Environmental Problems, Quality of Life and the State of the World
Evidence shows that the paradigms of growth, power, wealth, work and freedom embedded into the dominant political, technological, economic, social, cultural and educational systems are actually responsible for degradation of quality of life, increased urban violence, chaotic system of production and consumption, energy squander, deforestation, mining expansion, hazardous wastes, pesticides, pollutants, global climate change, diminishing biological diversity.
Environmental conditions are hampered by bureaucratic governance regimes rooted in biased policies, internal incoherence, historical injustices, asymmetries of knowledge and power, a long-standing reproduction of subalternity, lack of pluralism in decision-making, unequal sharing of benefits, aggravated by vested interests that benefit established corporations and destroy cultural relationships, land and territories, in the benefit of commercial demands for exported commodities.
Trying to solve isolated and localized problems, without addressing the general phenomenon, is a conceptual error: “sustainable” development, as an ideology, is easily absorbed by predominant interests and policy makers, approaches which stress institution building fail to account for the design, formation and maintenance of institutions, disregarding the role of leaders, elites and coalitions and the general patterns of institutional failure or corruption.
In view the transition from a non-ecosystemic to an ecosystemic model of culture, public policies, communication, advocacy, research and teaching programmes should identify and reconceptualise roles and drives, in view of the combination and co-design of four dimensions of being in the world (intimate, interactive, social and biophysical), as they merge to elicit the events, suffer the consequences and organise for a change.
Instead of taking current prospects for granted and projecting them into the future (exploratory forecast), science–policy interfaces programmes should emphasise the definition of desirable goals and the exploration of new paths to reach them (normative forecast, “backcasting”), in view of a set of values, norms and policies that prioritises socio-ecological objectives and human well-being, the quality of natural and built environments and the aesthetic and ethical values linked to a moral and cultural meaning of existence.
In this sense, it is expected that advocacy, public policies, research and teaching programmes would:
a) define the problems in the core of the “boiling pot”, instead of reducing them to the ‘bubbles’ of the surface (effects, fragmented and taken for granted issues);
b) combine all dimensions of being in the world (intimate, interactive, social and biophysical), in the diagnosis and prognosis of events, assessing their deficits and assets, as donors and recipients, as they combine to elicit the events, suffer the consequences and organize for change;
c) promote the singularity (identity, proper characteristics) of and the reciprocity (mutual support) between all dimensions in view of their complementarity and dynamic equilibrium.
The proposal favours the development of societies which invest in each other rather than in mega-projects with intensive use of resources. It extends to environmental problems, quality of life and the state of the world a larger conceptual framework encompassing ontological and epistemological issues, in view of the isomorphy and transfers of concepts, laws and models; it highlights how taken-for-granted worldviews, values and perceptions affect the definition and treatment of the problems by communication, advocacy, public policies, research and teaching programmes in the contemporary world.
Ref.: PILON, A. F., Returning Earth to Mankind and Mankind to Earth: An Ecosystemic Approach to Advocacy, Public Policies, Research and Teaching Programmes [posted on line on Academia Edu]: