Philosophical Dialogues: Arne Næss and the Progress of Ecophilosophy


Nina Witoszek, Andrew Brennan
Rowman & Littlefield, 1999 - Philosophy - 492 pages

http://tinyurl.com/rvvg7ug   

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy-the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the literature on environmental philosophy.

Contents

The Shallow and the Deep LongRange Ecology Movements A Summary Arne Naess 3

The Deep Ecology Platform Arne Naess and George Sessions 8

The Glass Is on the Table The Empiricist versus Total View Arnc Naess Alfred Ayer and Fons Elders 10

Ayer on Metaphysics A Critical Commentary by a Kind of Metaphysician Arne Naess 29

A Reply to Arne Naess Alfred J Ayer 40

Arne Naess a Philosopher and a Mystic A Commentary on the Dialogue between Alfred Ayer and Arne Naess Fons Elders 45

Remarks on Interpretation and Preciseness Paul Feyerabend 50

Paul Feyerabend A Green Hero? Arne Naess 57

Comment Naess and Feyerabend on Science Bill Devall 69

Reply to Bill Devall Arne Naess 71

Spinozas Environmental Ethics Gene vieve Lloyd 73

Environmental Ethics and Spinozas Ethics Comments on Genevieve Lloyds Article Arne Naess 91

Comment Lloyd and Naess on Spinoza as Ecophilosopher John Clark 102

A Critique of AntiAnthropocentric Biocentrism Richard A Watson 109

A Defense of the Deep Ecology Movement Arne Naess 121

Against Biospherical Egalitarianism William C French 127

An Answer to W C French Ranking Yes But the Inherent Value is the Same Arne Naess 146

Comment On Naess versus French Baird Callicott 150

Deep Ecology A New Philosophy of Our Time? Warwick Fox 153

Intuition Intrinsic Value and Deep Ecology Arne Naess 166

On Guiding Stars of Deep Ecology Warwick Fox Foxs Response to Naesss Response to Fox 171

Comment Pluralism and Deep Ecology Andrew Brennan 175

Man Apart An Alternative to the Self Realization Approach Peter Reed 181

Man Apart and Deep Ecology A Reply to Reed Arne Naess 198

Comment Self Realization or Man Apart? The Reed Naess Debate Val Plumwood 206

Deep Ecology and Its Critics Kirkpatrick Sale 213

A European Looks at North American Branches of the Deep Ecology Movement Arne Naess 222

Letter to the Editor of Zeta Magazine 1988 Arne Naess 225

Letter to Dave Foreman 23 June 1988 Arne Naess 227

Comment Human Population Reduction and Wild Habitat Protection Michael E Zimmerman 232

Class Race and Gender Discourse in the EcofeminismDeep Ecology Debate Ariel Salleh 236

Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology Karen Warren 255

The Ecofeminism versus Deep Ecology Debate Arne Naess 270

The EcofeminismDeep Ecology Dialogue A Short Commentary on the Exchange between Karen Warren and Arne Naess Patsy Hallen 274

Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology A Challenge for the Ecology Movement Murray Bookchin 281

Note Concerning Murray Bookchins Article Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology Arne Naess 302

Unanswered Letter to Murray Bookchin 1988 Arne Naess 305

To the Editor of Synthesis Arne Naess 307

Comment Deep Ecology and Social Ecology Andrew McLaughlin 310

Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation A Third World Critique Ramachandra Guha 313

Comments on Cubas Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation A Third World Critique Arne Naess 325

Comment Nsess and Guha Stephan Harding 334

Philosophy of Wolf Policies I General Principles and Preliminary Exploration of Selected Norms Arne Naess and Ivar Mysterud 339

Naesss Deep Ecology Approach and Environmental Policy Harold Glasser 360

Harold Glasser and the Deep Ecology Approach DEA Arne Naess 391

Convergence Corroborated A Comment on Arne Naess on Wolf Policies Bryan Norton 394

