Biology - 9 July - Ecosystems and Deep Ecology

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  • What do you think about the “eight-point Deep Ecology Platform”?
The Deep Ecology Platform
  • 1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth, intrinsic value, inherent value). 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 needs.
    4. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
    5. 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.
    6. Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
    7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
    8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.
    —Arne Naess and George Sessions (1984)
    (http://www.deepecology.org/platform.htm)

    I agree with most of the points of deep ecology. Human beings have turned away from nature in so many ways. That our own lights have drowned out that stars reifies our sense of omnipotence. Viewing constellations that move through the Milky Way, being situated within nature reminds us of our place within a larger system. The advent of the Abhrahamic religions coincided with our philosophical and material separation from nature--from viewing ourselves as threads within the fabric of immanence, to curators and owners of it. The only point of "deep ecology" that I disagree with is the fifth point, implying some form of population control. I think if we don't have a clear anti-capitalist approach to ecology, any sort of population control will only serve to control poor, working class, and non-white bodies as we've seen in the forced sterilization of Black and Latina women, and the recent the separation of children from immigrant parents. The choice to have or not to have children must respect the agency of those who want to parent, and must call into consideration the social networks that make child-rearing successful. There's enough food and housing to feed and shelter the world seven times. But bourgeois notions of expansion are destroying the earth and making people dependent on toxic and unsustainable products (Ie: Monsanto patenting seeds that cannot self propagate!) are really the underlying issue, moreso than the sheer number of people inhabiting the earth. 
  • Can you explain why “Ecosystems are both strong and fragile”?
Ecosystems are resilient insofar as we respect them. For example, Native people in Yosemite Valley worked in tandem with nature by planting trees and doing speciliazed burnings of grasses and new trees to prevent more catastrophic fires and to promote growth. However, European settlers committed genocide against the Native people and allowed California forests to set ablaze in incontrollable fires. 

This has happened in many places. In India the Adivasi and their livestock had kept the plant growth under control. Without them all the wrong grasses started growing. And setting deliberate wildfires has been an indigenous practice for thousands of years in the Serengeti and elsewhere. If done properly, the fires are healthy for the land. They burn off unwanted brush, leave rich ash in the ground, and help trees grow. Natives know how to do controlled burns so that they don’t kill the trees, only the underbrush that chokes the trees. The natives of Yosemite frequently burned the whole floor of the valley to fertilize the soil. In our culture, on the other hand, we tend to be against fire under any circumstances. We even put out wildfires that should be allowed to burn. 
(https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/452/keep-off-the-grasslands)

 The current treatment of the land works against its natural patterns and thus increases the likelihood of catastrophes.  

https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/452/keep-off-the-grasslands
  • How would you assess the “end goals” of Social Ecology?
Social Ecology seeks to unite social practices with that of ecology. For example, thinking about the way people throw parties and what kind of utensils and plates they use, or thinking about how we use our garden spaces and share in the harvest. Social ecology seeks to put in place systems that allow for respect of the environment to come easily to participants on a mass scale. 

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