheaper for a firm to abate than to buy a permit, in others vice versa, and this is the main
criteria of permits-market. So this lack of information doesn’t ensure the same consequences to
different subjects and doesn’t guarantee to achieve the target level of total abatement.

- Property rights

They are the rights of the owner of a property and provide a more sustainable use of assets, which
affect the relative prices on the market, influencing the impact on the environment in base of how
an asset is used and sold. They don’t refer just to private property, but the property can belong to
individuals, communities, the state, the global community, or no one and they are a three-way
relationship between one individual, other individuals, and the state: a property right for one
individual simultaneously imposes a duty or obligation on other individuals to respect those rights.
For example, if person A has the right to breath clean air, then person B has the corresponding duty
not to pollute that air. The state ensures that person B will fulfill her duty.
There are 3 types of property rights:
 An entitlement known as a property rule holds if one person is free to interfere with another, or
free to prevent interference. For example, an individual may own a piece of land. If he has the
right to build a landfill that destroys the neighbor’s view or prevents the neighbor from walking
across the land, he is free to “interfere” with the neighbor and the neighbor is free to interfere
with the landowner’s landfill operation.
 An entitlement known as a liability rule holds when one person is free to interfere with another
or prevent interference but must pay compensation. For example, the landowner might be free
to build the landfill, but by law he is then forced to compensate his neighbor for the smell, loss
of view, and other unpleasantness.
 An entitlement known as an inalienability rule holds if a person is entitled to either the
presence or absence of something, and no one is allowed to take away that right for any reason.
There may be certain types of chemicals or products that are absolutely not permitted in the
landfill, regardless of compensation. The negative impacts of these products are so severe that
present and future generations have an inalienable right not to be exposed to them. Dioxins and
radioactive waste would fall into this category.

37
Beyond the already mentioned problem of the uncertainty, it is essential in environmental policies
to consider the interdependence of policy goals in this complex evolving social-ecological system.
There is no single instrument type that is best in all situations and every goal cannot run alone but
has to deal with many other goals. Every instrument introduced provokes a consequence in other
sectors such as weight taxation on population with probable impacts especially on the poorer
subjects for an uncontrollable distributional effect. So far, it is necessary a systemic approach and
coordination among different policies and strategies in international climate negotiations, the last
taking into consideration some historical evidences, like the fact that most responsibility of this
situation is of the western countries and their exploitation of fossil fuels in the last centuries.

Limits of technical approach in Politics

The instruments and policies described are the results of decades of framing. However, even though
time passed, their implementation and respect didn’t result in important resolutions and
achievements. We continue to struggle in finding effective tools of change and solutions to global
warming and environmental degradation, and although legal frameworks are essential to impose
limits and address behaviours, simply imposing top-down tools hasn’t demonstrated to have
produced important outcomes until now. The inefficiency of those mechanisms is due to some
limits that don’t permit us to evolve into a new perspective of economic system and that derives
from the logic of profit and the inner essence of the normative scheme that imposes rules into a
system of sanctions. The lack of philosophical stage into this practical normative dimension has the
consequence that rules are respected just because it is necessary to avoid fines; they are therefore
based on external incentives, legal or economic.

Further risks arise when the knowledge of people in society and the meaning that they give to
problems, purposes and practices are neglected and therefore problem solving strategies do
not meet the needs of people and their circumstances with regard to the common good; or
they are poorly understood and not adequately used.55
When norms are imposed without a cultural background that makes them understandable and
justified they are likely to be observed just under a strict system of control and penalty. However
such a premise is less likely to promote a long-term durability of the results, because as soon as the

55
Hadorn Hirsch Gertrude, Bradleyb David, Pohlc Christian, Rist Stephan, Wiesmannd Urs (2006), “Implications of
transdisciplinarity for sustainability research”. Ecological Economics 60, 119-128.

38
circumstances allow it, people will look for the way to avoid and escape them, unless they bring
profit or advantage. There are many chances to go around laws in legal ways and market-based
instruments may allow doing it. Even systems of incentives to reward good and environmental
actions have been promoted, proposing a turn of positive encouragements instead of negative
punishment, but it still remains into the profitability logic. Following environment-friendly norms
just as long as they are convenient may have an effect in the short-term and small range, but not in a
long-term change-oriented perspective. Also, the less intrinsic motivation there is in following
norms, the more norms we need to impose. While the more our purposes are intrinsically oriented
towards sustainability, the less strict regulations we need. Having too many norms is not convenient
for any population, as it stresses the coercive attitude of the authorities, and weakens the active
participation and the capability to self-governance and wise cohabitation without top commands of
a community. Regulations, instead, can be minimised through an internalisation of norms.56

All of this depends, among other factors, on the value system of our social and economic reality.
Since we depend on values such as progress and growth, measured by profit and capital
accumulation, norms are followed if they are profitable. Since we define the progress in terms of
GDP growth57(Gross Domestic Product), which measures the economic wealth without saying
anything about how the richness is allocated and which consequences it has in terms of quality of
life related to non-material values, norms are judged as well in base of the impacts that they have on
economic costs and benefits. According to Naess GDP bases on value-neutrality and quantitative
relations and inspires normative pathways that reflect very less the wishes and needs of people that
are instead much more deep and qualitative-oriented than the market projects. GDP growth doesn’t
say or add anything in terms of intrinsic values, distribution, happiness, quality, sustainability.
Different criteria of measurement should be considered and there are existing proposals about
alternative indicators of progress, like the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic

56
See Naess Arne (1990), Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, p. 159.
57
Ignazio Musu, Microsoft Power Point Presentation, Venice International University, Venice, May 2014: “Sustainable
Development: an Introduction”: “GDP is the value of all final goods and services produced in a particular country in
one year period and revealed by market transactions. As measure of progress, given that it only considers market
transactions, GDP is not an accurate measure of economic welfare. GDP , for example, does not: - capture
nonmonetary activities such as unpaid household work or volunteer work; - take into account the “black sector” of the
economy; - consider losses in environmental quality and therefore in human life quality. On the other hand GDP
includes the outcome of market economic activities that worsen the environmental quality and produce
environmental damages. The negative welfare outcomes of these economic activities set in motion other economic
activities to repair the inflicted damages: they are also included in GDP as their costs are measurable by the market.
Paradoxically economic activities damaging the environment and the consequent cleaning-up activities are both
increasing GDP in a vicious circle making unsustainability more likely.

39
Accounting (SEEA)58, the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI)59, the Ecological Footprint
(EF)60, the Human Development Index (HDI)61, and so forth.

Naess divides norms in instrumental and genuine. “Purely instrumental” norms are valid just as a
means to the fulfilment of another end. In this context the instrumental end would be economic
profit. The “genuine norm” instead has validity independently of means/goals relations and it comes
from the intrinsic validity. With intrinsic validity I mean here the respect of a norm not for
profitability, but for the rightness in itself, even if the engagement for preserving the environment
can somehow be considered as an instrumental aim. According to Naess and the Deep Ecology’s
perspective62 the only presence of instrumental norms wouldn’t be enough to pursue sustainability
and the intrinsic ethical values and social commitment towards environmental issues should be
encouraged. That means working on the social assets and developing an integrated and interactive
system, where every rule has its sense inserted in the total net, understood and introduced in the
cultural context. Realizing such integration of normative and social tissues depends on the ability of
politics to incorporate the many fragmented contributions that different fields of study, analysis and
stakeholders provide. Political considerations and approval of norms should be the result of the
systemic synthesis among the several fragments and voices acting into the social context and should
be able to answer to the biggest questions that precede any micro-intervention.

58
Id.: In 2003 the United Nations provided a System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA)
made up by: the System of National Accounts (SNA, on which GDP calculations are based); a system of Satellite
Environmental Accounts. The SEEA considers how to adjust the SNA to account for the impact of the economy on the
environment. Three types of adjustments are considered: - the costs of resource depletion; - defensive expenditures
to remediate environmental damages; - degradation in the environmental quality.
59
Id.: It combines and weights a wide range of socioeconomic, environmental and institutional indicators.
60
Id.: It represents the biologically productive area required to support a certain level of economic activity taking place
in that area without destroying the environment; if a wider area is required, this is a signal of unsustainability.
61
Id.: It is published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in a yearly Human Development Report, and
including income, life expectancy, and educational attainment.
62
I will talk about Deep Ecology later on.

40
Chapter II – Technical or cultural approach to the ecological crisis

With the previous chapter I aimed to briefly introduce the general background of the management
of environmental problems, describing the strategies that economically and politically have been
proposed in order to introduce sustainable pathways. Such current responses are identified under the
umbrella of the technical approach that corresponds also to the “Weak Sustainability” orientation.
This strategy has, I believe, huge limits and its main problem is the focus on technocratic solutions
that can provide just short-term effects, without promoting a real deep change. Such change is
instead matter of culture. What is essential, next to the technical strategies, is a cultural approach to
the situation, the only way to provoke a radical and long-term effective change of direction that
involves every individual. In the next paragraphs I will explain more deeply the limits and
consequences of the technical orientation and the potential of what I call “cultural approach”.

The technical orientation and its reductionism

The attempts described above to walk towards sustainability consist mostly in top-down tools
imposed to firms, enterprises, governments and citizenships from authorities. The application of
these schemes takes less in consideration the role of people, as citizens and as humans and their
cultural preparation about environmental issues. This approach to the ecological degradation speaks
through technical language, monetary processes (production, costs and benefits, market dynamics,
norm’s compliance…) and focuses on hard imposition of rules. The only instrument that focuses
more on the action of individuals is the moral suasion, but it is generally considered the less
effective. Governments and international agencies tend also to approach the problem counting on
the technological progress and on the faith that the science will propose always new solutions. Top-
down laws imposed to uneducated masses of people and faith in the technologic progress are two
consequences of the reductionist approach that experts and politicians tend to follow.
Environmental problems are treated through scientific and technical tools, creating reductive and
improper perspectives towards them, which miss the integral understanding of the whole and the
main element of the culture as background where every social and economic dynamic happens.
Already in the 80s several scholars denounced the deficiency of such approach, typical of the
capitalistic system and of the national welfare structure. In 1988 Vandana Shiva publishes in the
book “Science, Hegemony and Violence”63 an article with the title “Reductionist science as
epistemological violence”.

The book describes the violence of the orientation of the modern society that in the name of
instrumental technology and “scientific temper” as necessary for development brushes off the
traditional cultures and ways of life and pursues the ideology of the economic growth and
development. Science and technology are the tools and the aims: they allow to “develop”, that first
of all means making the state able to compete in the international economy and to own an efficient
military national security system against the others; science and technology are also the aims,
because in the ideology of the progress the obsolescence of the new rules the system of knowledge,
therefore new technologies have to substitute old ones at a speed that is always faster. Science,
according to Nandy, gradually became a substitute for politics and the scope of public life. If this is
recognised as violence by Nandy because science has been deprived of any ethical value and it is
used to extend violence and inhumanity in the society, Vandana Shiva considers it violence
especially because of the reductionist character. She opens her article saying that:

Modern science is quintessentially reductionist. Its reductionist nature under-girds an

economic structure based on exploitation, profit maximization and capital accumulation.
Reductionist science is also at the root of the growing ecological crisis, because it entails a
transformation of nature such that the processes, regularities and regenerative capacity of
nature are destroyed.

Science and technology are instruments of the capitalistic economy and they are dominant on every
other kind of knowledge. Political decisions are kingdom of experts and specialists that lead the
modern nation-state system with a techno-managerial perspective. Such perspective, based on
specialisation, technology and reductionism is particularly dangerous in the ecological dimension.
In the last decades the understanding about the environment has been driven by fragmented and
inadequate knowledge and technological remedies. Modern science, so Shiva, destroys the integrity
of the nature in the effort to transform it for profit, supposing the ontological assumptions that
systems are reducible to their parts, that all systems are made by basic atomistic constituents and
they have same basic mechanical processes. This perspective has, however, the consequence to lose
the comprehension of the whole and to exclude from the legitimised range of knowledge all the

63
See Nandy Ashis (1988) edited by, Science, hegemony and violence, A Requiem for Modernity, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

42
sources that are not science experts or specialists (that is for example local indigenous communities
living for hundreds of years in environments according to traditional and harmonic ways of life but
not educated and without scientific knowledge).

The reductionist approach of the science to the nature isolates elements and impedes to understand
that the whole is not just the sum of parts interrelated, and the isolation of any distorts the
perception of the total. Such perception is, though, adequate to the functioning of the economic
systems based on profit, because the organisation of industrial societies and capitalist economy need
a reductionist worldview, ideal to public and private fragmented sectors that “have their own
efficiency needs in mind; and every firm and sector measures its efficiency by the extent to which it
maximizes its gains, regardless of the fact that it also maximizes the social and ecological costs of
the production process”64. The reductionism lays, according to Shiva, in the fact that resources that
generate profit arouse interest and are exploited at the expense of properties that are not profitable
but stabilise ecological processes. Science and technology, are, in this sense, powerful and effective
for the aims of the market, but inadequate for the knowledge about the nature.

The technical approach of political and legal interventions follows the logic of the scientific
reductionism denounced by Shiva and it misses to include cultural approaches to the ecological
problem. Top-down tools and norms and technological progress are imposed to the societies
providing a limited and inadequate knowledge and they are placed in contexts where no cultural
education, change and awareness are promoted. People are generally uninformed and uneducated or
indifferent to environmental issues. If they are not, they tend often to have a deep faith in the
possibility that technology will solve everything or that money will lead to new possibilities. The
market orientation of our society aliments this “bias” to monetise values and to conceive problems
in technical terms. The clearest result of this combination is market-based instruments in the
Environmental policies just described. These tools treat environmental resources in terms of
economic capitals, costs and benefits and propose a technical rule to manage their availability or
scarcity.

This perspective is the most diffused still nowadays. The reductionist perspective allowed to the
market system to extend its domain to every sphere of the human activity and to preserve itself. The
consequences of those trends are from one side the improper invasion of the market ideology in
every sector of the reality, on the other side the ideological faith in the technology as solution to all

64
See Shiva Vandana, “Reductionist science as epistemological violence”, in Nandy Ashis edited by(1988), Science,
Hegemony and Violence. , A Requiem for Modernity.

43
problems. One of the scholars to denounce the first element is Michael Sandel, while who analysed
deeply the cost of the technocratic ideology is Hans Jonas.

The effects of the market ideology and its invasion of improper fields in the last
decades

In his book "What money can´t buy"65, Michael Sandel shows, through many daily examples, the
consequences of the market triumphalism of the last thirty years on the social and civil fabric. Since,
in the 1980s, the faith in markets as only instrument for the prosperity took to deregulation and
market-friendly liberalism (pushed by the political attitudes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan, followed later by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair), our society became market centred and run
beyond the myth of the unlimited growth and the uselessness of political and ethical interventions.
This conception didn’t just crushed in the huge economic crisis in 2008, but it changed the society
itself. In the last decades we passed from having a market economy to becoming a market society.
The marketing approach is totalizing, completely absorbing in our daily life. It makes everything
potentially saleable, also things that have never being conceived as objects up for sale in the human
history. The market invaded spheres of the human life that don´t belong to it and with its principles
altered the way how people think and value them. Advertising and selling have no limits in our
society and the monetary criteria are the ones used to judge and value in matters like life and death,
pregnancy, children, education, sport, nature and health care. From an economic point of view,
applying economic principles to these dimensions means maximising the possibility of satisfaction
of preferences linked to them. Markets, economists say, is not about ethics, but it´s about finding
the best and more convenient ways to allocate goods according to people´s preferences through the
price system. Markets, in this sense, just allocate goods efficiently, allowing people to make
advantageous trades through the instrument of measuring their willingness to pay for them and
putting a price.66 Unfortunately, instead, the economy finds itself more and more troubled with
ethical matters, especially in the last decades, because, on the contrary, economic models do have
ethical implications. Economy can´t be divided from morality, because its effects are social and
human. Economy alone, ignoring anthropological, psychological, ethical and social implications
cannot understand or manage the world. The supposed distinction between market and morality

65
See Sandel Michael (2012), What money can´t buy. The moral limits of markets, London: Penguin Books Ltd.
66
See Sandel Michael (2012), p. 29.

44
reasoning and the claim that economics doesn´t traffic in morality becomes wrong, unreal and even
weird, as soon as we realise how every economic rule determines our social life.

When market reasoning travels beyond the domain of material goods, it must ´traffic in
morality´, unless it wants blindly to maximise social utility without regard for the moral worth
of the preferences it satisfies. [...] The more markets extend their reach into non-economic
spheres of life, the more entangled they become with moral questions.67

The triumph of the Market reduces things to be up for sale. We can be paid to dress a tattoo
advertising a brand, we can pay to have babies or buy children, we can bet on the death of people,
we can pay to skip the queue, and we can pay to be allowed to release greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere. Everything seems possible if we pay. However, Sandel wonders: can everything in our
human life be up for sale? This invasion by market values into fields where things cannot be sold
and cannot be conceived in terms of money is wrong. Markets triumphalism is wrong because it
causes inequality and corruption. The first is easy to explain, as richer people have more access to
commodities than poorer, since everything is treated and intermediated with money. The second is
more of ethical meaning. There are material objects that are rightly treated as commodities to be
sold for money. There are, instead, things that have spiritual and ethical depth, and this kind of
depth is not and should never become up for sale. Simply because some things cannot be bought,
and treating them with money criteria change their value. In this sense we speak of corruption,
because some things are corrupted in their inner value if we treat them with money. Friendship, a
relationship based on spontaneous affection, should not be bought. Children, being to love,
shouldn´t be sold. Making a queue to have access to medical treatment together with other people,
in a condition of equality in front of a welfare service, shouldn´t be avoided thanks to money by
privileging some at the expense of others. Educational programs in schools shouldn´t be sold by
companies that provide the instruments if the schools accept to advertise their products to the kids.
Reading books, an activity supposed to be motivated by spiritual pleasure, cannot be induced with
money in the students. Political votes in the elections, expression of civic participation, should not
be given for money. Environmental damage shouldn’t be allowed if we pay money for it, as we
won´t be able to buy a new ecosystem (it´s not a market good). And so forth.

Instead all these things, and more and worse, happen every day. Money and Market ideology
invaded some social and human fields where they shouldn´t have any right of existence and
changed the value of them. The introduction of money change people´s attitudes and deteriorates

67
See Sandel Michael (2012), p. 88-89.

45
the moral and civic commitment. In psychological terms, it substitutes intrinsic motivations such us
moral convictions, altruism, sense of community and common good, solidarity, civic due and
responsibility, with external ones such us money or tangible awards. Those values on the contrary
are interior and spiritual and need to be practiced and trained in order to be developed and
recognised for their significance. Commercialising the private and civic life erodes the commonality,
the critical thinking capability and the way how citizens consume and participate to the public.

Our reluctance to engage in moral and spiritual arguments, together with our embrace of
markets, has exacted a heavy price: it has broken public discourse of moral and civic energy,
and contributed to the technocratic, managerial politics that afflicts many societies today.
[...]But the moral and political challenge that we face today is more pervasive and mundane:
to rethink the role and reach of markets in our social practices, human relationships and
everyday lives.68

Loss of political responsibility from citizens means that a society is unaware of its reality and
doesn´t worry of taking care of it. The degradation of our environment is something that has been
officially acknowledged at least already 40 years ago, but the ethical lack of the economics didn´t
allow taking it really into consideration. Still today, I repeat, the approach proposed continues to
base mostly on technical attempts to modify the strategies of production, but there is less ethical
consideration beyond. Market-based instruments, the latest introduced, are apparently the favourite
at the moment. As the previous ones based on volunteer agreements and compulsory
recommendation didn´t have effects, governments try to adopt a strategy that seems closer to the
mechanisms that prevail in our society. Tradable Pollution Permits, instead of imposing emissions
standards, put a price on pollution and let the permits to be sold and bought in a market. The
introduction of market solutions seems not to have produced changes. Enterprises and governments
still care of saving their own profits finding the way to exploit the system and avoid embracing the
environmental responsibility, if this means having costs. The new, however, is that, while before the
limit imposed on emission and the obligation to pay a fine if exceed implied a moral consideration,
that is, not respecting the standard imposed is wrong, therefore who does it has to pay for it; with
the permits the fine becomes a fee and the ethical implication disappears, as everyone is clean and
has no fault if he pays for emitting greenhouse gases. There is no ethical commitment beyond the
system of tradable permits, governments and entrepreneurs are pushed to find the way to be allowed
to pollute, not to reduce their pollution because they damage the planet. The motivation beyond the

68
See Sandel Michael (2012), p. 14-15.

46
use of permits changes the value of the thing that is being treated. The environment is not a market
commodity and market values fail in addressing the way to relate to it. Approaching to
environmental problems just from a technical and economic point of view risks to miss one core of
the question, which is ethical. The planet is not just an amount of resources there to be exploited
and consumed by humans, like the economic traditional scheme conceives.

The dangerous faith in the technological efficiency and Jonas’ “Imperative of

responsibility”

With the dramatic increase of technologic power, the belief that technics can solve everything and
that technologic progress will find the solutions to re-establish environmental balances,
strengthened. This faith encourages the delegation of the problem to ‘others’ by the citizens and
discourages people to charge themselves for the things that are happening. It leads to the optimism
according to which, sooner or later, somebody will invent a way to clean the air and to re-freeze the
polar ice. Such attitudes, although healthy for our mental serenity, deforms the reality idealising the
instruments that we have and that do could help, but for sure they will not solve the problems at our
place.

Because of this consequence, the need of “responsibility” nowadays is much stronger than in the
past. Hans Jonas explains in his book69 how the technological progress increased our power to act
and influence the environment. It emerges that, the more we can act, the more we should be aware
and responsible of our possibilities, consequences and limits. Responsibility is proportioned to the
power that the humankind has. The need of responsibility is an ethical topic and ethics has to do
with action. With the “progress” and the deep development of our power in the last centuries the
nature of human action has changed and this change calls for a change in ethics as well. The first
dimension where we realise the reach of our power is the Nature. We have changed the natural pace
and balance of the nature and the birth of Ecology, attempting to understand natural systems, is the
consequent need. Such sway did the humans never have in the history. Modern technology raised
our influence in the reality, but also modified our relationship with it, as we don’t conceive the
technic as mere instrument anymore, but we turned it in being an aim. Technological progress got

69
See Hans Jonas (1985), The imperative of Responsibility, In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

47
its inner aim and this has to do, for Jonas, with human ambition and power’s thirst towards what
seems to be a run to “conquer the nature”.

The term “progress” could relate to any development, preferably towards something better, from a
previous to a next condition. Every individual makes progress since the first day he’s born, as life
starts out with nothing and must acquire everything70. The typical western version of the meaning,
instead, relates mostly to the technological and scientific advancing, in order to raise the material
well-being of the humanity. Technology is the symbol of progress in the global North. This idea of
progress doesn’t speak about improvements in wisdom, civic consciousness, solidarity, justice.
Least of all it used to speak about nature’s values and environmental sensitiveness. Together with
the technical development it wasn’t considered the urgent need of developing a morality and
wisdom capable to manage this power without negative consequences. This ideology of the
progress, though, has a high price, and it is what we are experiencing today, the danger of
ecological collapses. The nature of the technological development has changed insofar that it
arrived to threaten our proper home and the environment we live in. The atomic weapons are just
the most immediate example of this power over the limits, but the provocation to the natural limits
of our planet takes place through every daily action of every singular individual of the modern
society. This dimension of scientific-technological-industrial civilization became excessive, an
apocalyptic situation71 in Jona’s words, and - assuming the forms of industrialization, excess of
consumption and production and population growth- extremely dangerous, for the human himself
and for the biosphere. Care for the future of humankind is the overruling duty of collective human
action in the age of a technical civilization that has become “almighty” if not in its productive then
in its destructive potential.72 For this reason, it is required a new ethics, a new value-knowledge
that has to revise old patterns. In the past ethics concerned mostly with virtue and good, and with
human actions and their consequences on other humans. There wasn’t any consideration related to
the effects that human actions have on the nature. Today, though, it would be desirable to think an
ethics that addresses choices with the warning of being careful on the compatibility that they have
with the survival of the humanity, with the preservation of natural assets and with the continuation
of the life on Earth. Two centuries ago, when the humans didn’t have so much power and influence
on the reality, these advices wouldn’t have been reasonable. There was not a fear for the most
granted and elementary of the given, the life and existence possibility or a world and sufficient
natural environment to live in. We passed from Kant’s dictum “You can because you ought” to the

70
See Jonas Hans (1985), p. 165.
71
Id., p. 140.
72
Id., p. 136.

48
modern “You ought because you act”, that is, you must be aware because you have so much power.
We entered a time, Jonas warns, where we need an ethics of “preservation and prevention” and not
anymore of progress and perfection. The call for responsibility needs a total new attitude towards
the reality and ethical inclinations should be strengthen to this goal.

The new nature of our acting calls for a new ethics of long-range responsibility, coextensive
with the range of power, it calls also for a new kind of humility owned to the excessive
magnitude of power. Men act and ethics must be there for the ordering of actions and
regulation of power.73 .

An adequate ethics to our power should engage in envisaging the long-term effects of the
technological interventions, but in the same time should prepare and educate people to the
uncertainty of the previsions and to the possibility of calamities and sudden catastrophes they may
have to deal with. Consequent of the unpredictability of the future should be a strong inclination to
caution and prudence, in evaluating actions. Such ethics should emphasise the relevance of the aims
beyond the interventions and the responsibility for them, reinforcing the humility of our position
and our conditions, boycotting the perverse tendency of the human mind to wish to rule the game
challenging natural forces and laws. It should deconstruct the anthropocentric culture of our age and
readdress a conception of harmony among parties into a same whole of belonging. Especially, one
of the most important jobs is to beware about the responsibility that we have towards the future
generations, who are subjects not-yet-existing, therefore it is a non-reciprocal call of duty. We must
charge actions with the awareness that they will affect future human beings, beyond other living
organisms and natural ecosystems. Put more cynically, the impact of our actions will not determine
just the quality of life of future generations, but also the same possibility for the human kind to
continue to exist. The first duty towards our successors is to make them exist. Then it turns presides
over all the others, like the related to their chances of happiness.74

Acting, Jonas stresses, makes impact on the world, and such acting is under the agent’s control,
who should bind to a feeling of responsibility75. This is especially true for environmental matters.
We are not anymore in the position to let the freedom of values and of personal realisation choose,
independently from the consequences, because the effects of irresponsible decisions may be
irreversible and catastrophic. Some issues should gain priority on others and the liberty of realising
the self at all costs cannot be any more overriding some more dramatic priorities. It may arrive, for

73
See Jonas Hans (1985), p. 22
74
Id. , p. 42.
75
Id. , p. 90.

49
example, the time when population growth will need to be controlled through reforms, and such
intervention requires definitely a new ethics to be accepted by people (the topic is indeed very much
avoided by governments, as it is politically inconvenient!).

The concept of a new world order has the merit of identifying a number of relatively non-
controversial areas where cooperation is indeed mandatory76.

Jonas describes the need of taking responsibility as a duty of every citizen, every individual who
has power of action. It is not referred to a sphere of influence relegated to specialists or high level
positions in the society. Not anymore few should decide for all, but every singular daily action of
every singular individual must be responsible. In this direction, education is the most precious and
necessary instrument to re-address the ethics of the society.

As Jane Goodall used to say:

Every single day that you live you make a difference to impact the world, and you have a choice
on what kind of impact you are going to make. Your life matters and you can make a difference.

Cultural approaches beyond the reductionism of technical solutions: a culture of

sustainability

On the other side of the reductive technical approach to the problems there are people who start
talking about a “culture of sustainability”.77 The problem is that, although there are currently many
technical responses and initiatives to develop ecological societies and fight the climate change,
very little has being done and studied about how to address sustainability on all levels of the society,
in terms of lifestyles of people and cultural awareness. The alternative to the reductionism of what
has been called “Weak Sustainability” approach , is a “Strong Sustainability” perspective to
embrace, one that would not focus on technology or growth, rather on policies and real proposals to
change consumption patterns and create a culture of sustainability, necessary background for any
other concrete intervention. Adopting cultural approaches to the ecological crisis signifies

76
See Santamaria Osorio Julian, “Some reflections on the new world order and disorder”, in Walzer Michael, Towards
a global civil society, New York: Berghahn Books, p. 309.
77
See Wagner Felix , “A culture of Sustainability”, in “Realizing Utopia : Ecovillage Endeavours and Academic
Approaches” edited by Marcus Andreas and Felix Wagner, RCC Perspective 2012/8, p. 58.

50
transcending the limits of current responses and integrate them with more effective pathways that
can produce change, new perspectives and outlooks investing in the cultural dimension78.

Promoting sustainability in a cultural sense means developing social structures for it, that is not just
institutions and physical elements, but especially culture. According to Wagner the difference and
the hope of a change depend very much on the cultural address that we are missing to give to the
civil society. Sustainability should enter in the routine of every citizen and should lead to adequate
lifestyles. While the majority of uninformed society tends still to think that sustainability is matter
for enterprises and governments in the reduction of pollution and it has little to do with the daily life
of the citizens, it is especially there that we should instead operate. A sustainable culture must be, as
the Libro Blanco79 states, “una experiencia continua de aprendizaje que debe implicar a todas las
personas en todos los aspectos y momentos de la vida”. From the bottom the change can take place
and through it also push politics towards more ecological measures. The need of the involvement of
the society in cultural terms is essential to promote change. In this sense we can speak about a
“culture of sustainability”.
Quoting the expression used in 2002 by the German Federal Government articulating the national
strategy for sustainable development in a chapter entitled ‘Developing a Culture of Sustainable
Development’:
Sustainable Development is not simply the technocratic route to efficient methods of business,
production that does not cause waste, and healthy life. Technical innovations are important,
but on their own they are not sufficient to act as the driving force for sustainable development.
Sustainable Development has a lot to do with the imaginative and creative vision of how we
want to live in the future. In this sense it is a creative task, which challenges the creative

78
See China Daily news website, article “Ecological Civilisation”, 10/24/2007,
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2007-10/24/content_6201964.htm Recently the Chinese government spoke
about and used the expression “Ecological Civilisation” to indicate the intention to promote cultural approaches to
environmental degradation. Ecological Civilisation is defined as “a future-oriented guiding principle based on the
perception of the extremely high price we have paid for our economic miracle. This concept reflects an important
change in the Party's understanding of development. Rather than emphasizing economic construction as the core of
development as it did in the past, the Party authorities have come to realize that development, if sustainable, must
entail a list of elements including the right relationship between man and nature.” The concept is not “ to be
understood as environmental protection only and neither is it adequate for it to be comprehended as a supporting
tool only for balanced economic development. With its definition containing a much broader meaning, the concept
emphasizes the cultural dimension of development. In this dimension, we need to put our relationship with nature in
a new perspective: consider nature as part of our life rather than something we can exploit without restraint.”

79
See Ministerio de Medio Ambiente - Secretaría General de Medio Ambiente, Libro Blanco de la educatiòn ambiental
en Espana en pocas palabras, p. 14. January 2015.
http://www.magrama.gob.es/es/ceneam/recursos/documentos/pocas_tcm7-13555.pdf

51
 potential of our society on the basis of values, social models and our cultural tradition as a
whole. Sustainable development doesn’t simply mean the continuation of trends from the past.
It invites us to leave the old beaten track and find new directions. Over and above the
material constraints, the question of how we want to live in the future returns politics to the
creative task and social discussion on this question to the crucial point at which sustainable
development becomes relevant. Sustainability is therefore a cultural question.80

Sustainability, in other words, has to become an issue of the daily life of every individual. The
citizenship must be addressed to develop a collective mentality towards sustainable patterns and
slowly create an environmental ethic at global level, given that the environmental crisis is a problem
of global domain.

Economists often assume that solving global warming is simply a matter of designing the
right incentive structure and getting countries to sign on. But this misses a crucial point:
global action on climate change may require that we find our way to a new environmental
ethic, a new set of attitudes toward the natural world we share. Whatever its efficiency, a
global market in the right to pollute may make it harder to cultivate the habits of restraint and
shared sacrifice that a responsible environmental ethic requires.81

This means that a cultural approach is urgent, in order to join and to avoid the reductionism of
technical interventions. Readdressing the culture is a slow process that takes place along
generations, a very long time comparing with the urgency and gravity of environmental issues.
However even if it is very difficult to change the habits of old and adults generations, whose models
of life are usually already defined and stiff, it is very easy to educate the new generations to
different lifestyles and awareness. One of the elements that will be determinant in promoting
sustainability is education. The first way to promote a cultural change is educating to change things
and to act in a different way challenging existing models. Instead of only providing norms and
targets on emissions, we should put again the education at the core of the issues and investing much
more in it. Governments, international community and institutions should focus on a cultural
approach, rather than considering it just a side element and go for technocracy.

80
See Wagner Felix , “A culture of Sustainability”, in “Realizing Utopia : Ecovillage Endeavours and Academic
Approaches” edited by Marcus Andreas and Felix Wagner, RCC Perspective 2012/8, p. 58.
81
See Sandel Michael (2012), p. 76.

52
Part two: Cultural Approach and how to realize it

Chapter III - The domain of environmental issues: global actors and the
need to “think globally and act locally”

Education to sustainable life-styles should be a transversal purpose, independently from the

geographic origin. It should promote awareness and a positive mentality towards the environment
shared at global level. In this sense, to deal with the environmental crisis we need to “think
globally” . For this reason it is important to orient ourselves into the dynamics of the “Global
Village” and to identify the “Global Citizenship” as political subject and addressee of this cultural
orientation.

In this chapter I will describe the context of Globalisation as it is intended by Bauman, in dialectic
with the “Glocalisation”. The domain of the environmental crisis is global, but it relates strongly to
local dimensions and it requires an integration of both, in line with the meaning of the popular
expression “Think globally, act locally” and considering the structure of the world as an
“interconnected system”. Then I will discuss the need of shifting from the national dimension of
sovereignty to transnational and global perspectives, in order to deal appropriately with global
problems, defining the main actor playing a role in the cultural approach to sustainability, the global
citizenship. I will end the chapter speaking about the way how the global citizenship has power of
action and can become a political actor, identified as Global Civil Society.

Globalization and Glocalization

The term Globalisation is one of the most used words in several contexts. While I won’t here
explore the complex speech about it, I will refer instead to Bauman’s concept of Glocalisation82.
Far away from the idea that a global world is a uniform system, like if one only subject is acting, he
explains that globalization implies aspects of fragmentation and territorialisation. While we dispone
of an unlimited platform to share, inform, communicate and act, this doesn’t actually produce
simply what he calls “a global culture”, but many different identities that elaborate the available
inputs subjectively.

82
See Bauman Zygmunt (1998b), Globalization, The human consequences, New York: Columbia University Press.
 «Globalizzazione» non significa unificazione culturale; la produzione di massa di «materiale
culturale» non conduce al prodursi di qualcosa che possa sembrare «cultura globale». La
scena globale deve essere vista piuttosto come una matrice di possibilità, dalla quale possono
prodursi, e sono effettivamente prodotte, selezioni e combinazioni altamente variate;
attraverso la selezione e combinazione dalla trama globale dei simboli culturali vengono
tessute identità distinte.83

There are two complementary pushes, one to globalise and one to localise. While the rich part of
the world -and especially the small elite of individuals that keeps almost half of the world’s
richness-conquered the planet, are free to move everywhere and to exploit any territory, so they
are “globalised”, the other part gains spatial segregation, separation and exclusion from this
possibilities, they get “localised”. Globalisation, in this sense, increased the unjust gap between
rich and poor.84
Another consequence of globalization is the loss of the community as a meeting place to create
norms and shared criteria of evaluation. The space dimension as reference to address life, social
rules and behaviours lost importance as there is not anymore spatial limit. We live our daily life in a
relative time-dimension, made possible especially by the digital technology. There is no difference
between ‘here’ or ‘there’ when having to do with Internet and the speed of our lives is accelerated.
Globalization means, furthermore, growing of controlling powers. The global dimension is a stage
of public show where the private becomes public. It’s a platform of what Debord85called “spectacle”
and that George Orwell emphasised imaging the Big Brother Institution.
So far, we can say that if the Globalization allows the freedom of markets and capital and the flow
of knowledge, effects of Glocalization are the unequal distribution of resources and the
disproportioned concentration of richness and freedom of choice just in some parts.
This unjust consequence is expressed by Bauman through the description of the tourist in
opposition to the vagabond.86 The global world allows to the rich part to travel for choice and
pleasure, at the expense of the other part that has to travel because it doesn’t have alternative,
83
See Bauman Zygmunt (1998b).
84
Id. , p. 18: “Rather than homogenizing the human condition, the technological annulment of temporal/spatial
distances tends to polarise it. It emancipates certain humans from territorial constrains and renders certain
community-generating meanings exterritorial. For some people it augurs an unprecedented freedom from physical
obstacles, to move and act from a distance. For others, it portends the impossibility of appropriating and
domesticating the locality from which they have little chance of cutting themselves free in order to move elsewhere.
With distances no longer meaning anything, localities, separated by distances also lose their meanings. This, however,
augurs freedom of meaning-creation for some, but portends ascription to meaningless for others.”
85
See Debord Guy (1967), La société du spectacle, Paris: Buchet-Chastel.
86
In the Italian translation of the book, the term used for the word “vagabond” is “migrant”. This choice may change
the undertone of the meaning.

54
hoping to find better life conditions. Rich societies have an aesthetic relationship to the world (the
aesthetic of consumption)87 and live their consumeristic dream thanks to the poor that are living
their survival nightmare.88 That of the vagabonds is what he calls “forced localization”.

Quelle dei migranti sono come lune buie erranti che riflettono lo splendore dei soli luminosi
rappresentati dai turisti; essi sono i mutanti dell’evoluzione postmoderna, il rifiuto di un
mondo che si è dedicato a servizi turistici89.

As it is fairly arguable that the capitalistic part of the world is responsible for the global
inequality, it is as well correct to individuate the western countries as the main responsible for
the environmental degrade. Multinational corporations still control the economy and together
with governments they exploit global South lands’ resources and labour creating a relationship of
exploitation and dependence that doesn’t allow developing countries really to develop and
become independent. They lose their natural assets and don’t gain possibility of emancipation.
One crucial point of this interaction is that the ecological degradation affects every of both sides
and not just who is mainly responsible for that. Although just some have benefited of the
globalisation and some have been harmed (or worsted), the consequences of some issues are
equal for everyone and in some cases worst for the ones who have been already exploited,
because of the poorer conditions. One of the main goals at global level of sustainable
development should be the reduction of poverty and the equalisation of distribution of resources.
These conditions would allow to global South countries to guaranty basic needs and to promote
locally adequate development strategies, not similar to the western, neither dependent on global
North aid or investment. Reducing poverty would mean also stabilising birth rates and the
population growth in a future perspective. The environmental crisis is directly connected with
the dynamics of the globalised economy, that made some richer at the expense of others and
raised the inequalities. Therefore addressing sustainability means acting into the globalised
economy considering the interrelations of trade, production and labour, which have effects
especially on the local dimension. Production of goods in global South countries by
multinational corporations - because the labour costs are minor and the rights of workers are not

87
See Bauman Zygmunt (1998b), p. 95.
88
Bauman notices also the attitude that tourists have towards vagabonds, that tends to exorcise them and criminalise
their poorness. He explains it as the attempt to deny their nightmare: as the causes of this situation are the inner
dynamics of the globalised economy, everything can change fast and without citizens’ control and turn the situations.
Tourists look at vagabonds and fear to become them, therefore they do as much as possible to keep themselves
distant, stranger and protected from that condition.
89
See Bauman Zygmunt (1998b).

55
respected- that are sold in the global North, is the most evident effect of both Globalization and
Glocalization phenomenon. The process has global domain as the trade and labour exploitation
happens in different countries in market relationship, but the consequences of it are mostly local,
on the workers and on the place where the production takes place without any concern of
sustainability. Since we live in a globalised world and the economy developed this structure, the
environmental problem has to be treated into it, coordinating global and local domains and
considering their interconnectedness.

The world as an interconnected system

Several elements show that the context where we live is global, like the migration waves from
poorer to richer countries and, especially, the way how the economic system works. We are citizens
of the world when we consume into a market which presumes the openness of the national borders.
Every time we buy something which is produced in another country we participate to the
functioning of a system that has a global size and where every action is not isolated but connected
with the happening in a place far away.

La globalizzazione appare ormai ineludibile e irreversibile. Le nostre interconnessioni e la

nostra interdipendenza sono già globali. Qualunque cosa succeda in un luogo influenza le vite
della gente in tutti gli altri luoghi. Quando si calcolano le misure da adottare in un posto
qualsiasi si devono fare i conti con le reazioni della gente in tutti gli altri posti. La nostra
dipendenza reciproca ha dimensioni planetarie, e dunque siamo già, e lo rimarremo a tempo
indefinito, oggettivamente responsabili gli uni degli altri.90

Bauman emphasises the need of a global public space for the politics that should be addressed as
planetary, which is different from the international. This space requires recognising the reciprocal
responsibility for the planet and for every human living on it and the relevance of every action on
one side for the other side. We need a planetary responsibility to address the problems and
challenges of our time and this can happen just readdressing the systems of interdependence and
relations among all political subjects.

The concept of the systemic interconnectedness of the world is evident in the environmental
processes. The consumption of a good in a western country, which is produced in an eastern country
through the unsustainable exploitation of the resources, damages the producer, although the action

90
See Bauman Zygmunt (1998b), p. 26

56
is acted in the far away consumer country. The actions take place into a process where every
element is connected. Says Arne Naess91 that all our actions and thoughts, even the most private,
are politically relevant. If I use a clipped tea leaf, some sugar, and some boiling water, and I drink
the product, I am supporting the tea and sugar prices and indirectly I interfere in the works and
capital conditions of the tea and sugar plantations of the developing countries. The action damages
actually both countries, because it contributes to worse the conditions of the Earth ecosystem which
is one, the same in every part of the world, even if it’s not perceived so. The dimension where these
processes take place are global, therefore we speak about global problems. Global problems are
problems that regard people of the whole globe, of every country. There is no exemption for
geographical belonging, but every country is involved and responsible for the issue. The dimension
of interconnectedness is the condition that extends problems to global width, from local one.
However the global domain has to square always up with local dimensions, and the integration of
both is a big challenge. For instance, civil and social rights are still defined into national borders as
they refer to the national constitutions. Yet, some of them belong to a dimension which is
transnational, the ones that are considered universal to all humans. Human rights are identified in
order to individuate why all humans are equal and deserve the same possibility of happiness. As the
first article of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights92 says:

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.

Already in the 1948, when the Declaration was adopted, a first element of “globalism” was
perceived. In the context of the post-war such principles assumed a deep meaning, aiming for
the first time to find elements of union and fraternity among all human beings, no matter the
origins. A global conception of humanity and innate rights with it was spread and suggested, to
adopt new patterns of judgement into the reality that, instead of dividing individuals, unifies
them. Above the national roots and the cultural features every human can feel close and
recognise himself in every other human and acknowledge him his same rights simply because
of belonging to a planetary community, as Ronald C. Israel expresses:

91
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 130.
92
See Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

57
 At The Global Citizens’ Initiative we say that a “global citizen is someone who identifies with
being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this
community’s values and practices.”.93

With the recognition of shared values and of the human rights we enter the prospective of a global
interconnected community that is supposed to base on solidarity and fraternity among members.
They are one attempt to display on a larger platform what cannot be fostered by a national
citizenship, and to open to a new type of articulation between the universal and the particular.94

This articulation should foster a focus on the elements that unit individuals, rather than on the
ones that divide them, in order to promote cooperation and sharing of goals. The idea of a world
community emerges from a political structure that based on the concept of nation-state. Indeed it
is often that concept, and the consequent power deriving from it, one delicate and determinant
point when speaking about Globalization.

From the Nation-states to a Global Citizenship

One of the challenges of the globalisation is defining the role of national sovereignty. While citizens
from different countries live into global dynamics, they also submit to their national laws, which
keep the national territory as reference domain. At the level of international law the challenge of
harmonizing and coordinating many national systems is complex, difficult and serious. Although
the environmental issue is dramatically urgent, it seems impossible to obtain a uniform cooperation
among all the national states, agreeing on the strategies to reduce and contain the consequences of
the environmental degradation. It affects everyone, but every one tends to give priority to its own
interest instead of proceeding as one hand, for the well of the planet, that is supposed to be
important for each in the same way. Is it really possible, in these circumstances, to speak about a
global citizenship or are we still strictly attached to national widths?

As Bauman states95:Il significato dell’espressione «lo Stato» è quello di un’agenzia che rivendicava
e legittimava il diritto e i mezzi per stabilire e rafforzare le regole e le norme destinate a fissare lo
svolgimento dei compiti su un determinato territorio; le norme e le regole sperate ed aspettate per
93
See Israel Ronald C. (2012), “What does it mean to be a global citizen?”. Kosmos Journal, Global citizens creating the
new civilization, Spring/Summer 2012, p. 79. http://www.kosmosjournal.org/wp-content/article-pdfs/what-does-it-
mean-to-be-a-global-citizen.pdf
94
See Mouffe Chantal, “Pluralism and the left identity”, in Walzer Michael (1995), p. 297.
95
See Bauman Zygmunt (1998a), Globalizzazione e Glocalizzazione, Roma: Armando Editore.

58
trasformare il caos in ordine. The past ‘global scene’ was composed by the political relations
among states, so an inter-state politics, sum of many singular nations, where the sovereignty of
every subject was preserved. Passing through the big blocks of the cold war, political power took a
different scheme and today’s capacity of autonomy of the territorial State has been dramatically
reduced.

The importance of the national sovereignty is still recognised, as space where citizens give
themselves laws and have influence on their own lives through the political participation (when
there is) and cultural diversity is defended. However, every local policy has a pretty partial view of
the global problems, because it mostly works inside reduced borders and for the interests of the
people belonging to the reduced territory. This means that every nation tends to decide things and to
act favouring the internal goals96. Nevertheless, we are today in some circumstances where the most
urgent problems are of a global range and need strategies and solutions on the same domain. All the
singular actors in the global stage must cooperate following the same line. Without this common
walk it is not possible to find solutions. The current thinkers divide between Nationalism and Post-
nationalism, less or more supporters of the idea of global citizenship as a successful dimension in
promoting integration and democracy. The first approach identifies in the national belonging the
necessary element to create social cohesion and integration. Liberal nationalists like David Miller
argue that just the sharing of a common history and culture shape a sense of identity, membership
and solidarity among members. These elements are prior to the political role and the active
participation of the citizens and the creation of a sense of identity into the community. It is
theoretically impossible according to this approach, to create a sense of global community and
integration, because these elements don’t develop out of the national belonging, therefore citizens
are not likely to participate to the politics actively and sympathetically with the others perceived as
strangers. Post-nationalists such as Habermas97, instead, argument that although the role of national
boundaries is recognised as effective element to produce democratic attitudes in the members, it is
not the necessary condition to obtain it. In the modern pluralistic and complex context nations must
rather be aware of and integrate their specificities with universalistic principles of human rights and

96
See Miller David (2005), “Reasonable Partiality towards Compatriots”. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8, pp. 63-
81.

97
See Habermas Jürgen by, C. Cronin and P. De Greif editors (1998), The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political
Theory, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.

59
the rule of law, which does not imply the imposition of a particular majority culture on minorities98.
The Post-nationalism approach recognises the increasing loss of authority and power of the nation-
states, transferred to supra-national entities, for all economic, political and cultural aspects.

The conception of the Post-nationalism is close and linked with Cosmopolitanism positions, in
opposition to the so-called Particularistic ones (corresponding to Kosmopolitismus and
Partikularismus in the German version) regarding the political theories on Global Justice. In the
book “Globale Gerechtigkeit. Schlüsseltexte zur Debatte zwischen Partikularismus und
Kosmopolitismus“ by Christoph Broszies and Henning Hahn99, they are defined as follows.

Cosmopolitanism speaks from the perspective of the real possibility of a global justice, which
moves from a moral Universalism that considers every human in equal way morally important.
The Particularistic approach declares, on the contrary, that the principles of justice should not be
intended in a global sense, but conceived into the specific geopolitical domains.

The main crash between the two theories regards the domain of the justice, global for the first, local
for the second. The first considers the duty of a global justice, with the hold of the responsibility of
the inequalities, on the base of moral human principles, so that, just because I am a human, I must
respect every other human, which is equal as me. The second considers this responsibility owed just
in case of some kinds of close and special relationships among people, because of social and
cultural sharing of common projects, like in the case of national membership.
Between the oppositions of the mentioned conceptions, the Post-nationalist and the Cosmopolitan
furnish more effective instruments to deal with global problems and allow the identification of a
global citizenship. Even though it is different from the national one described by nationalists, the
existence of a world citizenship is evident, not for elements like historical and cultural belonging,
but for the dimension of interconnectedness and complexity of the political, economic and cultural
system we live in.100 Global problems are problems that involve the entire world and so all the

98
See “Citizenship”, Stanford Encyclopedia University, retrieved October 2014 from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/citizenship/ .
99
See Broszies Christoph and Hahn Henning (2010), Globale Geregtichkeit. Schlüsseltexte zur Debatte zwischen
Partikularismus und Kosmopolitismus, Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.

100
Political theories about global justice are opened to different approaches. Some advert to the idea of Global
Governance, of trans-national institutions, but that tends to exclude the possibility of a World Government that could
risk an absolutistic and irreversible degeneration. For more see Nussbaum Martha (2004), “Beyond the social contract:
Capabilities and Global Justice”, Oxford Development Studies Vol. 32, No. 1. N. speaks about the strengthen of
international institutions, which should be coordinated in a thin and decentralised structure, result of deliberate
normative reflection and not just of history like it is now. The responsibilities would be so distributed among domestic
basic structures, multinational corporations, global economic policies and agencies, trade bodies (IMF, WB, WTO),

60
people living on it and whose management can be addressed on a global domain, through political
reforms and the collaboration of every person in applying these measures.

Nation-state membership or any other sort of particularistic relationship among persons is

irrelevant to assessing the nature, depth, or scope of obligations they have to one another.
Moral agents have identical obligations to all human beings and to nonhuman creatures.101

So far, the idea of a transnational citizenship can be accepted if we don’t remain attached to the
traditional meaning of citizenship linked to the political community limited to the national territory.

Supporters of global democracy reject the conventional identification between demos,

territory and citizenship. In their view, citizenship is not a set of practices and rights that need
to be anchored in a particular demos defined by specific territorial boundaries. On the
contrary, citizenship is ideally exercised in a multiplicity of ‘sites’, situated at different levels
of governance: local, national, regional and global.102

If we agree on the existence of a global citizenship, beyond the national borders that divide people,
we can also conceive the right domain in order to address cultural strategies towards sustainability.
Since the environmental crisis is a global problem and it requires a real deep change in the culture
and in the socio-political and economic system, conceiving interventions just on the national
domain is extremely reductive and inappropriate. Still keeping the importance of the local
dimensions, it is important to create a stage of action that is not limited to nation-states priorities,
but it has a larger perspective and it involves everyone. This perspective can conceive the world
population as one actor with power of action and responsibility for the environmental problem. Just
if people understand that they share the same trouble and they have all the same responsibility and
possibility of action on it, we can create the kind of dimension that we need to address cultural
responses and provoke long-term change.

What does Citizenship mean and the possibility to conceive a Global Citizenship

international political bodies (United Nations), International Labour Organization, World Court and an envisaged new
world criminal court, nongovernmental organizations.
101
See Young Iris Marion (2006), “Responsibility and global Justice: a social connection mode”. Social
Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 23, pp. 102-130.
102
See “Citizenship”, Stanford Encyclopedia University, retrieved October 2014 from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/citizenship/ .

61
In order to conceive or accept the identification of a Global Citizenship, it may be useful to define
Citizenship itself first. According to the Dictionary of Politics by Pasquino and Bobbio a “citizen”
is an inhabitant of a city or a member of a community, with some rights ensured by this
membership.103 The word “community” opens the possibility of a generic definition, not necessarily
linked with the city or the state, of citizenship. “Community” can be the nation, but also the
humanity as a whole. The meaning of the word citizenships has changed in the history. For instance,
the citizenships that we can intend today in politics, contextualised in a globalised world is not the
same as the one contextualised in the 18th century in a national context.

According to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy104 there are three dimensions involved in
the concept of citizenship: the legal defined by civil, political and social rights; the political, which
considers citizens as political agents, actively participating in a society's political institutions; the
identity dimension, which represents the belonging to a political community that furnishes a distinct
source of identity105. The third one is the dimension from which cohesion and social integration
depend, but all three are dependent on each other: the rights defined by the law influence the
political activity and participation of the citizen, to which the shaping of identity is linked.

We find in the Stanford Encyclopaedia that there are two models to intend the citizenship, results of
the history: the Republican and the Liberal. The first comes from the ancient Aristotelian Greek and
then Roman conception of the citizens as active members of the community, with the duty to
engage in politics by sharing the authority and exchanging the ruling role with each other. Everyone
had a civic self-ruled role and participated actively to the decision-making processes. This model
has been transmitted in the Middle age through the Italian city-states, but it developed next to the
second one since the Roman Empire. When the empire expanded in Europe it needed a legal and
fiscal system that could allow to Rome to keep the control from far. They extended the law system
but not the elements of identity and political participation that were present in the city of Rome. The
status of Roman citizenship represented a guaranty of protection and rights in front of the empire
authorities, but not the identity element: citizenship is primarily understood as a legal status rather
than as a political office. The Liberal model of citizenship denotes membership in a community of
shared or common law, which may or may not be identical with a territorial community106107.Both

103
See Bobbio Norberto, Matteucci Nicola, Pasquino Gianfranco, Dizionario di politica, Utet.
104
See “Citizenship”, Stanford Encyclopedia University, retrieved October 2014 from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/citizenship/
105
Id.
106
See Pocock John G. A., (1995), “The Ideal of Citizenship since Classical Times”, in Beiner Ronald (ed.), Theorizing
Citizenship, Albany (NY): State University of New York Press, pp. 29–53.

62
the models expanded in the history and modern democracies adopted especially the liberal one,
carrying with it the problematic point of the lack of political activity of the community’s members.
It must be noticed that participating in the politics in todays’ heterogeneous, cosmopolitan and
complex world is not possible like it was in the past. The modern condition sees, however, the
combination of both models, that are complementary, with the alternation of passivity and
involvement in politics by the citizens, as keeping the passive enjoyment requires political
participation and vice versa.

Not everyone agrees with the possibility to conceive a kind of citizenship/membership on a global
level, but the definition of citizenship today must definitely be revised in the light of the
globalisation and the world dimension into which we live. Expressions like “Global Village” or
global population identify the modern perspective through which political and social subjects
establish connections. In such context we can think to citizenship at different levels and of different
size, regional, national or global. The idea of a world citizenship appears with the processes of
globalisation of the economy in the last century that enlarges the number, the size and the borders of
the national one. The members are potentially all the humans on earth, located in every territory and
the borders of their connections in terms of physical mobility and knowledge access are extremely
reduced. The passage from the national to the global dimension and the break of the traditional
national borders has taken a mixture of different cultures, nationalities and citizenships in the same
space, a large space without limits anymore that used to keep the distance between different social
subjects. With this premise the implication of the education is automatic. Shaping people endowed
with the skills and the mind required to live democratically and peacefully in a global society is a
responsibility of the education, like we will see later on. Not just should these people be capable to
respect other cultures, but they should develop a mind responsible, politically active and able to
deal with problems that are not of small or national domain but that are “global problems”, such us
the climate change, the inequality, the risk of war, the overpopulation and so on. Therefore, the
identification of a dimension of the citizenship’s definition that is global, is essential to be
recognised in this context, because this kind of subject will be the political actor dealing with the
environmental problematic. One of the way through which the Global Citizenship is politically
active is the engagement into Civil Society Organisations (CSO).

107
“Citizenship”, Stanford Encyclopedia University, retrieved October 2014 from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/citizenship/

63
Political Activism from bottom: Global Civil Society and its role

As previously said, a phenomenon that took us towards the global dimension is the
technological progress. The advent of the Internet and of the communication technologies from
the 70s revolutionized the way of sharing and communicating, creating a horizontal platform of
nets where the access to the knowledge is supposed to be free instead of depended on the
traditional vertical scheme of transmission of the culture through institutions and authorities.
Bauman used to say that we substituted the traditional terms structures, system, society and
community with the modern net to reflect the growing loss of clear borders of the totality and
their fluidity.108 These conditions created a new freedom and, with more or less control, access
to information and possibility to develop free critical points of view on the reality. This has
taken to the formation of groups sharing the same ideas, opinions and critics beyond the
geographic borders. Many cross-national social movements unify people belonging to different
nationalities under same aims and play today a big role. Lobbies, associations, NGOs and
groups of common people are so relevant into the political process that they have been
identified as a political subject, under the name of Civil Society.

Global democracy becomes thinkable once we focus on the development of transnational

civil society rather than on the transposing of representative institutions at the global
level. In response, it should be noted that such networks coalesce around a common
ideology or conception of the good (e.g. the environment, rights of indigenous peoples,
critique of neo-liberal forms of globalisation, etc.), which serves as a functional
equivalent to a common vernacular.109

Using again the Dictionary of Politics110, ‘Civil Society’ is defined in base of the historical context.
The original meaning of it, into the doctrine of natural law, was of “Political Society”, deriving
from polis and civis, so the “society of the state”, in contraposition to the “Natural Society”, in
agreement with Hobbes’ theory of the opposition between civil state and state of nature. With the
centuries, passing especially through Marx, the meaning of Civil Society tends to be opposed to the

108
See Bauman Zygmunt (2009), L’etica in un modo di consumatori, Bari: Laterza, p. 13: “La metafora della rete riflette
la crescente presa di coscienza che le ‘totalità sociali’ hanno margini incerti, rimangono in uno stato di flusso costante,
sono in divenire più che in essere e raramente sono fatte durare.”
109
See Citizenship”, Stanford Encyclopedia University, retrieved October 2014 from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/citizenship/
110
Bobbio-Matteucci-Pasquino, Dizionario di Politica, Utet.

64
State, where the first is the sphere of relationships among individuals, groups, social classes, that
take place outside the power relations of the institutions. It is the stage for economic, ideological,
social, religious conflicts that the state is supposed to solve or manage. So it is the place for
mobilisation, association, common organisation. Quoting Weber, the Civil Society is the place of
the factual power, while the State is the place of the legitimate power.111
Until one hundred years ago we wouldn’t have talked about Civil Society as a political actor. The
main actors in the political arena were basically States. International Organisations and Institutions
rose in the last century, especially after the World War II and they became the other main actor next
to the nations. Beside them we can talk today of Civil Society as third actor but that is of a deeply
different nature from the traditional ones. Civil Society indicates the civilians, the population. It is
not an institutionalised subject but it is a generic category to define the many ways through which
citizens started to play a relevant role in the political and economic dynamics, thus not belonging to
institutional bodies. These ways are mostly represented by organisations, non-governmental and
non-profit, transnational advocacy networks, regional bodies, academics, foundations, social
movements, consumer organisations, volunteer and independent realities that aim to pursue some
public interests and to give voice to their members.
Quoting Walzer112:

Citizenship, taken by itself, is today mostly a passive role: citizens are spectators who vote.
Between elections they are served, well or badly, by the civil service. However, in the
associational networks of civil society – in unions, parties, movements, interests groups, and
so on- these same people make many smaller decisions of state and economy. And in a more
densely organized, more egalitarian civil society, they might do these things to greater effect.

Although these organisations don’t have usually a decision-making role in the global governance
dynamics, they actually influence such processes indirectly, creating networks of information,
spread of knowledge and mobilisation that involve great numbers of civilians into campaigns and
activism. Transnational Advocacy Networks can indirectly influence discursive positions of states
and international organizations, institutional procedures, policy change and state behavior. The

111
See “Società Civile”, in Bobbio-Matteucci-Pasquino, Dizionario di Politica, Utet: p. 1065 “ Nella contrapposizione S.
civile-stato per S. civile si intende la sfera dei rapporti tra individui, tra gruppi, tra classi sociali, che si svolgono al di
fuori dei rapporti di potere che caratterizzano le istituzioni statali. In altre parole, la S. civile viene rappresentata come
il terreno dei conflitti economici, ideologici, sociali, religiosi, che lo stato ha il compito di risolvere o mediandoli o
sopprimendoli.”
112
See Walzer Michael (1995), p.18.

65
main feature is that this happens transnationally, under the so called Boomerang effect113: when
there is no receptiveness about an issue into domestic stages, they refer to international connections
and allies to pressure their government or attract the attention. This creates a complex and
transversal net all over the world among subjects from every country.
In these phenomena citizens usually voiceless take the possibility of being represented and expose
issues that remain outside the political agenda. All this has become possible in the last decades
thanks to the progress of the communication technologies that allow to be in contact and create
links all over the world, and so to involve people across countries in the same issue. In this way it
has been showed how many kinds of political problems today are of global domain and not
anymore of local or national.

Civil Society Organisations have met annually since 2001 at the World Social Forum to share
strategies, information about movements and coordination about campaigns. Through their
mobilisation about specific topics like human rights, gender equality, peacebuilding, economic
inequality, environmental protection, the human population has created strong frames of awareness
and activism that shape also a new sense of community, not just national, but global. People from
different countries feel united under certain issues and perceive themselves as one subject beyond
specific cultural differences with one global public opinion. This fact provoked, as Marchetti notes,
the growth of solidarity among civil society organisations, and for contestation of the socio-
economic consequences of globalisation. Relating for example to the financial crisis, many forces
found themselves united against the status quo and for the first time, a number of ad hoc coalitions
and campaigns have been organised on a trans-ideological basis, going beyond the traditional
political barriers of previous forms of mobilisation, and targeting a number of controversial
(mainly economic) aspects of globalisation114.

Principles or ideas raised in specific geographical zones can be shared with others in every other
part of the world and create a connection. One famous case of global mobilisation was the Occupy
movement started in USA. The movement spread in more than 80 countries in few months and each
population organised events and demonstrations coordinated with the others. Also the Arab Spring
in 2010 resulted from civilians mobilisation and was an example of boomerang effect (beyond the
relative results that it had politically), where a large activism raised through social networks’ spread

113
See Keck Margaret E. and Sikkink Kathryn (1998), Activists beyond borders, Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.
114
See Marchetti Raffaele (2011), “The role of Civil Society in Global Governance”, in EU Institute for Security Studies
published by(EUISS), De Vasconcelos Alvaro edited by (2011), Global Governance. Building on the Civil Society Agenda,
Condé-sur-Noireau: Corlet Imprimeur .
http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/Global_Governance_Building_on_the_civil_society_agenda.pdf

66
of information across several countries. Last September 21st (2014) Environmental organisations
organized the first Global March for the Climate Change, involving more than 150 countries whose
cities hosted thousands of people walking together to demonstrate their care and interest into the
problematic115. The impact that such events can have on public authorities are relevant. These
connections determine consequences also from a social and epistemological point of view, because
they are experiences that put in confrontation different cultural realities creating new
conceptualisations, analysis and envisages of the reality. They have so an effect in terms of
knowledge and arising of awareness.

A viable civil society as a kind of third force between the state and economy, on the one hand,
and the private sphere on the other, seems to require some effective sense of community and
of there actually being a community to which people are committed.116

For these reasons the activities of Civil Society are considered as new ways through which the
deficiency and gap of the representative democracy can be a little reduced. Civil Society
Organisations don’t substitute the traditional ways of political representation but they play an
important role in diffusing and giving attention to needs and problems that are usually ignored or
undervalued. In this sense, besides being an instrument of representation they are recognised as
‘problem generators’ because they present problems that were before unnoticed. In some ways the
CSOs are closer to the real conditions of the people than political institutions.117
So far, it is legitimate to conceive a global community because of economic structures, political
freedom of moving, cultural integration, free access to knowledge, existential recognition and
power of mass political action, and the definition of a ‘global subject’ is important to conceive
an effective strategy to deal with global problems. Environmental degradation and climate
change are one of the biggest challenges that we are going to face in the future decades and that

115
See People’s Climate Mobilisation, http://peoplesclimate.org/global/, November 2014.
116
See Kai Nielson, “Reconceptualising Civil Society for Now”, in Walzer Michael(1995), p. 56.
117
One delicate point about CSOs, is that most part of them have western origins, they arise from democratic western
countries and this can be a thorny point in terms of cultural partiality. It is argued that the fact that most part of this
mobilisation starts in the West, it imposes a partial vision of the things and a certain way to proceed. However the
abundance of CSOs in the West part of the world is the direct consequence of some conditions that made this possible.
Democratic countries give indeed much more space to this type of political activism than other kinds of governments.
Also the availability of knowledge and of the technology to spread it is higher in western countries that are also the
more developed ones. See Walzer Michael (1995): “Only a democratic state can create a democratic civil society; only
a democratic civil society can sustain a democratic state.[…] Civil Society requires men and women actively engaged in
state, economy and nation, and also in churches, neighbourhoods, families and other settings too. It is a project of
projects; it requires many organising strategies and new forms of state action”.

67
the humans have ever met in the history. To approach a problematic of such proportion requires
the involvement of every singular person on the planet. Not just political authorities and
institutions have responsibilities, but all the human population.
The need of involving and shape citizens to the sense of responsibility for the community they live
in, and therefore for the environment, the integration, the justice and so on, is at this point a priority
recognised by almost every political orientation that is based on democratic principles. Citizens
must have an active political role in their everyday life and reconcile themselves with moral
purposes. Thinking and acting as a global citizenship is extremely important in the context of
globalization.

Wolfe calls for a third perspective on moral agency different from those of the market and the
state, “one that allows us to view moral obligations as a socially constructed practice
negotiated between learning agents capable of growth on the one hand and change on the
other”. Similar to Hollenbach, social and institutional change is not only inevitable but
needed ‘if all persons are to become active participants in the common good, politically,
economically and culturally.118

The identification of the Global Citizenship as one only actor that includes all human beings
united, and the definition of its possibility of political action through Civil Society activism, are
important in order to answer the questions “Who must deal with the environmental problems?”
and “How this must be done?”.
If we identify the ecological problem as a global problem, that involves and affects every
individual, we need pathways that involve as well each individual in acting to solve it and adapt
to it. The stress on the global dimension of the actions regarding environmental issues is
determinant, if we want to deal with it appropriately. The Global Citizenship is the subject that
must promote or develop the cultural change that is needed, next to the technical solutions. If
political and economic authorities engage mostly in producing technical strategies, the civil
society must be charged of inventing cultural responses. This happens already, as we will see in
the next chapters, and it does through the education to sustainability and through bottom-up
mobilisation and proposal of alternative social innovations.

118
See BethkeElshtain Jean, “In common together”, in Walzer Michael (1995), p. 94.

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Chapter IV – Towards Cultural approaches: reflecting on the relationship
between Humankind and Nature

Once I have defined the actors involved, the domain of the environmental crisis, the technical
approach and the alternative of the cultural response, I have to specify in what a cultural response
should consist and what education and social activism are supposed to do for that. A cultural
approach to the environmental issues should first of all invite people to reflect on their impact on
the nature, to increase knowledge and awareness and to meditate about their role in the world and
their relationship with the nature. The relationship between humankind and nature is a delicate and
important focus, because the tendency to exploit natural assets without ethical responsibility is a
consequence also of the anthropocentric attitude that our modern history favoured.

In this chapter I will touch this point, mentioning 4 authors who expressed the need of a new
consciousness towards the nature, challenging the modern anthropocentrism, and develop similar
philosophies.

Anthropocentrism and learning to love the nature

People are losing the connection to the natural world. We seem schizophrenic: we've got this
amazing intelligence, but we seem to have lost the power of working in harmony with nature.

Jane Goodall
In her speeches about environment, Jane Goodall used to start wondering how is it possible that the
humans, the most intellectual and evolved species in the world, are capable to destroy its own home,
the Planet Earth. Many elements remember us every day that the humans are just a ‘drop’ in the
stream of life’, using Rachel Carson’s expression. We belong to the nature as a whole and shouldn’t
have any privilege in it at the expense of other lives. Unfortunately the human history, particularly
the western history, has insisted violently on the opposite attitude towards the environment in the
last centuries. Nature is not seen as a home to belong to and take care of. Rather has it been
conceived as a heap of unlimited material to exploit for our commodities, like if we are owner of it
and we can do whatever we want. This pathway leads to the destruction of the planet and it is quite
paradoxical how, in the run to progress, we end up with self-destroying ourselves. The idea that we
are above the nature and that nature is something external to us, that we can control and change,
made the humanity arrogant and insensitive towards the intrinsic existential value of it and we enter
metaphorically in war with it. Properly the environment doesn’t fight against us. Simply its inner
mechanisms and instruments are activated to survive, like the resilience and adaptation to changes.
Yet, the prominence of this automatic processes in the last centuries are being freakish; it has never
happened, in the history of the planet, that the ecosystem should adapt to such enormous changes in
such short time. On the other side of this anthropocentrism we can observe how the human species
is just one among millions and millions forms of life, each one with a precise role in the evolution
chain and the same right to life as we. We can realise how the time that the humans have inhabited
the planet is incredibly short comparing with its history (comparing the life of the planet with one
solar year, the human species appears around 11 h 56 p.m. of the 31st December…that means in a
time of 365 days we exist just in the last 4 minutes).

Nonetheless we are the only life form capable of understanding and appreciating its relations with
all other life forms and to the Earth as a whole.119 Some opinions tend to judge the value of the
human species higher than the others on the base of the evolution place, or on the intellectual
capacities or on the spiritual capacity of consciousness, but those opinions are incorrectly thought to
base on scientific foundation. Without entering this kind of topic, from a biophysical point of view
the human being, although unique in many ways, the most intellectual and conscious living creature,
has no superiority or more importance than other living beings. He’s simply one of the possible
results of the evolution, as any other creature. We belong the same way to what Naess calls
“ecosphere belonging”120 and should try to form a togetherness where everyone doesn’t just act in
order to benefit himself but in a whole perspective, where what is good for the individual should not
damage the other components, but instead should be done taking everyone the responsibility of his
conduct towards the others. This doesn’t mean that human needs should not have priority on non-
human needs, but that we should responsibly distinguish between what we need to do for necessity
and with responsibility and what we do for unnecessary reasons inflicting sufferance and violence
on other creatures and endangering the natural functioning of the ecosystem.

119
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 166.
120
Id., p. 168.

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 The need of a cultural revolution in the relationship between human and nature:
four inspiring voices.

A cultural approach should plan to work for a deep inner change in people’s attitudes towards the
environment. It should approach the problem deeply, acting on the deep core of social believes,
values and attitudes. It should act on the shared culture, first of all conceiving and teaching a new
relationship between humans and nature, where we are not anymore identified as “owners” of it, but
as part of the whole, therefore responsible for it. The next paragraphs introduce the thought of four
thinkers (one chemist and three philosophers), who, in this sense of renovating the conception of
humans-nature relationship, develop perspectives that are similar in many ways. They have in
common a holistic idea of the planet, where nature, humanity, environment are one whole only,
whose balance depends on the inner relations among the parts. The first author calls this system
Gaya and describes it in biophysical and also spiritual terms. The other three adopt a same term to
identify this perspective that is the word “Ecosophy”. They develop the concept differently and
from diverse perspectives, but keep in common the idea of a new culture and a new attitude towards
the natural environment, that should develop in and from the people. From the Ecosophy, the last
author, Arne Naess, goes forward in defining a new ecological orientation, deeper than the
traditional one, called “Deep Ecology”, which will become an important environmental philosophy
in our time, distinguished from the “shallow” environmentalism for the eco-centric approach, in
contrast with the anthropocentric one.

 James Lovelock and the Gaya hypothesis121

Although the environmental crisis is omnipresent and regards every sector of our life, the common
sense still has a partial or absent knowledge about it. Mass media and Politics speak about
environment as one of the many problems we have to deal with, but not one of the most important
and urgent. Environmentalism is still perceived as one small topic of the political debate, ecology is
mostly reduced to the image of groups of specialists in natural sciences or of people loving the
nature.

Nevertheless, nowadays the dimension of the ecology needs to be perceived and conceived in a
deeply different sense. Already in the 70s the chemist James Lovelock developed the so called

121
See Lovelock James (1979), Gaya: a new Look at Life on Earth, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
“Gaya hypothesis”122, a conception of the natural system according to which the Planet Earth (Gaya)
is a self-regulated, homeostatic and complex system into which organic and inorganic creatures
interact, that adopts mechanisms of adaptation and resilience to keep the best environmental bio-
chemical conditions for its own survival. All the organisms on the Earth evolve with it and
influence the composition of its parts. Basically, as soon as a threat menaces the inner harmony that
Gaya should keep, feedbacks and consequential mechanisms enter in action, in order to re-establish
the balance. In this balance it is not the human being that has to survive, but the Earth as a whole,
the Nature as big organism. From this approach derives the assumption that Gaya can probably deal
with the challenges that climate change is imposing to the natural ecosystems, but the danger is at
this point in what will happen to the human species if the mechanisms of readjustment don’t keep
the specific conditions of survival that humans need. Despite the Gaya theory is not completely
accepted by the science, because it can be seen close to religious or spiritualistic orientations, it
focuses on the important aspect of the relation between the humankind and the nature. The
anthropocentric history of the humanity in the last centuries didn’t perceive natural richness as
value itself, neither was ‘Nature’ meaning something bigger than the humans, previous or integrated
with them, but it was mostly seen as resources to exploit to produce goods and commodities. The
Gaya theory recalls a conception of the reality that is old in the History of Philosophy and that puts
the humankind in a much weaker and dependent position on the natural system. Humankind is part
of an integrated system and actually a very insignificant part if we think to the history of the Planet.

 Felix Guattari and The three ecologies

One decade after Lovelock, others authors defined conceptions of the planet that can be considered
somehow close to the Gaya-hypothesis, like Felix Guattari, who published in 1989 "The three
ecologies". Guattari describes a conception of ecology which is holistic and interests several
spheres of the human condition. It is not only about natural environment but it is about the
environment in which the human activity takes place as dimension where the individual subjectivity,
the community and the natural space interact and must integrate. In this dimension the ethical
approach to the otherness, to the alterity, which can be human, animal, vegetal, spiritual, has to
change in the direction of the cohabitation of different subjectivities and a balanced reciprocal
support. In practical terms, the crisis that we still tend to conceive just in terms of scarcity of natural
resources is for him a general social crisis where the relationship with the Self and the Other has

122
The Gaya hypothesis is famous today for the publications of the scientist James Lovelock in the 70s. However the
idea of the Nature as integrated balanced system, into which, among all the others organisms, also the human species
interacts, goes back already to the Greek tradition, from which Lovelock takes the name ‘Gaia’.

72
been deteriorated by the consumerism and the mass-media type of information and education. The
slow impairment of the sociality and the relation in the community, the transformation in the family
structure, the education to material consumption and civil de-responsibility changed the way how
we relate to ourselves and to the self of others. The other is not recognised as richness to host and
with whom re-create the sense of the common, but as diversity to be conformed to the big existent
and homogenous identity. So are the dynamics of the immigration, where integration is so difficult;
so are the dynamics towards the environment that we continue to treat as an external dimension to
be used for our needs. The technocratic and economic approach to it keeps trying to find better and
more efficient ways to use resources, not realising that this attitude towards the nature is totally
counter-productive. Ecology today is not about saving a green park or respecting the standards put
on greenhouse gases emission. It is about changing the ethical orientation towards a system
depending on natural conditions, where the role of the humankind is to create intelligent
communities, responsible for the whole system and aware of the limits and the duty towards other
living organisms. This kind of ecology regards many spheres of decision and requires a cultural
revolution. It needs a mind capable to conceive a mature, responsible orientation abandoning the
logic of profit, growth, power and consumption that are the leitmotiv of our time. These models are
responsible for catastrophic ecological consequences and a simple reductive treatment of the
problems will be poor and ineffective. Guattari’s Ecology is conceived as a mental and social
platform to reinvent and re-educate this new mentality.

Non si avrà alcuna risposta alla crisi ecologica se non su scala planetaria e a condizione che
si operi un’autentica rivoluzione politica, sociale e culturale che sappia riorientare gli
obiettivi della produzione dei beni materiali e immateriali. Le nostre società si accontentano
di affrontare il terreno delle nocività industriali in una prospettiva tecnocratica, mentre
soltanto un´articolazione etico-politica dell´ambiente, quello dei rapporti sociali e quello
della soggettività umana, sarebbe capace di far adeguata luce su questi problemi.123

Ecosophy124 is for Guattari a subject that can drive us to readdress our attitude towards these
spheres, the human, the nature, the subjectivity and the community. Such study should interest three
stages, the social, the mental and the environmental. What Guattari calls ´social ecosophy´ consists
in developing philosophical practices in order to modify and re-invent the way of living into couple,
family, urban context, work and so forth, to reconstruct the human relationships in transversal fields.

123
See Guattari Fèlix (1991), Le tre ecologie: l’umanità e il suo destino, Milano: Ed. Sonda, p. 14.
124
The term Ecosophy is used by the next three authors each in his own personal way. The meanings have some
elements in common but they result from different elaborations and therefore cannot be overlapped like one only
concept.

73
It is supposed to build a new way of togetherness on institutional and private level. The ´mental
ecosophy´ consists in the daily life attitudes and creative personal ethic of every individual, in his
domestic, neighbourhood, familiar dimension. It should drive to new relations with the own body,
the spirituality, the time, the life and the death, a new attitude towards the self, that has to find
defence against the manipulation of the mass media and the modes and marketing, being an artist in
divenire in realizing the person who does not only conform to the consumeristic ideology. The
‘environmental ecosophy´ has to deal especially with the mechanization and the use of the
technology to handle problems like the demographic overpopulation. It will have to consider the
human purpose of the scientific progress and calibrate the human intervention on the natural
balances and limits. The relation and interconnectedness among nature, psyche and sociality are
being deteriorated because we keep being passive and indifferent in front of big questions that are at
this point crucial. Instead these three elements cannot be separated. The individual needs to recover
the harmony with the nature and with the community and shape an ethical attitude towards the
reality. The interactions among ecosystems, social and psychological universes must be recovered
addressing the human interventions towards proper human purposes. We cannot just delegate
governments and technocrats to control the evolutions of things in base of criteria such us economic
profit. Each local subjectivity must engage to propose effective and original practices, not
homologated to others but keeping their diversity and specific alternative solutions. So should the
ecological movements intervene in the social frame, not just remaining some among many modes or
temporary and partial focus of the politics. New systems of values, like the solidarity, the equality,
the aesthetics, the spirituality, instead of the profit, should be the line leading these processes. As
Franco La Cecla125 states, there is no technical solution to the ecological problem, but every attempt
to increase the economic efficiency will fail. Solutions are not the drop of pollution by industries or
a more rational use of resources. Things like nuclear energy are not to refuse just because it is
dangerous. These are attempts to escape again the limits of the human condition and of the nature,
desperately inventing technical tries. This attitude indeed won´t work because it keeps valid the
same logic of the utilitarianism and exploitation of the planet as a pile of resources to be consumed
to satisfy the unlimited needs of the homo oeconomicus.

É necessaria un´immensa ricostruzione degli ingranaggi sociali per far fronte ai danni
prodotti dal Capitalismo Mondiale Integrato. Questa ricostruzione non passa tanto per delle
riforme di vertice, attraverso leggi, decreti, programmi burocratici quanto piuttosto
attraverso la promozione di pratiche innovative, il proliferare di esperienze alternative,

125
See Franco La Cecla, Postfazione to Guattari Fèlix (1991).

74
 centrate sul rispetto della singolarità e sul lavoro permanente di produzione di soggettività,
che si autonomizza per articolarsi congruamente con il resto della società.126

 Raimon Panikkar, Ecosophy and Earth’s spirituality

Sharing the same attitude towards the ecology the Spanish philosopher Raimon Panikkar127
elaborates a conception of the relationship between human and nature that tends to a more spiritual
meaning. It refuses the distinction between them and inserts them in an animistic system of
harmony with the totality of the cosmos, in which man, nature and God are one only thing. The
relevant point for the ecology is in this case the idea of promoting the development of a new
mentality and a cultural revolution to save the planet from the ecological catastrophe. We must
learn to relate to nature not as something external to us, but as part of it in an interdependent and
homeostatic balance, where the action of the humans have to respect the time and pace of the nature.
He insists on the need of a balanced relationship and a feeling of love and respect for the
environment because we are one thing with it and loving ourselves means also loving the nature.
Panikkar tries to define a sense of spirituality in the reality that we have lost because of the
scientific knowledge that tends to mechanise and sectorize it in many divided fields, violating the
natural rhythms and losing the sense of the whole. So as Guattari, he identifies the need of a new
orientation of the humanity that has to start from the role of the singular individual, that is political
and who can realise himself into the polis, the political community. Such participation is different
from the modern political action that consists in the technocratic management by the few. He speaks
about participation into the community with which everyone can realise his own artistic potential,
through the art, the creativity, the togetherness, as a dimension of every being, and not a subject for
specialists in the parliament. The political engagement regarding the ecology should be therefore
something different from the usual reaction of political technicians who find mechanical solutions
to treat the nature with more diplomacy and avoid the worst effects, but still keeping the purpose of
exploiting it. In this sense P. uses the term ´ecosofia´, to indicate an idea of ecology that goes
beyond the traditional and partial meaning of the term and defines a deeper and spiritual conception
of it. Having a harmonic relation with the nature means, for him, taking care of it as we take care of
ourselves, promoting cooperation, synergy and awareness, respecting the homeostatic operation and
the resilience capability of natural systems. We should find a connection with the environment,

126
See Guattari Felix (1991), p. 37.
127
See Panikkar Raimon (1993), Ecosofia: la nuova saggezza. Per una spiritualità della terra, Assisi: Cittadella Editrice.

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being able to listen to it and intervene in the best ways it requires to keep its inner homeostatic
balance.

Quando l´uomo segue la natura, non sfrutta ma cresce ed evolve. La pace con la terra
esclude la vittoria sulla terra, la sua sottomissione e il suo sfruttamento a nostro uso e
consumo. Richiede invece collaborazione, sinergia e consapevolezza. Ma la reazione normale
del pensiero tecnologico al problema ecologico è di trovare una soluzione tecnologica, non di
ricercarne le cause. Il rimedio non può però venire da nessuno di noi preso isolatamente, ma
soltanto da tutti noi insieme128.

From that comes the need to consider the educative task of the ecology nowadays. Every alternative
social practice has the role to propose and educate to another possibility of development for new
generations, in order to shape them to be prepared to the effects that this crisis will show in the next
future. Educating to sustainability is a necessity to address the future citizenship towards this new
mentality.

Ritengo che l´azione ecologista abbia essenzialmente il significato educativo di preparare le

persone che possono intuire già adesso i possibili effetti a essere pronte a un modello di
sviluppo alternativo a quello che noi viviamo dalla rivoluzione industriale. Tutte le nostre
piccole azioni sono una strada soprattutto educativa, di ricerca e di studio.129

 Arne Naess’s ecosophy and the Deep Ecology

We simply have to admit that we as humans have to try to act as integrated persons, and
societies must be integrated societies, even if they are to be pluralistic. A philosophy is pre-
supposed. I have proposed as example Ecosophy T.130

A common question to philosophers involved in environmental issues is about the link between the
two fields, environmental and philosophical. The relation between ecology and philosophy is not
always clear. If we try to emancipate our thought from the reductive fragmentation and sectorizing
of the modern sciences, ecologic issues relate to philosophy, since philosophy investigates the place

128
See Panikkar Raimon (1993), p. 115.
129
Id., p. 125.

130
See Arne Naess (1990), p. 120.

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of the human in the world and the relation with the nature is the first level to reconsider with a
philosophical and systemic perspective. Especially, it will be required a constructive cooperation
and reciprocal listening between economy and environmental studies. They usually dislike or are
hostile towards each other. The ones lack the necessary knowledge of the others to integrate the
subjects and they usually oppose their argumentation without understanding each other and
collaborating towards a common end. Yet there are some approaches that are becoming
environmentally involved among economists and with them should environmentalism engage to
promote teamwork. As we will see later, a trans-disciplinarity approach into the research about
sustainability is necessary and determinant. To this end Naess identifies a term, to give a status to
this affirmation, Ecophilosophy. With this term he indicates a field of study to be collocated in the
university. However from Ecophilosophy he distinguished the second term ‘ecosophy’, which
regards instead a certain philosophy of life, a point of view, a mentality that is part of our own
personal life style, our approach to practical situations.

His ecosophy is, analogously to the previous scholars, a mental perspective that aims to reveal the
harmonic interrelation existing between human being and nature, but Naess’ ecosophy relates more
to a personal philosophy of life that everyone can freely develop. There’s no one only solution, each
is personal and specific, but it can agree on some general issues like about the environment. Four
processes in his ecosophy are to be considered. The first is the ‘self-realization’ as expansion of the
self not in the self-centred solitude, but conceived as part of the whole, including others and nature.
It is not the realization of the singular one but of a large inclusive Self. The second concept is the
‘Derivation’, through which he identifies the process of interconnectedness with which the parts are
linked into the reality adapting to each other, and the intuition to see how they make sense in the
larger structure because of their gestalt131 relations. Organisms, parts of the nature, are not a
different thing from the milieu, the environment, but they are in relational junction with the total
field (the ‘self’ growths towards the ‘Self’132). This sense of the small into the relational whole is
something to be grasped by individuals. To mention the Indian philosophy, “He whose self is
harmonised by Yoga he sees the Self abiding in all beings and all beings in the Self”133. The third
process is the ‘Identification’ that consists in identifying ourselves with the natural ecosystem,
whose interests are our interests. The intrinsic value of the nature must be an imperative and a

131
The term is used in relation to the meaning that the psychology of perception gave to it as ontology and conception
of the life. As the most famous slogan of it is ‘ the whole is more than the sum of its parts’, in the same way the
human-nature system is conceived as integrated and interconnected among its parts, not mechanical sum of divided
elements.
132
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 56.
133
See Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Ch. 6, verse 29, mentioned in Naess Arne (1990), p. 194.

77
source of respect and love. We can identify ourselves with animals or plants and we do this in many
ways since our childhood, through the ‘personification’ or ‘anthropomorphising’ of objects and
creatures as a game, or simply experiencing our natural emphatic capacity, that makes us feel what
another sentient feels. When we feel sorry for hurting a living being we are identifying ourselves
with him thanks to our empathy.134The greater our comprehension of our togetherness with other
beings, the greater the identification, the greater care we will take.

Comparing with the traditional ecology Naess’ ecosophy requires what is said to be a ‘deep’
approach to environmentalism. His attitude is first of all a not anthropocentric approach to the
environmental problems. The consequent ‘Deep Ecology’ movement that developed from Naess, is
centred on the ecosphere and oriented to ‘eco-centric’ solutions to environmental problems. The
human being is seen in intrinsic relation with others organisms and in the milieu that excludes the
exploitation, suppression or use of other parts of the system. Every human or non-human life has, in
the Deep Ecology perspective, an inner value that condemns damage or exploitation for human
purposes unless it is for vital needs. In this sense, humans are required to diminish or manage their
interference with non-human beings in a balanced and harmonic way, in order to preserve the
richness and diversity of life forms and their habitat. Our presence on the planet is indeed massive
and our interference is too excessive. This perspective is placed in contrast with the traditional
ecology movement, called by him “shallow” and similar to the “Weak Sustainability” perspective,
still inspired by the anthropocentric and utilitarian culture of materialistic accumulation and profit’s
growth. More than the lack of ethical implication, what the ‘shallow’ ecology misses, for Naess, is
an explicit concern with ultimate aims, goals and norms.135

New consciousness, new culture: Aesthetics, Spirituality and “Deep Ecology”

Averting the environmental disasters ask for a revocation of the whole life-style, even of the
very principle of the advanced industrial societies, and will hurt an endless number of
interests.136

Promoting a culture of sustainability will mean creating long-term strategies that are practised by
the people in their daily life. The daily routine will have to follow sustainable principles and

134
See Naess Arne (1990), p.175
135
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 33.
136
See Jonas Hans (1984), The Imperative Responsibility. In search of an Ethics for the technological Age, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, p. 202

78
pathways, but before realising these concrete outcomes a new deep consciousness must be
developed, one of awareness, engagement and responsibility.

The role of Aesthetics in reawakening Spirituality

All the four voices mentioned above strive for a deep radical change in the cultural assets and in the
mentality and perception of the environment. All of them, in different ways and more or less
profoundly, refer to the need of recovering a spiritual dimension in the perception of itself by the
humanity and its intention towards the world. This spirituality, that doesn’t need to be conceived
necessarily in religious terms, implies a turn from the anthropocentric conception of the humankind
to an intuition of harmonic belonging to the whole reality, according to which there is no
antagonism or fronts between us and the nature, but all the elements are part of the same totality and
not taking care of the environment corresponds to not taking care of ourselves. Many scholars from
literature, poetry and arts’ fields137 have been denouncing in the last decades the dangerous
degeneration of the modern prototype of social subject and life-style, condemned to consumerism,
technological progress, mechanisation and monetization of the life. They condemn the separation
between the self and the nature outside, product of an historical development typical of the western
society, in which our inner essence is disconnected from the totality of the world and we perceive
ourselves as isolated, self-referenced, self-absorbed and in competition with each other and with the
rest of the world.

Our Western ontology of separation of human from world has resulted in a state of narcissism
and anaesthesis, the opposite of aesthesis; a disconnection “between what is thought, said
and written and what the senses see, the heart feels and the world suffers”. 138

According to them, our perception of the reality is dominated by hyper-rational analysis, technics
and utilitarian action and we can’t perceive our deeper sense of being in the world, a world that
is “over humanised” 139. We are alienated from the aesthetics, the intrinsic capability to feel the
beauty and to conceive us in harmony with nature. To limit this alienation we need to recover the
aesthetic experience of the reality and of the nature that can re-educate the soul and the heart to

137
See Bergmann Sigurd, Blindoc Irmgard and Ott Konrad. (2013), Aesth/Ethics in Environmental Change, Hiking
through the arts, ecology, religion and ethics of the environment, Studies in Religion and the Environment (Vol. 7),
Berlin: LIT Verlag, p. 85.
138
See Carruthers Beth, “Call and Response”, in Bergmann S., Blindoc I. and Ott K. (2013) , p. 133-136, referring to
James Hillman’s aesthetics.
139
See Clingerman Forrest,” Working within the Frame, Breaking Outside the Borders: Intersections in the theological
Experience of Art and Place”, in Bergmann S., Blindoc I. and Ott K. (2013), p. 85.

79
 the beauty, to respect and feel part of it and to strength therefore an ethical attitude of
responsibility towards it, not imposed by moral norms, but felt through wonder and spontaneous
intuition. They call for

An adequate spiritual vision for our ecological era. […] Such awareness leads to a profound
spiritual and ethical awakening, to a new way of perceiving and insightful political actions.
Wonder can galvanise this human energy, imagination, wisdom, insight, to learn the Earth’s
dynamics and educate an ethical imagination and sensitiveness.140

Through the aesthetic contemplation of the beauty and of the nature we can educate our
sensitiveness to fill active part of the reality and therefore responsible for it, stimulating a sense of
engagement. This should allow on a first stage to reconcile the soul and the emotions with the
mind and the rational thinking, and on a second stage our self with the world that we usually
perceive as external, separated and detached.

The prospect of Deep Ecology and the controversies of the movement

For the shallow ecological movement the task is essentially one of ‘social engineering’,
modifying human behaviour through laws and regulations posed by ministries and
departments of the environment – for the short-term well-being of humans. Those political
questions are significantly different from those of the deep movement.141

This claim to recover a sense of unification and respect of the nature has been pursued by the “Deep
Ecology” movement, based on Naess’ thought. N. conies this expression in 1973 and initially aimed
just to describe theoretically the sense given to the “deep” questioning of his “ecology” in
comparison with the superficial “shallow ecology”. In order to state the perspective of the Deep
Ecology he elaborates eight principles:

1- The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in
themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human
purposes.
2- Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also
values in themselves.
3- Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs.

140
See Heather Eaton, “Forces of Nature”, in Bergmann S., Blindoc I. and Ott K. (2013), pp. 120-123.
141
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 162.

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 4- The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the
human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
5- Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly
worsening.
6- Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and
ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
7- The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of
inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be
a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
8- Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to
implement the necessary changes.

The conception of the world of deep ecologists is characterised by the metaphysics of

interconnectedness and interrelation. The core values are taken from Naess ecosophy and re-
elaborated in the context of the movement that the Deep Ecology will develop. Every element of the
reality is seen as interrelated to the others and no one has higher value than the others. All beings, as
the principle of “biospherical egalitarianism” indicates, share the same right to life and oppression
or exploitation of any of them by others is not admitted unless for extreme justified raisons such as
survive. It derives that the humans cannot exploit the environment, but they should take from nature
the indispensable to satisfy basic needs. Beyond that, we should develop a different awareness
towards the nature, where we are not external consumers, but we are part of it and we realise
ourselves in it through the process of identification with it and self-realization. Naess proposes a
new paradigm where the individual selfhood is conceived in the large and holistic identification
with the environment. We shouldn’t conceive ourselves as singular bodies isolated from the rest,
but as identified with the large rest of life. If we see it this way it becomes consequential that
defending and taking care of the nature means also taking care of ourselves, as part of it. It is in this
sense that he speaks about self-realization, as an enlargement of our self-love towards the entire
environment and, in doing so, as the “actualization of our greatest potentiality for being”.142

Feeling responsible for the nature shouldn’t come, for Naess, from moral duty or legal imposition,
but, in the prospect of the Deep Ecology, as inner inclination and spontaneous deliberation. This
inclination is supposed to fight the instrumental attitude that the humans adopt towards non-humans,

142
See Freya Mathews, “Deep Ecology”, in Dale Jamieson edited by (2001), A companion to Environmental Philosophy,
Malden (Mass): Blackwell Publishers Inc., p. 252.

81
in the name of an “intrinsic value” proper to every being. Recognising an “intrinsic value” in ethics
means that every element in nature has its own raison to be, its own value and end in itself,
independently of the utility that it may have for humans. Hence the interference of human activities
in the environment , where non-humans live and have the same ethical value, should be reduced as
much as possible, to allow to the natural processes to happen freely and adjust themselves. The
attempt to which deep ecologists point is obviously to turn the anthropocentric outlook of modern
western culture into a non-anthropocentric one and they try to do it through equalising the ethical
value of living beings. This position opens to several controversial points that, together with other
weaknesses, provoked the raise of many critics to the movement.

From the first definitions of “deep questioning” of Naess’ ecology, the idea of a deeper approach to
environmental problems developed in an activist movement in the 80s, when the principles
mentioned above have been presented as representative platform in the book “Deep Ecology:
Living as if Nature matters”, by Naess in cooperation with George Session and Bill Devall. At that
point, as Freya Mathews states, Deep Ecology shifted from philosophical paradigm to activist
movement and it has been useful to inspire the environmental mobilization of the 70s and 80s.

Although the Deep Ecology perspective has had an important role in the political dynamics
concerning environmental activism and awareness of the last decades, the theory generated with the
time many weak points and levities that attracted critics from several sides of the academics, like
the social environmentalism or the ecofeminism. It has been criticised the tendency of deep
ecologists to remain strict and absolute in their definitions and intolerant towards positions that
didn’t accept totally their principles. The invitation to agree with their non-anthropocentric view of
the reality seemed to require the total subscription of its delineations, even though they are
problematic.

The raison that deep ecologists mention for the modern anthropocentrism is the western historical
development (in particular the role played by religion in this) of the dichotomy between human and
nature. However, this explanation of the detachment of the mind from the external world misses,
according to Ecofeminists and Social ecologists143, the determinant factor of the domination as
intrinsic tendency in the human nature. Domination is a tendency that humans have always shown
in many contexts and it simply apply to the nature as it has applied to other humans from humans or
to woman from men. Humans tend to establish relationships of dominance and this doesn’t depend
on the geography or on the culture, but it is an essential factor to consider when understanding

143
See Dale Jamieson (2001).

82
anthropocentrism and the ways to change it. Most part of the social dimensions is indeed
hierarchical, in consequence of this tendency, and the same happens when we consider humans and
non-humans.

Also deep ecologists stress the importance of wilderness conservation and the reduction of human
interference as much as possible. In this sense nature should be let doing alone, excluding the
humans in it. They justify human utilitarian intervention only in case of valid extreme raisons or to
fulfil basic needs. Yet, what means basic needs? Are they simply feeding and clothing like
indigenous groups still do? This definition is impossible to apply to the modern western society.
How to define basic needs in a time of waste and consumerism? It remains unclear. Deep Ecology
doesn’t provide practical strategies about how to behave more ethically in our modern capitalistic
society and in our daily life in urban metropolises, where the idealistic aspiration to recover
wilderness is impossible and it seems an irrational hope to escape reality. The eco-centric idea of
wilderness, taken at the extremes, would lead the human species to self-destruction. If humans
wouldn’t intervene in the environment they wouldn’t survive. In order to survive we do destroy life
continuously (if we wouldn’t destroy viruses or bacteria we would be probably already extinct), but
the principle of egalitarian biocentrism doesn’t admit to use this power of destruction at the expense
of other beings, because they have the same right to life. There is an inner contradiction laying in
the attempt to recover the unity between humans and non-humans that Deep Ecology pursues, and
the risk of misanthropy in the moment when non-human nature has even priority on humans. The
consequences of the concept, if considered in absolute terms, are controversial and they can arrive
to the extreme try of sacrificing humanity or individuals’ interests for non-humans’ ones. It risks
generating in what is called “Ecofascism”.
The idealisation of the wilderness seems, on the contrary of the initial intentions of Deep Ecology,
emphasising even more the detachment between humanity and nature, aspiring to a separation and
independence of both, rather than integration. This idea of the wild with minimum artificial
interference lacks also a broad and deep knowledge of the environment and the relation that
indigenous populations have with it. Deep ecologists consider hunter-gatherer populations as acting
in harmony with the nature, but instead they are also interventionists and they exploit natural
resources as well, even if with minor gravity. Who instead kept a good harmony although
intervening in the environment to satisfy human needs, are many subsistence gardening cultures
leaded by women, as the Ecofeminists remember, but Deep Ecology doesn’t’ consider them at all in
its argumentations. This omission links to a broader blindness in the Deep Ecology analysis,
denounced for example by Ramachandra Guha, that consists in considering the environment from a

83
western perspective, but asking to change attitude to non-western countries, to which, some of Deep
Ecology concepts are stranger, beyond being unjust. The concept of wilderness in the sense
conceived by Deep Ecology is unknown to many indigenous ethnicities and populations of the
South of the world, that didn’t experience the development of consumeristic and capitalistic
societies. Requiring the global south to reduce pollution is another form of ecofascism for him,
given that global South countries are not actually responsible for the environmental crisis, mostly
due to the western overexploitation of natural assets.

The concept of self-realization is complex as well. In a certain sense, taking care of the nature as a
way to take care of ourselves because we are a part of it, therefore defence of the environment
corresponds to self-defence, has been defined as simply another form of anthropocentrism, enlarged
to the whole environment instead of just to the individual self. So it doesn’t really change the
attitude towards the environment, but it simply enlarges the depth of it.

In general, it has been criticised that Deep Ecology remains pretty dogmatic and less elastic and
tolerant towards other perspectives. Many theoretical argumentations remain also problematic and
too less consistent. However, Naess opened, through spreading the Deep Ecology paradigm and
philosophy, an important platform of discussion and challenge when the concerns about the
environment started to arise. He contributed to the theorisation of a different paradigm and began to
doubt deeply and criticise strongly the current mentality that we had (and we still have) towards the
nature. Many argumentations that he inserted into a precise thought and movement are today shared
wildly by many people, without necessarily belonging to an activist group or to the Deep Ecology
movement.

In the end deep ecologists have the same purpose and hope of the scholars that call for a return of
spirituality. Their hope is the same shared by Panikkar, Felix and others. It’s the try to stimulate for
a turn of mentality in order to avoid the collapse of our species.

Beyond the specific differences among each author, through their argumentations they all try to
educate people to different mind-sets, more ethical, harmonic with the reality, reasonable and
simply more human. Cultivating spirituality, harmony with the reality, sensitiveness and
responsibility is part of the education to a culture of sustainability that would contain deeper
conceptualisations of the reality and innovative strategies of thought.

84
In order to promote this, two of the main tools of a cultural approach to the environmental crisis
are Education and Trans-disciplinarity perspectives in the research. The first to shape future
people to sustainability, the second to improve the knowledge and the paradigms that we adopt, in
order to understand the situation and to define the strategies. Education prepares the actors to
participate in the solutions, Transdisciplinarity perspectives in the research address better and
more complete standpoints and comprehension to conceive the solutions. In the next two chapters
I will describe both the tools.

85
Chapter V - Education to sustainability

When Jane Goodall talks to the large audience of her conferences around the world, she points
especially to young and children. She talks directly to them and she asks to meet the children taking
part to environmental projects in the local communities. She declares in her book “Raisons for
Hope”144and in her public talks, that, although the dramatic environmental crisis that we are
experiencing, she still believes that we can change the things, and this hope is mostly inspired by
the youth. The message that she spreads is that we can all make a different impact on the planet and
that it will be especially up to the future generations the capability to deal with the future challenges.
The only way to prepare them is educating them both in institutional and informal stages,
transmitting them and letting them interiorizing a new way to consider themselves into the natural
world and new mental skills to approach problems. To this end, beyond speaking in public meetings
about environmental awareness, she promoted the foundation of educational programs and
projects.145
The most immediate place where this kind of education can be addressed is obviously the school.
Educational programs have started to focus more on sustainability and environment, and in some
cases they also introduced new goals and methodologies, like the insertion of gardening in some
schools and the direct management of the gardens by the kids. However, education doesn’t depend
only on schools and institutions. There are many agencies that shape, formally or informally, and
they include also mass media. Every occasion of confrontation and experience that can enrich the
sensitiveness and knowledge towards the environment is precious for young persons and these
occasions are many. Civil Society movements and sustainable habits diffused among citizens are
growing, and this happens mostly without control of authority or political management. It comes
spontaneously from the bottom and divulges alternative ways to participate in the community, to
consume and to choose.

In this chapter I will first describe the consumeristic lifestyle as determinant element to fight against
and to change thanks to the education, in order to promote sustainable modes of living. I will
explain how consumerism works as one necessary aspect of the capitalistic economic model,

144
See Jane Goodall and Phillip Berman (2000), Raison for Hope: a Spiritual Journey, New York: Grand Central
Publishing, and Jane’s Journey (2010), documentary directed by Lorenz Knauer, Germany.
145
See Jane Goodall Institute, a global non-profit organisation, supporting the youth program Roots and Shoots, a
project to nurture values of civic responsibility, environmental stewardship, and peace, in order to create community-
based solutions to big challenges run by young people. http://www.rootsandshoots.org/about
quoting Bauman and his point of view about it. Then I will delineate the two channels through
which education to sustainability can be socially promoted: the institutional pathways defined by
the international frameworks and the informal channels through the Civil Society bottom activism.

Consumerism and its unsustainable education to “consume” the Nature.

No one, declares the Pope John Paul II, who understands the aesthetic and moral dimensions
of human life can accept either the social inequalities that disfigure world society or the
specific form of alienation inherent in consumerism.146

The first issue to consider to promote a culture of sustainability is the consumeristic life style.
Consumerism is part of the engine of the economic model founded on exploitation of natural assets
and waste release, and that drove us towards the ecological disasters.

Every society consumes in order to survive. ‘Consumption’ means using things to satisfy needs and
desires and it is properly part of every living organism, as the organic processes take place through
transformation and consumption of energy and matter, like it happens in the metabolic cycle. In this
sense consuming is normal. The news of the industrial society was the introduction of money to
intermediate the action of taking goods to satisfy needs, so that the good (and beyond the desire)
started to be bought. The process of monetisation and materialization of the human desires was
followed by the growth of production, availability and choice of goods (with the industrial and mass
production). In our society the action of consuming assumes a different meaning, far from the
natural one. Consuming commodities, that we wouldn’t naturally need, in the modern world,
becomes a social pattern after the “consumerist revolution”. Consuming excesses of goods and
indulging the desire to own them has become a “purpose of existence”147. According to Bauman148
our post-modern society of consumerism differs from the previous one because, while before people
were occupied mostly to produce, it was a society of producers, today we are occupied to consume
as much as possible, to keep going a system based on this. Before entering the society of consumers,
producers’ purpose was ensuring security, reliability and durability in the time. The wish of
producers was to appropriate and possess goods that were time-resistant, to gain comfort and
esteem. Consumers, on the contrary, wish the “gratification of needs” researching more volume and
intensity of the desires, that are actually induced by the availability to have them, and not because

146
See Norman Birnbaum, After the Disappointment of the Epoch, in Walser Michael (1995), p. 263.
147
See Bauman Zygmunt (2007), Consuming life, Hoboken (NJ): John Wiley & Sons, p. 26.
148
See Bauman Zygmunt (2009), “Dall’etica del lavoro all’estetica del consumismo”, in Lavoro, Consumismo e nuove
povertà, Troina: Ed. Città Aperta.

87
they are real needs. The speed to live these induced desires is high: they are instantaneous and the
possession of something needs to be immediately replaced with something new, as soon as the
satisfactory power of the owned disappears. The possess of new goods generates new desires and
new desires aim to possess new goods, in a vicious circle of dependence: new needs need new
commodities; new commodities need new needs and desires; the advent of consumerism augurs the
era of ‘inbuilt obsolescence’ of goods offered on the market and signals a spectacular rise in the
waste-disposal industry.149 The consumerist satisfaction of needs is illusory and instantaneous. It
lasts short time, it’s an instant and this instant remains isolated with other many instants of the daily
happening. B. describes the time dimension of the consumeristic society as “pointillistic”, not linear
nor circular, but interrupted and inconsistent, without continuity and integrity in its parts. So it is the
way how we enjoy consumeristic desires, like “eternal instants” and self-enclosed monads, each of
which is a potential chance project, that remains however wasted, not developed, not realised, as it
is just an isolated point, unlinked by causal logic with previous and next moments. Consumers are
induced to jump from one good to the other, from one instant to the other, as long as they provoke
pleasure. When their satisfactory effect ends, they must move to the next point, in a continuous
turnover of commodities to be appropriated and then thrown away. The circle is based on
psychological compulsion and addiction; actions are not made after a critical reflection and analysis,
but following the categorical impulse of desiring. The hidden aim of consumerism is the illusion of
gratification, but that never completes itself. Consumers buy trying to satisfy their desire, but the
desire remains always partly unsatisfied. It is in the inner nature of the compulsory dependency to
own commodities the impossibility to satisfy individuals’ desires, because the entire economic
system is based on this. Capitalistic and consumeristic economy survives thanks to the flow of
goods that are consumed. When consumers stop consuming the economy collapses, therefore it
developed a functioning that implies a vicious dependency, the more we try to satisfy the desire to
own things, the more the desire augments.

The promise of satisfaction remains seductive only as long as the desire stays ungratified and
the client is not completely satisfied…[…] Consumer society thrives as long as it manages to
render the non-satisfaction of its members perpetual. The method of achieving such an effect
is to denigrate and devalue consumer products shortly after they have been hyped into the
universe of the consumers’ desires.150

149
See Bauman Zygmunt (2007), p 31.
150
Id. , p.46.

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As many intellectuals already explained, the culture of consumerism requires the recognition of a
high value given to the material things and possession. Social esteem depends on the material
property that is shown and that identifies the status of consumer. Social recognition is externalized
in the show of the owned that any individual can support. Consumerism is based on materialization
and on the alienation that comes from the reduction of the reality to mere objects of manipulation
that our technologies provoke: “Consumers’ subjectivity is made out of shopping choices made by
the subject; its description takes the form of the shopping list. What is assumed to be the
materialization of the inner truth of the self is in fact an idealization of the material-objectified-
traces of consumer choices”151. To obtain adaptation to such culture the individuals are being
educated since their early childhood to consume. They learn to accumulate many objects without
particular value and to receive ready things to be used and wasted. The activity of “doing it
yourself”, of playing through building something, training the own fantasy, reaching an aim through
personal engagement and patience, cooperating with peers, is often substituted by the consumption
of a ready object that is enjoyed alone. The value given to things is different from the one given to
something that is the result of personal creativity and activity, while the impulse to possess the thing
seduces the egoistic tendency to isolate the self and being jealous of what one has got.
Consumerism induces to enjoy the pleasure of commodities in solitude, but expects every
individual to be part of the big group of the consumeristic society. It doesn’t favour the shaping of
groups of people that share interests and company, but it induces to stand together united by the
consumeristic behaviour, but mentally and emotionally isolated. Even when women go shopping
together, their enjoyment of things bought is individual. B. describes this way of togetherness as
being part of ‘swarms’. Swarms of individuals move without any real form of union typical of
‘groups’. This attitude weakens progressively the meaning of belonging to the community. The
sense of community made by the sharing and the reciprocal solidarity is destroyed by the
materialization and the individualism of the consumption.152On the contrary, the value of the
community, lays in the availability to restrict every own possibility of satisfaction, for the health of
the group153: “the replacement of the power of the individual by the power of community
constitutes the decisive step of civilization. The essence of it lies in the fact that the members of the
community restrict themselves in their possibilities of satisfaction, whereas the individual knew no

151
See Bauman Zygmunt (2007), p. 15
152
Id. , p. 78: “What bonded the dinners into a group was the cooperation, accomplished or expected, in the
preceding process that started in the kitchen and even beyond, in the family field or workshop, of productive labour
and sharing consumption of what derived from that. The ‘unintended consequence’ of ‘fast food’, ‘take away’ or ‘TV
dinners’ is to make the gatherings around the family table redundant and putting an end to shared consumption. ‘Fast
food’ is there to protect the solitude of the consumers”.
153
See Freud Sygmunt (2002), Civilisation and its Discontents, London: Penguin.

89
such restriction”. Everyone, in the consumeristic society, is free to buy and enjoy his materiality
alone, but the important is that he takes part in the economic process. Who doesn’t fit with this
model, who is not able to consume because he’s poor or rejects the conformist way of living, is
excluded and emarginated. This is the destiny of every poor, according to Bauman, or socially
deviant and problematic individual (grouped by him into the category ‘underclass’), who is
incapable to make himself an attractive product to be caught by the market. People who remain
unemployed because they don’t possess the ‘qualities and skills required’ from the market, are
considered problems and blamed as failed consumers. They are guilty of the fault of not being
‘saleable’ in the labour market. Not by chance a common sentence used in the labour market is “Be
able to sell yourself” showing to own the qualities that the system needs to reproduce itself, that is
being a good consumer and help in improving the processes of the system. Being member of the
consumeristic society implies respecting those conditions.

‘To consume’ therefore means to invest in one’s own social membership, which in a society of
consumers translates as ‘saleability’: obtaining qualities for which there is already a market demand,
or recycling the qualities already possessed into commodities for which demand can go on to be
created154

Consumerism and isolation of the self are in this sense a menace for the ethics of the society.
Ethical feelings like solidarity, communion, trust and responsibility towards the other people and
the environment are values that need to be trained and socially reinforced. The consumeristic
culture instead deteriorates them. The responsibility towards the Other taken in the community,
refers here just to the self and his benefits as individual and consumer: “The concept of
responsibility and responsible choice, which resides before in the semantic field or ethical duty and
moral concern of the Other, have moved to the realm of self-fulfilment and calculation of
risks”.155Lack of social ethics doesn’t just erode the human capacity of living together, sharing and
being sympathetic with one another, but it also promotes an attitude to the reality that is totally
irresponsible. Since we can find everything ready to consume, since the welfare state system is set
in the way to make citizens dependent on its services, since the market wants us to act compulsively
and without criticism and information, our role as citizens is banished to a passive consumption also
of politics and a detachment from any argument that requires to take responsibility and act. The
political life of the passive consumer citizen is relegated to the elections’ vote and to the
uninterested listening of flow of information from the media. This cultural lack of criticism and

154
Bauman Zygmunt (2007), p.56.
155
Id., p. 92.

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responsibility is the first thing to fight if we will want to deal with global problems such as the
environmental crisis.

The environmental disaster that we experience nowadays is a product also of the consumeristic
economy. The lack of responsibility lays in the dramatic blindness (and in fact wanted blindness)
towards the phenomenon. Consumerism is based on excess and waste. The accumulation and
disposal of commodities doesn’t take into any account the limits of the natural ecosystems to
support it.

Finding a way to reconcile freedom with responsibility is one of the central challenges of living in a
consumer society. The more that consumer society encourages choice, updating, newness, waste
and the superfluity of outdated technology, the more the link between freedom and responsibility
weakens.156

Consumerism is definitely an unsustainable model to which we are shaped to adapt. However this
model is not tolerated anymore by the ecosystem, therefore all institutions, educational agencies,
media, have to be readdressed in their perspectives, purposes and tools.

Institutional pathway of education to sustainability: the goals according to the

international frameworks

Already twenty years ago it was common to have in the primary schools some parts of programs
devoted to environmental projects. Nowadays it is possible at school to participate in activities that
have to do with the nature and they are likely to be given a big importance. Beyond the projects of
gardening, there are guided visits in factories157, hand-made production of food and objects, there
are even schools entirely located in the woods 158 where children from 3 to 6 years live their
“kindergarten” totally in the wild nature.159 All of these initiatives contribute to shape a citizenship
capable to support sustainable patterns of development and consumption.

The global citizenship that will grow in the next decades should develop some skills, competencies,
receptiveness and knowledge, that define a kind of intelligence that is compatible with the new
patterns that the environmental challenge requires. We are right now not able to deal properly with

156
Id. , p. 92.
157
See the project “Fattorie didattiche”, that establishes a cooperation between local farms and schools, in order to
guest children and practically live with them “farm’s days”, doing practical activities, visiting the farms, having contact
with plants and animals and learn about nutrition, nature and community. http://www.fattoriedidattiche.biz/
158
See the Italian project “Asilo nel Bosco” http://www.asilonelbosco.it/
159
It’s interesting to reflect on the fact that these new trends often bring back up some of the ways of life and
education that were normal just 40-50 years ago in every land area far from metropolises and big cities.

91
the ecological problems. We are on the way to define the strategies to become so, but we proceed
very slowly and much hope is directly put in the new generations that are both the victims and must
be also partly the solvers of what we, previous inhabitants, will not have managed. This means that
these future citizens will have to grow internalising different models and mentalities from ours, if
we want them to be part of the cultural change needed. They won’t just need to learn the respect and
sensitiveness for the nature, but they will experiment new ways of thinking and new paradigms,
more appropriate and effective than the ones to which we are still used, to approach new global
problems. They will be capable of an intelligence that is adequate to the challenges that will come. I
will call this kind of intelligence ‘sustainable mentality’.

A society of this kind would be a learning society, one able to respond to new exigencies
because the persons who constitute it are capable of replacing, after critical reflection
together, acquired and accustomed ideas and habits with new ones. It would be a society in
which presently intangible achievements in humane skills are made more tangible, in which
leadership would be exemplary and pedagogic rather than narcissistic and solitary. 160

To develop a sustainable mentality it is essential to start to familiarise with certain models of

learning and practices since the early childhood. The job of shaping future generations to
sustainable patterns is of the education. Education is the engine of the change towards sustainability
and the instrument to produce long-term responses.

Quoting the DESD Implementation Scheme 2005- 2014, education has the key role for the change:

Education must inspire the belief that each of us has both the power and the responsibility to
effect positive change on a global scale.

It is the primary agent of transformation towards sustainable development, increasing people’s

capacities to transform their visions for society into reality.

It fosters the values, behaviour and lifestyles required for a sustainable future.

Education for sustainable development is a process of learning how to make decisions that
consider the long-term future of the equity, economy and ecology of all communities.

Education builds the capacity for such futures-oriented thinking161.

160
See Birnbaum Norman, After the Disappointment of the Epoch, in Walzer Michael (1995), p. 291.

161
See UNESCO and DESD (2005), DESD IIS Draft International Implementation Scheme (2005-2014),
http://portal.unesco.org/education/es/file_download.php/e13265d9b948898339314b001d91fd01draftFinal+IIS.pdf

92
Readdressing education systems in base of the concept of sustainable development means
modifying social and political structures and changing the focus to which the civil society is
committed. The future education will not have to educate to the culture of the growth and
consumption, but, on the contrary, it will have to focus on some principles that are universally
shared by all and will contribute to inspire values that will characterise a global community of
belonging, and common goals towards which to work.

In order to define the values that we should share to be part of a global citizenship committed to
embrace peacefully the future global challenges, it has been created the Earth Charter162, an
international Declaration of principles useful to build a sustainable, just society. The Charter
describes an ethical perspective based on environmental protection, human rights, equitable human
development and peace, and it declares them as interrelated and universal principles. The proposal
that the charter encourages is the building of a global peaceful and effective partnership that will
enable us to work together and avoid destroying ourselves and our planet. It seeks to develop a
shared vision of new paradigms to adopt at individual, community, business and institutional level,
in order to pursue fundamental changes in “our values, institutions and ways of living”. As the
premise of the Charter tells:

We must realise that when basic needs are met, human development is primarily about being
more, not having more. (…) The emergence of global civil society is creating new
opportunities to build a democratic and human world. Our environmental, economic, political,
social and spiritual challenges are interconnected, and together we can forge inclusive
solutions.

Having defined the large aim, the Charter lists 16 principles, divided in 4 sections, and they are:

I. RESPECT AND CARE FOR THE COMMUNITY OF LIFE

1. Respect Earth and life in all its diversity.
2. Care for the community of life with understanding, compassion, and love.
3. Build democratic societies that are just, participatory, sustainable, and peaceful.
4. Secure Earth's bounty and beauty for present and future generations.
II. ECOLOGICAL INTEGRITY
5. Protect and restore the integrity of Earth's ecological systems, with special concern for biological
diversity and the natural processes that sustain life.

162
See The Earth Charter website, http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/pages/Read-the-Charter.html
January 2015.

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6. Prevent harm as the best method of environmental protection and, when knowledge is limited,
apply a precautionary approach.
7. Adopt patterns of production, consumption, and reproduction that safeguard Earth's regenerative
capacities, human rights, and community well-being.
8. Advance the study of ecological sustainability and promote the open exchange and wide
application of the knowledge acquired.
III. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
9. Eradicate poverty as an ethical, social, and environmental imperative.
10. Ensure that economic activities and institutions at all levels promote human development in an
equitable and sustainable manner.
11. Affirm gender equality and equity as prerequisites to sustainable development and ensure
universal access to education, health care, and economic opportunity.
12. Uphold the right of all, without discrimination, to a natural and social environment supportive
of human dignity, bodily health, and spiritual well-being, with special attention to the rights of
indigenous peoples and minorities.
IV. DEMOCRACY, NONVIOLENCE, AND PEACE
13. Strengthen democratic institutions at all levels and provide transparency and accountability in
governance, inclusive participation in decision making and access to justice.
14. Integrate into formal education and life-long learning the knowledge, values, and skills needed
for a sustainable way of life.
15. Treat all living beings with respect and consideration.
16. Promote a culture of tolerance, nonviolence, and peace.

To realise a world community able to observe those values we need a “change of mind and heart”.
We must learn to live sustainable at local, national and international level, sharing the
responsibility to prepare a better world for our children.

In the wake of the Earth Charter principles, the ESD (Education for Sustainable Development)
program has been created in 1992, through the declaration of Agenda 21, result of the Rio Summit,
in order to provide a framework as reference to readdress and re-think the education systems
towards these aims. Through the ESD governments and the international community offer a trace
to address sustainability, by identifying knowledge, issues, perspectives, skills, and values in each
of the four components of sustainability: Environment, Society, and Economy, with Culture as
cross dimension. The concept of sustainable development is not static, but it evolves and changes

94
continuously. Its definition is related to the areas indicated, according to the Unesco Associated
Schools Project Network (ASPnet)163:

 Society: an understanding of social institutions and their role in change and

development, as well as democratic and participatory systems
 Environment: an awareness of the resources and fragility of the physical
environment and the effects on it of human activity and decisions
 Economy: a sensitivity to the limits and potential of economic growth and their
impact on society and on the environment, with a commitment to assess personal
and societal levels of consumption out of concern for the environment and for
social justice.
 Culture: an understanding of the values that influence and shape individual choices
and societies, faiths and philosophies; the ways in which relationships with others
and the natural world are formed, changed and maintained, and the creative means
to express these values and relationships.

The ESD is considered a main focus towards sustainability and the Agenda 21 mentions it in each
of the 40 chapters. In order to give more centrality to it and strengthen the role of education,
training and public awareness in sustainable development initiatives, in 2002 the United Nations
General Assembly at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)
opened the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005- 2014 (DESD), that identifies
education as heart of approaches to sustainable development.164

The goals of it are to provide an opportunity for refining and promoting the vision of, and
transition to, sustainable development – through all forms of education, public awareness and
training; and to give an enhanced profile to the important role of education and learning in
sustainable development.165

163
See UNESCO Associated Schools (2009), Education for Sustainable Development, Second Collection of Good
Practices. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001812/181270e.pdf

164
See UNESCO and DESD (2005), DESD IIS Draft International Implementation Scheme (2005-2014),
http://portal.unesco.org/education/es/file_download.php/e13265d9b948898339314b001d91fd01draftFinal+IIS.pdf
165
Id.

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The Decade engaged in creating synergy with other initiatives like the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) 166 ,that focuses on reduction of poverty, the Education for all (EFA) 167 for the
universal access to education, the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD)168, aiming to provide
adults education and the Global Citizenship Education (GCE)169, the area of work for UNESCO’s
Education Programme (2014-2017). Together with other institutions and initiatives they seek to:

 Promoting and improving quality of basic education

 Reorienting educational programmes towards sustainable paradigms
 Building public understanding and awareness, that means an active, informed and
responsible population
 Providing practical training, which means understanding, accepting and adopting
sustainable practices and policies.

This doesn’t mean just developing appropriate education programmes, but also leading young and
future adults to adopt sustainable and responsible lifestyles (particularly in the Western countries)170

166
See UNDP website, http://www.undp.org/mdg/ The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) lists eight
international development goals established in base of the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000. All 189
United Nations member states at the time and at least 23 international organizations, committed to help achieve the
following Millennium Development Goals by 2015: 1-To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; 2-To achieve universal
primary education; 3- To promote gender equality and empower women; 4-To reduce child mortality; 5- To improve
;
maternal health; 6-To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; 7- To ensure environmental sustainability 8- To
develop a global partnership for development.
167
The Education for All (EFA) movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children,
youth and adults. It was created by the engagement of 164 governments at the World Education Forum (Dakar, 2000),
and identified six goals to meet learning needs of all children to be met by 2015 through the cooperation of
governments, development agencies, civil society and private sector. As the leading agency, UNESCO focuses its
activities on five key areas: policy dialogue, monitoring, advocacy, mobilisation of funding, and capacity development.
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/education-for-all/
168
The United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD),ended on 31 December 2012, was a UN initiative launched in 2003 to
provide an impetus for achieving the six Education for All (EFA) goals and developing literate environments, essential
for eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring
sustainable development, peace and democracy The slogan of the Decade, “Literacy as Freedom” recognized literacy
as a human right to be actively promoted and defended.
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/education-building-blocks/literacy/un-literacy-decade/
169
Global citizenship education (GCE) is one of the strategic areas of work for UNESCO’s Education Programme (2014-
2017) and one of the three priorities of the UN Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) launched in
September 2012. The purposes are equipping learners with values, knowledge and skills that are based on and instil
respect for human rights, social justice, diversity, gender equality and environmental sustainability and that empower
learners to be responsible global citizens. The three-pronged approach includes: policy dialogue in connection with
the post-2015 education agenda, providing technical guidance on GCE and promoting transformative pedagogies,
Clearing-house function. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/global-citizenship-education
170
See the YouthXchange web site, developed to address sustainable behaviours and ways of life.
http://www.youthxchange.net/main/home.asp

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and enhancing the commitment of cities to favour sustainability, given that half of the world
population lives in urban areas.

On a broader level, The Report of the UNESCO Commission on Education in the Twenty-first
Century Learning: The Treasure Within171, claims the need to manage and balance through the
education several tensions and challenges of our historical time. They include:
 The tension between the global and the local: Education should shape to be both
world citizens and local community members
 The tension between the universal and the individual: Education should teach
recognise the risks and opportunities of globalisation and to promote the realization
of each member in his own culture
 The tension between tradition and modernity: Education should teach to valorise
history and cultural traditions, balancing these with the ethical discernment about
change and innovation when they are necessary and worthwhile
 The tension between long-term and short-term considerations: Education should
give the tools to balance short- and long-term goals, and to train patience and
wisdom necessary to find solutions to the problems of the future
 The tension between competition and cooperation: Education should promote
competition just in a positive way, as engine of incentives and improvement, and it
should foster cooperation and solidarity, sources of unity
 The tension between the spiritual and the material: Education should shape people in
harmony with their spiritual and cultural traditions and values, aware and critical
about the increasingly materialistic and consumeristic tendency of our modern
society
 The tension between the existing curriculum and important new areas of knowledge:
Readdressing education towards those goals must happen balancing the best of
traditional curriculum content with important new areas of learning
The training of balanced persons who are capable to live in harmony and peace with others and
with the environment around us depends on all these “tensions” to balance. The aspiration is high
and the challenges accepted are deeply engaging. The success or failure in dealing with future
global problems will depend also on how we will globally respond to these challenges.

171
UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development in Action (2010), ESD Lens: A Policy and Practice Review Tool,
Learning & Training Tools no.2. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001908/190898e.pdf

97
Education for Sustainable Development.

Education for sustainable development must share the characteristics of any high-quality
learning experience, with the additional criterion that the process of learning/teaching must
model the values of sustainable development itself. 172

According to Unesco, ESD programmes should base on 5 pillars in order to shape people in the
perspective of sustainability, global stability and resilient societies. They should provide people
capable of:

- Learning to know
- Learning to do
- Learning to live together
- Learning to be
- Learning to transform oneself and the society

The process of learning is considered as life-long and investing in those pillars should equip
people to continue their learning travel also after school and to adapt to sustainable ways of
leaving, being flexible and opened to the change.

To put in practice these principles ESD and DESD developed some frameworks and programmes
useful to address the changes at the practical level of schools and institutions.

Combining the elements of the Unesco Sourcebook173 for ESD, the ESD Development Lens174 and
the ESD Toolkit175, a framework of Perspectives, Values and Skills to pursue has been defined
through innovative pedagogies and educational models.

The reference values of ESD coincide mostly with the ones listed by the Earth Charter and they
invite to conceive a society where individuals engage to ensure respect of human rights, equity,

172
See UNESCO and DESD (2005), DESD IIS Draft International Implementation Scheme (2005-2014),
http://portal.unesco.org/education/es/file_download.php/e13265d9b948898339314b001d91fd01draftFinal+IIS.pdf
173
See UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development in Action (2012), ESD Sourcebook, Learning and Training
Tools N. 4. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002163/216383e.pdf

174
UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development in Action (2010), ESD Lens: A Policy and Practice Review Tool,
Learning & Training Tools no.2. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001908/190898e.pdf

175
UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development in Action (2006), ESD Toolkit , Learning & Training Tools N°1.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001524/152453eo.pdf

98
peace, tolerance, cultural integration, poverty reduction, health, gender equality, environmental
protection and social justice.

With the “Perspectives” the following statements are recognised:

- Environmental protection and human-centred development are considered together, not

separately.
- There must be a balance and integration of environment, society, and economy.
- States have a right to development, but must respect geographic boundaries.
- Partnerships can achieve more than solitary action.
- Social and environmental problems change through time and have both a history and a
future.
- Contemporary global environmental issues are linked and interrelated.
- Systems thinking or a whole-systems approach should be used in problem solving rather
than looking at problems in isolation.
- Humans have universal attributes.
- Local issues must be understood in a global context and we should realize that solutions to
local problems can have global consequences.
- Individual consumer decisions and other actions affect and give rise to resource extraction
and manufacturing in distant places.
- Differing views should be considered before reaching a decision or judgement.
- Economic values, religious values, and societal values compete for importance as people
with different interests and backgrounds interact.
- Technology and science alone cannot solve all of our problems.
- Individuals are global citizens in addition to being citizens of the local community.
- Communities are built for all people regardless of income, ethnicity, status, etc.
- Community and governmental decision-making must include public participation. People
whose lives will be affected by decisions must be involved in the process leading to the
decisions.
- Transparency and accountability in governmental decision-making are essential.
- The decentralization of governmental decision-making allows people to find solutions that
fit local environmental, social, and economic contexts.
- Employing the precautionary principle – taking action to avoid the possibility of serious or
irreversible environmental or social harm, especially when scientific knowledge is

99
 incomplete or inconclusive – is necessary for the long-term well-being of a community and
our planet.

So as the challenges and tensions to balance have been defined, the same challenges become
opportunity of promoting appropriate perspectives when structuring educational curriculums and
pathways in the primary, secondary levels and the university level of education.

Implementation of ESD

According to UNITWIN/UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education176, educational systems

should be reoriented considering the five components of the framework: knowledge, issues, skills,
perspectives, and values and their interrelationship. To realise this, programmes, curriculums,
practices and policies must be developed and rethought. Some examples of implementation
programmes realised in some of the institutions involved in the international network177 associated
with the Chair,178 established to identify the ways to achieve ESD goals, are: graduate programs at
Masters’ and PhD levels in ESD, compulsory ESD courses for Masters’ programs in Geography
and Environmental Education, Advanced Certificate programs in ESD, distance education courses
in ESD, Environmental Education in College and education’s Masters’ Degree, ESD projects using
literature and language arts at the secondary school, reviewed and revised existing courses to
address sustainability, Infusion of ESD into all Math, Science, Geography, and Technology courses,
and into other disciplines at undergraduate and graduate level programs such as agriculture,
population education, consumer education, according to the principle that ESD is not a specific
subject, but a cross element to be integrated into all aspects and subjects of learning and that is
enriched and expanded by every field of study.

176
In 1998, the Commission on Sustainable Development called for UNESCO to develop guidelines for reorienting
teacher training to address sustainability. In turn, UNESCO created a UNITWIN/UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher
Education to Address Sustainability at York University in Toronto, Canada. The Chair established at the time an
International Network of 30 teacher-education institutions in 28 countries to address this issue.
177
See UNESCO Education Sector website, Chair in Reorienting Teacher Education to address Sustainability:
International Network. January 2015. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-
agenda/education-for-sustainable-development/partners/educators/teacher-education/ The International Network
of Teacher Education Institutions met the first time in October 2000 and began planning strategies and methods for
moving forward. It is associated with the UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability at
York University in Toronto, Canada, and it is today comprised of teacher education institutions from about 60 nations
around the world. The member institutions work to incorporate sustainability into their programmes, practices and
policies. Each member institution addresses environmental, social, and economic contexts to create locally relevant
and culturally appropriate teacher education programmes for both pre-service and in-service teachers.
178
See UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development in Action (2005), Guidelines and Recommendations for
Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001433/143370E.pdf

100
Education must be readdressed at local, regional, national and transnational level, involving
organisations, individual practitioners and society stakeholders. This means that it has to be the
result of the cooperation among Governmental and intergovernmental bodies (through policy-
making and framework-setting, promoting public consultation and input, public campaigns,
embedding and operationalising ESD in educational systems), Civil society and non-governmental
organisations (through public awareness-raising, advocacy, campaigns and lobbying , consultancy
and input into policy formulation, delivering ESD in non-formal settings, participatory learning and
action, mediation between government and people), and Private sector (trough entrepreneurial
initiatives and training , management models and approaches , implementation and evaluation,
development and sharing of practices of sustainable production and consumption).179
The subjects involved will be, among others, Education Departments and Ministries, Departments
engaged in sustainability topics like the Ministry of the Environment and Agriculture, structures
and agencies providing services or committed with ESD, International Organisations and agencies
working with governments and national policies, staff and members of the school community like
principals, teachers, students, parents.

Local stakeholders, national governments and departments, together with international corps will
have to implement and concretely realise the readdressing of the educational systems, adopting
specific solutions and arrangements in base of the specific context. The implementation of ESD
doesn’t provide the conformation of every system to one universal plan, but it emphasises the
importance of creating local solutions, integrated in the cultural and environmental context,
through studying local issues and preserving local culture and peculiarities. Every educational
system will have to refer to the general principles, skills and values recognised by the ESD, but it
will be in charge to readdress curriculums and strategies in the most convenient and suitable way
for the specific community and environment. In accordance with the principle of “think globally,
act locally”, respecting the specificities of every context is an essential condition to resist to the
risks and contain the forces of the globalisation.

To promote a quality education towards sustainability, educational models and pedagogies need to
be critically revisited. Traditional methods and assets are not suitable anymore to address complex
understandings and critical intelligence. Strategies like the teacher-centred method where the
teacher is the provider of information and the student the passive consumer; the multiple-choice

179
See UNESCO and DESD (2005), DESD IIS Draft International Implementation Scheme (2005- 2014),
http://portal.unesco.org/education/es/file_download.php/e13265d9b948898339314b001d91fd01draftFinal+IIS.pdf

101
text and other simplistic measurements; the structural dichotomy of wrong and right answers to
problems; the conformed methods of transmitting knowledge reducing it to reading, counting and
writing. Those assets must be overcome in favour of: individualised techniques of teaching, as
guaranty of social equity, given that every individual learns in a different way; student-centred
lessons and mutually searching strategies of understanding between pupil and teacher, who dresses
often more the role of facilitator than of leader; real and local-issues based, participatory and
complex learning, deep and creative thinking pedagogies.

In order to promote such orientation, the school cannot operate alone and isolated, but it must
develop cooperation and coordination with society practitioners, according to a trans-disciplinarity
principle and in the way to create a liquid dimension of learning, that is not reduced to the walls of
the school, but it is a continuous process, everywhere and every time. Transdisciplinary means not
reducing the perspective to the disciplinary divisions of the knowledge, but integrating it in a
holistic and systemic view of the reality, where disciplines are not isolated and in contrast with
each other, but they go beyond their borders. Transdisciplinarity, as I will explain later on, means
cooperation between academic environments and society stakeholders. In this sense ESD can
promote Outdoor Education projects, find material and topics of investigation outside the
institutional building, establish missions and initiatives and make use of the resources of the
community of belonging (e.g. NGOs, institutions, clubs, religious organisations, governments
agencies, businesses, etc.). The implementation of ESD requires indeed the cooperation of all
Formal, Nonformal and Informal sectors of education:

For a community or a nation, implementing ESD is a huge task. Fortunately, formal education
does not carry this educational responsibility alone. The Nonformal educational sector (e.g.,
nature centres, nongovernmental organizations, public health educators, and agricultural
extension agents) and the informal educational sector (e.g., local television, newspaper, and radio)
of the educational community must work cooperatively with the formal educational sector for the
education of people in all generations and walks of life180
Schools and educational programmes should not just be theoretical sources of sustainability
education. They will have to practice sustainability also in their concrete organisation and
management, coherently with what is being transmitted to the pupils. This duty is resumed by the
“whole-school approach” and it is realised when:

180
See UNESCO and DESD (2005), Promotion of a global partnership for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development (2005-2014), The international Implementation Scheme for the Decade in brief
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001473/147361E.pdf

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  The formal curriculum contains knowledge, skills, perspectives and values related to
sustainability.
 Learning includes real-life issues to enhance pupils’ motivation and learning.
 The school has a sustainability ethos which can be seen in the treatment of others, school
property, and the environment.
 School management practices reflect sustainability (e.g. procurement, water and energy use,
and waste management).
 School policies reflect environmental, social, and economic sustainability
 Interactions between the school and the community are fostered.
 Special events and extra-curricular activities apply and enhance classroom learning about
sustainability.
 Pupils engage in decision-making affecting school life.

Relating instead to the pedagogic techniques and models of teaching, the Unesco toolkit gives
central role to: simulations of real problematic cases, better if locally based; class discussions and
team work; issues analysis techniques to learn to deal with complex questions; storytelling, useful
to give life to theoretical understanding, improve the memory of situations and stimulate creativity;
cross-disciplinary combination of different disciplinary elements in approaching specific topics
(choosing one issue and exploring it through visual analysis, photography and text, autobiography,
travel narrative, scientific documentary and so forth, integrating the sources); extracurricular
activities involving environmental engagement (such as gardening, special events, community
monitoring, arts, drama, music and dance events) and outdoor initiatives, that can provide a direct
contact and interaction with the nature and stimulate curiosity and sensitiveness towards it.

The implementation of ESD is an engaging task for every country. Many are the factors that
obstacle this process, starting from the lack of awareness and knowledge about the environmental
crisis, to the economic implications of a change in the traditional system, luck of funding and
policies adequate to it and lack of availability of people and communities to accept the risk of a
change. For these and other reasons the transition to educational systems that give a focus to
sustainability are very slow to emerge.
In order to simplify the understanding and description of a re-orientation of the school systems the
“Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability” defined some basic design
criteria that can be a reference point for agencies engaged in readdressing the programmes. The
points are:

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❖ ESD is locally relevant and culturally appropriate.
❖ ESD is based on local needs, perceptions, and conditions, but recognizes that fulfilling local
needs often has global effects and consequences.
❖ ESD engages formal, non-formal, and informal education.
❖ ESD is a life-long endeavour.
❖ ESD accommodates the evolving nature of the concept of sustainability.
❖ ESD addresses content, context, pedagogy, global issues, and local priorities.
❖ ESD deals with the well-being of all three realms of sustainability – environment, society, and
economy.
❖ ESD is not imported from another cultural, economic, or geographic region.
❖ ESD is not “one size fits all,” but must be created to account for regional differences.

The skills of a Sustainable Mentality

The implementation of ESD is a huge engagement because it requires moving entire structures at
political, economic, social level. When planning programmes and pathways considering ESD much
impediment is due to practical and bureaucratic reasons. Beyond the practical implications of such a
process there is a theoretical core that aims to shape people capable of what I called upper
“sustainable mentality”. With this expression I indicate a mentality suitable to future possible
conditions of life. A forma mentis capable to deal with the challenges that the future will propose
and in accordance with the principles of sustainability described above.
Which skills should a “sustainable mentality” provide?
Among the many capacities that ESD should train there are:

 Envisioning, that means being able to imagine a better future, in the perspective of knowing
where we want to go, to be better able to work out how to get there.
 Critical thinking and reflection, that means learning to question our current belief systems,
assumptions, perspectives and opinions. Critical thinking skills help people learn to examine
economic, environmental, social and cultural structures.
 Systemic thinking, that means acknowledging complexities and looking for links and synergies
when trying to find solutions to problems.