Value in Nature Intrinsic or Inherent? Jon Wetlesen 405

Response to Jon Wetlesen Arne Naess 418

Platforms Nature and Obligational Values Per Ariansen 420

Platforms Nature and Obligational Values A Response to Per Ariansen Arne Naess 429

From Skepticism to Dogmatism and Back Remarks on the History of Deep Ecology Peder Anker 431

Response to Peder Anker Arne Naess 444

Arne Naess and the Norwegian Nature Tradition Nina Witoszek 451

Is the Deep Ecology Vision a Green Vision or Is It Multicolored like the Rainbow? An Answer to Nina Witoszek Arne Naess 466

Radical American Environmentalism Revisited Ramachandra Guha 473

Index 480

Notes on Contributors 488

Copyright

CHEAPEST EDITION ON AMAZON IS THE EBOOK/KINDLE

To unpack colonial influence on ecology, researchers propose five strategies

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Ecology, the field of biology devoted to the study of organisms and their natural environments, needs to account for the historical legacy of colonialism that has shaped people and the natural world, researchers argued in a new perspective in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

To make ecology more inclusive of the world's diverse people and cultures living in diverse ecosystems, researchers from University of Cape Town, North West University in South Africa and North Carolina State University proposed five strategies to untangle the impacts of colonialism on research and thinking in the field today.

"There are significant biases in our understanding of ecology and ecosystems because of this colonial framework of thinking," said perspective co-author Madhusudan Katti, associate professor for leadership in public science, and forestry and environmental resources at NC State. "We are challenging ecologists to understand and address the legacies of colonialism, and to start engaging in an active process of 'decolonizing science.'"

The researchers described emerging research documenting impacts of European colonialism - the migration, settlement and exploitation of the Americas, Africa, Asia and other parts of the world by people from Europe - on people and the natural world, and on ecology.

Katti said examples of how ecological research reflects the impact of colonialism include patterns of vegetation in cities that reflect patterns of racial segregation and discrimination, or in the use of names of prominent European scientists or their patrons in the scientific names for bird species and other organisms rather than names used by Indigenous people.

"Indigenous names are often based on observations of behavior or ecology, or represent cultural significance of species, but that traditional ecological knowledge is lost when names are changed," Katti said. "This is bad for both the colonized people and the science of ecology itself."

The researchers challenged the field to address colonial legacies using five strategies:

* Decolonize the mind. Researchers said this should be done by understanding other knowledge systems from colonized cultures.

* Know your history, or understand the history of colonialism in influencing Western ecology, and its role in promoting oppression of other people and in shaping the environment. "Ecology is about organisms living in their ecosystems - that's what we study," Katti said. "If you want to study ecology, that includes people. To understand how people shape ecosystems, we have to understand how political power works. Western ecologists have to acknowledge how science has been aligned with colonial power, and how it has been used to perpetuate systems of oppression that continue to this day."

* Decolonize information. They suggest this should be done by increasing access to academic information, and understanding power dynamics in the way data is owned and disseminated.

* Decolonize expertise by recognizing more diverse voices in the field of ecology.

* Establish diverse and inclusive teams to help overcome biases in future research. "The world is enriched by diverse perspectives," Katti said. "We need scientific teams where everybody is equally empowered to set a robust research agenda, and ensure more robust testing of these ideas. If the person with a different hypothesis is not in the room, then you're never challenged to test and prove their hypothesis, and you're subject to your own bias."

###

The perspective, "Decoloniality and anti-oppressive practices for a more ethical ecology," was published online in Nature Ecology & Evolution on May 24, 2021. It was authored by Katti, Christopher H. Trisos and Jess Auerbach. Trisos acknowledges funding from the National Socio Environmental Synthesis Center under funding received from the National Science Foundation (DBI-1639145) and FLAIR fellowship programme - a partnership between the African Academy of Sciences and Royal Society, funded by the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund.

-oleniacz-

Note to editors: The abstract follows.

