The relevance of the transdisciplinary approach to thinking about Ecological Justice
Tônia A. Horbatiuk Dutra, UFSC
2024
Humanity finds itself facing multiple crises at the beginning of this century – political, economic, social, ethical and epistemological – a true civilizational crisis. In this context, the crisis resulting from climate change stands out. “Extreme weather events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, storms and tsunamis are becoming more frequent, causing catastrophes that affect thousands of people around the planet. Irregular occupation of environmental preservation areas contributes to and increases the risk of disasters. Slowly, but already quite noticeable, global warming also affects ecosystems, altering terrestrial and marine habitats, compromising biodiversity, while also causing water and food insecurity. The melting of the polar ice caps and the warming of ocean waters are rising sea levels, causing coastal erosion, shrinking beach areas, compromising the subsistence activities of traditional communities and encroaching on urban areas.
The worsening of the climate crisis is happening in the so-called Anthropocene, in which the impact of human action on the planet, since the industrial era, is recognized intertwined with the production and consumption model of the capitalist economy. The origins of global warming are practices of intensive use of fossil fuels, as well as deforestation and the release of polluting gasses that cause the greenhouse effect into the atmosphere.This critical context, which has become visibly more pronounced in recent years, threatens the Earth’s biosphere and puts the entire community of life on Earth at risk, a community made up of human beings and other beings of nature. In addition, it places a burden on those who are already vulnerable due to ethnicity, race, gender, region of residence (global south), social class, among other factors.
It is necessary to seek an adequate understanding of the problems, to take measures consistent with the protection of the integrity of the planetary ecosystem and to safeguard the nature of which human beings are a part. Hence the urgent need to rethink the Law itself, promoting a paradigm shift, and to conceive of an Ecological Justice that, as such, encompasses human and non-human beings of nature in the same community of justice. The ecological aspect that characterizes this conception of justice reveals the web in which human life is involved, highlights the intrinsic relationships of interdependence and eco-dependence, and makes the unjust practices of domination and oppression of other forms of life transparent.
There are a multitude of worlds comprising both human and non-human beings of nature that cry out for a justice that encompasses them. These worlds, which persist in the reality of indigenous peoples and traditional populations, and which emerge among other groups that organize and promote multispecies coexistence based on fair relationships, demand a complex understanding. Such understanding must be guided by another paradigm of thought, capable of considering issues in a non-dualistic way. The call for Ecological Justice manifests the nonconformity of these “others”, who do not share the dualistic vision of nature and the world. These “others” who live in conditions of symbiotic coexistence, composing pluriversal worlds. They are indigenous peoples and traditional populations, non-white people, women, and minorities who demand their ways of being outside the standards of this universalized world in which the value of merchandise predominates.
The threats to biodiversity, related to mass extinction, for example, are not the work of chance – although they go unnoticed by most people, for whom the world revolves around the intermittent production of objects/consumer goods, as part of an intense and voracious dynamic. From this perspective of market logic those who are outside this world are considered useless, weak, and unproductive – this place is reserved precisely for nature, which does not fit into the standards of economically viable resources, for the elderly, for those who are out of the job market, for the sick, for women who are involved in pregnancies and unprofitable care, for indigenous people, for immigrants who are struggling with increasingly rigid border policies.
Ecological Justice has a multidimensional character and demands a profound change in the ethical and political aspects that underpin it, impacting democratic practices and acquiring a broad pluralistic character, promoting an openness to different understandings of nature. It is a proposal that requires recognizing other ways of life, sensibilities, and knowledge that do not follow the Western epistemological matrix, ways of life that design other worlds and through which bonds of fruitful coexistence are established between human and non-human beings in nature.
The ways of knowing nature interfere in the way we relate to the other beings that constitute the community of terrestrial life. Consistent with this understanding, the call for Ecological Justice confronts the dualistic Cartesian epistemology that separates human beings and nature, considering the latter as a mere object. The disjunctive approach that segments, isolates and specializes knowledge also distorts it by ignoring the context and the subjects involved. It is necessary to consider the interactions between the parts and the whole and between the whole and the parts, systematically, and to assume the complexity of knowledge, that is, the understanding that it is woven together in the subject/object and context relationship, as well as the presence of factors such as uncertainty, error and intersubjectivity.
Ecological Justice requires a critical and reflective approach to the specialized study in subjects, which, to this end, must be inserted into a given context, considering the social, cultural and spiritual aspects that are specific to it, and their respective effects. It should seek a contextualized understanding of the problems, considering the subjects involved and the contribution of the different lenses of the natural and social sciences, in a combined manner and at the same time taking into account their particularities, so that when looking together at a given event, paths can be glimpsed that point to the most coherent and fair solution.
The transdisciplinary approach allows for the articulation of different disciplines so that the transversal reflection brings the contribution of each of them and of the various possible combinations, establishing a favorable, fruitful and creative environment from which new knowledge can emerge. It is about adopting a perspective that allows for the connection of different knowledge and ways of knowing the common world in which human life is possible – planet Earth –, overcoming the limits of linear logic and apparent antinomies and identifying possible complementarities.
As reality is understood in a complex way from the transdisciplinary perspective, aspects such as ethics and subjectivity become relevant in understanding the epistemological process. It is no longer possible to ignore the fact that by denying the intrinsic value of nature and assigning it a subordinate status dependent on human interest, what is being produced is an indexation that is completely disconnected from the conditions of ecosystem balance. This is in line with the determination of market value, which is governed by anti-ecological and unsupportive principles.
Considering an Ecological Justice perspective requires reviewing what justifies certain human behaviors and decisions, especially with regard to human/nature relationships, values and purposes. The application of transdisciplinarity to research in the field of Ecological Justice permits an understanding of the interactive dynamics of the disciplinary aspects involved, subjects and processes. Furthermore, it allows for the consideration of the unity of knowledge in diversity in a complex way. By revealing the multidimensionality of the issue, it allows for the review, suggestion and creation of alternative ways of establishing fairer relationships between human beings and between human and non-human beings in nature.
Further readings and resources:
Escobar, A. (2016). Sentipensar con la Tierra: las luchas territoriales y la dimensión ontológica de las epistemologías del sur, Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, vol. 11, n. 01.
Morin, E. (2005). A cabeça bem-feita. Porto Alegre: Sulina.
Schnitman, D.F. (org.) (1998). Nuevos Paradigmas, Cultura y Subjetividade.Introdução. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