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 Building partnerships, which means promoting dialogue and negotiation, learning to work
together.
 Participation in decision-making, that means empowering people and encouraging active civic
participation
 Transformative perspective, that means being flexible and ready to adapt to fast change and
new challenges.
 World mindedness, that refers to understanding the world as one unified system and the
responsibility to view the interests of individual nations with the overall needs of the planet in
mind.
 Holistic Understanding, which means understanding the self in relation to a global community
and to an integrated reality.
 Ability to communicate effectively (both orally and in writing), express themselves clearly and
listen to others responsively.
 Capacity of thinking in time, to forecast, to think ahead, and to plan.
 Capacity to move from awareness to knowledge to action.
 Capacity to research, inquiring, questioning, investigating, and judging, preliminary passages
for problem-solving, complex planning and decision-making processes
 Capacity to develop aesthetic appreciation and creativity, to be sensitive to the aesthetic
dimension of the natural and human world, to train imaginative ways of thinking, and participate in
creative activity and expression181.
 Capacity of collaboration and team-work with others to achieve mutual understanding of
common goals.
 Information Management, that refers to the capacity to find meaning in our world's vast
information resources, identify needs, conduct research and seek solutions using a variety of
sources, strategies and technologies.182
 Responsible Citizenship, that means respecting the diversity of cultures, engaging for the
common good and understanding the importance of an active participation in the community and of
responsible behaviours in order to promote equity, justice, peace, democracy and protection of the
environment

181
See UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development in Action (2006), ESD Toolkit, Learning & Training Tools N°1, p.
38, about the case study at Toronto, Board of education Curriculum Revision and Reorientation.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001524/152453eo.pdf
182
Id.

105
 Capacity of personal care, that means taking care about the physical, emotional and spiritual
health of themselves and others, pursuing healthy, hopeful, purposeful lives and meaningful
relationships, good work habits and balance to make wise choices for a sustainable future183.
 Capacity of self-regulated learning, that means that learners are meta-cognitively,
motivationally, and behaviourally active participants in their own learning process and self-
generate thoughts, feelings, and actions to attain their learning goals. They are in a position where
they are forced to recognize the consequences of their own actions, and they can see themselves as
owners of their behaviour. This concept empowers them to take their learning into their own hands
and to have the most active role.184

Promoting “sustainable mentalities” is not an easy job, especially when starting from a structural
scheme in the school system that usually pursues opposite goals, compatible with the culture that
leaded to the overexploitation of the natural resources. It means often fighting the roots of a system
that has shaped entire generations in base of the ideals of competition, profit, monetisation and
accumulation. Those ideals, we have seen, are pervasive in the marketing that invades our daily
lives, and also the school in some ways contributed to keep them strong and untouchable. If from
one side our schools shape people to become the promoters and the makers of such ideals and
system, from the other side the same school system is required nowadays to radically change
directions and perspectives. The educational system suffers of an inner contradiction between the
resistance to the change and the urgent need of it, and this is the main obstacle to the
implementation of ESD.

There is an urgent need to re-examine the nature and structure of schooling in a more
critical way to address ESD in its broadest context (i.e., school organizational principles,
operational practices, school grounds management, and curriculum content).We are faced
with a paradox: Is education the problem or the solution in working toward a sustainable
future? At current levels of unsustainable practice and overconsumption it could be
concluded that education is part of the problem. If education is the solution then it requires
a deeper critique and a broader vision for the future. Thus, whole systems redesign needs to

183
See UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development in Action (2006), ESD Toolkit , Learning & Training Tools N°1, p.
38, about the case study at Toronto, Board of education Curriculum Revision and Reorientation.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001524/152453eo.pdf
184
See Steiner Gerald and Alfred Posch (2006), “Higher education for sustainability by means of transdisciplinary case
studies: an innovative approach for solving complex, real-world problems”. Journal of Cleaner Production 14(9), pp.
877-890.

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 be considered to challenge existing frameworks and shift our thinking beyond current
practice and toward a sustainable future.185

Focus on Philosophy as strategic instrument towards sustainability: the

potential of “Philosophy for Children”

Philosophy is one of the elements with a big potential in helping to educate people to a “sustainable
mentality”. Many of the skills expected from such education are normally provided and trained by
the study of philosophy and the practice of it. Matthew Lipman realized it in the 70s and decided to
promote curriculums and educational programs for young children giving an important space to
philosophy. He opened the initiatives of Philosophy for Children, founding also the Institute for
Advancement of Philosophy for Children in the US (IAPC)186 and developed material, in the form
of novels, to work at school. His conviction was that practicing philosophy since the early age
aliments the natural tendency of children to question and wonder about things. Philosophising
children’s “thinking skills” are improved. They show to be able to discuss, argument, question and
evaluate philosophically much more and better than adults expect. The dialogic strategy of
practicing philosophy in P4C encourages the critical thinking, logic and argumentation skills187, it
favours open mindedness, clarity in language expression, precision in thinking and confrontation of
points of view. Practicing philosophy already with 6, 7 years allows children to give meaning to
their process of learning, because they become aware of the sense, through reasoning and discussing
it. They develop a more integrated outlook of the knowledge, establishing links and relationships
among elements, into a reality that assumes continuity and a structure of interrelation and reciprocal
interdependence among things. They learn to associate things and link them in a more coherent
framework, where meaningful and foundational issues start to be explored, such as justice, love,
friendship, equality, responsibility, right and wrong, freedom. All of this happens especially through
reading material and discussing in a learning community, where the kids become part of a group in
development and they internalise the importance of participating, belonging and respecting their
peers. They assume an active role in the learning process, they are not told what to learn or what to

185
See UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development in Action (2005), Guidelines and Recommendations for
Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001433/143370E.pdf
186
See Montclair State University website, Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children
http://www.montclair.edu/cehs/academics/centers-and-institutes/iapc/
187
See The P4C Co-operative, http://p4c.com/history-p4c , November 2014.

107
think, but they create their pathway step by step. They learn to think for themselves and give their
own meaning to things and deliberate it, but also to respect others’ points of view in the community.
They remain independent in shaping their own thought, without repeating or imitating models
provided by the teachers, rather confronting themselves with the peers.

After Lipman developed the P4C program in the 70s, the idea spread also in Europe and many
countries developed their own programs of Philosophy for Children. They refer generally to the
ICPIC (International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children)188 as international
coordinator, while the official centres in Italy are the CRIF189 in Rome and the CIREP190 in Rovigo.

With those premises, I consider the activities of P4C pretty promising to the end of educating to
sustainability. Philosophy is a great instrument to learn to think critically, question and judge wisely.
Practicing philosophy teaches to doubt about things, to understand them inserted in a system of
knowledge, considering different perspectives and factors involved and to take a position or an
opinion supported by an argumentation. It stimulates to think differently, to promote alternative
understanding and to be open to new paradigms. It keeps the brain elastic and flexible and it usually
shapes to a strong social and ethical commitment, because it educates to be responsible for oneself
and for the community of belonging. All those aspects, cultivated and strengthen since the early age,
are the roots of a culture of sustainability. For these raisons the role of Philosophy in the educational
programs devoted to sustainability may be quite relevant.

Education and awareness from bottom: civil society movements.

Education to sustainability passes through, as we have seen, Formal, Nonformal and Informal
channels. Next to the institutional frameworks, a big role is played nowadays by civil society
dynamics, which are informal sources of education.

The introduction of policies needs to be accompanied by the civil society’s cultural change

National civil society and non-governmental organisations and networks will play a central
role in linking local groups with policy-making fora, undertaking advocacy and lobbying and

188
See ICPIC website, http://icpic.org/ , January 2015.
189
See CRIF Centro di Ricerca sull’Indagine Filosofica, http://win.filosofare.org/ , January 2015.
190
See CIREP Centro Interdisciplinare di Ricerca Educativa sul Pensiero, http://www.cirep.it/ , January 2015.

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 providing a conduit for bringing small, local and innovative experiences to the attention of
government and a larger public.191

The description of the civil society as political actor gave us the elements to recognise the huge
potential of social activism. Investing on this kind of engagement can be another important
possibility of change in the future decades. Social movement alone cannot go very far, if its energy
is not canalised into bureaucratic and political systems. On the other side, we have seen that the
only intervention of technical approaches is not likely to deal appropriately with the ecological
crisis. Technologic progress, among the limits and dangers described in the previous part, is also not
affordable for every country and technics cannot be exported from place to place ignoring the local
context. Exporting technology without cultural and systemic considerations can lead to the
dissolution of local ethos. As Naess says, technic has to be culturally tested192.

Political reforms must address their orientation and values in order to favour a culture of
sustainability, but this is almost impossible to do if most part of the social agencies pushes against
this change and pressure to maintain the status-quo. Beyond the consumeristic life-style there is the
interest of keeping the inequality and injustice of the global economy thanks to which powerful and
richer elites can keep their position and privileges. Market institutions and multinational
corporations are not interested in diminishing the consumption and deterioration of the environment,
rather this is their biggest fear. On the other side, the effort to maintain the status-quo is not just
matter of interests of the few. The globalised economy is a complex system of interrelated factors
and variables. Acting suddenly against production and consumption for environmental reasons
would provoke massive problems; in the immediate term even worse than the environmental ones,
such us unemployment. For this raison certain reforms shouldn’t arrive suddenly from top-down,
imposed without a background that is ready for that. As Wagner affirms: “A combination of “good
governance” models (top-down) and the commitment and participation of civil society (bottom-up)
is necessary”. Beyond this, “science and research can act as a facilitator and a catalyst by
conducting interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary transformation research.”193

To promote environmental policy we need to conceive a systemic functioning of the reality, which
considers all the variables included and requires not just one change in one part on the system, but

191
See IIS (2005), DESD International Implementation Scheme (2005- 2014)
http://portal.unesco.org/education/es/file_download.php/e13265d9b948898339314b001d91fd01draftFinal+IIS.pdf
192
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 94.
193
Wagner Felix, “ A culture of Sustainability”, in “Realizing Utopia: Ecovillage Endeavours and Academic Approaches”,
ed. by Marcus Andreas and Felix Wagner, RCC Perspective, 2012, no 8.

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many changes interrelated and linked with each other. Every political proposal must be based on an
integrated knowledge of the reality and should relate to all the fields involved. If one part of the
system is modified without being related to the others, that change will be a failure and damage the
singular part. If any change is seen in a holistic and systemic perspective it will provoke many other
changes and the whole will develop in a new form. If, for instance, we want to promote the choice
of electric cars that pollute less, incentivising the car industry to prefer electric cars may mean the
failure of it if we don’t intervene in the other fields of the system, that are for example the
infrastructures to be prepared to electric cars (point to fill them, space to park them, streets to drive
them…) and all these issues that must be integrated in the already complex architecture of every
urban centre. It implicates acting on many fields. Promoting systemic actions into a prepared
background requires the involvement of the citizenship. That is why political reforms alone don’t
work unless they are supported by social will and engagement. Just if these issues are understood by
the citizenship that takes the responsibility of changing its lifestyle, norms can be followed in a
long-run and intrinsic value perspective.

Attempts at a change in lifestyle cannot wait for the implementation of policies which render
such change more or less required. The demand for a ‘new system’ first is misguided and can
lead to passivity. The same applies to personal lifestyle change and its possible consequent
isolation from political action. These two changes must proceed simultaneously. Changes
have to be from the inside and from the outside, all in one, […] and can only be developed
among the people and politicians trough increased awareness of the unreasonability of the
present state of affairs. 194

To this end the role of citizens, of individuals as part of a global citizenship is crucial. There are
many pathways emerging from local contexts that propose alternative lifestyles, and they are
precious examples to be valorised and spread, although keeping their originality and specific
characterisation. Alternative life-styles, if supported and diffused can help politicians to promote
healthier policies that are understood and spontaneously chosen, thanks to the information, the
reciprocal influence, the awareness that these proposals can spread around. They usually encounter
a strong opposition from the dominant way of life of our industrial society, but still the potential of
the civil society is strong and if it will keep the network of mutual support and will gain more and
more space in the media they could be, step by step, appreciated and valorised for their innovative
elements. So they could be an inspiring start-point for large-scale cultural transformations. Those

194
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 89.

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examples of activism and mobilization from the bottom may be important tools of informal
education. They are not traditionally institutionalised, but they propose an alternative consciousness
and orientation of action and can inspire many and raise sensitiveness about environmental issues.

The main point here is that we need a change in mentality such that many of the regulations
will be unnecessary. […] How are we doing this? We engage people who have internalised
the deep ecological norms, even if a small minority, and make them more central in the day-
to-day dealings of communities. Here such ‘naturalists’, by their very example, can get people
aware of things that they never thought before and will thus help with internalising of norms
in the larger populace.195

Social movements: mainstream environmentalism and grassroots social innovations

Social movements, that is mobilization and activism from the bottom of the society in the forms of
institutionalised organisations (like NGOs) or informal grassroots movements, are an important and
precious element of democracy in the modern dynamics of global governance. The involvement of
civil society through this activism promotes emancipation and social change, but especially
resistance to the global “hegemonic form of environmental governance”196. Global environmental
governance tends to privilege the discourse of technical-rational knowledge and technocratic
solutions to ecological problems and in these context social movements promote counter-
hegemonic orientation that provides a cultural approach to the issues, denouncing the irrationality of
the modern patterns of consumption, distribution and production in the global economy. They claim
the need of an engagement for structural changes in the societies, criticising the reduction to
technical and normative treatments, ineffective for long-term changes. Using the words of Lucy H.
Ford, social movements “have the potential to challenge global hegemony through a variety of
strategies that aim to reject the only dominance of technical discourse”.

The cultural approach towards environmental issues start from the premise that the interest that we
have in protecting and respecting the environment is linked with the system of values, norms,
models that orientate the human action through shaping a certain conception of the world. The first
level to consider to protect the environment, so Paul Wapner in “In defence of Banner Hangers: the

195
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 160.
196
See Ford Lucy H. (2003), “Challenging Global Environmental Governance: Social Movement Agency and Global Civil
Society”. Global Environmental Politics Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 120-134.

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dark green politics of Greenpeace”197, is the “way vast numbers of people understand it”. According
to him Greenpeace, like other organisations, have the job and the merit to do this, to create an image
of the ecological destruction that can be caught by the media and extended at the largest audience
possible to inform people and show what is going on.

We are nowadays used to the action of NGOs and transnational organisations that lead the
mainstream environmentalism. Mainstream activism is engaged in a large broad conception of
social change on the masses: “Ultimately is the masses, through public consciousness raising, that
will ensure long-term solutions to environmental destruction by demanding changes in economic
practices”198.Since the 70s, the so-called environmental decade, the movements of those
organisations enriched with legal and scientific expertise and they gained access to processes of
implementation of legislation and development of procedures for environmental management.
Therefore they started to represent a loud voice against multinationals’ interests and governments’
negligence about environmental issues and have attracted attention on several topics. The kind of
activism of Greenpeace, Earth First!, Friends of the Earth and other NGOs is well known thanks to
the mass media attention. They act through activities like: lobbying against governments,
“undertaking research, influencing diplomacy between nation-states, organising protests and
pressure on governments to support environmental legislation“199. Their activity includes
campaigns, letter-writing, petitions, demonstration in loco, spread of knowledge, boycott of
industrial processes and so forth. The larger purpose of their activity is, however, both to contribute
to denounce some unjust and destructive processes and decisions and to inform the population.
They try to give voice to unheard issues and to spread the knowledge and awareness about them
among the common people, in order to improve their critical opinions and possibility of
participation in the global dynamics. As Paul Wapner insists referring to the activity of Greenpeace,
environmental organisations and NGOs try “literally to change the way people think about the
natural world and the effects of human actions on it.” They furnish alternative understandings and
work on the material circumstances that shape collective values, mores and sensibilities and in
doing so they hope to influence the way how people think, choose and behave.
So the movement is not simply about passing environmental protection legislation, but
rather it attempts to create a particular ‘cultural drift’, to use Herbert Bumer’s language, a
‘societal mood’ o ‘public orientation’’. Such moods, drifts and orientations pervade the

197
See Raimond Taylor Bron edited by (1995), Ecological Resistance Movement: the Global Emergence of Radical and
Popular Environmentalism, New York: State University of New York.
198
See Kamieniecki Sheldon, Coleman S. Dulaine, Vos Robert O., “ Effectiveness of Radical Environmentalism”, in
Raimond Taylor Bron (1995).
199
Id.

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 society and, although they don’t gain authority through governmental support per se, they
still act as forms of governance which shape the way how vast numbers of people live their
lives200

Identified as representative of the civil society, transnational organisations and NGOs are
considered to be a political actor since they are supposed to have influence on the process of
policy making: “NGOs can through networking and advocacy both stimulate bottom-up action
and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream
strong sustainable consumption”201. They can catalyse members and ideas, start pilot-projects,
creating networks and motivate mobilisations of people. They increase representation and
transparency in the decision and implementation of policies and favour popular legitimacy and
support towards them, given their direct impact on the citizens.202 According to Lorek and
Spangenberg, the involvement of the civil society is a determinant factor because it can
practically re-address the social and cultural structure and the way how our society works,
changing models of consumption and participation to the common and pursuing more balanced
and ecological lifestyles.

From this perspective it emerges that among the purpose of raising awareness by the environmental
activism there is no just the intention to inform people. The hope is that this information is
translated in action and social practice. Next to the public uproar made by the organisations, bottom
activism takes place through practical experience of people and groups that engage in proposing and
experimenting alternative lifestyles in more or less radical ways. Those subjects launch direct and
concrete action, a concretisation of what political mobilisation of mainstream environmentalism
represent mainly on a theoretical level. Most part of this mobilisation comes from grassroots
movements or communities of people that share common aims and decide to challenge the current
dominant modus vivendi and propose a different one. The values at the core of those actions are
especially a sustainable way of living in balance with the environment and with the less impact as
possible on it and the valorisation of community life, solidarity and sharing of resources. On a
practical level, the direct field where their action occurs and has effects is on the footprint that each

200
See Wapner Paul in “In defence of Banner Hangers: the dark green politics of Greenpeace”, in Raimond Taylor Bron
(1995).
201
See Lorek Sylvia, Spangenberg Joachim H. (2014), “Sustainable consumption within a sustainable economy –
beyond green growth and green economies”, in Journal of Cleaner Production 63, pp. 33-44.
202
Id., p. 41. Although according to Mont and Spangenberg the role of NGOs has become controversial in some cases
because of their often partial focus just on specific issues, lacking the larger understanding of situations and because
of their public or business funding, I’m not entering this problematic in this context.

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individual has through the personal consumption, from which it depends how much and how they
consume and waste and which kind of interaction they establish with the environment. Mont,
Neruvonen and Laehteenoja203 call these experiments of alternative social practices “social
innovations” and they include several kinds of action. They define what a sustainable lifestyle could
be in a future prediction related to 2050 and they establish that the footprint of a person per year
should not exceed the amount of 8 tonnes, while it is around 40-50 in European countries today.204
Our western excess in the footprint lays mostly on food, drink, meat and dairy consumption,
domestic heating, water use and car ownership. All those aspects of the daily life of a person can be
changed, reducing the impact on the environment, through modifying the lifestyle.

To this end any social practice that allows wasting less, consuming less and saving energy is an
innovation that positively contributes to addressing the society towards sustainable patterns. Social
innovations can be more radical, including a total involvement and change in the daily personal life,
like it happens in the case of the Ecovillages, or they can have effects on the small scale of the daily
routine of citizens living in the mainstream urban society. The possibilities of acting and choosing
more sustainable are many and they raise spontaneously from the population, free from institutional
command or imposition and create networks and reciprocal support and influence. A more
sustainable lifestyle can pass through more efficient individual consumption that implies reducing
waste, choosing critically what to buy, consume according to sufficiency criteria (consume what we
really need) instead of accumulating the unnecessary. On the collective level consumption can be
managed with collaborative organisation, through sharing, swapping and trading, through changing
the conception of consuming, shifting from the idea of owning a product to the one of “accessing”
to it or of using the service that it gives, that means producing materially less and re-using the
existing products. Alternative strategies to consume develop also an active attitude of consumers
that can become co-producers of goods and services instead of passive consumers, like it happen in
the case of producing own food in the urban farming. Undertaking aware and responsible
consumption implies therefore “a re-examination of the way we live”, but this new attention is
addressed also to dimensions of the life that are not necessarily environmental, but regard the
personal improvement of the quality of life in terms of health, nutrition, interpersonal relationships,
well-being, justice and ethical commitment. In this sense many movements are emerging in order to
promote a more balanced and harmonic lifestyle, such as Slow Food or Decrescita Felice.

203
See Mont Oksana, Neuvonen Alesksi, Laehteenoja Satu (2014), “Sustainable Lifestyles 2050: stakeholder visions,
emerging practices and future research” by, in Journal of Cleaner Production 63, pp. 24- 32.
204
Id., p 25.

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Next to critical consumption that impacts partially the daily life of the citizens, many people are
experimenting more radical solutions that involve their life completely. The most diffused examples
are intentional communities and ecovillages, realities that are growing in number and innovation in
the last years in the western countries.
I will explore in the next paragraph some examples of social innovations. What all those
experiences have in common is a vision of the future that will have to look different from the
current. Those experiments are attempts to propose diverse outlooks on the problems and innovative
solutions to them. They all focus on elements like the education and the personal and collective
responsibility. They invest in the community and in the will of every member to engage in
collaboration towards common good and against the overcoming of materialism and consumerism.
Big effort is put on self-development, self-sufficiency and self-organisation, which mean leaving
the power of decision on the local level and to every participant. They seek to make the individual
feel responsible and part of a bigger whole he has impact on.

Such efforts should be encouraged by the political authority and they could constitute inspirational
examples to imitate. Some of those innovations are locally anchored and cannot be transferred to
the society at large, but they are valid “social laboratories” with the potential to inspire others, be
imitated, stimulating the public debate and educating people. They can, as Geseko von Luepke205
underlines, “slowly create complementary models that can soften the consequences of a crisis”, but
especially they show that another future is possible. Such behaviours and choices that they propose
and may seem “alternative”, uncommon or even strange to the mainstream consumeristic society,
should become normal and diffused in it in the next future. Sustainable solutions and lifestyles
should be “normalised” in the everyday life of the mainstream culture, if we want to realise the
change in the long-perspective that is needed, because through this integration new worldviews,
new self-perceptions, new spirituality and values will be adopted.

Sustainable lifestyles cannot be created in a lab or in a research office. Therefore, action

research and experimentation with different policy instruments, economic tools, business
models and community initiatives is needed. Innovation policy has a role to play in
encouraging and advancing society-wide experimentation targeting sustainable lifestyles. The
premise is that new behaviours sometimes precede attitude and value change, so the

205
See “Ecovillages: Islands of the Future?” in Andreas, Marcus, and Felix Wagner (eds.), "Realizing Utopia: Ecovillage
Endeavours and Academic Approaches," RCC Perspectives, 2012, no 8, p. 75.

115
 engagement of people in experimentation, testing and evaluations might enable and facilitate
behavioural and value changes that are of high importance for sustainable lifestyles.206

Focus on Social Innovations: four levels of actions and some examples for each

Social Innovation and alternative ways of consuming, living and producing develop at different
levels of the society and into different dimensions. Many actions relate to the singular individual
and his choices in the daily life, but others regard entire communities that adopt a totalising
alternative lifestyle. Some derive from concrete and improvised practices and then develop a clear
understanding and framework of what they do and why. Others start from theoretical analysis,
description of problems and research of solutions and then they are translated into practise.

Most part of those realities don’t use the conventional channels of information to diffuse their ideas,
like the television, rather they are connected in the internet and are inserted in large nets where
other experiments and realities inspired by the same values are present. That means that it’s difficult
to hear from the television-news talking about an ecovillage, but once we identify the channels of it
in internet it is very easy to connect to other realities of critic consumption and social commitment
in line with the principles by which the ecovillage is inspired. Often the communication and
diffusion of those realities happen through word of mouth among people, feature confirming the
centrality of the relational and collective aspect that is common generally to all of them. With the
time the contact with alternative ways of life and consumption became more common and they are
starting to be accepted by the mainstream society as a wanted choice by informed and responsible
citizens. They refer often to alternative conceptions of the economy, therefore the space of action is
not reduced to the specific issues to which they are dedicated, but it implies a will of engaging to
promote a different model on the large scale, rejecting the current consumeristic one. They relate to
conceptions like the Social Solidarity Economy207, the Economy for the Common Good208 , the

206
Mont Oksana, Neuvonen Alesksi, Laehteenoja Satu (2014), “Sustainable Lifestyles 2050: stakeholder visions,
emerging practices and future research” by, in Journal of Cleaner Production 63, pp. 24- 32.
207
See RIPES Intercontinental Network for the promotion of Social Solidarity Economy website,
http://www.ripess.org/about-us/?lang=en , January 2015 : “Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) takes into account the
social and ethical dimension in all its economic activities. Thus the SSE aims to produce, exchange and consume
goods and services that answer the economic and social needs of the local and international communities. This
social and solidarity economy values work over capital. It aims at satisfying the needs of individuals and
communities rather than seeking to maximize profit or financial gains. Solidarity -based economic units rest
upon a model of democratic decision-making and a participatory and transparent management system, which
aims at ensuring collective ownership and responsibility for the outcomes of economic activities, as well as
ongoing mobilisation and contributions to ensure their success.”

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Shared Economy, the Degrowth209 or the Ethical Banking210. Common points to those models are
the values at the roots: ethics in the economic processes and rejection of private profit, social
commitment, equity and justice of distribution, valorisation of communality, respect for the
environment and perspective of sustainable consumption and production. The internalization of
these values gave arise to the need of conceiving other forms and pace of living, where also the
quality of life represents a core factor.

208
See Economy for the Common Good website, https://www.ecogood.org/en , January 2015 : “The current ecological,
social and economic crisis requires a bold and strong vision and people who actively participate in developing a
sustainable future. In that sense, the Economy for the Common Good (ECG) movement understands itself as an
initiator and inspirational force for far-reaching change. In a democratic and participatory process, the ECG works
towards an economic system which places the Common Good at the center of all economic activity.“ ECG is another
social movement encouraging an alternative economic model to neoliberalism that fosters human values and ethics,
through the focus on common good and cooperation, sustainability, justice, equity and solidarity instead of profit,
,
competition, individualism and unlimited growth. The concept was formally coined by Christian Felber with the
publication of Die Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie - Das Wirtschaftsmodell der Zukunft, in 2010.
209
See Research and Degrowth website http://www.degrowth.org/ . Degrowth indicates an economic critic that
became political and social movement leaded by several authors, starting with the analysis of Georgescu-Roegen and
then developed by many, like Serge Latousche, especially in France, Italy and Spain, and then Europe and Latin-
America. It fights overconsumption and capitalistic economy that leaded to the environmental crisis and the global
inequality, through dealing with the problem of the limits to growth and promoting the increasing of well-being and
quality of life through reducing consumption and focusing on human values, culture and commonality. The definition
from the website http://www.degrowth.org/definition-2 (January 2015) says: “Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling
of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on
the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open, localized economies and
resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions. Such societies will no longer have to
“grow or die.” Material accumulation will no longer hold a prime position in the population’s cultural imaginary. The
primacy of efficiency will be substituted by a focus on sufficiency, and innovation will no longer focus on technology
for technology’s sake but will concentrate on new social and technical arrangements that will enable us to live
convivially and frugally. Degrowth does not only challenge the centrality of GDP as an overarching policy objective but
proposes a framework for transformation to a lower and sustainable level of production and consumption, a shrinking
of the economic system to leave more space for human cooperation and ecosystems.”
210
See FEBEA European Federation of Ethical and Alternative Banks and Financiers website
http://www.ethicalbankingeurope.com/febea/legal/febea and the article “What really differentiates Ethical banks
from modern banks?”, 17 April 2012,
http://www.ethicalbankingeurope.com/sites/default/files/definition_ethical_bank-en.pdf : “Ethical banks have the
objective of achieving a positive impact in the collection and in the use of money. They invest in new activities such as
organic farming, renewable energies, the Third sector (or not-for-profit sector), Fair Trade. They respond more and
more to the needs of those who are excluded from the banking system, and to the needs of savers and investors who
are increasingly interested in the way their savings are used. Thanks to ethical banks, the “bank” institution returns to
a path stopped at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it returns to be an instrument of development for the
territory and for new social and environmental initiatives. This path goes in the opposite direction respect to the one
of commercial banks, which are increasingly oriented to use the financial leverage to build more and more profits,
contributing to the financiarisation of the economy and creating the conditions for a series of financial crises that
continue even today to weigh on the lives of millions of citizens. The role of an ethical bank is to work for the common
good and ensure the right to receive credit through a bank activity consisting in raising funds and reallocating them in
the form of credits for cultural, social and environmental projects. Through their activity, ethical banks promote social
inclusion, sustainable development, development of social economy and social entrepreneurship. Ethical banks also
have a role to raise public awareness on the role of money and the failure of the economy based on short-term and
profit as the only objective.”

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I individuate 5 levels of action and diffusion of alternative models. The first is the individual, the
space of the singular consumer, the second is the collective, the group, the space where many
individuals cooperate together and promote alternative solutions of consumption. The third is the
level of the movement, when the practice becomes officialised in a movement or philosophy and is
identified wildly with precise names and core values. The fourth is the level of the big communities,
like cities, that decide to adopt sustainable local solutions integrated with the mainstream society
and lifestyle and inaugurate so a slow adaptation and transformation of the city through small
changes. The fifth is again the level of big communities, but in this case that don’t remain integrated
in the mainstream society but form their realities outside, distinguished from it and clearly
identified. For every level I will mention one example of social innovation: Critical Consumption in
the first, Collaborative Consumption of GAS in the second, Slow Food and Decrescita Felice
movements in the third, the Transition Towns in the fourth and Ecovillages and Intentional
Communities in the fifth.

They challenge the consumeristic culture in different ways and from different domains, some more
some less integrated in the conventional social dimension. All of them offer interesting examples
and spread a new knowledge about the environment and the relationship between it and the
inhabitants.

The contemporary adaption of climate change in politics and economics clearly proves, for
example, that technocratic and socioeconomic reactions can only produce short term,
unsustainable and cosmetic responses; at the same time the convergence of worldviews,
values, lifestyles and designs of alternative life-worlds, demanded for over forty years, still
dwells on the late-modern margins. These margins, nevertheless, offer fertile soil for a
surprisingly broad and creative flourishing of alternatives, as seen for example, in the World
Social Forum211.

- First level: the individual and the Critic Consumption

Every person who has access to the modern communication platforms, or who is simply interested
in what to buys and eat, can find several ways to change the way of consuming in a healthier one.
The platforms where nets of associations, organizations, and groups of people diffuse knowledge

211
Bergmann S., Blindoc I. and Ott K. (2013), p. 39.

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and operate in this sense are many. Critical Consumption is a general expression to indicate a way
of shopping and consuming that considers the impact of the products in social and environmental
terms. Thanks to Eco-labels and Green Stickers212 the consumer has the possibility to know the
origin of most part of the products that he finds in the markets, the way how they are produced and
the row material used. The range of choice between different products and brands are large in
western countries, but thanks to labelling and informing ourselves autonomously we can catch data
about them and choose which one is morally better to buy when we go shopping. Fare Trade is, for
instance, a guaranty of respect of acceptable working conditions and environmentally friendly
production. The movement seeks, through labelling the products, to help developing countries to
promote sustainable production and to achieve better trading conditions and more equity in the
international partnerships. It invites us to consider the impact that a product produced in the Global
South has in terms of unjust distribution of resources, exploitation of labour and damage to the
environment, and it offers us an alternative to this and a way not to contribute to those processes.

Local consumption and Short Supply Chain are a way to reduce the impact of transports and to
support local economies against the Big Distribution that challenges the survival of small, particular
and localised productions. A short chain is characterised by the short distance and the limitation of
as few as possible intermediaries between producers and consumers. Local farmers or producers sell
directly to consumers in the same regions and develop autonomous strategies of marketing that
ensures a personal relationship between the two and information about the way of production,
quality and provenance of the product.

Sharing Economy is literally “a socio-economic system built around the sharing of human and
physical resources. It includes the shared creation, production, distribution, trade and
consumption of goods and services by different people and organisations and takes a variety of
forms, often leveraging information technology to empower individuals, corporations, non-
profits and government with information that enables distribution, sharing and reuse of excess
capacity in goods and services”213. Shared economy systems work often without money

212
See Global Ecolabelling Network website, http://www.globalecolabelling.net/what_is_ecolabelling/index.htm
January 2015: While Green Stickers are mandatory by law labelling systems, "Ecolabelling is a voluntary method of
environmental performance certification and labelling that is practised around the world. An "ecolabel" is a label
which identifies overall, proven environmental preference of a product or service within a specific product/service
category. In contrast to "green" symbols, or claim statements developed by manufacturers and service providers, the
most credible labels are based on life cycle considerations; they are awarded by an impartial third-party in relation to
certain products or services that are independently determined to meet transparent environmental leadership
criteria.” An example of international eco-labelling program is the application of the ISO 14000 standards, already
mentioned in the first chapter.
213
See “Sharing Economy”, Wikipedia, retrieved December 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharing_economy

119
transaction and intervention of third authorities. Everything taken or used includes having
shared it with somebody else and the exchanges happen directly person-to-person. It consists of
many services to share objects, transports, solutions of inhabiting and travelling. Examples are
car-pooling and car-sharing for sharing transports. One example of consuming reducing waste
is the barter of objects in transitions without money and where second-hand or used things are
reutilised. Examples of sustainable ways of tourism are peer-to-peer accommodation, exchange
of hospitality or the payment of it through work in the place, like Couch-surfing, Woofing or
Work-away. Shared Economy includes also the exchange of work without money payment, but
in the form of time-banking, where hours of work are bartered. Those services allow economic
saving, reduction of our impact on the environment and promote sociality, relation and
collaboration among people.

- Second Level: Cooperative consumption in groups, the example of GAS.

If on the individual level consuming critically can be a daily action, when more individuals
unite in groups and together organise critical consumption the level of action from individual
becomes collective. People access to so called “alternative food networks” not as singular but
as group, cooperative, association, organization, and establish nets of relationship and make
communities through the action of shopping. One such example diffused in north Italy, where
the critical consumption from the individual level shifts to the collective are the GAS- Gruppi
di acquisto Solidale, literally Ethical Purchasing Groups, a system of collective purchasing
goods.

In the definition by the Tavolo per la Rete Italiana dell’Economia Solidale, GAS are “gruppi
di persone che acquistano con una funzione collettiva di consumo, solidali, cioè che
ambiscono a superare il modello del mercato come meccanismo in cui offerta e domanda
s’influenzano a vicenda tramite reciproci aggiustamenti di prezzo”.214

They manage to organise collectively the distribution and the logistic administration of
products bought from a net of producers that have cooperation with them. Most of the people
who engage in GAS are generally well informed and critical consumers who decide to
associate motivated by strong democratic principles but with no trust anymore in the

214
See Tavolo per la rete italiana di economia solidale (ed. by) (2013), Un’economia nuova: dai GAS alla zeta,
Milano: Altra Economia Edizioni, p. 13.

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 traditional political institutions. They search for new forms of direct participation and
involvement in the social life.215 Among the most shared motivations to participate in a GAS
are the wish to support local production and small regional activities, the will to act concretely
and have a real impact in the social life, the wish to build new relationships and the worry for
the environmental problems. Their larger purpose is naturally that of stimulating alternative
lifestyles and ways of consumption, more responsible, participated, active and ethical and the
shopping becomes occasion and instrument to realise it. GAS members are often engaged in
other activities in associations, therefore the circulation of information and opportunities
diffuse easily in the community, that doesn’t remain isolated and closed in itself. They try to
spread knowledge about topics like Sustainable Agriculture, common goods, renewable
energy resources, fare-trade, self-sufficiency and ethical banking. They are considered for this
reason source of self-education, because they educate the members to sustainability but they
also contribute to diffuse an alternative way of consumption outside. In the book
“Un’economia nuova: dai GAS alla zeta” a survey conducted among more than 400 GAS
shows how the attitudes and behaviours of the members changed thanks to the experience of
belonging to it: they declare to increase the consumption of organic food and vegetables and
fruits, local and season products, to the expense of meat, exotic and gross distribution
products. They become aware of their lifestyle and make it more healthy and responsible, they
become more careful to recycling practices and they reduce the usage of energy and water.
They become more collaborative with other people and more interested in politics and social
issues. With those results GAS are definitely a source of education from the bottom that
empowers the individual in the collective context towards common aims. Interpersonal trust,
cooperation, civic engagement and solidarity are strongly enforced.

I GAS si confermerebbero quindi non solo come nuove scuole di partecipazione e democrazia,
ma soprattutto come laboratori auto-educanti di cittadinanza attiva e sostenibile e di
corresponsabilità sociale, cioè di ri-produzione di capitale sociale, spirito di cooperazione,
solidarietà e impegno civico.216

- Third Level: recognition of Practices as official Movements, the examples of Slow Food
and Decrescita Felice

215
Id., p. 22.
216
Id., p. 58.

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The Degrowth217, as mentioned above, is an alternative conception of the economy in
opposition to the consumeristic and materialistic model of the modern society and of the call
for the unlimited growth intrinsic to it. After the publications of The Entropy Law and the
Economic Process in 1971 by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, other authors, among which Serge
Latouche, developed his critic of the neoclassical economic model into a movement with
practical translation. In Italy this process has been leaded among others by Maurizio Pallante
who founded the Movimento per la Decrescita Felice (MDF). The movement bases on the put
in discussion of principles like the positive correlation between GDP, progress and growth (as
intended in the neoclassical model) and well-being.218 The western ideology of the growth
determines the consumeristic and materialistic behaviour of the society, which is not tolerable
by the planet and by the humans in terms of quality of life. The argument of the Degrowth is
simply that the progress intended as increase of consumerism and production of merchandise
doesn’t correspond to a higher level of life, rather it lowers the quality of it by destroying the
main social and relational foundations of the human being.219 According to them we have to
realise a ‘Degrowth’ in the sense of stopping to pursue the goals of producing more and
consuming more, working more to have more money to buy more, but rather we should
reconsider and focus on real values such us sobriety, sufficiency and wisdom in the
consumption, reduction of waste, self-sufficiency and self-production of goods and exchange
through not-money transactions, based on the gift and the reciprocity. These values include a
revalorisation of human relationship and feelings, solidarity and spiritual sensitiveness and they

217
Degrowth is considered distinguished if not opposed to sustainable development principles, because it is more
radical in the rejection of the economic trend of growth and progress. While sustainable development, green growth
and green economy theories keep economic growth as positive factor of well-being, the Degrowth movement
encourages a stop of this kind of progress, proposing a different paradigm that focuses on values such as the quality of
life.
218
See Demaria F., Schneider F., Sekulova F. J. M. (2013), “What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social
Movement”. Environmental Values 22, pp. 191-215. http://www.degrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/What-
is-degrowth.pdf : “Generally degrowth challenges the hegemony of growth and calls for a democratically led
redistributive downscaling of production and consumption in industrialised countries as a means to achieve
environmental sustainability, social justice and well-being.”
219
Id. : “One face of the degrowth movement is the critique of homo economicus, against utility-maximisation as the
ultimate driving force of human behaviour. The conception of human beings as economic agents driven by self-
interest and utility maximisation is one representation of the world, or one historic social construct which has been
meticulously nested in the minds of many generations of economics students. Degrowth in that sense calls for more
ample visions giving importance to economic relations based on sharing, gifts and reciprocity, where social relations
and conviviality are central. The focus here is on the change in the structure of values and the change in value-
articulating institutions. Degrowth is thus a way to bring forward a new imaginary which implies a change of culture
and a rediscovery of human identity which is disentangled from economic representations “

122
fight the ideology of monetization of the human.220 The GDP is the symbol of how the market
economy monopolises the life of the people by valuing in money everything and excluding
everything that doesn’t increase the profitability. Anything that is not monetary measurable and
doesn’t produce an increase of the GDP is not considered as factor of well-being and progress,
because it doesn’t increment the productivity. Instead, the well-being of a person lies especially
in all those things that don’t have any effect on the GDP, like donating, exchanging, self-
producing. All of them activities independent from the logic of money and profit. The levels on
which those value-oriented attitudes would produce effective changes are especially on the
energy supply and on the nutrition, which are the main future problems that an overpopulated
planet will have to face. Through a shift towards vegetarian diets, self-production of food (by
gardening or by shared economy practices) and energy; by becoming wise consumers ,
reducing at the minimum rate the consumption of resources and the waste produced; by
extending the durability of products and recycling materials, transmitting traditional knowledge
to preserve and re-use; by diminishing the ecological impact thanks to technological
innovation…through these changes in the daily life a mass of people with a big impact can
reduce its footprint very much in a relative short time.

Any consideration of degrowth is mostly referred to Western countries. It depends, indeed, on

the change in the attitudes of Western societies, if also the Global South will be able to
undertake a sustainable pathway of development, which doesn’t have to be like the one
followed by industrialised countries. This implies a commitment of just distribution of
resources, technologies and knowledge. With these premises the problem of the overpopulation
of the planet could be solved, as just distribution and extirpation of poorness provokes
automatically a diminishing of birth-rate.

The Degrowth movement has been translated in Italy in an association with federal status and it
acts in many regions through clubs, groups, and networks of consumption and organisations of
critical consumers. Through their social commitment they promote and diffuse an alternative
worldview and educate entire communities to live with wisdom and responsibility.

The same considerations can be applied to the “Slow Food” movement, that focuses on the
food and gastronomic sector but it diffuses a culture of quality and sustainability through it.

The nutrition is one of the factors that will be determinant when promoting cultural changes
towards sustainable lifestyles. Feeding an expected world population of 9 billion of people in
220
Id. : “The major idea is: if less time is spent on formal work and consumption, more time can be dedicated to other
activities which are fundamental to one’s well-being, such as social relations, political participation, physical exercise,
spirituality and contemplation. Such a shift will potentially be less environmentally harmful.”

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2050, I already said, will be one of the biggest challenges that we are going to meet and the
success or failure in doing it will depend on what and the way how we will eat. Slow Food is an
international cultural movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986 that promotes a culture of
food that educates to the rights of taste and pleasure of the gastronomy as a cultural value and
focuses on the quality of it. The quality of what we eat depends on what we choose and how we
do it, that means more broadly, from the lifestyle that we conduct. This shouldn’t be the fast,
stressing and frenetic one that our society proposes as model. Quality and responsibility in the
nutrition depend on the respect of culinary traditions, the valorisation of the identity and culture
of local populations, and of the respect of the environment and the nature, in terms of
protecting biodiversity and practicing sustainable agriculture that follows the natural rhythms
of the earth and doesn’t alter the ecosystems. Slow Food fights especially the spread of fast
food and junk food culture, and in general it promotes a healthier, slower and more harmonic
way of life treating food as cultural good.

Both those movements developed from theoretical knowledge into formal and official activism
through recognised associations, financed public events and educational projects. They are
internationally recognised, started to spread from the bottom through the engagement of
common people in their daily life and they contribute to diffuse alternative practices to improve
the lifestyle of everyone and reduce the ecological impact of it.

Basic social structures must be rapidly changed by social movements. This may be possible
because analogous changes have occurred in history without large-scale violence. In such a
process of social change, abandoning consumer society may turn out to be surprisingly
painless, because modern consumption is inherently dissatisfying. Hence, there is a chance
that out of the transformation, in addition to a rescued climate, an equitable economy and a
genuinely democratic polity would also emerge. 221

- Fourth Level: Alternative Communities integrated in the society. Transition Towns

There is awareness that action must be taken on all levels. Most activities take place at the
local scale, and are often articulated through informal and formal networks. Transition towns

221
See Olli Tammilehto (2012) : “On the Prospect of Preventing Global Climate Catastrophe due to Rapid Social
Change”, in Capitalism Nature Socialism 23:1, pp. 79-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2011.648842

124
 (UK), Rete del Nuovo Municipio (Italy) and Comuni Virtuosi (Italy) are good examples of
urban-focus approaches222

Continuing to enlarge the dimension where environmental social innovations take place, from the
individual and small group level we can find several experiments of new lifestyles that consider as
platform for the action large communities into the city. At this level of action it is not anymore the
individual or a limited group of people sharing interests that engage in living sustainable and
responsible, but the attempt can interest quartiers of cities or entire towns, like it happens with the
eco-neighbourhood and with the Transition Towns. The goal of those examples is to promote a
change into the city, integrating the innovation into the traditional mainstream culture and structures
and try to transform step by step the urban context. The commitment to propose alternatives into the
urban context is due to the evidence that more than half of the world population lives nowadays in
cities. The urbanization has touched rates of irreversibility that will continue to grow. Social
innovations that remain outside the urban contexts as isolated laboratories, like intentional
communities, are extremely important and precious, in the role of inspirational examples and
pioneers, hoping that their proposals or parts of them will “infect” the mainstream modes of living.
However they are relatively likely to modify the cultural orientation and behaviours of the masses
that live in the city, where the dominant model of lifestyle is the consumeristic one. Initiatives like
the eco-neighbourhoods aim, instead, to propose an effective alternative already into the city
context, by valorising the community of the district and promoting policies of direct democracy and
relationship, self-sufficiency of energy production, waste management and shared economy. One of
the main aspects that those experiments take care of is the recovery of the relational element and the
community affiliation. Recovering those values means fighting modern materialism and
individualism and automatically encouraging sustainable and virtuous behaviours.
The movement of Transition Towns is maybe the most successful example of the integration of
alternative sustainable lifestyle into the mainstream society. A Transition Town is a town that
undertakes the project of managing the community according to democratic and sustainable
solutions in order to respond effectively to the problems of the depletion of oil for the production of
energy, the climate change and the economic instability. The broader purpose of the transition
movement is to promote awareness about sustainable living, build ecological resilience and develop
strategies to promote a gradual transition, a change from the current unsustainable trends of the
societal masses to models, practices and worldviews that enable us to preserve our future and to

222
See F. Demaria, F. Schneider, F. Sekulova, J. M. “What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement”,
http://www.degrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/What-is-degrowth.pdf

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react and adapt in the best way to the possible challenges that the environmental forces will impose
us.
To deal with the depletion of fossil fuels and the crisis of the energy supply the town learns to be
independent from those resources and to rely on sufficiency and self-production of energy. The
community adopts planes to save, reduce the use and produce energy, and reallocate the basic
resources for producing food, goods and services. Public transportation systems are incentivised and
private car use is deeply reduced. Practices of recycling, exchange and shared economy are
promoted and alternative economic arrangements are developed, mostly locally based, like critical
consumption, local production through permaculture and sustainable agriculture and use of land,
short supply chains and urban gardening. This has the scope to reduce pollution due to trade
transportation systems and to maintain a good level of self-management and self-reliance in the
community. However it doesn’t mean that a transition town is isolated from global economic
dynamics and international trade, but it takes part to it in a wiser and more reasonable way. The
community promotes the active participation of the members who discuss and decide about inner
problems. The processes of decision-making are democratically managed by them: it is the
community in transition that visions, plans and implements the strategies of the change, having as
starting reference point the handbook of the transition movement, which individuates 12 indicative
steps223 to follow, in order to begin a project. Transition Towns become therefore also opportunity
of rebuilding and revalorisation of the system of relationship among humans and between
humankind and environment, beyond the primary elements of promoting resilience and
independency from oil.
One important element of the transition is the aim to cooperate with the local existing institutions
and political authorities. A town in transition doesn’t conceive its action as antagonist or alternative
to the mainstream management of the administrations, but it seeks to promote the integration with it
and the support necessary to address the gradual change. Also, as the premise to the functioning of a
transition community is an aware and open participation and cooperation, the transition of a group
implies an inner individual transition of every singular member, in the sense of embracing a
psychological shift from conventional life-styles and standards, generally dependent on oil and
consumeristic habits, to sustainable ones in terms of spiritual values, attitude towards other persons

223
The 12 steps indicated by the transition movement are a guide useful to begin a project and build a first leading
group. They consist in organising a group of action, informing, exchange knowledge and communicate information
outside the project, imagine practices and planes, building contact and cooperation with local administrations,
valorising the knowledge of the old generations, keeping openness and flexibility in the creative development of the
project, creating a plan of energy reduction (Energy Descent Action Plan). See Transition International and Transition
Italia websites: https://www.transitionnetwork.org/support/12-ingredients and
http://transitionitalia.wordpress.com/cose-la-transizione-2/i-12-passi/

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and entanglement for the environment. The educative implication of grassroots transition practices
are therefore strong and with a big potential of having an immediate impact on urban populations.
The first “transition” started in 2005 in the town Totnes in England, where Robert Hopkins, expert
of permaculture and then main founder of the movement, decided to imagine a project with his
students, of a town that wouldn’t be any more dependent on oil, but would address the community
towards resilience promoting solutions. The example has been repeated by more than one thousand
towns nowadays and has spread successfully and in continuous flexible evolution in all Europe.

- Fifth Level: Alternative Communities outside the mainstream society. Ecovillages and
intentional communities

It is obvious that a different world cannot be built without new cultural, ethical, and spiritual
values. In this sense ecovillages are pioneers for cultural transformation, because they
establish a different consciousness. They are change agents that show under which conditions
sustainable and environmentally just lifestyles can be established, while increasing quality of
life.224
In the review “Ecovillages. Realizing Utopia: Ecovillages Endeavours and Academic Approaches”
edited by Marcus Andreas and Felix Wagner,225 an ecovillage is defined as an “intentional
community where environmental sustainability is sought, along with social justice, equality, peace
and so forth.” Next to the definition of ecovillage also the one of intentional community is
explained, that is “Five or more people, drawn from more than one family or kinship group, who
have voluntarily come together for the purpose of ameliorating perceived social problems and
inadequacies. They seek to live beyond the bounds of mainstream society by adopting a consciously
devised and usually well thought-out social and cultural alternative.” To do this they share many
aspects of the daily life and conceive themselves as a group rather than divided individuals, distinct
from the rest conventional society. There can be several levels of sharing in such communities.
Some, like the Cohousing communities, provide families with private houses or flats, usually built
with sustainable material and design, but sharing common areas and services, like parks, children’s
halls and baby-sitting, dining-rooms and so on. Some other ecovillages engage on deeper and larger
commonality.

224
See Geseko von Luepke (2012), “Ecovillages: Islands of the Future?”, in Andreas, Marcus, and Felix Wagner (eds.),
"Realizing Utopia: Ecovillage Endeavours and Academic Approaches”, RCC Perspectives No. 8, p. 77.
225
Id.

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The realities of ecovillages and intentional communities have existed since long ago, already
appeared when the Christianity spread in Europe, with groups of people united by the same
religious or spiritual values that lived together in distinct communities from the mainstream society.
The element characterising the modern development of ecovillages is the attempt to live sustainable
and communally. Those communities are increasing in number since the economic and the
ecological crises worsened and just in Europe there are several hundred experiments located mostly
in western and northern countries.226
Some of them are inspired by religious or spiritual commitments, but many others are secular and
are simply motivated by the will to live in an alternative and more balanced way, in accordance
with the environment and with a sustainable future perspective.
Part of the sustainability of the lifestyles in ecovillages implies a communality of activities, space
and decision-making process. Every member is directly responsible for the community and united
to the group by solidarity and relational links. It is not the interest of the singular to have priority
but the well of all in the community, therefore values of democracy, freedom of expression and
sense of belonging are strongly felt. Ecovillages members aim to have the lowest footprint possible
on the environment and they organise their life in base of this principle. They build houses using
low impact material and technics; they try to generate locally renewable energy and to produce
locally organic food to pursue self-efficiency for feeding. They use sustainable transports and share
many elements that are commonly owned (e. g. like land, but also objects, instruments, cars…).
Every singular ecovillage is a different specific experiment. There are no general rules or
instructions to develop it, rather every experience is born into a specific local context with certain
people, and therefore it will grow with its specific features, as a social laboratory.
Yet all of them can say to have the elements and values mentioned above in common, and they
generate a unique solution in base of the specific interpretation and elaboration. In general the
alternative life conducted in ecovillages claims the urgent need of recovering elements of
communality and solidarity among individuals, if we want to produce the social change that is
needed. They strongly fight the individualistic and materialistic culture of modern consumerism and
do it choosing to live differently and showing that another way of living is possible. Beyond the
daily routine of ecovillagers, that generally is integrated pretty well with the mainstream society
“outside”, they often organise events, laboratories, work-shops, seminars opened to the outsiders,
where they can learn and experience sustainable activities that they can practice daily also outside

226
See Meijering Louise(2012), “Ideals and Practices of European Ecovillages”, in Marcus Andreas and Felix Wagner
edited by, “Realizing Utopia : Ecovillage Endeavors and Academic Approaches”, RCC Perspective No. 8, pp. 36- 40.

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the ecovillage itself (organic gardening, permaculture, recycling, meditation…) and that can
improve the quality of the life and diminish the impact on the environment.
Ecovillages represent one of the most radical social innovations that are being experienced in order
to propose a cultural and practical approach to the ecological crisis with real long-term efficacy.
Their contribution in terms of raising awareness and educating people to sustainable patterns is very
precious and they should be encouraged and politically or legally supported. The specific solution
that every “laboratory” produces is generally not extensible to the masses of mainstream society in
its entirety as radical totalising lifestyle, but all the singular proposals and strategies that they
promote could be easily imitated and repeated on a large scale by every citizen. The only condition
necessary for that is a strong awareness, a good knowledge and the internalisation of certain values,
including the understanding of the urgency, inevitability and importance of addressing our lives
towards sustainable styles. Ecovillages, offering examples of possible practices and opening their
doors to the mainstream society, offer a valuable occasion to learn and be inspired. They represent a
potential rich occasion of education towards sustainability by presenting worldviews and practices
that will have to become common in few decades to the most part of the conventional society. In
this sense they can be conceived as pioneers of a cultural revolution to which we will have to adapt
if we want to respond to the crisis in an appropriate way.

I believe ecovillages are important because they offer another way to understand what we
must do to transform our world into a saner, healthier, more human and more liveable place
for humans and all the world’s creatures. They practice the advice: To change something,
build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. They show how it might be like to
leap from the dominant paradigm of materialism and environmental callousness to that
imagined future paradigm in which people live simple, satisfying, cooperative lives in balance
with the natural world, harming no thing and no one.227

All the social innovations mentioned challenge the consumeristic culture in different ways and from
different domains, some more some less integrated in the conventional social dimension. All of
them offer interesting examples and spread a new knowledge about the environment and the
relationship between it and the inhabitants, and are therefore sources of education.

227
See Leafe Diana Christian (2012), “We never lock our Doors”, in Andreas Marcus and Wagner Felix edited by,
“Realizing Utopia : Ecovillage Endeavours and Academic Approaches”, RCC Perspective No. 8, p.19.

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Education to sustainability, both through the formal and the informal pathways described, is the
main strategy to promote the cultural response to the ecological crisis that the technical approach
tends to neglect. However, a wise cultural approach that acts on the social tissues and shapes to
sustainable values and assets needs also an appropriate knowledge and paradigm to understand the
situation where actions will take place. An appropriate, integrated and faithful knowledge about the
environmental crisis is necessary in order to comprehend the challenges that we are going to meet.
To this purpose, I argue, the paradigm of our knowledge must be addressed towards a
transdisciplinary perspective, otherwise any consideration or proposal may risk being partial,
inadequate and reductionist, as Vandana Shiva has denounced about the modern science.

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Chapter VI - Transdisciplinarity and the role of Humanities in
Environmental Studies

In the next pages I’m going to describe the other element that we need to deal better with
environmental problems: a different orientation in the research academy. As first point in the
academic field, the humanities should be reconsidered for their potential. Secondly the different
disciplines should embrace a Transdisciplinary approach, in order to produce valid knowledge. I
will describe why the humanities play such an important role in our attempt to face the
environmental crises and how they try to contribute through the field of environmental humanities,
an integrative perspective aiming to overcome the traditional split between hard and soft sciences of
our culture. After defining the position of the humanities I will clarify the Transdisciplinarity
paradigm and its practical perspective.

The theoretical division between hard and soft sciences that I mention doesn’t take into
consideration the local and national differences. I’m aware that the gap and the definitions vary in
base of the place, but I keep a general theoretical position without going in detail, according to
which there is a border dividing natural sciences and economics using hard and empirical methods
of investigation, from the human, that generally include Arts, Philosophy, Literature, History and
neighbouring.