"Decoloniality and anti-oppressive practices for a more ethical ecology"

Authors: Christopher H. Trisos, Jess Auerbach and Madhusudan Katti.

Published online May 24 in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Abstract: Ecological research and practice are crucial to understanding and guiding more positive relationships between people and ecosystems. However, ecology as a discipline and the diversity of those who call themselves ecologists have also been shaped and held back by often exclusionary Western approaches to knowing and doing ecology. To overcome these historical constraints and to make ecology inclusive of the diverse peoples inhabiting Earth's varied ecosystems, ecologists must expand their knowledge, both in theory and practice, to incorporate varied perspectives, approaches and interpretations from, with and within the natural environment and across global systems. We outline five shifts that could help to transform academic ecological practice: decolonize your mind; know your histories; decolonize access; decolonize expertise; and practise ethical ecology in inclusive teams. We challenge the discipline to become more inclusive, creative and ethical at a moment when the perils of entrenched thinking have never been clearer.

THE DEEP ECOLOGY MOVEMENT*

BILL DEVALL**
NATURAL RESOURCES JOURNAL

There are two great streams of environmentalism in the latter half of the twentieth century. One stream is reformist, attempting to control some of the worst of the air and water pollution and inefficient  land use practices in industrialized nations and to save a few of

the remaining pieces of wild lands as "designated wilderness areas."

The other stream supports many of the reformist goals but is revolutionary, seeking a new metaphysics, epistemology, cosmology, and environmental ethics of person/planet. This paper is an intellectual archaeology of the second of these streams of environmentalism,
which I will call deep ecology.

There are several other phrases that some writers are using for the perspective I am describing in this paper. Some call it "eco-philosophy" or "foundational ecology" or the "new natural philosophy." I use "deep ecology" as the shortest label. Although I am convinced
that deep ecology is radically different from the perspective of the dominant social paradigm, I do not use the phrase "radical ecology" or "revolutionary ecology" because I think those labels have such a burden of emotive associations that many people would not hear
what is being said about deep ecology because of their projection of other meanings of "revolution" onto the perspective of deep ecology.

I contend that both streams of environmentalism are reactions to the successes and excesses of the implementation of the dominant social paradigm. Although reformist environmentalism treats some of the symptoms of the environmental crisis and challenges some of the assumptions of the dominant social paradigm (such as growth of the
economy at any cost), deep ecology questions the fundamental premises of the dominant social paradigm. In the future, as the limits of reform are reached and environmental problems become more serious, the reform environmental movement will have to come to
terms with deep ecology.

The analysis in the present paper was inspired by Arne Naess' paper on "shallow and deep, long-range" environmentalism.'1 The methods used are patterned after John Rodman's seminal critique of the resources conservation and development movement in the United
States.2 The data are the writings of a diverse group of thinkers who have been developing a theory of deep ecology, especially during the last quarter of a century. Relatively few of these writings have appeared in popular journals or in books published by mainstream publishers. I have searched these writings for common threads or
themes much as Max Weber searched the sermons of Protestant ministers for themes which reflected from and back to the intellectual and social crisis of the emerging Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.' 3 Several questions are addressed in this paper: What are
the sources of deep ecology? How do the premises of deep ecology differ from those of the dominant social paradigm? What are the areas of disagreement between reformist environmentalism and deep ecology? What is the likely future role of the deep ecology movement?

READ ON

*Thanks and acknowledgement to George Sessions, Philosophy Department, Sierra College, Rocklin, California. His sympathetic support and ideas made it possible to develop and deepen many of the ideas expressed in this paper.

**Professor of Sociology, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California 95521. An extensive discussion of "Reformist Environmentalism" written by Professor Devall was published in the Fall/Winter 1979 issue of the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations. This is available from the Dept. of Sociology, Humboldt State University.

