INTRODUCTION 

This project integrates research and theoretical content on environmental ethics and philosophy, ecofeminism, environmental justice, Indigenous perspectives, place-based ethics, and narratives. The aim is to begin to formulate a new environmental ethic that recenters the discourse of environment and how we interact with the environment in a more equitable way—one that accounts for the breadth of identities that are in the environment themselves, and inevitably have a relationship with the environment, which takes many forms. More specifically, I wanted to recover and listen to suppressed voices and perspectives that have been silenced, overlooked, and cast aside because of their identities in the original/current environmental ethic, is a way to create a new one informed by ecofeminist, Indigenous, and environmentally just narratives.

In order to accomplish this goal, I combined academic research and scholarly works with perspectives from the local community. I interviewed people in various environmental organizations, non-profits, and outdoor recreation programs. My conversations with these people yielded some of the following perspectives about environmentalism, but my goal is not to generalize the perspectives of these groups of people. My goal was to gain insights and ideas to frame this new ethic. This page is a summary of the project with a link to the full write-up of the project at the bottom of the page. 

WHY DO WE NEED A NEW ETHIC?

The original understanding of wilderness implies an untouched pristine version of nature. Wilderness is other-than human and civilization. This dualized concept is built from the sublime and the beautiful. The sublime is the large mountain range or old-growth forest full of awe, wonder, and mystery, while the beautiful is the small flower in the meadow, delicate, vulnerable, and controllable. The sublime and the beautiful exist in a dichotomy where the opposite defines and shapes the other. Other examples of dualisms include human/nature, mind/body, master/slave, male/female, civilized/primitive, reason/emotion, production/reproduction.  These binaries are oppressive structures that define the ways in which we understand certain entities. Further, these binaries are reiterated and translated to other concepts, behaviors, and groups of people as a tool for further oppression.  

One misstep of early environmentalism is not only the separation between humans and the environment illustrated by these dualisms, but also the inherent distancing between different people as a result of that dualism, and, the linked and layered oppressions that are further perpetuated by those dualisms. 

ECOFEMINISM 

Ecofeminism and EJ largely suggest a more expansive environmentalism that encompasses the intersections of the environment and the people within it in an equitable way; specifically, a way that would strengthen the relationship between people and their surroundings.

Ecofeminists are concerned then about the environment, racism, homophobia, classism, ableism, and more because of the ways in which they are linked. Self-realization is generally an ultimate good, but ecofeminism suggests that self isn’t “me;” it’s everything. You cannot separate yourself from everyone or everything in the world. Ecofeminism crafts the environment as an active agent that people are in community with.

Greta Gaard thinks that ecofeminist philosophers have, one, “shown that the claim for the superiority of the self is based on the difference between self and other,” and, two, “there are linkages within the devalued category of the other” (Gaard 116). Or rather, there are linkages in oppressions. No one oppression stands alone by itself.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE (EJ)

EJ examines the intersections of race and environment and the structural constructions and oppressions that link the two. 

EJ addresses the effects of environmental degradation and pollution and the burden that people of color face and carry in regard to environmentally degrading jobs and geographical places, like where they live. Housing policies, city/neighborhood segregation, waste facility locations, and zoning are all disproportionately affecting people of color. These disproportionate affects are directly linked to the devaluing of that group of people and their close association with the environment.

Cassandra Johnson and J.M. Bowker, “African-American Wildland Memories” work through historical events and experiences that shaped collective memories for people based on political and cultural events. They were specifically examining physical ties to land for African American people. Slavery, instilled narratives about wildlands, and lynching are three physical experiences that shaped an understanding and ideology for people of color working on and with land much different from their white counterparts.

African American people were “naturalized” and equated with the nature side of the binary. Ultimately, the negative impacts of environmental destruction that Black people have to face are interconnected with the jobs they have, where they live, and the access they have to resources. The practices and socialized norms derivative of whiteness, the association of people of color with nature, and historical events rooted in collective memory inform the relationship that people of color have with the environment. EJ then seeks to address and dismantle those things.