The need of an integrated paradigm

The (environmental) question as a whole lies in the domain of ecology, biology, agronomy,
chemistry, and so forth. In addition, it also ropes in the economy, engineering, city planning
and so forth. Only the interdisciplinary pooling and integration of all these will lead to the
global environmental science that is needed.228

One way not to leave the monopoly of the management of environmental problems to technocracy
is, we saw upper, educating future generations to sustainable patterns and involving the civil society
at global level, giving value to the mobilisation and the arise of awareness from the bottom. Another
way to enrich the overlook about sustainable development and environmental sensitiveness is to
promote a more integrated approach in the academic research, between economics, natural sciences

228
See Hans Jonas (1985), p. 189.
and the humanities. Environmental problematics remain still not enough treated by the ‘human
section’ of the academy, although things started to change in the last years. Sciences like History,
Anthropology, Arts, and Philosophy give still a partial contribution and are not so much perceived
as relevant sources. The stages where this side of the academics flows together or cooperate with
Economics, Politics and Natural sciences are still limited and the way how the humanities can
approach the environmental matters seem not interesting for the “technicians”. On the contrary, the
potential that the humanities contain for enriching the topic is precious. The humanities have the
instruments to describe how the humankind acts, thinks and changes in the history and so they can
say much about the relationship with the nature and the environment. Technical analysis promoting
reforms and models, without the cultural knowledge and preparation for them, is like building an
instrument and not having the hand able to use it. The hand, that is the people with their mind and
capability to think critically, should be aware of the aims, the implications, the responsibility, the
history, the larger context that the instrument implies.

Environmental issues, even posed by economy, directly involve socio-philosophical questions:

What do we need to be happy?, Does material wealth make citizens happier?, Does greater
productivity and richness lower the global inequality? Does the market structure allow preserving
the environment? All this regards ethics, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, beyond the
immediate call for economy and politics. The ‘shallow ecology’, that intervenes through money and
market-based instruments and economic incentives systems, tends still to miss a substantial
dialogue with those subjects, that could give a different form of understanding and knowledge to the
issues. An organic perspective among different academic studies towards the environmental
challenge is urgently needed, and the cross-disciplinary orientations - as inter-, multi-, but
especially trans-disciplinary - have a strategic and big potential.

Dealing with environmental questions, I repeat, is not just matter of finding practical solutions to
numerical problems such as the excessive percentage of greenhouse gases concentration. It is, by
now, a more holistic and large matter, that has to do with the mentality, the life-style, the culture
and attitude that we have towards the natural environment. Who or what, better than studies
concerned with the human, can address this kind of orientation?

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 Environmental problems are not only related to the physical environment; they are also
inextricably tied to the sociocultural environment. The key to understanding them is to
understand that they are as much physical as they are a social issue.229

The role of the Humanities and the relation with the Nature in the Western
cultural history towards the Anthropocene230

The relation that the western culture has today with the environment is deeply different from the
one that it had in the antiquity. It is impossible to comprehend how we developed towards the
Anthropocene without re-walking back the historical evolution of our society. To understand this,
and to understand our current position, humanities are essential.

According to Ecofeminists, the reason why we approach to nature in an external dominating way
has the roots in the framework of dualistic thinking that serves to naturalize and legitimate political
oppression generally: the domination of nature is ideologically inextricable from the domination of
human by human, particularly of women by man231. It is the core of dichotomies part of the dualistic
thinking of Western culture that drove us towards this attitude of anthropocentric exploitation and
domination.

At some point of the European history the Nature as subject of knowledge encountered a process of
debasement on behalf of human artificial creation and of an inner soul speculation. The capability
of humans to build mechanic disposals not existent in nature was a first source of power that could
be perceived in opposition to the natural creations. With the spread of the Platonic philosophy and
later the Christianity, the world was divided in two dimensions, the physical and the metaphysical,
immanent and transcendent. The physical, corresponding to the natural world, lost in a certain way
value, because the ‘Truth’, purpose of the human knowledge and research, was in the Ideas, in the

229
See Kreutz Angela (2014), “Reconciling theory and practice: Transdisciplinary Insights from an Indigenous Case
Study”, in Emmett Rob and Frank Zelko (eds.), "Minding the Gap: Working Across Disciplines in Environmental Studies".
RCC Perspectives No. 2, p. 27.
230
With the term Anthropocene, recently adopted by the sciences, it is intended the chronological epoch when human
activity starts to have global impact on the Earth’s ecosystem. It is the most recent geological period, but opinions
about the conventional time of starting still disagree. Some put the start before the Neolithic, when sedentary and
farming culture began, some consider the Industrial Revolution as starting point, and some want it to start 2000 years
ago, at the end of Holocene, when the big Empires of the history (the Roman, the Chinese…) and large areas’ human
management developed.
231
See Freya Mathews, “Deep Ecology”, in Dale Jamieson (2001), p. 227. The dichotomy core identified by
Ecofeminists goes forward with: mind/body, spirit/matter, subject/object, human/nature, culture/nature,
reason/emotion, science/superstition, civilized/primitive, colonizer/colonized, mental/manual, and so forth.

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Iperuranio232 and in God, a dimension intangible and superior to the tangible reality. This initial
division between physical and spiritual will continue in the Middle age with a proper distinction
between the body and the soul, materiality and spirituality. They were two different things, one
impeding the spiritual elevation of the other, the body as a cage for the soul that gains freedom in
the inner reflection, after the death and after leaving the material condition of life. Material body,
analogously to physical natural world, has endured a process of progressive underestimation while
the human condition and its spiritual possibility of knowledge have undertaken a strong boost of
power and sense of superiority. Next to this dichotomy, Descartes contributes to the further
development of a distinction between the human as subject that knows and the reality as object to
be known. A proper detachment between our mind and the world, the latter perceived as outside
dimension and outside entity from us. With this news the human mind lost the sense of belonging to
the reality and to be an inner part of a whole and we became external observers of an existent
dimension exterior to us, we have power to act on. According to some scholars, as mentioned in the
previous chapters, this detachment of the mind and the self from the world is the raison of the
modern lack of integrity and spiritualism and the root of extreme self-referencing individualism and
socio-psychological malaise.233

Our anthropocentrism has far roots and it passes through several social and cultural revolutions
before reaching the extreme attitude of the modern times, when natural assets are considered just in
a narrowly utilitarian and external sense that will oblige us to re-think our limits and our position in
the world. These processes take place in the history of the humanity through philosophy, history
and arts. Who represented the relation that the humans have with the nature in the history were
artists, painters, sculptors, poets, scholars… all this simply explains how the humanities impact our
reality, because they interpret it and are able to give a sense to the social changes and evolutions
and they also shape them. Quoting Scott Slovic234, humanities and arts are ideal media for

232
The Iperuranio is the dimension, described by Plato in the Fedro, upon the physical world and beyond the sky,
where are the perfect and changeless Ideas that can be coughed just by the intellect and cannot be reached by
temporal beings. It is a metaphysical, perfect, immaterial, timelessness, and totally spiritual dimension.
233
See Beth Carruthers, “Call and Response”, in Bergmann S., Blindoc I. and Ott K. (2013), p. 134: “Our Western
ontology of separation of human from world, has resulted also in (…) a disconnection between what is thought, said
and written and what the senses see, the heart feels and the world suffer. In this state we have trained ourselves to
see only ourselves, our own interests reflected, projected. We make ourselves profoundly and dangerously alone,
locked within the palace of our self-reflexive ontology and its artefacts. The remedy for the separation of self and
world and ultimately the suffering of the world is to reawaken the heart, and his prescription for doing so is clear. It is
beauty that stirs and opens the heart. That the world is loveless results directly from the repression of beauty, its
beauty and our sensitivity to beauty. For love to return to the world, beauty must return, else we love world only as a
moral duty.”
234
See Scott Slovic, “Literature”, in Dale Jamieson (2001), p. 252.

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exploring and communicating systems of values - ethical frameworks- within specific communities
and between one culture and another. Humanities change social believes, assets, mentality. They
are the kind of reflection that can determine how the humanity thinks, acts and perceives itself in a
certain context. When we talk of environmental matters we talk about this and the humanities have
much to say and they have always done it.

The humanities are a powerful source of change. We humans are motivated by what we
believe, and humanistic thinking is one of the main sources of ideas and narratives that
inform social action – for good and for bad.235

Humanities and social sciences to avoid the reductionism of the technical

approach

We have seen in the first chapter the limits of the technical approach from an economic and
political point of view. Policies are not able to promote long perspective change if a cultural
approach misses. Another reason why the technical approach doesn’t work is its reductionism.
I have mentioned above the denouncement of Vandana Shiva about the danger of the reductionism
of modern science. Her argumentation about the ontological perspective of the modern science, that
reduces the complexity of the nature to division of units, sums of parts and points of investigation
that encounter the efficiency aims, is another raison, together with the lack of cultural background
for the application of legal frameworks, why the technical strategy cannot work. Technical expertise
may miss indeed a faithful and deep comprehension of the environmental problems. Beyond the
reductionist perspective in studying natural systems, they miss the social point of view, because
social sciences and humanities are not integrated in it. Environmental studies have the core in
natural sciences, while arts and humanities are relegated at the margins. This asymmetry is in line
with the reductionism and the tendency to prioritise procedural strategies:

Unbalanced development in environmental science has led to an asymmetry of disciplines in

which the natural sciences are placed at the forefront while the humanities and arts are
resigned to the margins. An increasingly technocratic ideology is creeping into environmental

235
See Paul Holm (2014), “Can Environmental Humanities help make a better world?”, in Emmett Rob and Frank Zelko
(eds.), “Minding the Gap: Working Across Disciplines in Environmental Studies", RCC Perspectives No. 2.

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 science; promises of quick technical fixes are gaining priority and investments over long-term
complex processes of knowledge seeking.236

Sustainability and environmental matters are natural and social objects. The reality we live in is a
complex construction of social and natural interrelated facts and processes and the reduced point of
view of one scientific side doesn’t enable us to understand the whole. Social, economic and natural
dimensions cannot be conceived as independent entities and cannot be studied as separated. If the
challenge of sustainable development requires acting especially on long-term perspective, it is
essential to work on the social system of institutions, political structures, cultural issues such as
believes, motivations, and values. Beyond the short-term policy actions and the normative scheme
this fundamental core should be driven by humanities and social sciences. Just this integration of
different ways of analysing the reality can promote a systemic understanding and a holistic
framework.
The sustainability challenge requires more than technical expertise. It requires us to consider
long-term and foundational issues, and it challenges deeply held values and beliefs. Key
contributions for this come from ‘interdisciplines’ such as human ecology and environmental
politics, social sciences and humanities such us history and philosophy. The humanities in
particular have been marginal to sustainability research to date, which reflects the science-
arts divide that has pervaded both the academic world. Yet, to understand the biophysical
world requires science; to conceptualise our role within this world requires the humanities;
and to reach sustainability requires their integration.237

Environmental Humanities

I believe humanities do change the world and environmental humanities are urgently needed
both for intrinsic interest and for their contributions towards a better world.238

236
See Bergmann S., Blindoc I. and Ott K. (2013), p. 1.
237
See Joern Fischer, Adrian D. Manning, Will Steffen, Deborah B. Rose, Katherine Daniell, Adam Felton, Stephen
Garnett, Ben Gilna, Rob Heinsohn, David B. Lindenmayer, Ben MacDonald, Frank Mills, Barry Newell, Julian Reid, Libby
Robin, Kate Sherren and Alan Wade, “Mind the sustainability gap”, in TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution Vol.22 No.12.
238
Poul Holm (2014), “Can Environmental Humanities help make a better world?” in Emmett Rob and Frank Zelko
(eds.), “Minding the Gap: Working Across Disciplines in Environmental Studies", RCC Perspectives No. 2, pp. 57-60.

136
The way how knowledge developed in the western society along the history of the last millennium,
in the wake of Descartes, increased in the centuries the sectorization of the subjects and the
dichotomy between sciences and humanities. The official definition of the scientific method
(passing through Aristotle’s logic, the scientific revolution in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
the Positivism and so forth), as definite procedure of research, made the border line between natural
sciences and the rest clearer and tidier. Science could demonstrate and reproduce things and had a
clear mechanical pathway to follow. The rationalistic and positivistic tendency of western culture
has left often to the humanities a secondary or relatively important status. The utility of not
objectively demonstrable knowledge was not very clear in some historical periods and if something
didn’t fall under the umbrella of the “scientific criteria of validation” was likely to be considered
non-scientific or irrelevant. The epistemological excursus about sciences’ status is much more
complex than this, obviously. However, the dichotomy between hard sciences and soft sciences
remains a feature of our cultural paradigm. Analogously has the dichotomy between nature and
culture been bequeathed. Biophysical and social realities were conceived as separated entities, one
stage of natural events, one of human action. The usually concerned relation between the two
regarded the human’s possibility of dominating the natural world for his best survival.
Environmental humanities, as new platform for cross-disciplinary studies, propose an approach to
the reality that tries to pass this gap and dichotomy, conceiving ecosystems as the place where both
human and non-human beings interact and belong. They are parts of a large system where
everything is linked and connected and where we act as participants in lively ecologies of meaning
and value, entangled within rich patterns of cultural and historical diversity that shape who we are
and the ways in which we are able to ‘become with’ others. If the reality is conceived as integrated,
holistic and systemic, studying it with sectorial and divided approaches cannot be the right tactic.
The best way to approach to an integrated reality is a knowledge not withdrawn into every specific
sector, but integrated and trans-border. In this sense, environmental humanities aim to:

Resituate the human within the environment, and to resituate nonhumans within cultural and
ethical domains. Both tasks aim to overcome the nature/culture binary that positions humans
outside of nature and thus implicitly posits that we are free to control our own destiny within
a broader ‘natural’ world that is devoid of meaning, values, and ethics.239

239
See Bird Rosea Deborah, van Doorenb Thom, Chrulewb Matthew, Cookec Stuart, Kearnesb Matthew and
O’Gormand Emily (2012), “Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities”, in Environmental
Humanities 1, pp. 1-5, citing the thought of Australian philosopher Val Plumwood.

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In the last decades several sub-disciplines have raised, providing an interdisciplinary approach. It is
important that they don’t just overcome the traditional nature-culture dichotomy, but they also
include non-western and indigenous paradigms towards the nature, therefore the enlargement of the
approach becomes even more precious. Environmental History, Environmental Anthropology,
Ecofeminism, Ecocriticism and Cinema, Environmental Philosophy, Ethics, Aesthetics and
Sociology, Political Ecology, Ethnography and Geography, they all help to foster this orientation
and to conceptualise a new notion of humanity and think better ways for us to conceive ourselves in
the world, act and learn. They can give a different outlook from the current prominent technical and
scientific one. An aesthetic or visionary comprehension of the reality through the arts, literature and
cinema, a spiritual one through religion or philosophy, a contextualised and inclusive through the
History, or a practically involved and cross-cultural through Anthropology and cultural studies, and
so forth, they can change the disposition and the sensitiveness that we have towards the
environment and shape a different scale of cultural values. Humanities (more specifically literature
and Ecocriticism), says Luose Westling240, use a metaphorical and connotative language, differently
from the denotative language of scientists, to question the place of the human in the world, to enter
ethical problems derived from science and technology, to scrutinize their ‘invisible’ dangers and
effects. They can create a different “Social Imaginary”, with the words of Hearther Eaton, that is the
complex and relational tapestry of intertwining ideals, beliefs, moral principles, patterns, practices
and influences; more simply is the way we imagine life and our lives together. 241
Environmental Humanities can contribute to change the current utilitarian and exploitive “social
imaginary” in a more ecological one and from those learning we could conceive alternative
practical pathways, if these academic studies success in working together with the society
practitioners, and the result wouldn’t be just an imposition of top-down bureaucratic, state-
sanctioned “management”.242
To this end, also integrating academic research and social practices is essential if we want to
promote new sustainable patterns. Transdisciplinarity becomes therefore the key factor.

Fragmented Knowledge and Transdisciplinarity

240
See Louse Westling, “Literature and Ecology”, in Greg Garrard editor (2012), Teaching Ecocritisism and green
cultural studies, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 84.
241
See Hearther Eaton , “Forces of Nature”, in Bergmann S., Blindoc I. and Ott K. (2013), p. 111.
242
See Rich Hutchings (2014), “ Understanding of and Vision for the Environmental Humanities”, in Environmental
Humanities Vol. 4, pp. 213-220.

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 The point is that all these studies are fragmentary: they select and isolate relational nets
through abstract analysis. One does not ever attempt to study the total net. According to our
intuition, though, there is something we call reality which is in some sense a unity and […] in
our interdisciplinary cooperation, we must, somehow, split up considerations of totality.243

One of the effects that institutional education has on the mind of young children is to address their
perception of the reality divided in sectors. Knowledge in primary and secondary school, is likely to
be imagined as many different drawers, each of them containing one discipline with its own outlook
on the human, diverse from the outlook of the discipline near. Another image that could
metaphorically represent the paradigm of the fragmented human knowledge could be a graph with
the form of cake divided in many slides; each of them is one discipline, one slide of psychology,
one of physics, one of biology, one of history... The cake is supposed to be the human being, and
every slide understands the human from its perspective. It is difficult with such imaginary, to see
the cake as one only integrated thing, and therefore the human as a whole. We rather see an entity
fragmented in all those parts, each describing the cake in a different way, with different languages,
often not comprehensible for the others.

When we then focus more on one of the slides, therefore we potentiate one outlook, one perspective
to understand the reality, at the expense of the others, we are likely to enforce a partial perspective
and to have a limited view of the world. That happens if we understand the reality just in scientific
terms, as chemical or physical processes, without any spiritual, cultural or emotional component. Or
on the contrary if we miss scientific knowledge of natural dynamics and tend to evaluate everything
mystically. Independently from the personal worldview and philosophy of life, the tendency to
sectorize the knowledge, through the fragmentation of disciplines, creates an embarrassment in our
mind. The specialisation in one sector may provoke the loss of the whole. This process of
sectorization is a common experience for every individual in the modern society. The enormous
amount of knowledge that we produce used to be divided and specialised more and more. Expertise
levels in every field are extremely high, but although the progress in the specific sectors grows, the
cake remains a sum of parts that have difficulty to communicate with each other.

Hans Jonas used to say that:

The ‘collective mind’ of the society that stores the knowledge has to pay a price for scientific
progress, namely the price in the personal quality of the knowledge itself. Its name is

243
See Naess Arne (1990), p. 79.

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 ‘specialization’. Enforced by the monstrous growth of the contents of knowledge, their
proliferating subdivisions, and the differentiated, subtle methods developed for them, it leads
to extreme fragmentation of the existing total of knowledge among its adepts.244

Fragmentation of the knowledge doesn’t have just consequences on the individual understanding of
the reality, but it creates an amount of specialization that may not really catch the complexity of the
reality we live in, that is much more than a sum of drawers.
According to Nicolescu245 the differentiation and division of disciplines that study the external
object-reality has leaded to the loss of the Subject, meant to be the whole reality with the human
being part of it. The emphasis on the scientificity and objectivity of the knowledge polarized the
loss of spirituality and subjective component of the reality. Following his argumentation, on a long-
term perspective and on global scale this scientism and objectivation of the humanity will take us to
the self-destruction.
The disciplinary paradigm is not anymore adequate to comprehend our complex world. N. stresses
the urgent need of an approach that goes ‘beyond the disciplines’, not simply multidisciplinary or
interdisciplinary, but trasdisciplinary. Transdisciplinarity opens a new way of understanding the
reality that can catch a sense of the Subject, not possible to conceive for singular disciplines.
As the article 5 of the Charter of Transdisciplinarity246 points:
The transdisciplinary vision is resolutely open insofar as it goes beyond the field of the exact
sciences and demands their dialogue and their reconciliation with the humanities and the
social sciences as well as with art, literature, poetry and spiritual experience.

Transidisciplinarity in the definition from the article Methodology of Transdisciplinarity- levels of

reality, logic of the included middle and complexity247, concerns that which is at once between the
disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond all disciplines. Its goal is the understanding
of the present world, of which one of the imperatives is the unity of knowledge.
A new concept of cross of knowledge is introduced, that differs from the multidisciplinary approach,
where an object is studied from different subjects in the same time, whose perspective are

244
See Hans Jonas (1985), p. 167.
245
Basarab Nicolescu is a physician and one of the most important contributors to the speech on Transdisciplinarity,
president and founder of the International Centre for Transdisciplinary Research and Studies (CIRET).

246
See World Congress of Transdisciplinarity edited by (1994) ,“Charter of Transdisciplinarity”, Interdisciplinary
Encyclopedia of Science and Religion website, http://www.inters.org/Freitas-Morin-Nicolescu-Transdisciplinarity

247
See Nicolescu B. (2010), “Methodology of Transdisciplinarity – levels of reality, logic of the included middle and
complexity”, in Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science Vol. 1, No.1, pp.19-38.

140
incorporated but the results remain on a disciplinary level. It differs also from interdisciplinary
approach where the methods of different disciplines are transferred to one another but again
remaining on the disciplinary level. Transdisciplinary approach concerns a holistic framework
‘behind’ the singular disciplines that should focus on the common problems, rather than on the
intellectual diversity or language and paradigms’ divergence.
After explaining his theory of the three axioms of different levels of Reality, Included Middle and
Complexity248, N. claims the need of recovering a spirituality of the reality that we’ve lost because
of the technical efficiency, scientific and economistic ideology. Transdisciplinarity approach is able
to do this because it enables us to represent a ‘Big picture’ of the reality and to communicate among
the different perspectives. In practical terms, as it is exposed in the Charter, the transdisciplinary
approach corresponds to a trans-cultural attitude that can allow us to cohabitate democratically
among different cultures and worldviews and to an education that must teach contextual, concrete
and global approaches249. It corresponds to a trans-religious and trans-national orientation that
stresses the sense of belonging to a totality, rather than the specific differentiation and division. It
promotes also a harmonic conception of economy, which must be in the service of the human being
and not the contrary, and an ethics based on reciprocal tolerance and respect of individuals and
community diversities.250 Transdisciplinarity knowledge should be trans-language and trans-history.
All the dimensions of the reality should follow an attitude that aims to recover the human and
spiritual sides of the humanity and to redefine the role of the humankind in the world and in the
universe.
The attempt to recover this sense of the reality is translated in the re-conciliation between the
Homo Oeconomicus of the modernity and the Homo religious of the tradition. The latter, who was
protector of the sense of sacred towards the reality, has been strangled by the first one. The two
kinds should recover their integrity reconciling the opposition between subject and object of
knowledge and situating them into the reality as an integrated whole. This whole is moving and
changing continuously and we have to learn to move with it following its own flows and not
perturbing, resisting to it or dominating it. Just if we learn to act in harmony with it we can imagine
sustainable futures.

248
Id.

249
See World Congress of Transdisciplinarity edited by (1994) ,“Charter of Transdisciplinarity”, Interdisciplinary
Encyclopedia of Science and Religion website, http://www.inters.org/Freitas-Morin-Nicolescu-Transdisciplinarity

250
See Dincà Irina (2011), “Stages in the configuration of the transdisciplinarity project of Basarab Nicolescu”, in
Transdisciplinary Studies: Science- Spirituality- Society, No. 2. http://basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_Notice/Irina_Dinca.pdf

141
Nicolescu starts to diffuse the concept of “Transdisciplinarity” in the 90s, although Jean Piaget has
used the term already in 1970. From this first conception it developed an idea of transdisciplinarity
that adds to the element of holistic understanding ‘beyond the disciplines’ also the interaction of the
academic achievements with the society practitioners.
Researchers in the academy should establish cooperative relationships with involved actors in the
society to address real social understanding and change, on the institutional, behavioural and
cultural level. In this way the knowledge from the academics enters in contact with social contexts,
policy makers, cultural patterns of values and norms and institutional structures, and confronts and
develops together with them. The academic expertise opens itself to the outside active community
and its stakeholders that have practical role in the social processes. That means also going closer to
the real life of people, the stage social change should come from, if the attempts made are effective.
Working “on the field” addressing a more appropriate interpretation of the reality, drives to the
promotion of active engagements and clearer awareness of needs, obstacles and aims in every social
actor of a community. The community is in this way directly called to participate in understanding
the complex issues they are involved in and in promoting future alternative solutions. Obviously,
one of the obstacles to overcome in this form of knowledge production is the compatibility of
communication. The several ‘levels of the reality’, from the academics to every social or
institutional environment, should be capable of reciprocal understanding adopting a common
language and a multidirectional communication (that is already one of the biggest problems just
remaining in the academics and at the stage of research).
In the context of sustainable development, addressing the knowledge towards the elastic
cooperation between academics and society means opening to the complexity of the reality we live
in and its problems, which cannot be understood just in theoretical terms. A pure theoretical
comprehension doesn’t drive to practical achievements and changes if it doesn’t affect the processes
that it investigates, in their institutional and physical reality. The sharing of the perspective of
practitioners and the interpretation and theory of the research can create, together, a fertile field to
produce mutual learning, new integrated and more systemic understandings, with a practical attempt
to realise outcomes. As sustainability requires social change, the research should develop into the
social processes in order to comprehend and address them differently.

Transdisciplinarity leads to a move from science on/ about society towards science for/with
society. With this interaction, the stakeholders in the specific organization or region are
confronted with new ideas and insights. This helps them to develop new orientations towards
sustainable development and to better understand the options available for innovative

142
activities. More and more within the currently emerging network society, scientists are
expected to help stakeholders to define common ground for action and for the sharing of
individual problem-solving capacities. Academic expertise needs to be viewed as being on the
same level as the more practical experience and values of non-scientists.

G. Hirsch Hadorna, D. Bradleyb, C. Pohlc, S. Rist, U. Wiesmannd (2006), “Implications of transdisciplinarity for
sustainability research”, in Ecological Economic Vol. 60, Issue 1, pp. 119–128, 1 November 2006.

143
Conclusion

The environmental crisis is one of the biggest challenges the humanity will have to deal with in the
next decades. Many elements define the “crisis” and the human activity of the last two centuries is
the main cause of them. The domain of the ecological issue is global, since it regards everyone and
it depends on the dynamics of the globalised economy and of the globalization. In order to deal
appropriately with such situation it is important to enter the dynamics of the global village as an
interconnected system and to identify who is involved in finding the strategies to deal with it. My
opinion is that only conceiving every individual in the world responsible for it we can address
effective pathways. Just if we act at global level, the environmental problematic can be embraced.
Therefore I identify the Global Citizenship, meaning the whole humanity, as player in charge of the
problem. The actors involved in such issue are not just authorities, but every citizen of the world.
Global Civil Society engagement is essential to promote cultural responses to the crisis, which are,
in my opinion, the only possibility to endorse effective and long-term change. I argue that the
technical approach of current responses, based mostly on technological innovations and
introduction of technical legal and political frameworks, is inappropriate and reductive. If next to
those adjustments we don’t develop a culture of sustainability that will address radically different
lifestyles and worldviews in a long-run perspective, the solutions will be ineffective. Technical
strategies, indeed, remain into the logic of profit, growth and accumulation, that are the core of the
economic system based on consumerism and exploitation of natural assets that leaded to the crisis.

We need cultural approaches in order to shape future generations to new mentalities, ready and apt
to confront with the challenges that will come and to think and live sustainable. To promote all this
Education, in institutional and informal stages, is determinant. The international community defined
already the purposes, models and implementation schemes of an education to sustainability, but
every context needs to engage personally and locally to rethink school systems in this sense.
Important sources of education are nowadays also the social innovations proposed by the Civil
Society, through bottom-up engagement. They represent precious laboratories of sustainable
solutions that can inspire, spread and raise awareness.

Beyond Education, I consider important the adoption of Transdisciplinary approaches and

paradigms into the research about sustainability, in the sense of the systemic integration of
disciplines to understand more deeply and properly the situation and conceive solutions, and to
establish platforms of easier cooperation between the academics and the society practitioners.

Those elements could furnish to the future generations a more faithful comprehension of the reality
and a kind of intelligence that presents the right resources to deal with coming conditions and
challenges. Technical tools simply postpone problems, just a deep cultural reorientation at global
level can be effective if we really want to avoid the worst consequences of the ecological crisis.

145
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