1. Naess, The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement, 16 INQUIRY 95 (1973). 

2. J. Rodman, Four Forms of Ecological Consciousness: Beyond Economics, Resource Conservation, (1977) Pitzer College.

 3. M. WEBER, THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM (1930)


Recommended Citation Bill Devall, The Deep Ecology Movement, 20 Nat. Resources J. 299 (1980). Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol20/iss2/6 

SOCIAL ECOLOGY AND COMMUNALISM MURRAY BOOKCHIN

http://new-compass.net/sites/new-compass.net/files/Bookchin%27s%20Social%20Ecology%20and%20Communalism.pdf

Social Ecology and Communalism - New Compass | 

Still, it is his treatment of ecological and political issues that has made Bookchin known to most readers, and some of his older books, notably Post-Scarcity ...

http://www.psichenatura.it/fileadmin/img/M._Bookchin_What_is_Social_Ecology.pdf

What is Social Ecology? By Murray Bookchin - Psiche & Na... 

From Social Ecology and Communalism, AK Press, first printing, 2007. Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological ...

 https://we.riseup.net/assets/461284/Bookchin+Murray+1993+What+Is+Social+Ecology.pdf

What Is Social Ecology? 

Murray Bookchin has long been a major figure in anarchlst and utopian political theory, theory of technology, urbanism, and the philosophy of nature.

https://files.libcom.org/files/Social%20ecology%20after%20Bookchin%20-%20Unknown.pdf

Social ecology after Bookchin - Libcom.org 

1 his article is forthcoming in Bookchin's Anarchism, Marxism, and the ... ogy after Bookchin means a social ecology without Bookchin. Book-.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-the-philosophy-of-social-ecology

The Philosophy of Social Ecology - The Anarchist Library 

Murray Bookchin. The Philosophy of Social Ecology Essays on Dialectical Naturalism. Dedication. Preface to the Second Edition. Introduction:

https://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/texts/425/Bookchin,%20Social%20Ecology.pdf

murray bookchin • social ecology versus deep ecology 

His many books include Toward an Ecological Society,. The Ecology of Freedom, and The Philosophy of Social Ecology. Social ecology, which Bookchin develops in ...

 

Spiral of jack fish wins 2021 BMC Ecology and Evolution image competition

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMC (BIOMED CENTRAL)

From furry crustaceans to hunting wasps and escaping frogs, the 2021 BMC Ecology and Evolution Image Competition has produced an impressive collection of celebrated images that showcase the diversity of Earth’s animal and plant life. All images are open access and available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY) license. 

The overall winning image by Kristen Brown from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA depicts a school of jack fish in a spiral formation at Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia.

Kristen Brown said: “This image represents both the beauty and bounty of our oceans as well as the spiralling crisis unfolding within the marine environment. Coral reefs with high coral cover and plentiful fish populations like this one at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef are sadly becoming rarer. Without a concentrated effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve water quality, coral reefs as we know them are at risk of disappearing within our lifetime.”

Section editor Josef Settele recommended the entry, saying: “Marine biodiversity sustains life and the health of our planet, but human activities are threatening the well-being of the world’s oceans. Kristen Brown’s striking image is a symbol for the need for concentrated efforts to manage biodiversity loss and set conservation priorities.”

In addition to the winning image, the judges also selected an overall runner up, as well as winners in six categories: Conservation Biology; Evolutionary Developmental Biology and Biodiversity; Behavioural Ecology; Human Evolution and Ecology; Ecological Developmental Biology; Population Ecology; and the Editor’s Pick. The winning images celebrate Earth’s biodiversity and its evolutionary origins, from how species learn and develop, to conflict, collaboration and parasitic relationships, both between and within species.

The Population Ecology category winner was captured by Roberto García-Roa from University of Valencia, Spain, who also submitted the winning images for the Behavioural Ecology and Human Evolution and Ecology categories. It shows soldier termites migrating along a length of abandoned rope in a Malaysian forest.

