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Ecology and environmental movements have evolved a lot in recent decades. Today, we can find a fairly wide variety of different philosophies and approaches that affirm what the relationship that humans should establish with nature should be and, likewise, what the rest of the social structures that interact with each other should be.
Within these movements, one of the most prominent is social ecology, which brings together different elements of classical environmentalism and various political movements that define this philosophy and their way of understanding the world and the relationship that human beings should have with it. If you want to know in depth what is the importance of social ecology, as well as its most recent history and defined objectives, continue reading Green Ecologist and we will tell you about it.
What is social ecology
When we talk about social ecology we make direct reference to Murray bookchin, an American historian and philosopher to whom we owe the coinage of the term. Social ecology, also called green anarchism or eco-anarchism, is a philosophical current that arises from the union of classical environmentalism and the postulates of anarchist current.
According to Bookchin's own vision, nature regulates itself autonomously and without the need for an authority to govern it. In the same way, all the living beings that comprise it, establish local and interconnected relationships, which leads to a holistic vision (global vision in which everything is connected) and that defines the success of nature and biological life. In herself.
Continuing with the same argument, when the human being establishes relationships between its members or between man and nature, these types of relationships are based on a relationship of power and authority. In other words, the holistic and interconnected vision of each of the parts that makes up the whole is broken. Consequently, not only the natural balance that allows the successful development of nature is destroyed, but the very survival of human beings is endangered.
What is the man-nature relationship proposed by social ecology
Faced with this situation of disruption of natural balance that involves the action of human beings in nature, social ecology proposes a series of technical and political aspects aimed at redefine the man-nature relationship with the aim of restoring the broken holistic balance.
Technical aspects
The human being must make use of his intelligence to transform his civilizing and industrial action into a sustainable civilizing and industrial action, that is, that man's action does not lead to the destruction of nature. This is achieved through sustainable development, sustainable biotechnology, sustainable architecture, etc.
Political aspects
Social ecology redefines the political structures in which human communities are grouped in order to minimize the impact that human actions have on ecosystems. In this way, social ecology denies the classical structures of the nation-state and even the very concept of the State. Instead he proposes to reinforce the more local structures in what is known as libertarian municipalism.
What is libertarian municipalism
Taking up the need to reform social structures to protect nature, social ecology proposes what is known as libertarian municipalism, which is a territorial organization system that abandons the classic nation-state in favor of a model of human communities where the municipality would have the highest authority when regulating the social life of citizens. Naturally, the municipalities must adopt the necessary actions to create human communities that are in balance with nature.
In this way, there would be a social structure similar to that of the ancient Greek polis (autonomous cities) that would act together as a federal organization, with the ultimate goal of preserving the man-nature relationship in the holistic and interconnected relationship defended by social ecology.
So what is the importance of social ecology?
The importance of social ecology, eco-anarchism or green anarchism It does not come so much from the possibility or not of establishing a federalist model on a large scale as from the proposal that, ultimately, it is small-scale actions that can lead to a change in the way we relate to the environment . If we think of individual cities, municipalities that take environmental initiatives at the local levelWe will be facing a sustainable development model that is much easier to implement, both in practice and in short periods of time, than if we limit ourselves to large projects that require the alignment and cooperation of States and international authorities.
This by no means means that the most ambitious objectives proposed by the most relevant political authorities should be renounced. However, it does constitute an example of the importance of the ordinary citizen and local governments when it comes to converting our immediate ecosystem (the environment in which we live every day), in a sustainable place and in connection with nature. What would be carried out thanks to the implementation of sustainable alternatives and projects that respect the environment and recover the holistic model in which the human being forms another part of nature and not a fierce enemy of it in the that the interests of one and the other are irreconcilable.
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