RECIPROCITY, RE(STORY)ATION, & ENTANGLEMENT

Robin Wall Kimmerer / Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Kimmerer discusses obligate symbiosis and reciprocity as integral concepts for a community. She demonstrates this idea with a creation story about gods using people of corn. How do you foster reciprocity? To grow corn, it has to be both sown and picked requiring human cultivation. That cultivation is not only integral to the agricultural process for growth of the corn, and food and nourishment for the people cultivating and eating the corn. The corn also represents how integral the creation story is because of the way they script the way beings exist and co-exist in an environment and are integrated from the beginning of their creation. Humans are involved in their cultivation and success in every step of the way. This integration uses gratitude and reciprocity in the foundation of the environmental ethic.

The current understanding of a handful of dominant environmental ethics that are derived from a carefully crafted story of conquering and resource depletion, based in binaries, are what inform most ethics. The stories that are told and retold over time are our scripts for interacting with others, others being other people and our landscapes. For Kimmerer, different from other stories about the environment, there is information sharing, telling, and reciting that mold the creation stories and their implementation: it is not just storytelling; it is story making. Therefore, we are restoryating our relationships with the environment. 

Donna Haraway / Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene 

Haraway largely discusses in her work the ideas of situated knowledge: how our positionality informs, physically, socially, and ideologically, our knowledge and ways of being. She uses symbiosis, as a making-together, rather than autopoiesis, a self-making, to illustrate this kind of integration that we have with our surroundings. Entanglement and weaving are meant to color the relationships between living things, coming to a reality together collectively, and, ultimately, entangling in a deep interconnected way that is unable to dissipate from the other connections. Entangled kinship then is the traditional idea of kin, or relating too and being drawn and connected to someone because of kinship, but making kin with a much broader understanding of who and what is kin and ought to be. Entanglement implies a kind of reconceptualization of the ways that humans interact with and are within our environments. We are in and of them, not separate from them. 

CONVERSATIONS & IDEATIONS FOR A NEW ETHIC

With this backing of Ecofeminism, EJ, and more radical environmentalisms like Haraway's situated knowledge and entanglement, and Kimmerer’s incorporation of Indigenous perspectives with science, I knew the kinds of characteristics and relationships that needed to be in environmental ethics and ought to operate in a new discourse, in a new ethic, that was not only more equitable, but encompassed the multiplicity in place, environment, culture, species, and more. Something that struck me particularly was the combination of voices being silenced or pushed to the side because of the identity behind that person or peoples, and the use of narrative, stories, experiences being told and retold verbally and in practice and action. Those two things directly shaped, and continue to shape, our environmental ethic. My project then shifted from writing and reading about the above topics to talking to the people that have been silenced: the people that are integrated in environmentalism in varying degrees and have stories to tell about their environmentalisms, often wrapped in their education, jobs, family heirlooms, and childhood memories that shaped who they are as people. 

Below are the summations from the conversations I had with people: what are the main things missing, and what are the requirements, the non-negotiables, of a new ethic. 

PROBLEMATIZING THE CURRENT ETHIC: 

• The idea of protecting or only preserving the environment as opposed to an allyship that requires listening and relationship building with our environments not simply setting parts of it aside
• The narrowed perspective that people have on themselves and the scope of what environmentalism is and could be
• The exploitation of Indigenous perspectives and lack of reparations and recognition for stolen land
• The inappropriate relationship between people, environment, and non-human animals based in oppression and domination of non-human entities
• Othering the environment as outside of ourselves rather than something that we as people are within and a part of
• No sense of collectivity amongst species and their surroundings
• Not knowing how to include non-human entities as subjects and what that looks like politically and in policy
• The absence of corporation level pressure to make change
• The difficulty of a negatively charged message of the current climate change crisis
• The lack of overall urgency and priority

REQUIREMENTS FOR A NEW ETHIC:

• More self-reflection
• Allyship with non-human species and environments
• Anti-racism
• Safety & accessibility
• Holding space for all people, and meeting them where they are at
• Reverence as an idea, thinking about it as more than its different parts; allowing spaces to shape us, who we are, and our ethics.
• Centering the discourse in Environmental Justice, Ecofeminism, & Indigenous perspectives
• Entangled kinship
• Political will and prioritization of policy changes
• Joy: recognizing joy in non-human animals and learning to love being alive with a thriving environment, non-human community, and the human community globally.
• Relationships beyond what legislation and policies require

                                                                                                  link to portfolio