Roberto García-Roa said: “Thousands of soldier termites are able to migrate in a complex social environment where each individual has its own mission framed altogether in a global objective: the survivorship and reproduction of the colony. In this case, these termites used meters of an abandoned rope to move across the Malaysian forest. Once humans disappear, nature recovers its space and uses what is needed to survive.”

The Editor’s pick titled ‘Eerie Stalker’ by Dimitri Ouboter from the Institute for Neotropical Wildlife and Environmental Studies, Suriname captures a Giant Gladiator Frog seconds before escaping from an attempted snake attack. Giant Gladiator Frogs have been previously observed escaping from the jaws of snakes by emitting distress calls, jumping and inflating their lungs, making it harder for small snakes to hold on to them.

The BMC Ecology and Evolution Image Competition was created to give ecologists and evolutionary biologists the opportunity to use their creativity to highlight their work and celebrate the intersection between art and science. It follows on from the BMC Ecology competition, which ran for seven years until BMC Ecology merged with BMC Evolutionary Biology to form BMC Ecology and Evolution. The winning images are selected by the Editor of BMC Ecology and Evolution and senior members of the journal’s editorial board.

Editor Jennifer Harman said: “We had a wonderful experience judging the fantastic images submitted to this year’s competition. Our section editors used their expertise to ensure the winning images were picked as much for the scientific stories behind them as for the technical quality and beauty of the images themselves. As such, the competition very much reflects BMC’s ethos of innovation, curiosity and integrity. We thank all those who took part in this year’s competition; we hope that our readers enjoy viewing these images and discovering the stories behind them.”

###

1. The winning images, along with caption information and image credits are available here: https://bit.ly/2XdZvK5. All images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
2. Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the announcement.
3. BMC Ecology and Evolution is an open access, peer-reviewed journal interested in all aspects of ecological and evolutionary biology. The journal considers articles on a broad range of topics, including population genetics, conservation genetics, phylogenetics, behavioural ecology, population ecology, macroecology, palaeontology, biodiversity (e.g. environmental DNA approaches), theoretical research (e.g. terraforming) and ecological and evolutionary developmental biology.
4. A pioneer of open access publishing, BMC has an evolving portfolio of high quality peer-reviewed journals including broad interest titles such as BMC Biology and BMC Medicine, specialist journals such as Malaria Journal and Microbiome, and the BMC series. At BMC, research is always in progress. We are committed to continual innovation to better support the needs of our communities, ensuring the integrity of the research we publish, and championing the benefits of open research. BMC is part of Springer Nature, giving us greater opportunities to help authors connect and advance discoveries across the world.

---

JOURNAL

BMC Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.1186/s12862-021-01886-7

ARTICLE TITLE

Inaugural BMC Ecology and Evolution image competition: the winning images

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Aug-2021

Industrial Ecology

Another conservative climate change denier attempts to paint left wing ideas and environmentalism as reactionary.

The concept of "nature" is a romantic invention. It was spun by the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century as a confabulated utopian contrast to the dystopia of urbanization and materialism. The traces of this dewy-eyed conception of the "savage" and his unmolested, unadulterated surroundings can be found in the more malignant forms of fundamentalist environmentalism.

At the other extreme are religious literalists who regard Man as the crown of creation with complete dominion over nature and the right to exploit its resources unreservedly. Similar, veiled, sentiments can be found among scientists. The Anthropic Principle, for instance, promoted by many outstanding physicists, claims that the nature of the Universe is preordained to accommodate sentient beings - namely, us humans.

Industrialists, politicians and economists have only recently begun paying lip service to sustainable development and to the environmental costs of their policies. Thus, in a way, they bridge the abyss - at least verbally - between these two diametrically opposed forms of fundamentalism. Still, essential dissimilarities between the schools notwithstanding, the dualism of Man vs. Nature is universally acknowledged.


Quoted by The Economist, Daniel Esty of Yale, the leader of an environmental project sponsored by World Economic Forum, exclaimed:

"Why hasn't anyone done careful environmental measurement before? Businessmen always say, 'what matters gets measured'. Social scientists started quantitative measurement 30 years ago, and even political science turned to hard numbers 15 years ago. Yet look at environmental policy, and the data are lousy."

However we do know how to measure environmental impacts of capitalism, and we can reduce them through Industrial Ecology. In fact that was how industrial capitalism boomed during WWII, it reduced, reused and recycled. The fact is that capitalism needs to adapt, or die. Thus IE is a closed loop system based on biology and ecology. While technology continues to adapt itself in an organic fashion as well. But in order to overcome these contradictions we need to move beyond Green Industrialism to social ecology.

Industrial ecology is the shifting of industrial process from linear (open loop) systems, in which resource and capital investments move through the system to become waste, to a closed loop system where wastes become inputs for new processes.

Industrial ecology proposes not to see industrial systems (for example a factory, an ecoregion, or national or global economy) as being separate from the biosphere, but to consider it as a particular case of an ecosystem - but based on infrastructural capital rather than on natural capital. It is the idea that if natural systems do not have waste in them, we should model our systems after natural ones if we want them to be sustainable.

Along with more general energy conservation and material conservation goals, and redefining commodity markets and product stewardship relations strictly as a service economy, industrial ecology is one of the four objectives of Natural Capitalism. This strategy discourages forms of amoral purchasing arising from ignorance of what goes on at a distance and implies a political economy that values natural capital highly and relies on more instructional capital to design and maintain each unique industrial ecology.

How does an industrial facility measure its impact on the surrounding community?

And with a voluntary commitment to sustainable practices, can it improve its environmental, economic and social "footprint" over time?

These are the questions the Washington Department of Ecology and Simpson Tacoma Kraft Company, LLC will explore under a new partnership called the "Industrial Footprint Project." The Tacoma pulp and paper mill has volunteered, along with three other pulp and paper mills in the state, to provide baseline data to Ecology on a range of environmental, economic and social indicators.

Working with a consultant, stakeholders and the participating mills, Ecology will use the data to create a scoring system to establish a "footprint" measurement for each facility. The footprint will serve as a baseline to help companies set targets for improving over time.

Environmental data to be collected includes waste streams, recycling, emissions, water consumption and purchase of raw materials. One part of the project will be an energy challenge-asking each facility to voluntarily reduce their energy usage. On the economic side, some data analyzed will include jobs provided and the costs of good and services. Social indicators may include community involvement, health and safety records or good neighbor efforts.

Simpson Tacoma Kraft Company is an integrated pulp and paper manufacturing mill located on the Commencement Bay waterfront in Tacoma, Washington. It produces upwards of 1300 tons per day of bleached and unbleached packaging-grade paper and unbleached kraft pulp. About one-third of the fiber used comes from recycling old corrugated containers.

SEE:

Capitalism Is Not Sustainable

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Fostering anti-racism in ecology, evolution and conservation biology

by Tim Stephens, University of California - Santa Cruz

Fig. 1: Representation of BIPOC among students in EECB, other life science fields

and non-life science STEM fields in the United States. Bar graph of the

 representation of people of different ethnicities among students of EECB (n = 1,661), 

STEM-LS (n = 7,473; includes all five fields under the National Science Foundation

 (NSF) subfield of life sciences that we did not categorize as EECB) or STEM-NLS

 (n = 16,339; includes all other (non-life science) STEM fields, as defined by the 

NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates159). The percentage of PhD recipients 

of each racial or ethnic group159 was subtracted from the estimated percentage

 of each group in the United States then divided by the percentage of each race

 or ethnicity in the United States (American Indian or Alaska Native = 0.7%; Asian = 5.6%; 

Black or African American = 12.3%; Hispanic or Latino = 18.3%; white = 60.2%)160

. Positive values indicate over-representation and negative values indicate 

under-representation relative to the US population. The racial categories in t

his figure are those used by the NSF and US Census Bureau and differ

 slightly from those used elsewhere in this paper (for example, 

Hispanic or Latino instead of Latin). The error bars represent 99% confidence

 intervals from the US Census Bureau. The data from the NSF were from a complete 

census and contained no sampling error. See the Supplementary Information for

 more details on data collection. Credit: DOI: 10.1038/s41559-021-01522-z

Academic departments in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology are increasingly aware of the need to address longstanding barriers and challenges faced by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in these disciplines. A diverse group of faculty, staff, and students in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) at UC Santa Cruz has now compiled a set of tools and strategies which departments can use to address shortcomings in equity and inclusion.

Published August 9 in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the recommendations are based on a review of the literature in an effort to identify evidence-based interventions for fostering anti-racism in the classroom, within research labs, and department-wide.

"There's nothing novel in our recommendations. These are empirically-based approaches developed by people who study these issues, and we've put them all in one place and tailored them for the disciplines of ecology, evolution, and conservation biology," said first author Melissa Cronin, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC.

Cronin said she and senior author Erika Zavaleta, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, saw a growing need for an easily accessible set of resources to help departments wanting to address historic and current inequities in their fields.

"There is greater awareness now, and a lot more departments are thinking about how to address these issues, so we thought this would be a helpful contribution," Cronin said. "This paper is not a perfect response to the systemic racism we see in scientific life today, but we hope it is a useful tool for those scientists and departments looking to take action at the local level."

The paper addresses the problematic histories of racist policies and ideas in the fields of ecology, evolution, and conservation biology, such as the use of pseudoscientific interpretations of evolutionary biology to advance eugenics and racist ideologies. These historic legacies have contributed to racial gaps by discouraging BIPOC participation in those fields.

Cronin noted that, while people of color are underrepresented in science generally, the gaps are even greater in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. "Underrepresented groups are even more underrepresented in these disciplines than in other areas of science, so these disciplines are a high priority," she said.

Cronin and Zavaleta recruited a diverse group of students, faculty, and staff within their department to work on the paper, which has 26 coauthors.

"It was a really positive and constructive experience for our department to work together on this paper," Cronin said. "And we built on this incredibly rich tradition of scholarship at UC Santa Cruz in critical race studies, a field which historically has not always intersected with the STEM fields."

Field courses boost student success, support STEM diversity efforts, study reveals

More information: Melissa R. Cronin et al, Anti-racist interventions to transform ecology, evolution and conservation biology departments, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-021-01522-z

Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution 

Provided by University of California - Santa Cruz 

Historical ecology: Past, present and future

Article (PDF Available) in Biological Reviews 90(4):997-1014 · August 2015 

DOI: 10.1111/brv.12141

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265171942_Historical_ecology_Past_present_and_future

• 

  Péter Szabó

  • of Botany of the ASCR

Abstract

The term ‘historical ecology’ has been used with various meanings since the first half of the 20th century. Studies labelled as historical ecology have been produced in at least four academic disciplines: history, ecology, geography and anthropology. Although all those involved seem to agree that historical ecology concerns the historical interconnectedness of nature and human culture, this field of study has no unified methodology, specialized institutional background and common publication forums. Knowledge of the development of historical ecology is also limited. As a result, the current multitude of definitions of historical ecology is accompanied by divergent opinions as to where the origins of the field are to be sought. In this review, I follow the development of historical ecology from the 18th century to the present. In the first part, I briefly describe some early examples of historical ecological investigations, followed by a description of the various scientific strands in the 20th century that contributed to the formation of historical ecology. In the second part, I discuss the past five decades of historical ecological investigations in more detail, focusing mostly (but not exclusively) on works that their respective authors identified as historical ecology. I also examine the appearance and interconnectedness of the two main trends (ecological and anthropological) in historical ecological research. In the last part, I attempt to outline the future of historical ecology based on common features in existing research. It appears that at present historical ecology is at a crossroads. With rapidly growing interest in historical ecological research, it may move towards institutionalization or remain an umbrella term.